Why and how do you home educate?

[gabid]

I am quite frustrated with the early school starting age in the UK. When DS was 3 a primary school teacher friend of mine said she would love to home educate if she found a couple of parents who would join and do it together. At that point I had never thought about it and worried about social aspets and being academically behind in later years. In the meantime that friend has moved away.

We asked our local school whether DS could start Reception one year late and were were told yes, but he would then have to join Y1 - we didn't. DS is 6 now and in Y2, aged 4, he went from refusing to read and do maths with his teacher to being an average reluctant reader at age 6. I don't think the system has done him any favours. And I wish I would have been braver and kept him out during the infant years.

How did you get into home ed? How and how long do you do it for?

Real housewife, i really think if you ask at a school they expect all there children to learn phonics, recognize letters, numbers and names by the end of, if not mid way through reception. if the child is one of the younger in the class that would make them 4. Also just course they are learning through play does not mean they don't have to read.
Look at some of the posts about homework and parents being told there children are behind or have SEN because they cannot read at 4, 5 or 6.

Notatschool

Ours are in school mainly because of the social pressure to send them, but I do feel they learn more through informal chat, reading and experiences at home, espacially inthe early years.We don't do a lot of extra curricular stuff, but we have a lot of family time. I do feel none of ours really connected with school until age 8ish, when they did start to enjoy it from a social point of view. If the teachers went on strike properly, like they did when I was at school (3day week for a year-we had a Tory MP) I wouldn't panic at all.

realhousewife - 'no school forces children to read and write and do maths at the age of 4' - I disagree, our school is more play-orientated than most 'outstanding' schools, however DS had to do jolly phonics and read to the teacher and was made to do maths with a TA. So, its not like nursery!

rosemaryandthyme - I thought what notatschool does with her 6 year old was absolutely age appropriate education and you can do science much better out and about, also English, maths and don't even mention modern foreign languages in primary schools because its non-existant. All these subjects can easily be planned into a day out ... or in.

Further, regarding a 4.5 year old not being able to do a day in a holiday camp. Mine wouldn't have, he never even considered joining anything like that as he hates crowds and lots of people he doesn't know, still doesn't like it at age 6.

The only thing I would worry about HE - a question to those autonomous HEs - once children get to age 7, 8 and older how do your DCs learn that they can't always do what they like, that they have rights as well as responibilities? How do they learn to work as a team, or to get on with others in a formal/professional environment. At school they meet lots of different people from all walks of life with whom they need to get on with and work with - just like in real life.

originalposter - here is a little social experiment for you to proof your point: our DCs (6 and 3) are raised bilingual. OPOL (one parent one language), I always speak and read German to them, dad speaks English and we live in the UK.

Both children still prefer German, DS (6) has spent 2+ years in a British school, 6 hour per day and his German is still better than his English. He speak it to me, his sister, everyone he knows is fluent,he prefers me to read to him, and when watching DVDs he will choose to watch it in German.

I would say that shows that my DS learns more at home than at school.

They are awake for 13 hours a day on week days, and only in school for around 6. Then we have them all weekends and holidays. So they are with us for the majority of the time, even when 'in school'. I think its obvious that the family are the most important learning environment. Mine are very curious and ask questions all the time, and not the sort that would be answered at school.

gabid have you come across the website Joyfully Rejoicing ? lots of questions and answers about unschooling on there.

OriginalPoster the pressure is immense. I sometimes feel I spend all day explaining myself to people while out and about, and you can't join in all the normal school conversations with your friends. I think it's great you still manage to spend so much time together.

Ok, so this evening we were reading some nature stories and DS correctly identified robins and hummingbirds from descriptions. He was excited to tell me he could spell OWL. Reading Horton hatches the egg, DD wanted to know what 100 per cent meant, and what a circus was, and what "sold for money" meant.

As TooJung says, they ask me questions all day long about everything they come into contact with. I'm not worried about them "learning".

And as you say OP! x-posted :)

"English law requires that regardless of the setting, children are provided with an age and ability appropriate education (1944 Education Act)."

No. It's Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act that applies, it states:
"The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to

receive efficient full-time education suitable ;

a) to his age, ability, and aptitude, and

b) to any special educational needs he may have,

either by regular attendance at school or otherwise."

What notatschool, describes sounds perfectly suitable to a small child. Hell the education we provided was an extension of that for our three children all the way up through their teens, Right up till they entered FE college in fact! It's what our autonomous/informal/child interest led education looked like!

"The only thing I would worry about HE - a question to those autonomous HEs - once children get to age 7, 8 and older how do your DCs learn that they can't always do what they like, that they have rights as well as responibilities? How do they learn to work as a team, or to get on with others in a formal/professional environment. At school they meet lots of different people from all walks of life with whom they need to get on with and work with - just like in real life."

Because autonomous home educated children, are out there in the real world, mixing with people from all backgrounds and ages, (you should come to HesFes) rather than just about 30 people of almost exactly the same age and background( as school children are usually all from a relatively small geographical area), for 6 hours a day, weekdays, every week in term time.

Literally the only rule in our household was one of 'mutual respect'-what one person does impacts on everyone else, for the good or the bad, so through discussion, we always encouraged them to think of others.
Responsibility iss not something suddenly imposed after a certain age.

And they took on responsibilities as soon as they wanted to, with regard to education. When they were ready they took themselves off to college.
By that time, they wanted to be there, so they organised themselves completely.
They got their clothes and equipment needed ready, set their alarms, got up, did breakfast, did home work/assignments all by themselves. I didn't nag once. If they didn't want to go in, that would have been their choice and their responsibility. If they didn't want to do an assignment they didn't have to. Entirely their choice and responsibility. I didn't nag or remind them, not once.
In fact they didn't miss a day/go in late/miss an assignment once. they chosen to do the courses, it was their valuable time that could have been spent in fields/having fun with friends, so why waste it?

Their tutors at FE college and now at Uni level, confirm that they fit in very well indeed socially and academically.

Our children learned to work as a team in exactly the same way as school children-except they probably had loads more time to practice it. They spent so much more time playing team games etc than they would have done in school.

I well remember one day at a local HE holiday, when the teens decided that we would have an 'Black Tie Dinner' that they would cook.
They went down to the local town, costed up the ingredients for two courses, came back and asked everyone if they wanted to join in. Most of us did.
We had a choice of three main courses, and we all had the same dessert. All meals were vegan and gluten free friendly. so everyone could eat them.
Without any input from the adults whatsoever, they cooked the meals.
They organised the pre teens to serve.
We all had to get dressed up (which took some imagination as we all just had camping clothes-the funniest were the men who painted black bow ties on their necks!)
Afterwards a group of the teens got up onto the balcony and turned it into a musicians gallery, we pushed back the tables and spent the night dancing and singing .
The only things the adults did was wash up afterwards.

I've seen them organise sports days, Christmas Shows, filmed Masterchef competitions, played problem solving games together and loads of other things, that I think you would consider team work.

My youngest daughter had real difficulties much like those described my Notinschool. She couldn't concentrate at such a young age, indeed she continue to have marked problems with her severe dyslexia, ADHD and dyspraxia until a much older age. However eventually, when the time was right for her, she was able to concentrate, and managed the most formal of occasions with no difficulties. She came often with me, to lobby and meet MPs and Lords. She was present at the first Cross Party Parliamentary Committee meeting on home education.
She was an active member of the Children and Young Peoples panel, sent up to talk to Civil Servants and Ministers about policies affecting children and young people, set up by the last Government.

I know a number of other autonomously teenage and young people, organise themselves into again completely without adults, to lobby and get the voices of home ed youngsters heard, during the last Government review on Home Ed. The girl in that YouTube Vid, gave evidence at The Select Committee for Education at Westminster, You can't get much more professional formal than that!

When home ed teens want money (their parents are usually very very broke as the cost of home education is often one parents income!) they get themselves a job or become self employed very succesfully. Just like every other teen who wants more money. Responsibility just comes along like everything else when you learn through living life.

"At school they meet lots of different people from all walks of life with whom they need to get on with and work with - just like in real life."

To my mind that sum it up-that's the difference you see, autonomous HE isn't 'just like real life', it IS real life.

Thanks for the insight!

Thanks for your reply notaschool, your second explaination is really reassuring to those of us who are concerned that the rise in HE could be a cover for parents (OK not like the vast majority of the parents here) who opt out of the school system and don't go onto provide suitable education.

I think it is the responsibility of society to query the welfare of children who are not in school, just as it is to query the welfare and care of children who are in school.

Regarding the rise in home ed, if there are educational grounds for concern then the LA can ask for further information about the education being provided.
The LA can continue to push for more information and if still not satisfied should consider sending a formal notice to the parents under section 437 and issue a SAO if required, and the family will then be answerable to a court to decide if the education being provided is suitable.

If there are welfare concerns the the LA have always had the powers to do something about it-as they do about any child who goes to school, where there are welfare concerns.

From personal experience as someone who is taking a sometimes overwhelming number of calls from families who are desperate to get their children out of school, I'd say the rapid rise in home education is down to:

• schools not dealing properly with SEN. *schools not dealing with bullying issues *a growing incidence in school phobia (possible related to the first two items) *a growing incidence of bright children who are bored in school *parents not being at all happy with the school allocated to their child.

and a growing awareness of home education as a legal viable alternative to school.

sadly from the calls I take it is mostly the first three-the calls I take are heart breaking.

It is the responsibility of society to report ANY welfare concerns for a child whether they go to school or not.

It is not the responsibility of society to judge someone guilty of welfare issues just on the basis of the child being home educated.
The Elective Home Education: Guidelines for Local Authorities issued by the Department of Education, for LAs, Section 2.7 states:
Local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis

section 3.6 makes it very clear even "Where a parent elects not to allow access to their home or their child, this does not of itself constitute a ground for concern about the education provision being made*

section 4.7 goes on to say:
The welfare and protection of all children, both those who attend school and those who are educated at home, are of paramount concern and the responsibility of the whole community. Working Together to Safeguard Children 200619 states that all agencies and individuals should aim proactively to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. As with school educated children, child protection issues may arise in relation to home educated children. If any child protection concerns come to light in the course of engagement with children and families, or otherwise, these concerns should immediately be referred to the appropriate authorities using established protocols.

I have spent the last four years supporting a family where false allegations of welfare and educational concerns have been made. The case has now been completely dropped. This has been plain bullying and harassment on the part of the LA-it has been very stressful for the mother and child, has taken away from the time and money that should have been available to educate the child, and has distracted the LA away from other urgent welfare concerns

Julie - all of your info is great, but surley only applies to those who have notified their LA, the 20,000 or so that are currently registered as being HE.

UK legislation does nothing, can not even identify or locate the estimated 80,000 children (last weeks TES) who never register for school, thus never appearing on a list to be followed-up.

Isn't it possible that when a person becomes aware that a child is being HE they are enquiring after that child NOT in order to judge or critisise but because they care.

fine-I don't disagree about asking where a child is educated. People can and did that all the time to me and mine.

I disagree completely if people then assume that there is a welfare concern just because children are home educated

Exactly as I would disagree with people assuming that children under 5 years old, in the full time care of their parents may have some welfare concern-just because they are in the care of their parents.

Just as I disagree that all children are a welfare concern when they are in the full time care of their parents in the long school holidays.

and talking about the TES cover story there is a good accurate analysis of the Kyra Ishaq case here

Social Workers In Birmingham had every indication and opportunity to do something for the child-and her schooled siblings who were starving too-but they did not.

A judge in the case wrote
" K?s death was caused by and is the responsibility of her mother and the Intervenor, but on the evidence before the court I can only conclude that in all probability had there been an adequate initial assessment and proper adherence by the educational welfare services to its guidance, K would not have died. Merely looking at the photographs of the house and the conditions in which the children were living confirms in my mind that had social services even seen the bedroom in which the children lived or the manner in which they were fed, they would undoubtedly have intervened."

and also home educators-organisations and researchers in the area- think that 80,000 unregistered home ed children, is an over estimate.
The HE community thinks 50,000 is a more likely TOTAL number of home educated children.

Thanks for replying, there are lots of points of agreement from this side of the fence, I hadn't raised K's case here (for fear of offending even more!) the fundemental question for me would be why the wider community could not have more influence.

By way of background I live in a compound-based community living society, here there are eleven family units with a total of 16 school and pre-school aged children.
Two families (including mine) allow their children to go outside of the community daily to attend mainstream school.
The remaining 12 children stay in the compound and are deemed by their parents to be being HE. Only three of these children have ever attended school, which generated one LEA visit on their removal from school several years ago. The LEA lady was simply asked to leave the site and no further contact has been made. The remaining children are not known to the LA at all.

Do you have concerns about them?

No, community children are well cared for but when it comes to education it would be easy to become insular and have no idea what the children could be achieving for their age.

I would be in favour of having outside tests for the children, say yearly, to help guide their education.
I run the maths work with my neighbour.
I know, now that my children are at school, that for maths and for reading the children are way ahead of schooled peers. All the community who attend state school have been moved up a year for maths and all by age 6 have school measured reading ages of 11.

However writing, art, PE, computer skills all these are very poor.

I would most definitely NOT be in favour of any sort of compulsory testing of home educated children.

The biggest problem IMO is of someone else's definition of what is an acceptable level of attainment.
Children, left to develop at their own pace so just that. Mine all have dyslexia and were failed badly by schools. The youngest left school aged nearly 9, completely unable to read or spell even her own name.
Anyone imposing tests may well have failed her for not being able to read/write/spell aged 13 or so, but it wasn't a case of us not educating her, we were allowing her education to run ahead whilst allowing her spelling and reading to catch up at their own pace.
Other children would be ahead in these areas and behind what my child was good at (her grasp of general knowledge was excellent for instance)
It didn't mean she didn't want to learn-just that what she would have failed miserably at an outsiders imposed test of what was acceptable-and to be honest RosemaryandThyme, I'm guessing what you would deem to be acceptable.
The fact is however, she was reading a year later and completed an OU starter Course by the age of 16 and has recently finished an Nat BTec with the straight distinctions and the highest points on the course.

Personally I would say-for my children at least- at school it would be easy for the teachers "to become insular and have no idea what the children could be achieving for their age" They are hide bound by the NC and one size fits all schooling, which in fact does not work for so very many children, especially those with SEN-and hence the rising numbers of HE!

We were told that my then schooled son for instance, "might achieve Grade D's at GCSE if he tries very very hard" I would have been failing in my duty as a parent to have left him in such a place when he was clearly that unhappy and being failed.
Instead we offered the very sort of relaxed, experience led education that was described earlier in the post, with NO formal work whatso ever, None. No maths work, no writing nothing that could even loosely be considered work in any form, by you or any outside tester. School had completely put him off even looking at a worksheet!
He continued in this way until he rang me up (on his way back from a home ed teen party in London) one day, and told me he was enrolling for 2 GCSEs at FE college. The rest as they say is history. He's at a good uni now reading Psychology.

The problem with outside testing of any sort, is that it simply doesn't fit with autonomous home based education
There number of successfully home educated teens and young people I know personally, must be in the hundreds by now. They are all doing well in Uni/working successfully/self employed.

The European Court of Human Rights allows the parent to educate their child to any educational or religious philosophies. My Educational Philosophy was of one of whole life learning, where education and life were not split from each other, and there was no tests for my children to fail and be undermined by.

Oh and I meant to say I didn't need to have tests of any sort to guide their education. It was guided by the children's own interests and by my instantly seeing whether they were grasping a concept or not.
Nobody ever got any taller by being measured!

Exactly - you had a belief system, a plan for your child and, the plan of autonmously educating.

Here in the community the elders have an education vision based on raising children of high mathmatical and scientific knowledge.

In terms of method your enviroment and mine are probably at completly opposite ends of the spectrum.

We too could take the stance of no outside input/interference, realistically anyone with half a brain would look at either of our situations and know (regardless of agreement with the method) that the children are being very well cared for, stimulated,building confidence etc.

However society should not ignore those who are not being educated at home but whose parents are using the ease of HE regulation to, in essence, hide their children from "prying" eyes.

Our community would support HE inspections if it made it harder for neglectful parents to get away with claiming they are HE when they are doing nothing of the sort.

I would say that tests are simply to establish whether children are being neglected educationally. In mainstream education, low levels will get a child put on 'school action' where they get additional support - it's just a way of keeping a check on the child.

Rosemary if other HEs were more open and cooperative there wouldn't be this suspicion. I am still shocked that children can slip through the net like this. No mandatory registration is a recipe for disaster IMO.

But Rosemary, if I remember Julie's other posts correctly, Julie didn't have any sort of coordinated educational plan initially, but rather withdrew her children on the instinct that their emotional well-being was paramount, believing that any education they might acquire at school would be useless to them if their mental health was destroyed as the result of continuing to attend school when they were so unhappy there. Would an outsider who visited her have said at that stage that she was educating her children?

And what about parents who cannot articulate their educational approach; does that mean they should not be allowed to educate their children? I have a friend who is doing as Julie did, but who would not be able to explain it well at all. In fact the mum becomes very anxious and tends to go all to pieces whenever anyone in a position of power asks her to justify herself either in writing or in person. The only serious difficulties she encounters in educating her children seem to result from the disruption caused to the whole family by the Local Authority's periodic attempts to force the children to school, which fills her and one of her children with fear because he had been so unhappy at school. This sometimes induces the mum to put sudden pressure on the children to produce the type of written output which she believes the LA wants to see. I can see that (between these episodes of disruption at least) her children are getting a great education but I doubt that an inspector would see that at all.

Anyone with half a brain, as you put it, would know that her children were in the right environment. The rest of the HE community do see this and try to support her through this ordeal. But an inspector very likely would have no chance of seeing how the children are thriving. An inspector would see a very anxious mum who is hardly able to give satisfactory responses to the simplest of questions he puts to her, who appears to have something to hide, who tends to tell fibs or become hostile towards authority figures when she feels under pressure, one of whose children seems very fearful and withdrawn when the inspector comes.

So then realhousewife, how would you envision tests would have panned out for Julie's youngest dd if she had been made to take them in the early years of her home education? Presumably they would have "established" that she was being neglected educationally. Would there be a return to school after she had made no measurable progress in literacy while being home educated? Or would she have been made to receive some unwanted "additional support" along the lines of School Action Plus, more of the same support and direction (and pressure) which hadn't worked for her while she was at school?

I would turn what you said on its head, and say that if there weren't this suspicion, home educators would be more open and cooperative. My friend that I mentioned above, for example, really has nothing to hide and is a brilliant mum who is educating her children very well. It is the LA's domineering attempt to intervene in home education which prompts her to want to hide from them. She doesn't behave this way around anyone else. Home ed friends, neighbours, church leaders and relatives all see an open and contented family.

You are right Saracen I had no start plan, no idea of philosophy, no end result in mind-I just found out that home education was a legal viable option one Friday and knew I'd found the answer. I knew that whatever I did was better than what school and their 'school action' crap were doing to my children.
The deregistration letter went in on the Monday and we never looked back.

It was only later that we found autonomous education-I didn't know a single thing about HE before I found the EO website that day and whipped them out.

Schools fail all of the time. They fail children in huge numbers! Testing does not make that better!
I am not anti school, it suits some children. But not all-and for those of us whose children do not fit the system, imposing the tests that go with that system that has failed them is not going to help!

When the Badman debarcle was on, he tried to twist figures to infer that home ed children were twice as likely to be abused as schooled children.
Looking into the same figures properly showed in fact that home ed children were half as likely to be abused as school children-which is what we were able to demonstrate to MPs who bothered listening to us.

Don't worry Julie, home educated children are still no safer than they were before what you describe as the 'Badman debarcle'.

I thought Rosemary's take on the child protection issue was very balanced - that home educators have nothing to hide and would welcome the state services coming in to check on their kids from time to time. It's not domineering, (Saracen) it's protecting the interests of the child. The state services are quite happy thank you very much that home educators do their job for them - they know you save the taxpayer a lot of money. Cooperation is what's required.