Were you homeschooled?

[bobjovial]

Has anyone here been homeschooled themselves? Not talking about homeschooling your kids, but you personally never going to a mainstream school.

I’d be really interested to hear the pros and cons of your experience.

Yes, I home schooled myself in my final year of secondary school (not in the UK so no A-levels). It’s because I was fucking over it and the compromise to keep me from leaving school entirely was homeschooling. I was top in my year so fairly competent.

I took a science course at a local university. I did maths and Spanish at a local state secondary (not the one I’d gone to previously). I just turned up a few times a week for those lessons and then left. I did English privately tutored by a retired teacher who sat and discussed poetry with me at her kitchen table.

Honestly, it would have been better if my parents and the school actually communicated and met my needs and kept me in school. At the time, it felt like the only option, but I wish I’d stayed in school with my friends as I missed out on a lot socially and I would have been better set up for university. What I really needed was support, but it took me several years, dropping out of uni, finding a new uni and course, and some proper support on my own to get what I really needed back in school.

Yes. All four of us were, in a very isolated and remote location, in a pretty odd situation with a lot of traumatic and abusive family dynamics. Education wise, we had no exams but still managed to get degrees as adults and have successful careers. One of us did go to secondary school later on but the rest of us did not attend primary or secondary! It’s the social side of things that was the worst though, and being at home in an environment of anxiety every single day.