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Home ed

Find advice from other parents on our Homeschool forum. You may also find our round up of the best online learning resources useful.

Not really familiar with it, but what makes parents WANT to home ed?

30 replies

MummyPenguin · 17/01/2007 23:33

I couldn't do without my kids being at school. I'd go insane if they were at home all the time. What drives parents to home educate? Do home ed children fare as well as those in school? Do you have to be pretty clever yourself? (That's me out then.) Or do you get the same resources for learning as schools do? Do you follow term times and school hols?

OP posts:
sorkycake · 18/01/2007 00:02

If you don't get many responses to your questions then it maybe be
cause the home ed'ers took a disgraceful bashing very recently from ignorant posters and this post comes hot on the heels of some pretty vicious criticism of the decisions some of us have made for our families.
I personally don't equate school with education and learning and know I can do a better job. I was initially worried about how I might cope with both at home and another due in 3 weeks, but it's been okay so far however it's early days for us. We missed each other (my eldest) when she was at school. I've never been a mother who saw school as a kind of break from her tbh. No offence intended honestly.
We don't receive any support in terms of financial assistance or resources from the LEA. We don't have to follow the National Curriculum or stick to terms etc that's just for schools.

Fireflyfairy2 · 18/01/2007 00:09

My friend home-eds her 5 kids!! Hats off to her!! She does a damn good job too! They are working on a project about the egyptians. AFAIK you don't have to be clever to home-ed, just hungry for knowledge & able to use it

She felt let down by the education system & the bullying going on at her eldest child first school. Only her eldest two have been to school (Although I cannot honestly remember so maybe FS will correct me there ) They are clever, articulate & very balanced young people. They feel comfortable with people from any age group & can hold a very intelligent conversation!!
(As I'm sure many school edded people can too..so I don't really know what point I am trying to make here)

Anyway, diff strokes for diff folks & all that

JustHumphrey · 18/01/2007 00:12

Hello MummyPenguin.
Have a look at the education otherwise website as that has the answers to the legal requirements of HE.
(I wish I was on some sort of pay-per-click deal with them, the number of times I've done that link! )
I think there are probably as many different reasons for home educating as there are families doing it!
In our case, we took our children out of school because they are dyslexic, and the England state school system does not educate dyslexic children appropriately.
My children are 11 and 9, so they have lots of activities that don't involve me. It's not like we're together 24 hours a day.
Many HE parents are qualified teachers. I'm not. I view my role as facilitating rather than teaching.
Hope that helps.

Runnerbean · 18/01/2007 08:39

What drives parents to home educate?

There are many reasons we HE, but my driving force was undoubtedly my observations doing voluntary work in my daughters class for two years.

I just felt compelled because it was just failing my daughter miserably.
If we could afford private education I may not have had to consider HE.
It is definitely not for every parent or child, but it works for us and we are all defintely happier.

Runnerbean · 18/01/2007 08:41

that should be definitely!

McDreamy · 18/01/2007 08:42

I have such admiration for those of you that home educate I really do!

Ladymuck · 18/01/2007 08:50

I don't home ed, but I would certainly include it within my options. I would home ed in a flash if my children were bullied and it was not appropriately dealt with (assuming transfer was out of question). Or if my children had learning needs that weren't being suitably addressed. Or if my children were being turned off learning by schools (I have boys, and in general I don't think that the state education system is always working to their best interests).

Home ed doesn't have to be 24/7 with you and the child. It is OK to take a break and get other things done. It also depends veyr much on the age of the children anyway - some of the older ones may well access some courses via college etc anyway.

SueBaroo · 18/01/2007 09:12

Well, I guess I do like having them around. Doesn't mean I don't need a break now and then, of course, but generally, they're nice people, and fun to spend time with.

We have a mix of educational and religious reasons for HE personally, but as others have mentioned, that is one of many variations in motivation for those who HE.

I am educated to nearly degree level personally. I had to give up in the last year of my English and Drama degree to care for my mother, who had cancer. My Dh is a maths graduate. But we're neither of us top flight intellects, I'm sure.

We don't follow termtimes and school holidays, and we tend to have a flexible approach to what we do and when we do it. We take a 'lifestyle of learning' attitude, but we do a little bit of formal stuff at the moment, phonics worksheets and memorization mostly.

HTH. For what it's worth, I'm always happy to answer questions about our HE, as long as they're not framed in offensive nonsense, which the OP certainly wasn't. If I'm attacked, the sarcasm monster tends to come out and growl

Judy1234 · 18/01/2007 10:11

MP, your first post could be my answer to the same issue but of being with under 5s. I could not have stayed home with under 5s. But some people want to and it works fine. Just depends on the parent. Some mothers and fathers are very good parents but go back to work quickly after the birth and others want to be with the children all the time until they go to school at 5 and others for all kinds of reasons want to home educate beyond that age. I don't think I would have had the patience for it but if my life were different and I could not have afforded fees to very good schools I might have done it as an alternative to poor schools.

MummyPenguin · 18/01/2007 10:42

Interesting responses. I can see why some people would choose it, especially where bullying's concerned, as I know many schools don't deal with it effectively. My DC's school being one of them. My DD has had problems with verbal bullying which has taken a toll on her. If she were in lower years, I would consider moving her, but she's in year 6 so will be moving this year anyway. Aside from not tackling bullying very effectively, my DC's school is fortunately a very good school, and is always at the top of the league tables. Home ed wouldn't be an option for me personally, mainly because I wouldn't have enough confidence in myself to educate them well. Don't get me wrong, I love having my kids around - just wouldn't fancy it all day. They're all close in age, my three, and I've had very little support from family over the years, and it has been a struggle, tbh. Anyway, it's a shame that you home educators took a bashing recently. That's a shame. What parents choose to do with their own kids is surely their own business. That's one of the things that I feel lets MN down at times, the way that some posters just lash out unneccesarily. Thanks for info, it was just something I've often wondered about. Godd luck to you!

OP posts:
mumofhelen · 19/01/2007 20:17

I will home educate if my children are given no other option than to attend the primary school the LEA has earmarked for us. There is an acceptable undersubscribed primary school nearer to our home, but it is in another county (we live within 100m of county boundaries). When I suggested this option to my LEA, they were less than enthusiastic. In fact, they were very hostile. I would like to send all my children to a private prep school but this will depend on finances. Mark my words, there is no way my children will attend the nearest primary school to my home in the county in which I live. It is a shithole - no other way to describe it. If push comes to shove, I WILL home educate.

frances5 · 24/01/2007 10:16

How do you cope with the patience factor? There are things that my son loves like reading and he hates writings. How do you get your children do things that they hate. For example my son loves science and reading and hates hand writing. If he had his way he would never do hand writing practice.

If you do an unschooling approach where your child dicates the curriculum, do they end up with a balanced education. I suppose that if my son was home educated then he would eventually realise that hand writing was an important skill and knuckle down and learn to write at about the age of eight or nine rather than five.

choosyfloosy · 24/01/2007 10:28

DS has just started pre-school. I would consider HE to be in my 'active options' pile. I find it very hard to be home with him, but much easier if we are out and about, which I would think would be one of the big pluses of HE - the amount of 'out and about' you can do.

A big driver for me would be this quote from A Town Like Alice (sorry this is from memory so inaccurate in words, not in meaning) - it's about a woman employing girls in a factory:

'From the first, she found that the fifteen year olds were best. Girls straight from school were accustomed to the regular hours and discipline of school life. Girls who had spent some years out of school, or who had never been to school at all, did not cope well with the monotony of the work'

Says it in a nutshell for me - the worst side of school is the idea that it forms you well for monotonous, repetitive work.

choosyfloosy · 24/01/2007 10:30

frances5, [another uneducated comment] but if i were getting my ds to, i don't know, write to interesting people to ask about things he was genuinely interested in, he might care more about writing, rather than just doing writing he didn't necessarily care about?

i'm sure good teachers do this too btw, although that wasn't my experience of school.

Jennylee · 25/01/2007 01:26

I chose to, as once the school decide your child has problems and struggles to find any appropriate label for it, overlooks illness which affect the child , blame it for not coping and being bullied and yet have no strategies on how to help the child learn and when previously the child was above average and then regresses at said school and this is ignored. Well, I thought I can do better than this, and it seems I can. I taught him to read in a matter of weeks and now he wants to do maths and learn things when just one sum or maths in any form was reducing him to tears at this school and he did seem unable to so it but was not unable it was stress putting him off, when before the summer holiday all was well at previous school and he was apparently showing a gift for maths this showed me that for my ds this school did not work, it was fine for the other kids but for whatever reasons(bullying , racism, new kid, glue ear ,intermittent deafness) it was not working for my ds, me and dh have degrees but I think that it is not really necessary, as long as you are willing and interested in learning yourself you can help your child and find things out . Only thing is now it would be hard to send him to school just for the sake of it i will be really picky about it if he wants to go to a school again but would support it one day if it happens. We are not doing it for selfish reasons we just want to help our child and do what is best at the present time.

frances5 · 25/01/2007 13:02

JennyLee, I think your situation is understandable. Your son was in a school which didn't understand hearing impairments. Ie. There is a difference between being deaf and being stupid. Also I expect it must great for your son not to have to put up with background noise.

My son is having problems because of deafness caused by glue ear. His hearing aids have been ordered, but it takes 6 weeks.

How do you cope if your son decides he doesn't want to do something. Children with glue ear can be difficult to live with. I find it hard to know if my son is deliberately ignoring me or just hasnt heard.

Do you make your son study things he doesnt like? If there is something your son finds hard to master do you find it hard to keep your patience.

choosyfloosy · 25/01/2007 13:07

sorry i keep coming back to this one and i still don't have any direct experience...

the boredom the boredom the boredom. I remember at primary school doing some awful comprehension work with this book called New Worlds to Conquer and it was just dire and we kept having to do it every week and i could do it OK, it was just SO DULL. and the things i couldn't understand, they never seemed to help me understand them, i just had to keep trying even though it was dull and pointless when i kept getting it wrong. and at secondary school i used to make charts at the beginning of quite a lot of lessons, showing the number of seconds left, and i would cross 300 off every five minutes and feel that at least i was crawling towards the end of another boredom encrusted day.

i did a bit of adult learning years later, in a formal classroom environment, and within 2 minutes i felt as bored and constrained and stressed as ever, either having to work too fast or too slow, could never work at my own pace, still too worried about being seen as the teacher's pet to put my hand up much.

Maybe I could write another really positive post giving the good side, but this is the sort of stuff that would drive me to HE.

purpleturtle · 25/01/2007 13:13

Days like today

Although honestly, I'm not sure that I really could, because I'm not quite patient enough (by a long way).

Jennylee · 25/01/2007 13:53

Frances5 he started off mostly disliking everything, and going into upset rages if he was corrected on anything, but I would stop and talk about how no one can see us it is just ds and mummy there is no need to get upset, and lost of talk about how mistakes are necessary and good as they tell us how to do things correctly and if we not make mistakes we could not learn, he was so pressured about being correct and embarrassed when he could not do things that it seemed impossible at first, even now if he makes a mistake he can go mad and angry and storm off and I do stop when this happens and talk him down , it is not easy, when he was younger becuase he was like this I could not engage him with anything like writing or drawing or reading at all it is only since December, with patience (real or put on to appear real) that he started to even try, sometimes I am totally upset and frustrated and it can be wearing but I do not show this too him, we have to stop, I am not perfect, but the thing is as he lets me help him more and tries just a little this causes improvement which he sees and that encourages him to keep trying, so when he started to be able to spell out words and read a little it spiralled an dhe got beter and better at it. Maths was a big no no and still is , he is so against it he would nto even draw a circle around a group of spiders in a book (the workbook remind him too much of feeling stupid at achool) which he was capable of doing, it was just not going to happen, so I left it and by accident when he asked to write things on the pc in word, just random letter and words he typed in to a blank page and discovering the space bar delete etc he eventually wanted to press the numbers so he did that for a while, I said what about writing a sum so we wrote some and using a number line he did them (subtraction) this is simple stuff he can do easily but he had fun typing it in and it got his confidence up and now today he has asked me to do maths on the pc, so I will be typing his sum type of things on the pc on word, i could not believe it when he wanted to do it , so sometimes you have to find new and mysterious ways to engage them, or sneaking maths into counting sweets and money whilst out shopping, so I cannot force him to do anything , he has to want to.if i hadn't found a way to make maths palatable I would have left it for a while and kept trying from time to time, it is hard when you have had a bad day for other reasons and your child is with you the whole time wanting attention, and you cannot take him to school and relax, it can be intense, and he can be difficult but the way school was causing us all upset and tension it is nothing compared to that, we are all happier and he is less tired and less affected by the hearing loss, in fact you can cat me or email me if you like as this is hard to talk through like this. [email protected]

Also buying a globe unexpectedly sparked off lots of interest in geography and questions and looking at countries in books etc Andhe likes the schools programmes (turned up loud enough) and with me to explain things while he is watching it. Reading to him can be difficult if the hearing is particularly bad on that day, sometimes even sitting next me on the sofa he has to look at my face the whole time and cannot look at teh book adn hear me at the same time so we stop, but I am not sure how to get round that for contant hearing loss at that level of severity, it jsut tired him, but his ears have improved this week

Jennylee · 25/01/2007 14:14

purpleturtle, hope the meeting on monday is constructive, it is not fair for your child to be kept down becausee she has been placed at random in a class that is problematic, but also for the sake of thse children who are not doing so well and are being allowed to wrestle and play up instead of learning that is not doing them any good either, they need an effective teacher who will try with the whole class and can keep order and promote learning, in a positive way, these punitive measures the teachers are using do not seem to be working so maybe they need to try things differently and leaving P.E. out goes against all sense. if the head is friendly and supportive maybe she will have some solutions, and ideas would have made a world of difference to me at my son's school . You can't put up with that for your child and the other parents even those of the children who are allowed to play up do not want this for their children, hope you hear good things on monday anyway.

purpleturtle · 25/01/2007 16:17

Thanks Jennylee. I'm not really prepared to be seriously considering the home ed route!

Runnerbean · 25/01/2007 19:02

Patience ....

I see this often comes up during discussions both on here and when my 'schoolie' friends are enquiring about HE.

I found my patience was sorely tested when my dd was at school, ususally in the mornings in the usual panic to get out of the door for the school run. How many 3 yr olds have any concept of 'hurry up!'?

Also in the evenings when everyone was tired and it is tea time, bed time, bath time, homework......

When the day stretches leisurely out before you with no time constraints, patience (or lack of it) doesn't seem to be such an issue.

My dd's are no angels and I do still do get tired and grumpy,
it's far from sweetness and light, but I don't feel so guilty anymore that the only time of day I get to spend with dds is spent in a mad rush and ultimately a lack of patience.

Jennylee · 26/01/2007 10:44

I find that if I get upset now it is about other stuff and if I find my self getting impatient with ds it is time to stop what we are doing as it is nto what he wants to do, you are right though it was harder to rrush him off to school everyday and deal with his tiredness and the stress of knowing it was going wrong at school and then trying to get him in bed on time so he would be able to cope with school , and the worrying, was a total pain compared to home educating where we do what he wants to do as much as possible and he is not all stressed, and if he starts to get upset or worreid about a subject we stop.

Jennylee · 26/01/2007 10:45

purpleturtle, thats cool, I just mean that I hope you get resolution on Monday, so that your child will be happier and enjoy school more.

filthymindedvixen · 26/01/2007 10:58

Has anyone ever pesuaded the LEA to give them a share of funds in order to HE if school has proved unsuitable? (I already know the answer to this ...)

Finances are the ONLY thing which prevents me from HE my ds1. Like HC's boys, he is dyslexic and failing. But sadly, having spent 5 years at home with them when they were preschoolers, we have no savings left and I have to work. Course, If I'd known then my child was going to struggle horrendously with school, I'd done things differently...worked when they were tiddlers and HE them now