Do any of your dc homeschool themselves?

[Mycatatetherat]

My dc are in primary school at the moment but I don't want them to attend high school. They are both very self motivated when learning things that interest them and can be focused and sensible when given a task. I'm wondering would it be too much to expect them to be able to basically school themselves? I'm a self employed single parent and couldn't possibly stop working (although I often work from home) so kind of had it in my head that I could set them tasks and pop in on them every so often. Am I being unrealistic? How much input do other homeschooling parents have?

I could blame my parents for not researching enough or knowing me well enough and sending me to a school which didn't appreciate or encourage the arts and was full of anorexic cokehead girls and stoner boys! I do think some kids will grow up to be angry at their parents whatever happens.
The main point I've taken from this thread is to look more carefully at how my dc would do qualifications. It seemed very far away which was why I hadn't given it much thought but I suppose Y7-9 are all prep for GCSEs.

Cansu

When they need a certain amount of GCSE's they do them at home, and the joy is they can choose what they want/need rather than subjects in blocks to fit with teachers timetables. There are hundreds of GCSE's.
Mine needs 3 GCSE's and 2 A levels which she could easily do from home, if not in school.

PlaynTag Change and weighing ingredients is basic arithmetic, not maths. And schools do these kind of things too to show the practical applications. I am not against that at all. Just that there is a certain kind of HE parent who has very limited ambitions of education for their children. Maths education needs to go far beyond basic arithmetic.

In terms of adult children's views of their HE, no one knows how many are happy with their education and how many have been failed. The available research is all self selecting i.e. researchers asking for volunteers. Only those confident about their HE are going to respond to that.

We do know there are an increasing number of parents who are threatened with court for failure to send their children to school, who respond by saying they are HE. Many of these are chaotic families who struggle to provide basic care, so unlikely they are providing good HE.

I think any decent research has to talk to adults who have been HE. I think there are brilliant HE and very poor ones. I suspect my friend is a brilliant HE, I also knew socially another woman who I strongly suspect was failing her son with HE. I suspect the best HE can be self critical. But too many people are not able to be.

catsu Be aware that a child doing GCSEs a few at a time, is not demonstrating they can manage a heavy study cycle. I know this sometimes means that HE children can be rejected for challenging degree courses. Also be aware that some GCSEs are easier to do online than others. For some science ones for example you will need to do lab work.

Hi op Google what's in your area and check out Facebook. Edinburgh seems to have fab homeschooling network, for example.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-42624220

“I also think a lot of HE parents who comment online have very low expectations for their kids. They talk about kids learning through shopping lists, dealing with change, weighing when baking. I think that is what a good parent does anyway on top of education. And real education has to be far more than just this basic everyday shopping and cooking that so many go on about”

I completely agree with this

Yep I was talking about the definition of maths on a school time table - which like you say includes arithmetic. Many self chosen projects lead to maths that goes beyond basic arithmetic.

I agree that research should include adults who were home educated - not just the parents who currently home educate.

Increased numbers being threatened with court could be more to do with the LAs and now the government becoming more prescriptive in what they believe an education is (without actually defining it) and also the increase in numbers of HEers as a whole. I think that the media paint HEers as neglectful chaotic families as a large proportion but it really isn't.

I agree that self reflection and being self critical is essential for good HE and being a good person in general. This is what I love about the principles of self directed education - you get the time and space to know yourself, to think on mistakes, your choices, what happened, what you would change next time. You get to know your strengths and weaknesses, which ones you really need to work on. You decide where you want to get to and how you get there. It's entirely yours - you can ask for help or not, take guidance or not. Successes and failures are both yours and as a result you learn to sit with your mistakes as part of learning.

Just went to that reddit group homeschoolrecovery - wow there's an awful lot of Christian home schoolers there. I think there's a bit of a correlation between the religious reasons and the social isolation. Compare that to people using facebook/whatsapp groups to connect wherever they are and the giant groups that exist for meeting up and trying out what London has to offer (just as an example)...plus then there are the world schoolers who get to meet in loads of different counties. More reading for me though, just in case...

Yes there are a lot of Christian posters because there are a lot of US posters, but there are also a lot of non Christian posters including posters with more hippy style parents. The Christian ones talk a lot about specific issues related to being educated in a very biased curriculum. The others talk about more diverse issues.

I've just had a quick look at the reddit thing. You can't possibly be using that as a barometer for how successful home ed is? There is clearly a correlation between people who struggle with social situations anyway, possibly have SEN or are on the autistic spectrum, and end up being homeschooled because their parents have similar difficulties or don't know how else to handle their child's difficulties. I fully empathise with them BUT it is not representative of everyone who is considering home ed as a viable option for their dc.

I said my dc are square peg types but I am in no way saying they have social difficulties. They just don't learn in the linear way that school wants them to. Socially and emotionally they're streets ahead of where I was at their age. I want them to have an interesting and inspiring education which isn't hindered by all the nonsense which goes on at high school (social media, the obsession with appearance, bullying, premature relationships etc). This doesn't mean we are isolated recluses, far from it.

Maths was best done in a practical way for dd, she seemed to improve quite a bit when doing practical things.
For some parents the education offered at school isn't good enough or fitting for the child.
Some, don't want to sit learning about maths in a classroom situation when they are H.ed, that's part of the joy. If they were going to learn Maths or any other subject how they do in school, they might as well enrol.

Why do you think there is a correlation on that reddit forum between people with inherent social difficulties?
And no I am not using it as a barometer of how successful HE is, just in the same way I do not use mums who are HE comments on mumsnet as a barometer.
I have said many times that HE can be successful, but it takes real work. It can also be a disaster for kids.

Our dc have been he that way (mostly by dh) although he was often able to work alongside teaching them.

However we have found that as they get older it does get more and more time consuming.

Oh and qualifications are not an issue if you can afford to spend some money. The OU stage 1 modules are fantastic and accepted by many universities as equivalent to A levels.

I home educate my 3 children. They are 16,15 and 7. The older two came out of high school in Yrs 8 and 9. The youngest came out of primary school in Yr 1.
I had to close my Toyshop so that I could educate them at home. We do topic work. They wrote a list each of what they wanted to learn about. We research the topic and try to link it with maths, English, geography, history etc
I was attending college one day a week for a full day and so the boys had to look after themselves and had a 'day off' learning.
There are no rules on what education should be like for your children, nor are there set times or days in which it should take place.
My eldest is now attending college having gained two grade 4 gcse's (C) in Maths and English.
The middle one is still home educated, and the youngest has chosen to go back to school (not my choice)

Two GCSEs scraped through at age 16 isn't the most brilliant of resounding recommendations for home ed!

2 grade 4`s for a NT 16year old is awful! I have more aspiration for my ASD ds!

Many he also seem to just do "surface learning", they need in depth. It has to be thought out.
DH is a teacher and we HE, so they`re not all against it.

Why do your kids not want to go to school? I don't really understand. If the school is lovely, your kids are street smart, sociable as well as studious and don't have SEN - what's the problem?

I'm a reluctant home educator, only fell into it as my son was permanently excluded (longer story but he has SEN/MH issues and his needs weren't being met). He's 15 and would be in Y10

We bounce between structured online schooling (iGCSEs) plus independent learning on things that interest him which I tend to plan around topics not tasks and let him discover for himself.

I work full time, husband is self employed and works from home. We occasionally leave him for half a day but find it better if one of us is around not to teach but to interact etc which is what he also needs.

Can honest say it's a really positive experience for us that I would have never considered if he hadn't have been excluded.

Also, OP... your experience of secondary school is really not a typical experience. Everyone I know has been to school and I've never heard or seen schools "full of anorexic cokehead girls and stoner boys"

A really interesting read Fridaynight. I'm sure that has given people a lot to think about.

Well the whole unschooling approach is very much that children aren’t formally taught and learn better while immersed in subjects they choose, so I think you could go with that approach and leave them to it a fair bit tbh. The teacher based approach is a social construct which assumes children are incapable of taking responsibility for their own learning