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?

SOME kind of formal qualifications must be obtained - whether it's GCSEs or functional skills or equivalent. Not having any formal qualifications is terrible for the child even if they can bake and climb a tree and start a fire (which most school-educated kids can anyway).

I think I'm general colleges are pretty good. My children have been to 3 different colleges between them and they have all been as you have described.

Colleges seem to run very smoothly without a need for uniform or behaviour systems.

Absolutely nobody has a problem with engage home educating parents who have a clear understanding of the curriculum, and how to adapt it to their children’s needs.
People are concerned about parents who are unengaged or plain clueless about curriculum. Your year 9 who you took out of school because you felt school was too intrusive in your private life reading dogman doesn’t mean he’ll sail through english gcse, or will pass chemistry because he can bake a cake.
If your severely dyslexic year 9 reads dogman - amazing! Your year 9 with learning disabilities able to bake a cake independently- amazing. Its about giving the child the best. Do state schools do that? absolutely not, but that is a very low bar.

No my child wouldn't have passed the GCSEs if they had stayed at school and likely would have loved to do anything because school not only didn't allow them to learn anything, it completely destroyed their mental health and esteem

Some children will not pass GCSEs if they are educated in school or at home. By home educating we can avoid the GCSE route and take a more appropriate and effective route.

My child needs Lot of support so they can not be left to their own study. But I do know many many home educated young people who can study independently and are very self motivated.

Generally, it is the he ed families who haven't ever sent their children to school who have the most success with self motivation and independence of learning.
Those of us who end up home ed after school has failed the child causing the child to have destroyed self esteem and damaged mental health have a more complex journey.

As a teacher, EHE really concerns me and I think in future years we’ll look back on it and wonder how it was allowed to happen - I can think of a number in the past couple of years whose parents have removed them from school and it’s ONLY been because it makes life easier for them - ie it’s easier to say they’d home educate rather than work with us to help their child be punctual / not be disruptive / attend school. We’re not talking unmet SEND needs, we’re talking about kids quite often from challenging families who often weren’t engaged with school themselves, just using this as an opt-out. And it’s all fuelled by various well meaning Facebook groups and AI for paperwork. Many parents are just doing EHE because it makes their life easier, but quite frankly many shouldn’t be in charge of educating a potato!

I looked into EHE because my youngest is autistic and at one point I thought we’d be home educating. I’m not totally against it, I know some families socially who do an amazing job. I worked with a colleague who was home educated and found it really interesting to hear about her background. It absolutely can be done well BUT there’s also a huge number of families who are taking advantage of it and not giving the kids a decent education. Anyone who says otherwise is quite naive in my opinion!

And yet

You can be in a room full of others and be lonely and isolated.

I’m a teacher and recognise the huge challenges in school. I dispute the suggestion that the education I or my colleagues provide is pitiful. The majority of children are thriving.

What do you assume is taught in specialist schools for children that have SEN and can't not manage the mainstream curriculum?

Self-motivated kids exist everywhere. They don't need to be HE'd. I come from a very academic family. All of us (including my own daughter) are self-motivated and all of us went to school and have formal qualifications. Anyway, all kids at uni will have to be self-motivated in one way or another.

Agreed. I know someone who HE because she struggled getting her kids to school on time. HE was purely to make her life easier. As you can imagine the kids aren't getting much education

families like ours have been let down so badly by the school and LA that it has caused lasting damage to our child and resulted in no option but home ed.
We have very little confidence that checks done by the same LA that didn't care about the child's well being or their education while they were at school would be able to judge the quality of education they receive at home.
It would also be distressing for my child to have these people invading their safe space especially given that they would have the power to decide if we can continue home ed or if they issue a order to return to school.

They could issue a order to return to school based not on actual clear data or concern of real risk but based on their own opinion and bias.

My child is academically years behind their peers. Since home ed the gap has narrowed. Likely 4years behind now compared to 6 years when attending school.
Most importantly their mental health has improved and they believe that they can learn.

We are apposed to visits not because we have something to hide but because we do not trust the agenda will be about beat interest of young people or ensuring education.

It is easy for people to judge us when their child has been fine in school it is very very different when you have walked this path.

Not at all, tutoring is entirely legal.

A child being HE should be getting an individualised education and loads of 1 to 1 support. They should be doing better than if they were in school. Instead we have HE parents on this thread arguing they don't even have to achieve functional maths and English because they can do them at college at 16.
Functional maths and English at college are aimed at children whose education has failed and it's offering a second chance to achieve the minimum standards. Imagine setting out to achieve this?

Again some children spend 12 years at school and DO NOT come out with any formal qualifications that they have been building for for 12 years

And what about those who are not only not thriving but being damaged by school?

The comment I was replying to talked about children in different pods with a tutor.
An illegal school offers 18 hours or more of education to five or more pupils.

Many of those children have huge challenges. Either severe learning difficulties, or very difficult home lives or they are rarely in school.
Arguing it is okay for HE parents to achieve for their kids what the most struggling or disaffected kids manage is not a defence. You should want better for your kids .

There will always be children that mainstream school can’t meet need for. They need alternative provision that ought to be provided. Is isn’t always and this is hugely wrong. That doesn’t mean mainstream school provision for the majority is pitiful.

And not all people can and want to go to uni

The point is some schooled children will take a uni route and some home ed children will take a uni route.

Some home ed children will have low level of achievement but so will som schooled children.

Regardless of in school or not some children will not pass their exams. With home ed we can avoid the GCSE route and opt for a more appropriate route.

Families who home ed can opt for a GCSE route if that is right for the young person. This may mean they do the 4 GCSEs they need rather than the 9 do e in school. In school they may need to decide between french and Spanish but as home ed they could opt for both languages

I'm not arguing that it's ok for home ed parents not to bother. I'm pointing out that children with huge challenges could also be home educated so the expectation that all home ed children should be able to achieve a level that wouldn't happen if they attended school is unrealistic

Please watch this

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1614427783507118/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v

This is happening across the UK. The huge uptick in home ed is because children and families are being failed so badly by schools and LAs

I am the tutor! I also check them against NC standards, their own personal goals, support with PHSE and ensure they are safeguarded.

They should be achieving at least slightly better being HE than if they were in school.
What I see is kids being removed who were doing okay, and within a year are clearly behind.
Also many HE parents don't seem to realise the standard most school kids achieve. It's why you get lots of surprise when the parents start looking at English and maths GCSE and realise their child is nowhere near the level.

How many hours are you teaching them and how many kids?

It was suggested to me I should home educate DD, as she has ASD and EBSA. However I have pushed and pushed for her to keep going as being with others has helped her. I know if I removed her she would never have gone out again.

I do know someone who removed her 2 from primary. The basis for this was her eldest was ‘too clever’ for school (no mention of her other child). They were popular and happy in school. she also said she missed them.
They spent several years doing ‘baking is science’ ‘history lessons in the museum’. I know she fell out with the local HE group as it wasn’t centred around her children. My friend works in the local museum and they asked for weekly free lessons on subjects they wanted, she was very unhappy they wouldn’t go that.
Her eldest ended going to a local private school on scholarship. The youngest doing online schooling at home. Last I heard he doesn’t go out, he’s in his 20s.
Last I saw them they were teenagers and although lovely, were odd, they were very disconnected from the other children. All their ‘socialising’ was in clubs organised by their mum. I’ve heard the eldest works but struggles.
Mum has a long history of complaining she has been let down by the education system and clearly she thinks she should have been a high flyer if it wasn’t for that. She’s dropped out of uni twice. She often starts things and quits. Once the kids got older she has self diagnosed herself with an illness so she can’t do things now.
All the kids they were friends with have done very well for themselves, I wonder if she realised how much she restricted them.