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 have a home ed Facebook group keep popping up on my feed (no idea why as I do not have school age DC)

I find the posts & comments a bit disturbing. They are mainly screenshots of local authority requests for evidence of work being completed & topics etc & requests for visits

The group seems to consists of people offering advice on 'telling them where to go' and their rights to refuse to show their child's work as it's a breach of their rights & they can't force you etc etc.

It seems very conspiracy theorist & anarchist rather than about appropriately safeguarding & educating children. I appreciate these are mainly kids that have been failed by school or families that have failed with the school & have strong feelings but some of the views are dangerous.

Yes I understand Facebook will have seen me read a post & will show me similar & I don't follow the groups to see the full topic of discussion

I was previously a primary teacher in a ‘challenging’ school and there was a certain phenomenon of a child (who tended to be poorly behaved) whose parent would have a big old argumentative run-in with the HT and would then decide on the spot to ‘home educate’. This was often in the summer term. The child would be whisked out of the classroom in the middle of a school day, the family would then have a lovely extended summer but, sure enough, September would roll around and the child would reappear in their year group without a further word being said about plans for home education!

To be honest, if education is actually being delivered, I am not against it in certain circumstances in the primary phase (for example travelling as a family for a defined period of time) but I agree with registration of home educated children and a certain amount of light-touch inspection too. I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable for parents to give an account of the education that their child has been experiencing (note that I have said ‘experiencing’, not the parent necessarily providing) but there should also be facilitated routes for children to re-enter the system and take public exams as needed.

Unregistered schools (especially religious schools) are also a worrying phenomenon and I think that the previous government (can’t recall which one) was right to bring them under greater oversight.

There is also a concerning overlap with post-Covid poor attendance/school refusal (I was involved in a project where this came up as a phenomenon) and then a pathway to being NEET post-16.

There was a c4 documentary on this a few years ago, made with the Children’s Commissioner, and I think it would stand a remake for the post-Covid era.

I actually know of more home educated children than I thought I would. There’s a playground in my neighbourhood frequented by pupils from the nearby prep and state schools. On any given afternoon you’ll see up to 50 children from 4-5 different schools, and I know of at least 5 who are home-ed. This is in SW London.

It’s more common than you’d think @SilenceInside

Brilliant post. School is a very new concept really and lots of kids are poorly suited to it. My dc went to an exceptional (independent) primary school, but secondary was a disaster. HE has saved them so much unnecessary stress.

So I am not against home education in principle. I think if it is done well, by committed and skilled parents, it can work very well, particularly for children who struggle in a school environment for whatever reason. If it felt like the right route for my children, I would strongly consider it.

But various homeschooling groups pop up on my social media feeds and some of the posts there are by people who I don't think have the right skillset to educate their children without any external input. They say that they 'dont no lots' or that the primary level maths is too hard and they don't understand it so they can't help their child complete the KS2 worksheet they have printed off. They are contacted by the LA and they post online for help, panicking because the LA has said that printing off worksheets is not a full educational programme.

The really sad posts are by people who have withdrawn their children in desperation, because they are being failed by the school system. They are left without SEN support, struggling to access the curriculum, or they are being bullied and not properly safeguarded. Some parents are trying to balance working full time with providing their children with an education.

There will always be a group of parents who home educate their children and do it very well, but there are also parents who don't have the ability to provide their children with an adequate education, and I'm not sure that LAs do a very good job at identifying them. I also worry that there are parents who do not want to educate their children but are being forced into it by a system that has failed their children. The two groups probably overlap to an extent.

I'm now going to be told that I've totally misunderstood home education and there are lots of ways it can work. But I don't think it is working for all children.

I took my children out of school and home Educate them

let me tell you it is hard work!!!! It’s a hell of a lot more work than if your child went to school. It’s brutal and difficult and you need to really work out where you’re going to get all of your information from.

we have tutors that come to the house a few times a week and I do the rest of the schooling. I work a job where I work nights and that’s how we do it here.

but home schooling isn’t for the faint hearted, it requires so much work, but for me my daughters mental health at 6 was almost suicidal from school and as a family we couldn’t continue anymore, she was taking scissors to her hair and just chopping, she would scream from 6pm to bedtime over and over staying how she didn’t want to go to school. She tried to jump out of windows and in front of cars…..Mornings before school were so bad that I can’t even think about them now as it’s too upsetting. They're not behind and They’re set to do exams like every other child which are around £100 each, and it will be extremely hard work.

I work with my local LA as in thy ask my yearly what I’m doing and I write a report and so do all the tutors I use and I’ve never once had them say that they’re worried. I get glowing reports back from the LA also, I don’t panic about them and have invited them in and asked them for advice when needed, I am lucky that I have a supportive LA who understands that school doesn’t fit every child…..

you can always redo exams if need be but you can never redo mental health.

I wanted an alive child by the time school had finished and if she’d of stayed in mainstream school she wouldn’t be here

sk I think you need to maybe speak to some people who actually home educate their children and not rely on TikTok.

I support a home educating family. Their children are all ahead. They do the usual baking, arts and crafts and nature walks. They also do a combined 3 hours a day of intensive study, attend science camps, run an allotment and attend various sports classes. They are kind, bright and confident

Ive really noticed this too op. For some reason my social media keeps serving me stuff where people have posted in uk (public) online groups. They are all the same. Badly written posts (implying poor education leves) by parents who have removed secondary aged kids from school and are classing going to the gym, watching tv documentaries, baking & craft hobbies as a complete education. They have invariably received a polite letter from the council inviting them to chat about their DCs education & progress, and are coached by others in the group to resist any engagement, quote statutory rights, refuse visits etc. Its very worrying. Lots of language about unschooling.

All these kids do absolutely zero age appropriate english/maths with any progress towards the level of functional skills required to manage or work as an adult. Where they undertake activities you could call educational, they don't seem to be doing anything at a level to develop the skill needed to do it as a career. They seem to basically only do leisure activities.

I do worry some of these kids will be utterly unequipped for work as adults.

Oh and i know a family who pulled DC out to "home educate" for a couple of years. He basically indulged in random interests and hobbies and returned to school very behind.

I do worry some of these kids will be utterly unequipped for work as adults.

Well, in that, they will be in the same position as some schooled children - quite a lot of them actually.

Likely not the ones you know.

various homeschooling groups pop up on my social media feeds and some of the posts there are by people who I don't think have the right skillset to educate their children without any external input. They say that they 'dont no lots' or that the primary level maths is too hard and they don't understand it so they can't help their child complete the KS2 worksheet they have printed off. They are contacted by the LA and they post online for help, panicking because the LA has said that printing off worksheets is not a full educational programme.

This @KatherineParr, i see a hell of a lot of this.

I home edded my dd for a while.

my SIL home educated her seven kids.

my dd now has a degree from Newcastle in physics. She’s looking for graduate jobs.

my sil’s eldest is now 19 and is doing maths, English and science GCSEs at college at foundation level because my sil realised she can’t teach it.

there’s six kids behind him at two year intervals none of whom have any qualifications at all and sil has apparently only now realised she can’t teach gcse content.

her highest qualification is GCSEs.

I know 3 people who home school. 2 are single parents who just go to work and leave the kids at home playing video games. They are getting literally no education at all and it's just shocking. It's akin to child abuse as those children will have no qualifications and absolutely no hope. They are never checked up on.

The other is a typical 'alternative' type parent, nature walks, lots of crafting, extended holidays in India.

This is exactly the kind of scenario I’m referring to.

It’s pointless coming at me with ‘well I know 10 homeschool families and their kids are light years ahead’ because they’re not the families this thread is about.

My natural default is to be wary of government intervention but they may have to do something here.

@fridgecigarette I don't think anything at all about how common or not it is. I think my post was unclear and therefore misunderstood and it's too late to edit it.

My point was that social media is not an accurate portrayal of anything, and what you see in your feed is not a neutral position. To have a sensible discussion about numbers, you need the actual numbers, which is what I linked to. I made no comment at all about what the data showed. In retrospect I should have indicated that more clearly. The OP knows lots of home educators, I know none - who has the accurate view on the numbers? Neither of us, as we only have our own subjective experience. I am well aware that my own experience is not representative.

I don’t think this is a thing where you can just say it’s the same in all situations as people home school for a variety of reasons, some more successfully than others, some with SEN children, some with medical conditions, some for lifestyle choice.
I know of one child who was put into year 7 with my son he’d never been to school before then he’d had some amazing experiences and was a lovely lad but academically he had the reading age of a 6 year old!!! So starting secondary was traumatic for him but this is just one of thousands - all different outcomes.

Oh do fuck off. So sick of all of the anti-home education threads on MN.

You know what, I work in a secondary school, and you should be more concerned at the atrocious literacy levels of teenaged schooled children, than my home educated children's education.

Sorry to derail but this is my main concern about home educating. I think my DC would probably benefit in the future but I am quite traditional in my expectations of children’s (and their parents’) behaviour and my own DC have SEN but I don’t let them use this as an excuse for poor manners or inappropriate behaviour. I would also have pretty high expectations academically and don’t believe that playing Minecraft all day constitutes an education. I’m worried that I wouldn’t find any likeminded families? Have you met many?

How did you figure out "it isn't unusual"? Did you do a national sample, or did you see some nutters on social media?

DH & I love the idea of home educating. We take a huge interest in our children's learning. I spend hours researching and coming up with ideas for how to bring learning to life and we do this on weekends and evenings. However we couldn't afford the lifestyle we want the kids to have if we didn't work.

I am also deeply concerned by the growth of the conspiracy theorist anti-science foil hat wearers. Refusing essential freebies as basic as vaccines (which other countries would bite your hand for) and all sorts of other paranoid lunacy.

We've gone from having generations becoming more and more educated and somehow we are now going back on this and will soon have adults who are illiterate.

I don't think just any parent should be allowed to take away their child's right to mainstream education. And I think children who are capable should have to sit GCSEs at the very minimum. Why on earth parents would want to disadvantage their children by not providing them with the free opportunity for basic maths and English is beyond me. They don't need to be A* pupils but a C in English and maths is the bare minimum to go anywhere in life. Even if you want to run your own business, work in a trade or even something creative - you still need basic GCSEs.

As a parent I can't understand why anyone would want to willfully handicap their child. Plenty of children in other countries would love the free healthcare and education, so perhaps they can do a swap, and then perhaps they will see where the grass really is greener.

I know a few parents who home educate and they have bright children who are well ahead of where they'd be in school because instead of a class of 30 they are in a group of 2-3. They also get to be outside and go for walks and the like which is fantastic and kids shouldn't really be stuck in a classroom in an ideal world.

It works well if parents are doing it because they want to offer their kids a better education than they'd get at school. But conspiracy theorists should be locked up and the kids handed over the social services.

How are you home educating if you also work?

@fastantyou are fantastic, and face the same worries OP raises as many of us do.

unschooling is the biggest issue, and I think gives home schooling a bad reputation.

then there are the kids “in school” who are unsupported and rarely there.

it’s a society issue. As others say

Somehow I doubt she's working 24/7

Who should be held responsible when children don't get a C in maths and English GCSEs?

Yes thank goodness that all state schooled children are leaving secondary with their maths and English GCSEs 🤦🏻‍♀️

There are children entering the schooling system at 4/5 years old, spending virtually their entire childhood there and leaving without achieving a single GCSE.

Where is the uproar about that? It shouldn't be possible.