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 would say that given the choice, most children would prefer to go to school. They need socialization. As an only child I felt lonely at home, had I also been homeschooled it would have been complete loneliness. It's not normal to isolate a child like that. And I agree with pp kids definitely don't learn as much at home either. I can't understand why parents go down this route.

Considering the utterly pitiful state of school education you are being particularly obtuse. I non-ironically urge you to educate yourself.

An example- we know 2 families who home educate. One I have zero concerns, one massive ones.
Family 1 home educates to allow for frequent travel. Mum fully devoted to home education with online school, kids socialise in groups, both kids doing amazing
Family 2, i’m concerned. Kid always happy at school until mum got in a shouting match with the headteacher as child told some alarming tales from home, and he had a talk with her. Home education consisted of watching youtube for about half a term.
New school started next term as mum needed “childcare” (her words), lasted 6 weeks , child complained about bullying, taken out to watch youtube. Next school started a term later, 4 weeks he said he was bullied again, now permanently taken out watching youtube.
”bullying “ was other children telling “if you loose your pencil case, police will arrest you” kind of stuff….

I feel that people think they can do this adequately when their children are younger eg under 9, but then reality will set in as subjects become more in depth and beyond the parents scope of knowledge and then how this gets handled is key to how well the child does academically.
The exception to this are people who have previously worked as teachers who know what to look out for, how to follow the curriculum and structure a childs learning.

Baking and survival skills are not education. Why would they need survival skills as an adult anyway?

There’s alway been children out of education and children in education who are not suited to it. The issue is we have a education system that is one size fits all

I home educate my son but I do have to mainly agree with you.

we removed our son from school fairly recently as he wasn’t coping in the environment (likely autistic) and was bored with the work (he is exceptionally clever).

He told us while in school he wished he would die so he didn’t have to go. He was six years old. This, amongst other physical reasons including ticks was why we felt we had no choice than to take him out.

Within two weeks he was no longer experiencing ticks and within a couple of months he is back to his usual happy, confident self.

I put in a huge amount of effort with his education. He has tutors for the subject I felt I couldn’t teach to a high enough level such as maths, English, computing, languages and science and I do the other subject alone such as history, geography, art, PSHE etc with plenty of research and resources.

He is doing brilliantly. He is already years ahead of the level he was working at at school because he has been allowed to work at a pace and level that suit him. He is happy and so are we.

However, I am in several home education facebook groups as well as home education groups locally and I have to say I have been surprised about the amount and level of work that seems to be covered. Several people I have met seem to only cover maths and English and not any other subjects, and like you say, class baking as a maths curriculum.

In the Facebook groups the grammar of the written posts is worrying, as how can you support a child when you can’t even compose a single sentence?

The behaviour of a lot of the children we have met at local groups is so bad that I’m wondering if it’s a good idea for my (well behaved) son to continue to attend.

However, I do feel that most of these children have been removed from school as they weren’t coping at all like my son. Most of the children we have met, in fact I’d say all of them with the exception of about 2, have additional needs such as autism and adhd. The parents have really been left with no suitable option than to try to support their children as best as they can.

The real failure here (with the exception of people who just keep their children at home because they have that preference) is the education system as a whole. The teacher training on conditions such as adhd and autism is almost non existent, so how can these children be expected to cope.

Gifted children are having to work at a level way below their capabilities which leads to huge frustration and upset.

I do see new schools popping up with alternative approaches so hopefully things will begin to change for the better but I think overall it’s parents trying their best in whatever situation they find themselves in.

Completely with you, OP.

This thread is fascinating. Basically a mixture of

‘There are some home edders who do a good job, therefore you are wrong OP’

’But there are terrible schools out there, therefore you are wrong, OP’

’Some home ed children end up working for NASA, therefore you are wrong, OP’

’the problem is the whole education system, therefore you are wrong, OP’

For me, even if only child in this country was home schooled badly, then that’s one child who has diminished choices in life. The fact that this is entirely possible and legal is a tragedy.

To be fair lots of schools do forest school these days, and my kids school does orienteering as a PE option. Food tech is also a school subject.

My kids are both happily at school...the only reason I could see my self home educating is for a few months if by some quirk of school admissions DS1 got allocated a school 1.5h away and 2 bus rides (unlikely) - then I'd do that while we were on the waiting list for somewhere closer.

To be fair food technology and forest schools are actual lessons at school.

All children have a right to an education. There need to be proper, regular checks on home education, as well as safeguarding checks. Those who home educate shouldnt have a problem with this if theyve nothing to hide. Schools are subject to regular quality checks and staff are trained in safeguarding. I have a little skin in the game as the school educated sister of a home educated child. The differences is in our outcomes as adults is vast.

Of course school isn’t the best environment for a minority of children, I’m not disputing that. But ‘pitiful’? My child is in y4, she attends a very regular state primary and it’s wonderful. Weekly forest school, lovely teachers who make her lessons very interesting. Swimming, drama and dance productions, they have a vegetable garden and a lovely big playground. So lots of ‘nature’ alongside a proper core curriculum.

I visited a state college a couple of weeks ago for a guided tour by the students. Just a regular state college, it was absolutely amazing. Calm atmosphere, lots of courses offered both academic and vocational, relaxed teachers called by first name, lots of quiet learning spaces. Nothing about it was chaos or oppressive.

I just don’t recognise this ‘state education is pitiful’

Exactly.

It simply cannot continue to be legal for parents to take kids out of education and then decide that anything at all can count as "education" and they don't need to follow any curriculum or for there to be any checks and balances.

I am absolutely not against online schools or home tutoring for kids who can't cope in mainstream schools, but this has to be regulated and cannot just be left to the parents. First, it's a safeguarding issue as kids can be abused at home and no one will know if no one sees them and second, kids must be working towards formal qualifications, as a bare minimum in Maths and English. It can't be optional.

I know a couple of home educating families. One makes sure the children are educated well, they do exams etc. The children are very ‘young’ for their age (16 year olds wouldn’t get the bus into town or go somewhere like the cinema with friends) but overall parents seem to be giving them a good rounded education.

The other family we know the children don’t do much typical learning. They don’t do home ed groups as the mum doesn’t mix well and they’ll do an activity for a few weeks until mum gets overwhelmed and it stops. One child is now at college doing age 16 needing to get up to GCSE level but is really struggling.

My kids are in school and it works well for them but I work for an art gallery, we get loads of home Ed groups in and all those kids seem to be having a very different experience to that which you describe. Most of them end up taking GCSEs or other qualifications and some of them are so knowledgeable on things my own kids would have no clue about.
I get the worry and I’m sure the system doesn’t always work but I wouldn’t take what you see on social media as gospel and certainly not as the norm.

Some people on this thread do have a very narrow view of what education is and what it should look like. If it’s ok for a 16 year old to go to college to learn to become a hairdresser or a plumber, that’s education isn’t it? A young person doing a plumbing course is in education and training and is being prepared for a career as such. It’s hands on and doesn’t involve sitting lots of theoretical exams but it’s a valid form of preparation for adult life. Why can’t that same logic be extended to pre-16 education? Many post-16 training routes only require functional maths and English as entry reqs and some will even allow you to take these alongside the vocational course.

I work in HE and I would say that approximately half of the kids sitting A-levels would have been better off doing something else because they are not really academic enough to be at university and there aren’t many jobs that require you to have two Ds at a level but no technical or vocational qualifications. Most jobs that will accept you without a degree would prefer you to have done other post-16 quals like a BTEC in health care. The students who perform poorly at a-level then have few choices and end up going to university and doing academic study for another few years, in some cases they do ok but these are almost never the students who go on to get really good grades.

What I’m trying to say is that beyond the KS2 basics academic study is not for everyone. 13 and 14 year olds in schools up and down the country are learning a lot of stuff that many of them either will memorise for exams and then forget and never use again, or they will struggle to engage with. Curricula are outdated and because of the obsession with league tables a lot of time is spent teaching to the test. Many students leaving schools with good results are exam robots who have been taught not to think for themselves but rather to focus on the right way to phrase an answer for the test. True critical thinking is something we are almost teaching from scratch at university because it has been actively discouraged. But because this is the norm people are just assuming that this is what a good education looks like and failure to replicate this at home means kids will have poor outcomes. In some cases I agree but in others the kids are spending their time doing more useful things.

The problem is that it's unregulated. Absolutely nothing stops parents taking kids out of school and then letting them sit at home on screens 24/7. No one would even know as these kids go under the radar and are not seen.

Have you read a different thread to the rest of us?

Nobody is worrying about that type of child, its the ones that dont go to school and have feckless parents who aren't providing them with any sort of education. This has been stated repeatedly.

I can see that there must be a lot of advantages to home educating. With a motivated parent and good resources, I don't think we could live in a better time to access an education that fits the child and delivered in a way that efficiently cuts out a lot of the dead time devoted to classroom behaviour management or shifting between classrooms, or dumped with substitute teachers who are just spinning the wheels.

I've seen criticism of home ed kids on mn that they are both lacking in socialisation and also, that socialisation is all that they do.

My older kids thrived in traditional school. My youngest is having a much bumpier go of things. We have a plan in place if things get worse, so I have done a fair amount of research around this and I think I could make it work for him.

One thing about mn that I have noticed is that many of the posters are highly conformist. So, it is no surprise that home education is viewed with deep suspicion and mistrust without much exploration about how it might work well for some kids.

The OP is not disputing the fact that good home edders exist.

Yes, but in the confines of following a dedicated programme. I think that is a very restictive view of being a good home edder.

Two words ... Daniel Pelka. Scavenging from bins in school and still died.

Nope, people are assuming that GCSEs and A-Levels = good, even when it comes to home Ed kids (“I’m not worried about some particular HE kids because they’re doing GCSEs”).

This is not true. Most local authorities now require proof of what children are learning at home via a written report from parents. It does not have to follow the national curriculum but does have to provide an approproate levels of education to their peers.
Educational welfare officers can and will make home visits to verify that a child is not simply off school and left to their own devices or worse.