So is this really ok? Surprised.

[Newsenmum]

I’ve always been really interested in home ed and honestly try to be open minded, so please donf be offended. I seriously considered it for my ND son and would have done it if we weren’t so lucky with his mainstream school having a place for him within their arp, as he has no ehcp yet.

I follow someone online who home educates her 4 kids. The oldest one (9) is ND and couldnt cope in mainstream so I totally get it. The others are 6 and 4 and never tried school. Also a baby.

I always assumed she must this amazing creative person who does so much, but she did a couple of reels, which she used to show her week. She said she worried she hadnt had a good week but writing it down made her feel much better about it. She has chronic illness btw!

it was basically:

Monday: get up and do phonics cards with middle two and then read them books, whilst older one reads to herself. Then play in garden all day building dens as sunny. Fine. Mum busy with baby and hose chores but pops out as they play.

Tuesday: bad health day for the mum so they read in the big bed all morning and then she lay on the sofa and they watched TV for the rest of the day!

Wednesday: mum feeling a bit better so they made cookies and the kids counted out/weighed items ie maths and Home ed. Then they played maths related computer games all afternoon whilst mum did chores.

Thursday: raining all day so played the maths based computer game and then tv all day! Mum busy doing loads of chores and got kids to help when she could.

Friday: loads of appointments in the morning and food shopping - kids helped ie maths. 🤔Then playground. Gross motor skills. Walked past a construction site and talked about that.
All helped cook dinner.

Is this supposed to be a good week? I feel like that’s what I do in the school holidays or weekends! There is so much that they learn at school that is not nearly being covered. My son does music, crafting, sports, geography, history, science, everything! Yes it is adapted for him as he has additional needs and is in a tiny class, but he gets so much! Also what about mixing with any other kids?

I understand that some kids especially SN kids cant cope with much more, but these kids seem academically able so it seems like theyre missing out on so much, especially with the reasons often being the mum’s health :( thoughts?

I must add she lives in USA although originally british so maybe that’s ok there.

In the U.K. four year olds might not be in school.

the 6 year old would be in a class that focuses mostly on English (phonics) and maths. They’d do history and science and stuff through topics at most schools.

so the 4 year old isn’t missing out. The 6 year old is missing out on some stuff (sport and music mostly) but all that sort of thing stops for August so maybe it’s done through clubs in term time?

the 9 year old is definitely missing out on stuff.

One of the things I've found interesting about home ed is the comparatively small amount of time you need to spend on the education part when you're one-on-one or one-to-few. Most decent home ed-ers seem to cover the curriculum stuff in the morning and have free afternoons but the good ones all seem to broadly have an approach they are following which this woman clearly isn't.

It is school holidays still, so maybe she's taking it easy?
But seriously, I think it must be very difficult to HE effectively while looking after a baby, especially if you are ill. There has been talk ( in UK) of having some kind of HE register so that children don't slip through the net, though I suspect that's more about safeguarding than education.
I've worked in education for 15 years or so, and I can say that there is a lot of time in school when children aren't actively learning - there is a lot of transition time, and waiting time while other children catch up. I reckon you'd only need to do 2-3 hours HE a day, including music/PE/art, to have an equivalent amount of education to a child in school. 1:1 is way more intensive, even 1:4 means children can ask questions and follow individual thought paths and ideas in much more detail than they would at school.
Where HE fails is when the children are not actually being educated, and they are just at home because it is more convenient for the parents. Hard to tell in OP's example which is the case.
A bright kid can learn a lot online if they are viewing the appropriate things, and there are channels set up for HE which would include geography, history etc. But it needs directing and monitoring by a switched on parent who is also set up to take advantage of things like nature walks, local museums, libraries and groups like Scouts. I don't know how much of that would be done by someone lying in bed with a baby, hopefully other family members might have some input?
HE shouldn't mean no eduction.

I completely get that they need a lot less time when its 1:1, but I do feel like the 9 year old especially is missing out on so much knowledge! How much stuff do you do with yours and how do you manage to fit everything in? Maybe the lack of structure scares me too! Might be a ‘me’ problem though.

the children are missing out on so much, this is really sad.

But this was not a typical week for her. "She said she worried she hadnt had a good week". Later in your post you ask, "Is this supposed to be a good week?" No. No, it is not. She said it wasn't. Her point, I think, was that even a bad week was not a total write-off.

Home ed is really flexible, so if a family is having a bad week or month it doesn't matter in the long run. They will be doing much more at other times. Clearly she does usually do more, or she wouldn't ever have worried that the above was a bad week.

It’s not school holidays in the US they are back at school now

It’s not one to one though, there is four kids, and one is a baby. I agree with you op, this is not ok for the kids, particularly the 9 year old, if this is how they’ve been educated so far. They will struggle as adults or as they get older,

Agreed.

If that woman was working from home, I don't imagine her employer would allow her to work and look after kids of those various ages, because her work output would nosedive.

Educating her kids should be seen in the same way here, in terms of quality.

If the eldest could not cope with school, the chances are he/she finds formal learning challenging. There may be PDA and it might be really hard to get the kids around the dining room table to learn, so all learning has to be contextualised in play. However, there experiences seem very limited and I think it is a shame that she has not even tried the middle two in school, so they can decide for themselves how they would like to learn.

If you want structure, you can purchase and use a curriculum for each subject.

Primary classes are 30, even in private schools class sizes are 12 or more.

If you don't home ed, why are you even worrying about this?

Home ed is very common in the US and this person described one unusual week which gives no information about what learning or activities they usually do.

If you are happy with your choices then don't waste energy worrying about someone you don't know living a little bit differently.

I agree with @verycloakanddaggers

I agree with you, I don’t think it’s good enough and I think there’s not enough variety in those activities. It’s also teaching them they ‘don’t have to’ do things like get up early in the morning, get ready and go out into the day sort of thing. I mean ultimately it’s her kids who will suffer.. I think aswell it’s telling that she has a health condition that keeps her from doing things; and yet rather than push her children on to another setting where they would be doing other things, she allows the condition to affect everyone’s experience by having them in bed with her. I don’t think any of it is really very beneficial compared to other settings. A few days a week of this plus a few days of nursery would be better for the younger ones imo and well the 9 year old is in an extremely disadvantaged position.

I think people worry because home ed can be an easy mechanism through which parents can neglect a child and this can happen pretty much unchecked. I know parents that home ed would find the use of the word 'neglect' a bit strong but this is how I and others view it. Having a decent education is one of the key foundations a child needs to thrive as an adult and succeed independently away from the family unit. Education is a human right and nobody should stand by and just accept that denying a child a reasonable education is just 'living a bit differently'.

Home ed isn't universally bad or wrong and I do think it can be the right thing for some children BUT I think OP is right to question whether an untrained mother of four differently aged children and struggling from a chronic illness can meet the educational needs of her children. Even for a so called bad week, that week was totally unacceptable for a 9 year old. Very little actual academic learning, virtually no enrichment and extremely limited socialising outside the family unit. I have a child of this age and that week would leave her totally bored and unstimulated. How many of us would honestly be happy to send our children to this mother as an educational service in lieu of school? If we are not happy to do this then this tells you that the experience is massively inferior to school or other home ed providers and therefore shouldn't be good enough for any child.

I have always been drawn to the idea of home education and how much more free time children get when the learning is personalised to them. However my children are thriving in school and learning lots, so we have kept them there.

It does wind me up a bit when people say things like 'we baked a cake so that was maths'. Yes there is maths involved, especially if you halve/double quantities, but that's the sort of activity many people do alongside their kids being in school. It's great to apply learning practically but you need to recognise the volume of learning you are doing. Same with 'visiting museums'. Yes, they are educational but ideally you need to do other learning around this e.g. writing, other research etc (depending on age of course).

I do understand there are different types of learning and unstructured learning can be fantastic, especially when scaffolded by a parent, but I don't feel everyone manages this well.

This sounds like torture and I don’t mean for the children! I love my children but there’s no way I couldn’t home educate so well done to her! But no!

In what way is it well done to her? I was thinking the opposite. If you are not in a position to do the job remotely properly, you should not be doing it.

Yeah, a lot of these kids are being done a disservice. I think there should be a requirement to have a qualified tutor if home educating for at least an hour or two per day OR show an Ofsted inspector a detailed curriculum and explain how you’re effectively tutoring your child. Because as it is some people get away with barely educating their kid at all.

I mean well done for attempting it, I didn’t say she was succeeding. To be honest, I think it’s ridiculous to think that you can homeschool three children of varying ages with the baby, and have a chronic condition on top of that!? Talk about making life hard for yourself!

I don’t think it’s ok at all. Having taught primary for over 30 years those children are missing out on loads of curriculum content. Where’s the maths? The writing? Handwriting? Science?
Phonics needs to be taught every day as does maths.
Seems like in this case, Home Ed is being used as a cover up for doing very little.

I home educate.

The “formal” learning that we do takes a couple of hours at most. I pay for a service that sets out the curriculum, teaches the concept, sets worksheets or activities to test understanding and create a report of what my child learns. It costs £16 a month.

When my child reaches secondary age I will pay for tutors.

Our formal learning is the core subjects, plus a language and history and geography. When we have finished these, the afternoons are spent either learning about my child’s chosen interest (Space last term), at forest school, at one of many home ed groups in the local area, art, crafting or cooking.

There are so many home ed groups and resources that there is no excuse for her to not mix socially with other children or explore a wide variety of learning. I submit a report to the local authority with evidence of learning every year.

My daughter is ND, and could not cope in school. In her class of 30, there were around 6 children with additional needs and only the class teacher, no TA’s. When she finished her work in class she was expected to sit and wait for everyone to finish their work before they could all move on to the next lesson together. Not only could the school not meet her needs, her poor teacher was absolutely frazzled and unable to support her in class.

The school system is not right for every child. It is a one size fits all approach. Education is compulsory, school isn’t as far as I’m concerned.

If that is a typical week for that mum (and she says it’s not), it is nowhere near enough but I’m not sure how home ed is monitored in the US?

You sound like you’re providing a great education for your DC @YesHonestly
As a home educator it must be frustrating when you read of others doing it so badly.