Home education

[loodledoo]

My DH is really keen for me to home educate our DD, she’s currently only 18 months so we’re a way off but I’d be really interested in others experiences of home educating their children in the UK. I’d love to know what a typical day looks like and what resources are available to you in your local area to help with home educating, such as groups with other home educated children, and what made you decide home educate your children/ what you think the benefits are, please. I’m looking into this now because if we do decide to home educate I’d like to do some sort of home preschool prior to her being primary school age. Thank you so much in advance.

I do have some concerns here echoing the pp - why is the responsibility being laid upon you and what are your plans to protect t your earning potential? Why is he seeing it as entirely yoir job?

You won’t do it. You think you’ll do it now, when it’s all novelty and she’s so young. In 3 years time, you’ll realise the benefits of sending your child to school and will want a part-time job so you can interact with actual adults and drink a hot cup of tea.
It’s like how I decided to become a midwife right after I had a baby… I didn’t.

I’m not going to dignify the other comment with a response, because I can’t see the need to respond to people who are rude to others on the internet for fun. However in response to your comment, I am highly qualified in a professional field which I am free to go back to at any time, I choose to stay home with our daughter because I believe it is giving her the best start in life and it fulfils me to be a stay at home mum at the moment. My husband runs a business which allows me to do this, which doesn’t give him time to home educate our child, if this is something that we choose to do in the future.

Thank you for your thoughts, I’m just looking for some information.

Not in spelling, I imagine.

Not when they get to year 5 and beyond…

Ok.

I’ll just say this….

Always plan first the man you think you trust to turn into a complete abx utter wanker who won’t give a shit about the input on your part.

Much luck to you - I’ve never ever regretted the hone e’d, I only regretted the sperm diver who saw my contribution as less than nil.

‘40% of children are bullied at school’

Where is your data from?

I’m really sorry to hear that you’ve had that experience. I hope you’re okay.

My point was that there are checkpoints in the school system at which I can tell if my DC is meeting expected standards and how they are performing relative to peers. If he isn't doing as expected, I can support him more at home or pay for a tutor. Or speak to his teacher about what is going wrong. What are the ways in which a home educating parent can be sure their child would be able to re-enter formal education at some point, should they want to (either within a school, having a similar or better skill level as their peers or at university, having done formal exams, particularly for professions such as medicine, law etc rather than just studying a subject)?

There are some big problems with the school system and it genuinely doesn't suit everyone. The milestones and expectations are designed for a mass-education system and don't always match up with the progress of similar aged children in the home ed community. Yes, some children and adults thrive and contribute a lot to the world whilst being able to completely follow their own path. However, I was asking how a home educator might ensure all options are open to a child who couldn't cope with formal school as children but feels able to as a teen / young adult.

And my rebuttal is this: have a big of imagination. I’m typing on a small screen without my glasses and AI (which is what poredi fibd text is) is less than perfect.

If your imagination is Si limited as to presume I’m just poor at spelling island cannot be bothered to sorbs yhd extra time trying to proof without glasses on a very small screen, read then I cannot help you. Try some extra fatty fish to boost thise brain cells

Happpy to be the canary in the mine

• An estimated 1,544,000 children aged 10 to 15 years (34.9%) experienced an in-person bullying behaviour and 847,000 children (19.1%) experienced an online bullying behaviour, in the last year; there was no significant difference compared with the year ending March 2020.

Sorry is was only 34.9%! It's from the ONS. I was rounding up with the school children that don't learn basic English and maths.

The same way any other parent would?
You've literally listed them in your post, more support at home, pay for a tutor, take exams.

How dare you round up

It’s like pulling teeth

Have you seen the state of secondary schools today? The bullying, the peer pressure etc. It creates really unhealthy social dynamics. This also exists in primary schools but is far worse in secondary.

I also don’t think it’s natural to group together only children of one particular age. We evolved in mixed age communities and families, not forced into groups based just on age. It limits social contact with people from different backgrounds and of different ages. Spending your days with same age peers creates so much pressure to fit in. This also leads to kids suppressing their individuality. It creates ‘groupthink’.

School is often very overwhelming and overstimulating for many kids. I don’t think that’s healthy. This is especially true for those with a neurodiversity or just introversion.

I find too many kids in school are sort of ‘raised’ by their peers. There’s this weird codependency going on. I remember it well from my own school days. Yes there are teachers in a school and some other office adults but the ratio of kids to adults is so unnatural. There aren’t enough good adult role models modeling healthy behaviour. Teachers are great but I know how stressed out they are (I was one!). What there is is mostly emotionally immature children.

DT’s are through school now but experienced non of the issues you are referring to. They have good memories of their school. I was a governor at two schools and again they didn’t have the problems you described.

Counter argument: best 5 years of my life as a mother.

So addressing the question of how do home educators make sure their children get the qualifications they need to go onto uni/work etc:

firstly it’s relatively easy to checkpoint reading and early maths. Phonics schemes and early reading books usually come with suggested reading ages. One can also (if one really wanted to) download the phonics test and use that; ks1 sats papers are also readily available.

in practice at the infants level (so age 5-7 in school) there is often a lot if parental input in terms of daily reading - this can be fairly easily replicated with a postal phonics scheme and in fact many many parents do supplement the school teaching with things like alphablocks and number blocks, plus computer programs etc.

just look at the number of posts on here along the lines of my child is behind how do I support them?

as they get older there are other checkpoints - you could use KS2 sats papers (also readily available) or 11+ papers - and again, lots of parents who are aiming for grammar will get a tutor in addition to standard school as it’s widely acknowledged that state school generally doesn’t prepare well for the 11+.

many invested (possibly tiger?) mothers will also be getting their child to learn a foreign language and a musical instrument outside school as well as doing sport.

you just don’t bother with the sending them to school bit and do the language classes/instrumental tuition plus art group, maths tutor and English tutor.

This is really interesting, thank you.

Thanks @Octavia64 that's really helpful.

Yes. There are resources all over the internet and ij more formal workbooks.

I used to think this way - that we needed the constant guidance of teachers employed in schools.

Until I had my own children - theyre not a monolith

Why does your husband want her to be home educated? Does he have concerns about school? Or does he just want to keep you at home?

She's still so young and you haven't mentioned disability/neurodiversity which is usually the reason for home ed (in all the cases I've known). It seems strange to be pushing for it already.

DD is 11 (would have started secondary this month) and has been home educated since halfway through Year 5. It's the best decision we've ever made.

To answer some of the points raised in the thread:

My daughter socialises more, and in a healthier way, than when she was at school. Some of the children in her class at school were being encouraged to grow up far too soon (unlimited access to social media and neglectful parents leading to concerning situations, including one where DD's picture was taken covertly and shared by a fellow year 5 pupil to hundreds of strangers who were his Snapchat contacts. His parents didn't give a shit). DD goes to various groups; some are home ed specific and some are not - bouldering, theatre and Guides as examples. She has also learned how to interact with adults, without the teacher-student dichotomy that can harm how that skill develops.

We track my daughter's progress in various ways, most of which are used by teachers. Age-related expectations are easy to find online, as are past papers of tests for different year groups. We track her progress and development of different skills and report on this each year to the local authority.

There's no set way that home ed families educate, as there are lots of different styles, but we do a full mix of "life learning" and sitting down with online recorded sessions, textbooks and more. We do science experiments, we do field trips, she learns languages and musical instruments and cooking and all sorts.

We ask her frequently whether she's still happy, whether she wants to try a different approach or whether she wants to go to school - she may ask to tweak our approach (more worksheets / more life learning / a specific subject she's interested in) but she is adamant every time that she doesn't want to return to school.

She sits her first GCSE next May.