Home education possibilities

[hennypenny 10]

I have had a few PM's asking me about home education, so I thought I would start a thread where anyone interested could ask questions, and I and the other home educators on the forum can try to answer them.

 

I have been home educating for 21 years now, and have 2 children (one is now an adult) who have never been to school. I think I have come across most questions that people ask about home ed in that time, so if you are curious - ask away

[Wheezy 10]

Hello there, this week, I got my child into the school that I want. A friend of mine didn't and she is devastated. How easy is it to home educate?

[hennypenny 10]

I find it very easy. Some people find it difficult. I think it is all about your style and how confident you are about what you are doing.

 

The legalities are quite easy, a simple letter of deregistration from the school roll, or if it is at transition to primary or secondary, then she would just need to notify the school that her child does not need the place allocated.

 

If the child does not have a place allocated at a school then there is no legal obligation to notify anyone.

 

The style of education of each family is individual to each family - there is no right or wrong way.

 

Some families follow a curriculum and in effect do "school at home". As one to one teaching is far more effective than 1-30 they find they can get through the same amount of work much more quickly.

 

Some families do not follow a curriculum but try to keep up to school level with basic subjects, such as English and Maths, whilst allowing other subjects to be more project based.

 

Some families do as we did, which is to abandon school type education altogether and trust their children to learn the things they need to know, this does not mean abandoning them to their own devices, but to follow the childs lead, facilitating their learning of the things they are interested in, and always introducing them to things that may interest and intrigue them. This style is known as autonomous learning and is the least understood type of home education. Research has shown it works extremely well, but it is suspected by conventional educationalists.

 

It is as well to learn the law relating to home education and be prepared, so do your research first.

 

The following sites are good for finding out more about home education.

 

http://www.education-otherwise.org - this site has a summary of the law and also has sample deregistration letters to copy, and educational philosophies to help you to formulate your own.

 

http://home-ed.info/ A site set up by a long term home educator whose children are now adults. Very informative.

 

http://www.home-education.org.uk/ - this site has a comprehensive guide to the law relating to home education and many fascinating articles.

[SamMT 10]

My question about this is how do other children and potential employers respond to children who have never been to school. I always wonder about the socioemotional effects. Being 'different' etc. Is there much research about this? Children's subjective experience etc?

[hennypenny 10]

In my experience home educated children do not come across as being very different, and so people react to them in the usual way. When on visits with home educated groups, the main differences that I repeatedly find remarked upon is how well they behave, how they ask interested and intelligent questions, and how polite, friendly and pleasant they are.

 

In Sheffield the children meet up regularly (4 to 5 times per week) and socialise, in groups of 20 -30 at a time, so they have the normal social skills you would expect from any children of this age.

 

From personal experience, my son went to college when he was 14 and fitted in very well, with no problems, except possibly that he was slightly mystified by the other kids in the class messing about when he was there intending to learn.

 

I remember at one college parents evening I asked his tutor how he was fitting in as he was 2 years younger than the others, and had never been to school - she blushed and admitted that she had totally forgotten he was younger, as he was so mature that he was the one the others went to with their problems and the one they looked to for the answers. He has always tended to choose to socialise with people older than himself, finding people his own age rather young - however my daughter has friends of all ages, from babies to elderly people, and her favourite place to be is in the middle of a group of girls her own age, so I think that is individual choice rather than a constraint of home education. Possibly it is even a freedom of home education as they have both had the chance to choose, rather than being forced into the company of others their own age, which would have been an unpleasant experience for my son.

 

Paula Rothermel's research (Home-Education: Rationales, Practices and Outcomes, Paula Rothermel, University of Durham, 2002) shows that home educated children perform well on standard assessments of accademic attainment and social skills:-

 

http://www.dur.ac.uk/p.j.rothermel/Research/Researchpaper/BERAworkingpaper.htm

 

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.

 

Universities are catching on to the fact that home educated children tend to have a higher level of self motivation and self directed study skills, and in America, Harvard and Yale both actively recruit home educated students.

 

I believe for my son the presence of HE on his CV led to an increased interest from employers and universities, and was not in any way a disadvantage, he has had no problems getting places at college, university or on his PhD course, as well as doing lots of part time jobs over the years.

[drp215 10]

I would like to know, what makes you have the confidence to know that you can educate your child to the high standards he/she deserves, in comparison to a school who have 'experts' in the field?

[hennypenny 10]

The same research posted above which finds that home educated children do better than children educated by any other educational system, including private schools. It also found that there was no correllation between the parents socio economic background, income or educational level and the progress of the child.

 

http://www.dur.ac.uk/p.j.rothermel/Research/Researchpaper/BERAworkingpaper.htm

[Zebra 10]

I would imagine that home educated children are already in a good situation, I don't think the kind of parents who are interested in teaching their kids at home are lacking intelligence.

I suspect that the ones who can't wait to turf their kids out of the house in a morning so they can get on with loafing around and watching morning tv, they're the ones who rarely have the intelligence to be discerning about the quality of education or maybe just don't care.

I would conclude therefore, that there is a baseline of education, ambition and common sense which teaching parents hold in common. I would also imagine that a certain quantity of the population fall way below that baseline and would not be capable, nor inclined to teach at home.

I'd be interested to see what the results are for education values, attainment and ambition for the teaching parents compared to the 'schools good for babysitting' sort of people.

[Zebra 10]

I would like to know, what makes you have the confidence to know that you can educate your child to the high standards he/she deserves, in comparison to a school who have 'experts' in the field?

But many of the 'experts' really aren't at all. They can have a degree in religious education and go on to do the PGCE in primary teaching for example and rarely teaching religious education at all.

My specialist subject is not a core subject in schools these days yet I have a qualification to teach.

I would feel very confident teaching my kids everything but maths, that's the only one which I think I would struggle with, the teaching techniques are mostly alien to me and my recall of the ability to do trig and algebra etc is low because I don't need it. So, I suppose I'd be book and internet reliant for that.

Otherwise I'd feel fine using resources to supplement my knowledge and abilities.

[hennypenny 10]

I read an article recently that gave figures for the numbers of teachers who were actually qualified in the subject they were teaching - I don't remember the statistics, but they were astonishingly low - I can't find the article again now - very irritating!

 

What most home educators I know have found in practice is that we don't actually "teach" our children. What we do is to help them to learn. A lot of it is parent and child learning together - the parent certainly doesn't need to be one step ahead of the child, sometimes it is the child who is the expert and who teaches the parent. When a child is interested in a subject then they will learn it simply by researching and exploring it for themselves. Left to themselves children will naturally want to learn and make sense of the world around them. In a piece of research done recently :-

 

"One child had a SEGA megadrive on which he played a game where he explored different planets looking for minerals. From this he learnt a lot about mineral names, developed an interest in geology, visited museums, other countries and mines and made jewellery. This led to an interest in natural history which further expanded his area of investigation.

Another child became interested in the war-time evacuation of children after watching a Narnia film following through with the topic in considerable detail. Yet another child undertook research into the battle of Trafalgar after the bicentennial celebrations and also into the gunpowder plot after one Guy Fawkes’s night."

Ref USE OF ON-LINE AND MULTIMEDIA IN HOME EDUCATION

Manjit Dosanjh

Bournemouth University

 

Children learn much better in a one to one situation, and even unpopular subjects can be learnt together. There are several online and offline resources which can be used, such as the excellent Maths2XL course, Education city for fun lessons online, Learn Premium etc, and if parents feel in need of more structured help, then there are now several online accadamies which offer school at home. Home education groups usually run various classes, in Sheffield there are currently drama, music, computing, first aid, swimming and skating sessions running, in the past there have been language, history and many other sessions run as children have expressed an interest. The childs progress is not totally dependent upon the level of expertise of their parent, they can access knowledge from many other sources.

[Eleke95 10]

I have a family member who has educated all three of her children at home - I don't know how she stays motivated (and keeps them interested!) - that would be my biggest problem I think.

[hennypenny 10]

I have a family member who has educated all three of her children at home - I don't know how she stays motivated (and keeps them interested!) - that would be my biggest problem I think.

 

I think that what happens is that children who haven't been to school don't ever learn that it isn't cool to want to learn, and so they are very motivated themselves. Children learn the things that they need to know incredibly well, after all, they teach themselves to walk and talk! In fact the hardest thing as a home educating parent can sometimes be to step back and let them alone - our instincts are to "teach" them, but actually they learn really well if we just facilitate them to teach themselves by making the resources available to them and allowing them to explore and sort it out in their own time. It is incredibly rare to hear a home educated child say they are bored.

 

I know one home educator who has 12 children under 14 - now that I would find a challenge!