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?

Not really it's quite well known that 30% will fail
But no one seems to think this is an issue as long as it's not their child

I think that's the main issue - if those destined to fail are home educated and so not entered in GCSEs those that would have passed (but only just) will be at risk of falling into the 30% that fail

Sarah was known to be at risk before she was even born. She attended school and school referred concerns to social services

Social services determined their was no risk and left her to be abused. She was killed in the summer holidays

Schools have a duty to highlight to LA if a child is deregistered and they have safeguarding concerns. This was not followed up

This wasn't a home ed issue it was a failure of social services who already had the power and processes they should have used to safeguard her. But they did not safeguard her

I am not entirely sure when and how the need for a ‘school attendance order’ is assessed.
There is a family on our estate who have never sent their children to school… they applied for first child but he didn’t get into the school they wanted so he was never sent, 2 subsequent children also never attended… oldest would be year 8 or 9 now..
walking past the house there’s always shouting, swearing, multiple cats on front lawn, dogs barking, kittens sold from front door, stench of weed, TV is on all day and night, rarely see kids but when you do they’re sat in front lawn eating pizza while the parents sit smoking pot.
its awful….
how do these kids not get forced to attend school? There doesn’t seem to be any checks done and I’d be surprised if any one of the children receive anything that even resembles an education.

@T1Dmama How does one "force children to attend school"?

The same way we are forced to make our kids attend?!?… I mean jeez we aren’t even allowed a term time holiday…

Homeschooling where no one checks up on the child can be an abuser's paradise. Nobody will know what's happening to the child if it's taken out of school and not checked on. In fact, I read a book about a girl who was abused by her step-father and no one noticed at all because she was homeschooled and under the radar.

Yeah. Not too long ago a child had been flagged as being at risk by school staff a handful of times so the parents took him out of school and he ended up dead

Statistically, more schooled children are abused than home educated ones, yet home educated families are something like 4 times more likely to be referred to social services.

I don't have the actual figures to hand right now.

But home educated children also have opportunities to be part of a big community and spend time in groups. Obviously some areas have a lot more going on than others but where I am we are spoilt for choice.

Lack of socialisation is such a myth, and anyone with any experience of home ed knows it isn't an issue. The only time it would be an issue is for children suffering severe anxiety etc. but in the school I work in, there are also children who do not attend school due to having severe anxiety, so this isn't a specific home ed issue.

That's so positive to hear. However, it doesn't negate the number of parents who refuse to send DC due to self projected issues and/or being able to function themselves so getting them up.ready for school is impossible because they don't get up themselves.

Home ed parents don't have to "teach", yet another misconception. They do however have to facilitate learning, so providing the right resources, getting subject specific tutors (if applicable) etc.

I'm a former teacher, and also didn't realise this until I thorough researched home ed when I first started considering it.

Home schooling can be done really well. I know people who’ve got their children through exams and on to college, which I think is commendable. I know I couldn’t have done it.

On the other hand, I know a family, DH used to serve with the bloke in the RAF, who have 12 kids. They don’t value education at all, and have pulled all their younger children, 7 in total, from school. The rest have left. They get zero education. They, also, have a YouTube channel, TikTok and the rest which seems to be a running theme. The children spend a lot of time going out for walks, they clear out the shed, do the garden and perhaps spend an hour on reading eggs. Every single one of them is behind. All they are is content, which should be against the law.

What happens when they get to 18 or 20 and decide they want to be a nurse or an engineer or a teacher but they don’t even know the basics? It’s absolutely criminal how these children are being allowed to be let down like they’re being imo.

Ok, but this is precisely the point why home education isn't a great idea. In practice this "not teaching" produces kids with no qualifications and no general knowledge.

I totally agree.

There's a lot of "home Ed" parents who are counting making things out of Play-Doh, watching documentaries and "having a really interesting conversation" as education. Someone who was amazed that her 9 yo correctly identified that she had eaten a piece of sausage from his plate because he had counted there were 7 quarters when there should have been 8. And baking a cake is maths, science, art and literacy, you know.

They seem totally unaware that most parents do what they do in a whole day in an hour or two after school.

And I don't believe that you can work full time and provide a full time education for a child.

No, I disagree. There will always be exceptions, but generally speaking, home educated children can be very focused and self-motivated learners. Many home educated children go off to uni. Oxford even has an annual open day specifically for home educated children.

I also know a boy who has been head-hunted by NASA for an apprenticeship with them as soon as he's old enough.

I think if you don't understand home ed, it's easy to jump to a conclusion that "not teaching" produces kids with no qualifications and no general knowledge", but really, you couldn't be further from the truth.

As I said, there will always be some exceptions and some families who let their children down, just as their are children who leave the schooling system without qualifications also.

But in my experience, home educated children tend to do very well.

My eldest child is taking some of her GCSEs 2 years early, because she can, and she's doing very well, despite me not formally "teaching" her those subjects.

Both of my children are very bright and knowledgeable and neither have ever attended a school. My children are focused and self-motivated learners.

This 'not teaching' produces self motivated young people who may or may not have qualifications depending on the route and interests they cultivate.
This can be varied in outcomes

1. Person may be into electronics and become an electrician by starting an apprenticeship
2. Starts their degree at 16
3. Starts their degree at 22 after an access course.
4. Becomes a chef at college

Anything is possible..many a level route teachers find that home ed young people are far more independent learners and struggle less than those who did school.

A levels and degree isn't a route my child will take regardless of if they had been fully educated in school or home educated..we won't be doing GCSEs. We will be doing alternative level 2 courses instead. They know what they want to do and they know the steps they need to take to do this.

Yes but I think the point people are making is that you are doing and have done some ‘proper’ and ‘formal’ learning in regards to core subjects and even the formulation and presentation of test papers etc, children don’t just pass GCSEs early by being interested in a subject.

I think it’s hard to understand OP’s point until you’ve actually seen it in person. Some areas seem to have motivated and thriving HE communities and others seem to be dominated unfortunately by the families / children that OP describes.

It sounds like you are describing an illegal school which is probably a safeguarding nightmare

However I’m noticing a huge uptick in people ‘deregistering’ their kids to promote a kind of off-grid, traditional lifestyle on social media

Social media isn’t real life though.

I live in an area with lots of HE parents and a local education authority that is very light touch.
I know two families that make a brilliant job of it.
I know some families with kids with Sen who do not want to HE and feel forced into it.

Then there are the families where there is no education happening at all. They usually start off with great intentions with nature walks and worksheets, but by the end of the first year most have given up and just let their kids play or go on video games, and occasionally take them to a museum class or similar.

Then there are others where the parents do nothing, but the kids are old enough to know they need an education so try and educate themselves. There is a social media site critical of HE and those kids sometimes post there asking about free online resources they can access to teach themselves. There is more than you would think. But sometimes parents do buy books.

Why a teenager teaching themselves in their room alone all day is supposed to be better than being taught in a classroom, I have no idea.

I’m more worried that people seem to think watching something on the internet for 5 minutes is an indicator of someone’s whole life.

You see this is the kind of nonsense I hear from some HE parents.
Firstly you do not know this. No stats are collected on this.
Secondly way more children go to school than are HE, you would have to compare per 100,000 children, rather than just actual overall numbers of children abused.
Thirdly children going to school every day are monitored by teachers and signs of abuse reported to social services. This is not foolproof of course. That shy teenage girl may not talk much because of sexual abuse, or she may just be naturally shy. Teachers wouldn't know, they can only report signs they can see.

Yes, some of the educational activities like doing shopping and counting the change, looking for things beginning with the letter L etc on a walk, quietly reading a book are actually good... as supplements to actual education. It's all stuff parents absolutely should be doing with their children but in addition to full time education not just "we did an hour's shopping that's maths for the day".

Likewise older children being self sufficient is great, when it comes to homework. You can't know what you don't know. So leaving a child to "teach themselves" even with workbooks is setting them up to fail and quite cruel if it's a child who very much wants to learn. Saying "oh they are so motivated" is a cop out because motivation alone isn't enough.

As a parent who has a ND dc who has not attended primary school fulltime for over 2 years, these threads are interesting.

I've been ok with supplementing their primary school education at home, but when they move up to high school we will need to seriously consider online schools or our local independent alternative school because I know I won't be able to provide the level of learning they need.

My preference is for dc to stay in mainstream, but realistically if they're struggling this much with primary school, high school will be impossible.

So your self-motivated children will have no GCSEs and won't be doing A-levels? Kind of proves my point. I don't know what would prevent them from following their interests at college if they had done their GCSEs? I think it's borderline irresponsible not to get them to sit at least English and Maths GCSEs.

@ReadingSoManyThreads lol how many home-schooled kids go to Oxbridge and are head-hunted by NASA? I'd like to see the statistics for that 😂 I'm assuming the home-ed Oxbridge applicants had to sit A-levels like everyone else rather than just bake and stroll around museums?