Home educating from the get go?

[Homeeducatingquestions]

Hi all.

My DD is 3 and I’m seriously considering home education. The reasons are:

• I believe that she will learn better one-on-one rather than in a classroom with 29 other children. I would use quite a traditional method of home educating (with a dedicated ‘classroom’ at home, with a few hours per day spent doing academic work). We would also spend time on hobbies (swimming classes, music lessons etc) and occasionally other life skills such as cooking and baking.
• I think children grow up too quickly these days - I’d like to keep her away from things like social media, makeup, celebrities etc. for as long as possible.
• I don’t agree with some of the topics that children are likely to be taught.

However, my biggest concerns are:

• I personally really enjoyed school, especially the social aspect. I worry that I will be depriving her of this experience. I know there are negative aspects too (eg. Kids falling out, being excluded from friendship groups, peer pressure etc.) but perhaps kids need to experience these things to learn from them? I don’t see anything in my DD to indicate that she would be unhappy at school. She is social and confident.
• I am confident in my ability to teach at primary school level, but how do primary school children typically do academically? Rightly or wrongly, I do believe academic success to be important and will be raising my children to strive for this. I know that lots of HE families prefer to focus on “child-led learning”, but I would definitely aim to follow an academic curriculum, similar to school.
• Not fitting in with other HE families (we aren’t the stereotypical ‘hippy’ family, nor are we part of the ‘anti-vaxxer anti-government’ crowd, and I wouldn’t be home educating due to neurodiversity either). I worry that we would find it difficult to meet likeminded people for DD to make friends.

If anybody has any advice or experience that address any of this, it would be hugely appreciated!

From my experience during covid I would say that formal teaching of your own child, at home is a lot harder than you might think. And I’m an actual teacher.
I guess I just wonder why you wouldn’t just give school a go and see if it works for your child. Who’s going to teach them beyond the primary curriculum? Are you planning to send them to school at all??
The end of year expectations for children in all subjects at all ages are freely available on government websites so you can see what the academic expectations might be.

I don't home ed but I'm similar in that I'm not in any of those categories of home edders that you describe but share the concerns you raised about schools. I know lots of home edders some of whom do fall into the groups you mentioned and are pretty extreme. I'm sure some more mainstream home ed parents will be along to reassure you you aren't alone, however it does depend where you are whether you'll find reasonably likeminded families.

I chose school and it has I think been better overall than what I could have provided at home, especially on the budget we'd have been on with o my one of us working. Of the 5 home ed families I know none of them has kept up with the school curriculum, or with equivalent standards of maths and literacy but that doesn't mean no one does.

anyone who experienced school children in lockdown will know that following the national curriculum at home is very difficult and that is at least in part to do with the fact that some of it is irrelevant and a load of bollocks.

I think it would be harder to slot into school if you find it doesn't work out and they haven't done reception which is play based but gently getting into school routines. I'd probably try that and then de register if it doesn't work well

You don't have to decide forever at this stage. You can apply for a school whenever you want.. if you want. Similarly you can withdraw from school if you want to.

The school curriculum expectations are all one if that's what you want to follow.
Similarly there's other methods of socialisation...sports clubs, ScoutsGuides/woodcraft folk kind of things, church groups perhaps.
In school holidays there are often sessions at museums etc.

Thanks for your response.

According to a friend of a friend who is a primary school teacher, the hardest part of teaching primary is keeping the group focused and on task (rather them all distracting each other) - basically ‘crowd control’. In her opinion, teaching one child is doable for most people (providing they themselves are fairly well educated and are willing to put in the effort to research the curriculum and find ways to make topics interesting).

I would consider sending DC to school in year 7.

Another consideration is that in my experience children are very happy at home but one home ed teenager I know is struggling massively with isolation. He went to lots of groups and classes as a child but the pandemic put a stop to that and then when things re-opened he just refused to go. I'm not sure how many groups/ meets there even are for teens. There's no way he could go to school now without major trauma but he isn't doing anything at all really.

Another teenager I know did brilliantly and has followed his dreams but he had a big active church community so never got isolated.

Obviouly I don't imagine these are representative samples but anecdotally I do hear of many home ed teens who are gaming all day and don't engage with education or friends

I just found that my Dd struggled with me being her ‘teacher’. She fought me quite a bit on the more academic aspects of learning.
If you plan to send her to secondary school then you’ll need to make sure she’s prepared to fit back in when the time comes.
People re right in that you don’t have to decide it all now.

From a teacher's point of view I have found that the majority of students in Y7 who were home educated before this found it a HUGE struggle to integrate aged 11. I have seen quite a few over the many years of teaching I've done.

It was a massive culture shock to most, suddenly being in a formal classroom situation with another 30 kids, wearing uniform, having different teachers - never mind the social aspect of break/lunch times. It was utterly alien to them and a lot were very, very unhappy. They were completely overwhelmed by everything.

It is a big jump from primary school, which tends to be smaller and friendlier, and you have one class teacher and a group of friends you've grown up with, up to a secondary school situation.

It's an even bigger step to suddenly throw a bewildered home educated 11 year old into the system.

I home educate my children. We also have an academically rigorous approach.

There are so many HE groups. I'm in an area with fewer than most, but nevertheless have many options.

Most include a majority of families who either unschool or have a child-led approach. I'm happy to do a weekly forest school style meet-up with them where our very different educational philosophies and parenting styles don't matter so much.

As we start wanting to meet up with other home edders for Shakespeare and so on, we'll need to travel a bit further from home for meet-ups.

At the moment most of my children's friends are from church, from families living locally that we've known for a while (eg NCT and neighbours) or from extra-curricular activities. Most go to school, so playdates are after school, weekends, or holidays.

I haven't made the effort to encourage closer friendships with the home edders from the groups yet, since I want to get to know them better first and my children are still young enough for me to heavily influence whom they're friends with! But there are plenty of home educated children out there who are expected to do their lessons each day and follow rules. They just aren't in the majority.

@HowDoYouSolveAProblemLikeMyRear "my children are still young enough for me to heavily influence whom they're friends with!"

And therein lies one of my concerns about HE!
For context, I did not HE my children-but I was HE myself.

My children have been home educated from the start. Two are now high school age, the other is key stage 2 age.

I really want to say that home educating long term is absolutely nothing like the forced homeschooling in covid. It is quite irritating tbh that people continue to think they had a taste of home educating. During that time we lost the freedom that comes with home education, we had to stay at home, there were no groups, no museums, galleries, trips to castles or parks. As home educators we aren’t forced to stay at home, not seeing anyone else outside of our immediate family with only an hour a day for a walk with the added financial pressures of furlough, concerns about a pandemic and for many having to work and look after children at the same time.

To address some of your concerns.
First up, not all home educators are anti vax, hippies. That is a very outdated stereotype and while there are of course some people like that. I have always found it to be a diverse community. Obviously this will partly depend on the area you live in, as some areas are more diverse than others(but this would be similar in a school setting too).

Socially, unless you are planning to not mix with anyone else the. You will find that your daughter does experience fall outs, peer pressure, friendships etc. My dc have been going to home Ed groups since they were toddlers, seeing the same children and growing up with them. Outside of home ed groups they go to hobby groups and play sports for clubs so they have friends who go to school too.

Academically home Ed children can achieve just as well or better than schooled children if they are capable. School simply can’t replicate a personalised education in the way that you can at home. As an example from this week I have spent several hours one to one with one of my dc working on some maths that they wanted to crack but were finding hard, it (understandably) wouldn’t be possible to do that in a classroom, we can take as long as we need or take a break and come back to it in a few weeks or months if needed. Equally if they pick something up easily then we don’t have to spend x amount of time going over it with the rest of the class, we can either make it more challenging or move on to something else (obviously depending on what it is).
You are free to home educate however you choose, many find child led is best, some prefer structure but it’s not set in stone and you can see how it evolves. Equally the option of school will always be there at some point.

This is why I feel it isn't right to say 'school is always there if you want it'. Schools especially secondary schools are tough places socially, academically restrictive, have millions of stupid rules, it's not an easy environment to dive into if you don't gradually get used to it from when you're little in EYFS and it's all much gentler and more flexible

Of course it’s a big change for a previously home educated child but it absolutely can work for some. I have several friends who home ed their dc in the primary years but chose school as they got older. I also know children who hated it and ended up going back to home ed. i also know dc who have always been in school settings but struggled to cope with the switch to high school and ended up become home ed at that point(my own niece being one of them).

But to say school IS always an option is true, if a dc/parent want to try school then they can at any point even if they find that actually it isn’t for them.

Schools need to be better places then it would be true. I say this as someone who has been a teacher for 20 years and has both DC in school. I'm glad opting in has worked for someone you know, it never has amongst people I know

We home educated from 10-16. If I could go back in time I would do it from the start. DD was never lonely, she had friends at Forrest school, dance classes and then from 12 at a local home Ed hub where she took her gcse classes.

We met all sorts of people on our home Ed journey and that's part of the beauty of home Ed, not just running with the crowd. Your child has friends of different ages, not just their age from their class. They learn at their pace, mine took her first gcse at 12 and had 8 by 15.

I regret her primary years in a private school where she was bored and then badly bullied and wish we had known about home Ed from the start.

Make sure that your children socialise.

Had a friend, years ago , who sent her children to pre school to foster friendships ( her admission) and never sent her three children to school.
Our children were friends at pre school but the friendship only lasted three or four years after.

Her children became defiant, antagonistic and , as teens as I later heard , isolated.

Be very careful.

If you're considering sending her to school in year 7 then these two reasons aren't relevant to primary - at least not KS1 and lower KS2:

I think children grow up too quickly these days - I’d like to keep her away from things like social media, makeup, celebrities etc. for as long as possible.
• I don’t agree with some of the topics that children are likely to be taught.

So explore a bit more what your real reasons are.

I home educated mine till 9, you really don't need to do hours of academic work. Think of a school day, about 6 hours? Take out breaks and lunch, taking the register, trying to get 30 reception children sitting down. If we did an hour a day for key stage one it was as much as we did.

When the eldest was starting school the Head was very serious about catching up and time with the SENCO. I smiled and said fine. They did a couple of assessment days before going fulltime, catching up was never mentioned again. Our main problem was a deputy head who was clearly insulted that a home educated child could be out performing children who had been in school for 4 or 5 years and probably pre school before that.

We did lots of activities like swimming, rainbows/beavers, tennis, dancing, music so they were familiar with being in a group setting with me not around. The only regret they have ever raised is why didn't I keep them at home till senior school.

with a dedicated ‘classroom’ at home, with a few hours per day spent doing academic work

From 3?

Most work until Y2 is through play based learning ime. Your intention to follow an 'academic' curriculum from the start, at home - tbh that sounds dry as dust for your average 4/5/6 year old.

I've home educated my three from the beginning, for various reasons I won't go into here. We started off being more formal but have now become half formal, half unschooled. IME you end up finding a route that fits best with how your child learns, and you might change your style a few times till you find one that works, so be prepared to be flexible.

As others have pointed out, you don't need to spend hours a day on formal learning, especially when your child is small. Most learning is through play - free, undirected play - so do make sure you've got plenty of opportunities for this.

The home ed world is completely different even now from when I started 7 years ago, so you'll find a huge range of families doing it, from fully unschooled to fully formal and everything in between. My friends cross this full range too, and in general our children all get on well.

We're just about to begin high-school aged learning. I'll be more like a facilitator for DD, not a teacher as such. DD learns perfectly well without me, so my role now is to make sure she has everything she needs for her subjects and be a sounding board when she has things to work out.

Schools especially secondary schools are tough places socially, academically restrictive, have millions of stupid rules, it's not an easy environment to dive into ...

It amazes me that people can hold that view alongside believing that it is OK that this is what is forced on our children.

What are we doing to our children?

Home educated ours from the get go but that was due to circumstances - bad schools, no money and no chance of moving anywhere better.
If we'd had the choice of a decent school and a better area in which to live then no we wouldn't have done it. The other people at the local home ed groups were exclusive and unwelcoming, and, frankly, many of the children were little more than feral with the parents saying it was unschooling? Bullshit. It was lazy parenting and they simply didn't want the effort of taking kids to school.

If you do want to home educate then make sure it's for the right reasons.

Editing to add that the few decent families who were there at the beginning moved away early on.

The term home ed means lots of different things to different people. It is also v difficult to assess how good or poor home Ed is because it is so hidden. I have not seen any stats on the percentages of children achieving gcse's and at what level so how can it be easily compared to school? The children we see in school who have previously been home educated are often those where it has failed. They arrive well below the standard of their peers and often go on to have poor attendance as they are simply not accustomed to having to go to school every day regardless of whether they wish to do so. I have experienced kids being removed and parents say they will home Ed. They tend to be parents who home Ed because they have fallen out with the school in some way or are trying to avoid social care or fines.

There are probably many kids who are educated brilliantly by parents but we simply don't know and gave little to no information about what education is being provided.

I home educated for a few years, mainly due to me travelling a lot, but the DCs went back to school in year 9 for the exam years. We chose their school very carefully (a very small state school) to ensure they wouldn't have too many issues integrating. They both managed fine and found they were on par or well ahead of their contemporaries in English and maths.

We spent an hour a day, rarely any more, doing academic stuff like maths and English with some purpose, but the rest of the day was always somehow educational without being obviously so. Some of the subjects we explored were child-led and were not necessarily on the mainstream curriculum but were still useful subjects that the DC enjoyed, e.g ecology and statistics, history of art (including visiting lots of galleries and exhibitions), lots of detailed local history and geography, cultural studies, astonomy, animal care, horticulture, etc. I taught most subjects myself (I am well-qualified to do so) and the DCs went to various clubs/after-school activities to socialise. We lived abroad for much of the time so they learnt languages naturally. It was fine but they were both keen to return to school once they were teenagers.

My DD tried reception year and it was even worse than I'd anticipated. The teachers all insisted she was fine but we're still paying emotionally eight years later.

My DS was HE from the start, and I've never known such a cheerful little person. He is utterly himself, no understanding of peer pressure. I very much wish I'd done the same with DD.

Yes my always HE kids have no understanding of peer pressure whatsoever, I was just talking to my teen the other day about how the teen meet ups are such a lovely mix of dress styles etc

I have to say PPs description of teens being desperate to get to school has not been my experience or what I've seen. On the contrary it's parents saying "are you sure you don't want to go to school to get these exams" 😂 but they prefer to study in their own ways & cost us a fortune in exam entries!!

I didn't send my eldest to nursery because she was very anxious any time she was parted from me, by the time school came around it wasn't as much of a problem but she was happiest with her siblings & me in the woods so we said we'd play it by ear. She's doing GCSE exams just now as an external candidate 😆 more to come next year plus some college courses.

We never did much if any formal work when they were small & didn't teach them to read at all & they all read chapter books well above their age by the time they were 7 so I wouldn't get overly fixated on the academics OP. Just read to them lots & take them on adventures and it will fall into place.

Also you'll find your HE people it just takes time & changes over the years.