To really worry about the future of homeschooled children?

[AgeingMillennial]

Please don’t think this is a goady thread designed to rile the masses about home education. I’m very much not referring to children with SEN whose parents are homeschooling because they’re desperate, or ‘serious’ homeschoolers who do an incredible job and produce very well educated kids by following a dedicated programme. I follow several such families on social media and their energy and commitment is way beyond anything I could do.

However I’m noticing a huge uptick in people ‘deregistering’ their kids to promote a kind of off-grid, traditional lifestyle on social media. Not because the child is struggling or unhappy at school but ‘I want to spend more time with them’, ‘the government want to create tax paying robots’, ‘I don’t want the state to raise my kids with transgender ideology’ etc.

The problem is the ‘homeschooling’ is then very substandard and then consists mostly of nature walks, crafts and visits to National Trust properties. All very wholesome but the sort of things most families do at weekends anyway. They might do a couple of pages of the sort of workbooks you find in WH Smith, but that’s it. Where there are siblings they all do the same basic things, none of it tailored to be specific to their age.

AIBU to worry about the future of these kids and to cynically wonder if it’s a ‘social media stream’ in many cases?

I can see both sides, but with what happens in some schools, or at least in some classes in some schools, I get why parents who can afford not to work FT do it.

126,000 children in elective home education (EHE) on census date in autumn 2025. In the previous autumn term, there were 111,700 children electively home educated.

175,900 children were EHE at any point during the 2024/25 academic year. Across the previous academic year there were 153,300 children in EHE.

So that's an increase of 23,600 children or a 15.4% increase in a single year. I do think it's reasonable to describe that as a huge uptick personally.

Surely you should worry about the futures of the children being failed at school rather than the comparatively tiny number who are home educated?
Is it 15000-20000 a year who don't even pass maths and English after 12 years of schooling?

But they’re not ‘educating’ them. That’s my point. If they were I wouldn’t have anything to write about it. As you can see I’m far from alone in having this opinion.

Of course. That doesn’t mean I can’t worry about this as well.

I think for every parent like you who is working their ass off, there are 4 or 5 other home edders who are doing barely anything. They aren't educating and they aren't even raising their children with any kind of compass.
I have a lot of criticisms of our education system and im well educated myself but could I teach my own children well enough... I dont know. How can people be so arrogant to think they can do it, when theyve barely passed gcse's themselves? (Not talking about you FastAnt youre doing fabulous.)
Another thing ive noticed about many of these parents is a serious lack of safety, with regards to these children. Multiple times ive noticed them not supervising children/toddlers in public especially in dangerous areas with bodies of water or steep falls, living children in a playpark and walking to a nearby cafe completely out of site.

What are you doing about all those poor schooled children though?

You do know education is available to these kids whenever they need it / want to engage in it.

Most home Ed kids thrive when they decide to join education because they want to be there and they haven’t been sickened of it by doing too much too young.

It is noting any child as my own who has been HE from day dot and never been in formal childcare won’t be reflected in the figures, as we didn’t ‘deregister’ as never began. So the real figures are definitely higher.

Exactly this. With a committed parent who follows a dedicated programme I imagine it is absolutely wonderful, probably better than school in many ways. But I feel like so many parents having been sucked into an internet wormhole that convinces them schools are sinister government plots and children should really be spending all day ‘getting messy in nature’ - they’ve been convinced this somehow is an education, when it clearly isn’t.

Thank you, it’s probably worth noting I do have an evening job within academia and I fully appreciate those who would love to HE but cannot due to commitments / single parents etc.

What do you expect me to be doing? I’m not the education secretary.

That's concerning that they don't have a way of recording/following up on those children. I am sure you are doing a good job but I don't like the principle that it's so easy for children to fall through the cracks.

The figures I quoted were directly from the link the previous poster provided as "evidence" that there was no increase. Which is also concerning.

So you take all that from watching people on you tube and TikTok?

home education is bloody hard work to do properly.

would suggest you don’t try it to be honest, carry on watching social media then bitching about all the terrible parents that are doing the best they can to educate there kids.

Wondering why you are concerned?

I agree it’s hugely concerning. The LA are welcome here anytime, they’ve never contacted me nor me them. However, I have a full classroom ‘room’ and I’d happily show them everything we have done and do. I think after Sara Sharif things should change, and I’d actually support a ‘formal register’ but many HE groups see this as an attack on their liberty.

But you care enough about some randoms you saw on tiktok to start a thread about it 😂You're really worried about them but not arsed about hundreds of thousands of schooled children...

There are people taking home education serious, and that is not a problem at all.
However, there is a significant minority who do a tiny amount of education and a lot of watching youtube…
Yes,1-2-1 education takes a lot less time than being in school, but 30 min a day isn’t going to cut it…

Agreed. For KS2 it’s averaging around 3/4 hours per day. If it dips less we go over weekends and I don’t stop for half terms etc.

I’m a home educator, and the only people I know who also HE fall into two groups. The vast majority have SN kids who have been monumentally failed by schools (which no one gives a flying fuck about), the second group is teachers who cannot face putting their children through a system that works hard to harm them - I always find this particularly interesting…

You’d be better to put your energy into looking at the education system that routinely fails children, that has growing numbers of SN students whose needs they fail to meet, fast increasing numbers of SN (over 40% in some mainstream schools), that has record numbers of young people finishing school at the end of the arbitrary process and are unable to do anything. Those deregistering perhaps have it right. Stop judging, look at why people are doing this.

I don't think the Austen sisters or Thomas Edison represent the average intelligence person... most people are very far from their intelectual abilities, so what worked for them will not work for most children.

Are you, in turn, ‘arsed’ about these kids as well as the ‘failed at school’ ones?

In fairness if you look at the PISA rankings the UK as a whole (and England specifically) does very well (in the top ten). So even though there are obviously issues if some children within the formal education system at being left behind the overall education provided in UK schools is decent compared to elsewhere. Even if teenagers aren't left particularly enthused.

Because I think it is storing up yet another problem for unemployment and mental health services in years to come; when they are already very oversubscribed?

They’re not doing their best. If they are doing their best, their best is simply not good enough.