Can I ask those of you that home educate, what your own educational levels are?

[suwoo]

Just wondering really, how educated you are?

I know very little about home educating, I don't even know if there is some kind of curriculum that you follow or if you decide yourselves what to teach.

I imagine that you must be educated to at least an A level standard, but I'm guessing most of you are degree educated or more?

Anyway, just musing.........

It varies a lot - there's no curriculum which anyone has to follow, you just have to make sure your child gets an education "suitable to their age, abilities and aptitudes". Also, many parents who choose to HE don't see it as their role to "teach", but to "facilitate" - ie to make sure their child has suitable opportunities and resources, so that doesn't automatically mean the parent has to know everything about every subject the child wants to know about - it could mean going to the library, searching on the internet, joining a group, finding other people who know about that area, etc. For some parents it's very much a process of "finding out together" with younger children, then helping older children to find suitable resources and ways of studying.

Thanks for that AMIS, do you home educate then? If so, do you enjoy it? I suppose its almost a vocation in itself, you wouldn't enter into it halfheartedly.

I do, but in my case it's very much "giving him suitable resources", as DS is studying for iGCSEs through an internet school! It's about as close to school as you can get, so I'm in no way a typical home educator, it was just a practical choice for us at the time.

Wow, its fascinating. Good on you AMIS for doing what works for your family.

Well, it was a bit of a shock decision at the time, brought on by failing to find a suitable school, thinking "Eek at this rate we're going to have to home educate him!" then very rapidly working out that it wasn't that scary after all and there were loads of resources out there. There's pros and cons however you do it, but it certainly seems to have been working for him, giving him an education tailored to what he wants (as much time as possible doing music, but qualifications as a backup plan).

We HE autonomously, letting DS (almost 5 years) follow his own interests. No formal teaching or curriculums done here .

I've got 8 GCSEs, 4 A Levels and a degree and some teaching experience at Primary and Secondary level and DH has the same, without the teaching experience. None of it has been useful for autonomous HE'ing so far! To be honest it's more of a hindrance as I find myself constantly reminding and correcting myself about worrying about what level DS is, what he would be doing if he were at school etc.

Like AMIS said - we don't actively teach DS, we facilitate his learning. If he asks me about something I don't know the answer to something then we look it up together on the internet or in a book. None of the qualifications or training I've had have helped me with that...heck the internet wasn't around back then

It sounds great, especially when something happens that 'makes' the decision for you or if your child has special requirements or talents. I don't think I could do it, I'm far too lazy!

I think you would be very suprised then suwoo
Many families home educate without any A levels or higher.
There are a couple of interesting pieces of research you might want to look at.

Rothermel in 2002 found:

"The results show that 64% of the home-educated Reception aged children scored over 75% on their PIPS Baseline Assessments as opposed to 5.1% of children nationally. The National Literacy Project (Years 1,3,5) assessment results reveal that 80.4% of the home-educated children scored within the top 16% band (of a normal distribution bell curve), whilst 77.4% of the PIPS Year 2 home-educated cohort scored similarly. Results from the psychosocial instruments confirm the home-educated children were socially adept and without behavioural problems. Overall, the home-educated children demonstrated high levels of attainment and good social skills."

yet

"Socio-economic class is not an indicator of achievement levels: whilst the home-educated children outscored their school counterparts, those from lower socio-economic groups outperformed their middle class peers. Figures indicate that at least 14% of the parents in the home-education sample were employed in manual and unskilled occupations."

and
"In this study, parental level of education did not limit the children's attainment. At least 38% of parents in this study had been educated at comprehensive schools and at least 21% had no post-school qualifications. Whilst 47.5% of parents had attended university, at least 27.7% of parents in the study had not."

and in 2007 The Frasier Institute in Canada found:

"Home schooling appears to improve the academic performance of children from families with low levels of education, according to a report on home schooling"

"The evidence is particularly interesting for students who traditionally fall through the cracks in the public system," said Claudia Hepburn, co-author of Home Schooling: From the Extreme to the Mainstream, 2nd edition and Director of Education Policy with The Fraser Institute.

"Poorly educated parents who choose to teach their children at home produce better academic results for their children than public schools do. One study we reviewed found that students taught at home by mothers who never finished high school scored a full 55 percentage points higher than public school students from families with comparable education levels."

DD is fairly bright and we she spends a lot of time looking things up on google/wikipedia herself and has done since she was 4 ish. She has been free reading since early in year 1 so I do 'facilitate' extra things at home and she does a lot of workbooks as she enjoys them, so I suppose it HE would be a much extended version of that. I just feel I am not 'clever' enough to offer that kind of support to my DC. DH is but he works full time.

Oh ok, so maybe I am

I don't possess A Levels, Degrees or anything like that. I have some 'o' levels and secretarial qualifications but that is about it.

It has not been a problem for us though.

suwoo
It seems that it is the involvement of an interested adult, on a one to one (or near one to a very small number of children) that makes the difference.

As others have commented I don't teach my children, we facilitate their learning and follow their interests and that has got us all the way up to A Level/OU course level.

Looking at what you are already doing, what happens in our house is very close to that.
(although we didn't do any work books/formal lessons at all until the children themselves decided to do A levels?OU course material)

Do have a look at Alan Thomas' book How Children Learn at Home

Product Description
In his "Educating Children at Home", Alan Thomas found that many home educating families chose or gravitated towards an informal style of education, radically different from that found in schools. Such learning, also described as unschooling, natural or autonomous, takes place without most of the features considered essential for learning in school. At home there is no curriculum or sequential teaching, nor are there any lessons, textbooks, requirements for written work, practice exercises, marking or testing. But how can children who learn in this way actually achieve an education on a par with what schools offer? In this new research, Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison seek to explain the efficacy of this alternative pedagogy through the experiences of families who have chosen to educate their children informally.Based on interviews and extended examples of learning at home the authors explore: the scope for informal learning within children's everyday lives; the informal acquisition of literacy and numeracy; the role of parents and others in informal learning; and, how children proactively develop their own learning agendas. Their investigation provides not only an insight into the powerful and effective nature of informal learning but also presents some fundamental challenges to many of the assumptions underpinning educational theory. This book will be of interest to education practitioners, researchers and all parents, whether their children are in or out of school, offering as it does fascinating insights into the nature of children's learning.

[Deep breath]

DP and I only have a handful of low grade GCSE results between us .

DS is only 7 atm so I'm confident that between DP and me we know enough to facilitate his learning. As he gets older and possibly overtakes us, we'll either all learn together, pay for tutors or (if he wants it) send him back to school.

My qualifications reflect more on my hatred for school than my ability to facilitate DS in a HE environment IMHO.

Good question though suwoo. Before I looked into HE I thought there was a certain stereotype that went with it that we as a family could never fit into.

I'm only exploring the possibility of HE, but this thread encourages me greatly, my lack of a higher education was a bit of a concern for me.

I'm glad I've started a useful and thought provoking thread for once

Primrosehall

As he gets lder, it is my experience that you'll all be learning together-or that he will be facilitating your education in some areas!!

That's interesting, I didn't know that. I did well at school but not very well at A Level - I did a BTEC course and only got half the certificate, then did one year of A Levels and dropped out to find a job instead.

I wonder whether the link between less educated parents and their children doing better being homeschooled is that the school environment suits some children and the home learning environment suits others, and this trait is perhaps hereditary?

Julie, I'm actually really enthusiastic about learning with DS. HE is giving me an opportunity to buy primary level science books and rediscover all the maths that I've forgotten/never learnt etc etc. I wouldn't be doing that if DS was still at school. I was a serial bunker-offer right through school, so the gaps in my education are huge. He's already facilitating my learning by giving me a reason to start from the beginning again...and I'm enjoying it

Cherrychoc, I think there's something in that. It's likely that some parents who appear to be less educated because of their poor exam results are actually bright, but didn't reach their potential because they disliked classroom learning. Those parents are probably more likely to explore a different route for their child's education, or be prepared to change direction if they see that their child isn't thriving.

I've got two O Levels but bucketfuls of common sense, enthusiasm and a deep understanding of what my son needs. My lack of formal education reflects the standard of state schools way back in my day, and the lack of confidence it gave me so that I never felt able to try my hand at higher education, despite countless people telling me I should go for it.

I totally agree with what some have said about learning together. I thoroughly enjoy plugging the gaps in my own knowledge while working with my son, and I think he benefits too from knowing that I don't know everything (which I think a lot of children feel is compulsory for school teachers).

I hated maths at school, was rubbish at maths at school.
Since home educating my dd (9) I have come to love maths and find it fascinating. I learn alongside my dd, and sometimes she explains things to me!
Also I am re-learning latin, which I loved at school but couldn't do it to o'level because it wasn't on my "options"!

I think it's important that a child understands learning is something that happens throughout life no matter your age, and adults do not know everything.

for those who think they're not clever enough to HE perhaps that's because you are a product of state education!

I passed 7 O'levels (am 45). Went to Art College for 2 years from 16-18 and that's it!
I left college, worked in a cafe for about 4 years, then worked in retail until I had DS, now 12. Have had various waitressing jobs whilst HomeEdding to pay the bills.

Deregistered the 2 boys nearly 4 years ago and haven't looked back. All going really well, and we are autonomous...no formal curriculum followed. hth

I am quite well educated (9 good O levels, 3 A levels, and a good degree) but I really am not at all sure how useful it has been to me as a home educator! Mostly I have had to unlearn a "schooly" way of doing things because it doesn't work so well at home! And hubby who has much less education (a few CSEs and later in life, an access course)makes just as good a job of it as I do.

The other thing is, you forget so much of what you learn. I did A level maths, but am having to learn alongside DD1 to do early secondary maths - I can't remember any of it, yet I must have done it! I'm sitting there looking at the answers and trying to work out how they got to that...well, you get the picture!

The only advantage is my family are quite educated as a whole so I utilise other members as unpaid tutors in Latin, IT, languages,art, whatever I can persuade them to do, really!