Guest post: "This September, my daughters won't be going back to school"

[MumsnetGuestPosts]

When we first considered home education, I pictured handwriting practice, daily reading tasks, desks and mini-projects. I used to be a teacher; I imagined some kind of co-op, where I'd teach four or five children Stuff I Knew and another parent would include our children in a similar group for Stuff They Knew.

We decided to opt out of the school system after a brief dabble with preschool for Evie, who's now five - her four-year-old sister Clara won't be starting school this September either. Society can sometimes laugh, with varying degrees of mirth, about the lack of fun and creativity in schools. But given the government push for testing and an ever-narrowing curriculum, we stopped laughing and just felt a bit sad. We decided that home educating would suit our family better.

Of course, we had early worries about doing the right thing for the kids; qualifications; making friends; the embarrassment of telling people.

Although I'd initially envisioned a kind of school at home, my children don't learn that way; in fact, few of us learn that way. It's how schools work because there are 30 children in each group with one adult, and that's hard to manage. It's what has always been done.

We're usually wet or muddy or covered in ice cream or - on good days - all three. Some days I'm Queen Elizabeth I at Hampton Court Palace (but a nicer one at Evie's instruction, because our ginger queen wasn't known for her benevolence) and the girls are my daughters (but secret, illegitimate daughters, because she didn't have any really). Other days we might go back to check on some tadpoles at the park. The girls are enthusiastic explorers and biologists. I'm a rather repetitive and slightly irritating Protector of the Tadpoles. No tadpoles have been harmed, but many have been stroked.

I always knew that these kinds of activities were legitimate ways of learning, but surely you'd also need lessons, or some form of structured teaching. I had read a bit about unschooling but I wasn't really convinced. The essence is that you live with your children and allow them to live: offer lots of opportunities and resources, and allow the children to choose how they spend their time. Be supportive and talk to them. It's the parenting that most of us did when our children were babies and toddlers. They learnt to talk and walk, and recognise individuals, they knew their colours and how to count, and how to stack things, and what would make them feel better if they got hurt. As I started to look for and find learning in ways that don't look like school, this way of educating, and living, made the most sense to me.

We're lucky these days that lots of unschooled kids have grown up and been to university; they're getting good jobs and living satisfying lives without ever having faced the stress of year 6 SATs or last minute Sunday night homework or bullying.

So we're unschoolers. We don't do it in exactly the same way as anybody else, because everyone has their own set of interests and learns in different ways. We go on all sorts of trips organised by home educating parents - to museums and nature reserves and sites of historical interest - and a whole lot of unorganised trips to parks and IKEA and the swimming pool. We read lots of books and go to the library to get more. We play with toys. We watch a lot of Netflix and YouTube and are currently in a phase of playing an abundance of Kirby's Epic Yarn on the Wii.

We spend time with lovely friends and travel around the country to see family. We never take tests; we're never limited by a curriculum; we don't sit if we want to run, nor do we run when we need to sit.

I don't worry about the same things any more, which luckily leaves me time to worry about the mess, or the sibling squabbles or what we'll have for tea instead. I know this is the right choice for us. If they need qualifications there are plenty of ways to get them; they have lots of friends of all ages; and I'm not at all embarrassed to tell people that we're not on holiday, actually, we home educate.

Fire, how do you pay your utility bills, your council tax, your food bills, your transport costs?

can't think outside the box This is what I find rude. Home-eding has sod all to do with "thinking outside the fucking box"
and more to do with what you want to do, or are restricted to doing.

Don't think you some kind of superior thinker/parent because your children don't attend mainstream school, because all you are is a parent, like the rest of us doing their best for their child.

My children do very well in school, I don't need to "think outside the box"

And,Fire, how do you pay the rent/mortgage?

As an adult I still read a lot and explore passions, and learn a lot. But you do need a grounding in different subjects that following your passions does not necessarily bring you.
I also struggle with the idea that learning maths from a textbook is better than from a teacher.

Also I'm not talking about children being taken out due to trauma. Of those who have never been, what % are girls and of the boys, what % are loud, rough and tumble, sports mad boys?

Also, your last paragraph is rather condescending. Do you not think my children do all those things? Or ask all those things? Ds2 (the rugby one) also won last year's prize for physics. some home ed parents seem to be of the view that home ed is wonderful because it allows time for gentle critical thought. Visits to ponds and museums etc as if schooled children miss out on this. My children are off school for 18wks a year. What do you think we go in that time. Also, they absolutely adore school as it offers them so much. Regular high levels of team sports, music and drama none of which I could offer at home. And yes, they have music lessons outside school too and yes they can go to drama groups but I've yet to find any drama groups offering the stage, stage equipment, lighting etc that they have access to at school. One of my sons is shy and although he enjoys drama he'd rather be backstage. He would not have discovered an aptitude for props and lighting at home.

I am by no means anti-HE but I would say this. Looking at the data, staying home with your kids to do this and consequently surviving on a meagre income may have a counter-intuitive effect and the kids may do a lot less well. This is because, statistically speaking, across the whole population and both schooled and HE kids, there is a link between low attainment and low income. The reasons for this are complex and I won't go into it all here, and obviously it won't apply in every case, but I would caution against making too many financial sacrifices if you are going to have to HE on a shoestring. Part of this is the fact that it is likely you will need hard cash to buy in specialist teaching for some subjects at secondary level, for example, if your children are to reach their full potential. So if I was attempting this I would keep a additional income stream going (in my case probably music teaching at weekends).

I can understand if the child has been bullied at school etc. I can't see enough benefits of HE for other children, being with a parent for 16 years to me isn't enabling them to achieve their Potential.

freetrampolineforall, if I cannot answer then we'll discuss our own thoughts before googling, looking it up in a book, going to the library, or asking someone we know with more knowledge in that area. So yes I am able to follow up all her questions eventually and make sure that I do.

I am not suggesting that schooled kids will not ask all these questions. The difference is that our spend more time with someone who has the time to have these discussions with. Of course there is nothing a HE family does that a schooled family could not do. The difference is we can choose when to do it, how often, for how long and have more time to relax in between. That freedom of choice works really well for me and my kids.

There have been a lot of points about "but you have to make them learn xyz eventually or at some point, it can't all be tickling tadpoles". That's just it, we don't have to make them learn anything. Because we don't make them learn stuff they want to. And because no subject is made boring or hard by being introduced to it too early or in a way they don't understand they actually ask and want to learn about everything. By the time my kids are 16 I fully expect them to have the same good grounding in literacy and numeracy and science and history as a schooled kid, only I hope they will also have a deep knowledge of the skills and subjects that really interested and caught them alight. Plus great friendships and a deep knowledge of themselves and how they learn and think and live that will last them a lifetime. I am sure any parent of a schooled child hopes the same, we're just going about it our way.

PS I specifically don't HE because my children would spend all their time lazing about doing Minecraft/Reddit/Pokemon and arguing if I stopped them. I want them learning a lot more than I can cover at home as well, especially up to date science education and various additional languages, group subjects like drama and team sports on tap. I also want them to encounter kids I haven't pre-approved and kids who will thwart their Messianic tendencies (in the case of DS1). All part of the mix.

Fulltimemummy85, read the posts above. The kids are not ONLY with their parent for 16 years. They live in a community, they see lots of other people, live a full filling life connected to lots of people and things beyond the family home. If you are not connected to the HE world yourself it will seem like a mystical thing. But there are truely lots of us. It's like I never noticed how many pregnant people there are until I was one suddenly there were bumps everywhere. Now we HE we meet HEdders all the time and not just at groups, we literally bump into them everywhere. My area is not unusual, save for a few very rural and isolated parts of the UK, HE is very common everywhere in the UK.

The name 'home' education is a bit of a misnomer. It implies two things, that the child will be spending most of their time at home and that they are taught solely by the parent/s. In my experience this isn't true. Most home educating families spend very little time at home and a lot of time out and about in their local and wider community, socialising with friends, takig advantage of opportunities in their community and learning about the world by being in it. Home educated children don't learn solely from their parents but from books, the internet, from other children, from wider family, from friends of the family, from members of the community and yes, from private classes or tutors too, if they choose to! The parent's role is less of a (school) teacher and more of a facilitator, exposing their children to different opportunities and experiences, and when something catches the child's interest, providing whatever's needed to further that interest, whether that's driving them to the space museum, ordering them a book on dinosaurs or introducing them to a family friend who's hobby is battle reenactments. If you don't know a lot about a certain topic you will almost certainly know someone who does. Among my circle of friends I have a retired maths tutor, a published author and a zoologist to name just a few. Home ed parents with particular areas of expertise will often mentor groups of children. Home ed groups organise trips and days out just like school trips.

As for how home ed kids socialise, it tends to be similar to how adults socialise; they have different groups of friends, some who they will be closer to or see more often than others depending on the nature of the friendship. They may have some they only see once a week or once a month at a home ed group and some they meet up with several times a week. Just like with school, friendships made through home ed groups soon translate into going to each other's houses, birthday parties etc. Most home ed kids also attend mainstream groups and make friends through there, and just like any other child they socialise with cousins, local neighbourhood children etc. My children have plenty of friends and such a busy social life that we often need to schedule in some downtime.

So when will they choose to learn the core subjects? How will you know that they are sufficiently grounded in the basics? How do you know what the basics are?

So, Fire, all sounds great but how do you pay your bills, rent/mortgage etc?

As for whether home ed only suits girls or 'sensitive' boys, we know plenty of very boisterous, sports mad boys who are home educated. Their parents say one of the advantages of home ed is it works with their children's personality and energy levels rather than against them, their children can spend as much time as they like getting out and about, running around and burning off energy and then are generally much more able to sit down and concentrate, whereas in school they would be bouncing off the walls with surpressed energy and may well end up being labelled disruptive.

Seriously can people who do not want to HE stop saying that it is elitist and you have to be really wealthy to do it. You may be putting someone off from exploring a good choice for them. We know people in council houses, people that work part-time as an NHS nurse, people that left school with no GCSEs, people that stack shelves in the super market that HE and have happy, thriving children. They struggle to make ends meet, I'm sure they do. But they manage because the choice they have made they believe is best for their kids and they are happy with it. It can be done. That doens't mean everyone should. First and foremost to HE you have to want to HE. And to choose not to you should not feel guilty, just like a mother that chooses to bottle feed or anything else. Everyone has to do what's best for themselves and their child. But whatever choice you make you can do it if its important enough.

Pent, but no one is able to explain how I would pay even modest living costs. A pp has also raised a good point about the limited options available where you home school on a shoestring. No one has provided any clear explanation as to how you would manage without a private income of some kind. I'm assuming that no HE person relies on benefits to pay the bills because that seems rather a cheat.

By living in an area with low rents, by cutting out luxuries, by buying secondhand and by budgeting carefully.

I already do that Fire.

If you are middle class yes you probably do know plenty of people with very specific skills. I know someone who works in a factory, who is in a call centre, and who works in a kennels.
I totally understand how primary school education can be learned if a child has intelligent and fairly decently educated parents. My primary school taught us largely through project work. But secondary is a different kettle of fish. I can see how bringing in tutors fills those gaps, but that does require some money.
And not all children do stop playing and learn. Summerhill which follows the unlearning ideal has said itself that rarely a child simply continues to play and does not learn the basics.

Paula Rothermel did a study a few years ago of outcome for home educated children and found that:

'Findings within the research further indicate that:

Socio-economic class is not an indicator of achievement levels: whilst the home-educated children outscored their school counterparts, those from lower socio-economic groups outperformed their middle class peers. Figures indicate that at least 14% of the parents in the home-education sample were employed in manual and unskilled occupations.

In this study, parental level of education did not limit the children's attainment. At least 38% of parents in this study had been educated at comprehensive schools and at least 21% had no post-school qualifications. Whilst 47.5% of parents had attended university, at least 27.7% of parents in the study had not.

Common to all families involved was their flexible approach to education and the high level of parental attention received by the children. Children benefited from the freedom to develop their skills at their own speed. Thus, parental input and commitment, regardless of their socio-economic group and level of education, may be the most important factor in children's development and progress.'

parental input and commitment, regardless of their socio-economic group and level of education, may be the most important factor in children's development and progress.'

And this applies to everyone, surely.

I do wonder how HE children cope in a more formal environment? When you have to do work you're not interested in/tasks you don't want to do.

When do they learn to crack on if they don't have to pursue things they're not interested in?

So, for example, a child, Bob, isn't interested in learning how to rewire a plug, so doesn't bother, moves on does something else, and Bob learns how to hang wall paper, ast that is what he is interested in.
Bob gets a job as a painter and decorator. hooray. Bob's boss says, "You must learn how to work at heights safely. The course will be on Monday." Bob isn't interested in this course Yawn. Working at heights, snooze-o-rama.

Where did he learn the skills to learn/absorb something he just isn't interested in, but needs to do in order to do his work well/safely/correctly?

How do Home Educators tackle this problem?

So many assumptions being made here. We are far from middle class - my author friend could probably be called middle class (although there are plenty of authors from working class backgrounds) but my ex maths tutor friend definitely isn't. If you have no interest in home educating your child/ren that's fine, school is a great choice for many children, but please don't imply that those who do home ed are only able to do so because they have financial privilege because, as you have repeatedly been told, that is simply untrue. Visit a home ed meetup and you'd find families from all walks of life, some who are well off and others who don't have two beans to rub together.

Sorry , Fire, my bills still need to be paid. You haven't convinced me.

School isn't the only place where you sometimes have to learn or do things you don't want to do, those sort of situations crop up frequently in life. If Bob was passionate about doing the decorating job and in order to do the job he needed to take the course then he'd take the course. Why wouldn't he? If you're passionate about achieveing something then you will put in the effort needed to achieve it, you get through the less interesting bits because you're focused on the end goal. I've never found that home educated children lack self motivation or work ethic, on the contrary, the home educated young people I know are among the most self motivated people I've met. They are intrinsically self motivated, doing things not out of fear or punishments or expectation of rewards but because they themselves get satisfaction from doing so. I know one home educated girl who wants to be an author and is currently writing her first book - she writes pages and pages every day. When she was in school, trying to get her to write one page for an essay was like trying to get blood out of a stone. When you're passionate about something it doesn't feel like hard work.