What careers for HE children as adults?

[catnipkitty]

Hi

Another question if you don't mind..not sure if title makes sense, but I'm interested to know what careers HE children have gone in to as adults. Can HE lead to a professional career? I am a vet and had a very academic schooling (good and bad) so no direct experience of HE.

Thanks again

Cx

I personally know of one home educated young person who has just been accepted to do law at Oxford.
Another who was 'invited to apply' to University do paediatric nursing, after attending the open day-she got in and is about half way through and doing very well indeed.
A third has now started his PHD in medical research-the youngest ever at Manchester uni.

None had a 'formal' home education. None did 'school at home', all were totally autonomously home educated and followed their own interests.

I know of others who are happily in a circus, some who are self employed in occupations such as plumbing, electricians.
One of my children is looking to do a sailing course and may earn her living that way-unless she decides on a law degree, another will be a singer-but will do a degree with the OU along the way and my son looks to be aiming for a degree in psychology.

So yes, HE can lead to a professional career-and also occupations as diverse as every other section of the population might end up in.

Hi

and thanks for your reply. I am mostly concerned with my children's education not shutting any doors for them, whatever form that education takes (and I have no doubts that my school education certainly did that for me and directed me only in a very academic direction). i have read quite a bit about HE but not yet come across anything written by adults who were HEd as children.

My personal opinion is that Home Education can open more doors for them-their education can take the direction of whatever interests them instead of it being so severely limited to what the schools/National curriculum dictates!

Our children have been exposed to such a huge variety of cultures and interests during the nearly seven years that we have been doing this.

It has also restored their self confidence and self belief that was destroyed by the state schooling system-now they know there is a world of possibilities.

We have also found that our children's dyslexia has not been such a problem since we home educated.
We had been told by the school, that our eldest might possibly achieve grade Ds at GCSE if he worked really really hard.
He spent five years having a wonderful life home educating-and then chose to go to FE college to do A levels, where he fitted in very well academically and socially according to the tutors.
He got damn good A level results too!
So you see we would definitely have been limiting our son's career choices if we had left him in school wouldn't we?

And our story is very common in the home educating community.

There is a book called 'Those Unschooled Minds: Home-educated Children Grow Up'
by Julie Webb (Author)

and I also know of a 'Facebook' group called
"Being home-educated didn't do me any harm - look at me now!"
www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2332178174

regards
Julie
Home Educating in Worcestershire
www.worcestershire-home-educators.co.uk/

Great, thanks for those links and for your reply

The tricky bit is often getting the exam passes universities want. I know a couple of university admissions people very wll, and they both say that fairly assessing HE children against others can be a real problem if they don't have some recognizable awards.

The problem is that A-levels are now so unbelievably fiddly with coursework, modules and other measures to improve pass rates that they are getting harder and harder for HE children to do.

It's well worth asking what solutions local HEers have found. Near me, for example, a dance school which became and exam centre for GCSE and A-level dance is happy to put HE children in for exams. Of course it helps that one of the owners has just withdrawn her child from school...

Or when the children get to 17, they might do an Open University foundation course or two - most full-time universities will accept OU passes very happily.