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Hey, I can answer your questions here. I've looked in to this for my two year old son in the UK because I'm unhappy with a number of the principles and policie

Hey, I can answer your questions here. I've looked in to this for my two year old son in the UK because I'm unhappy with a number of the principles and policies of the education system here. Not least of which the religious leaning that many local schools have. I'm not happy for my son to be taught there's a "God" from such a young age. Anyway... Over 50,000 children are home schooled in the UK and apparently this figure is on the up each year. The laws vary slightly between England/Wales and Scotland so I'll focus on England as that's where I'm based. If you want to home school your kid you need to adhere to one simple rule. You must give your child a "suitable education". There's actually case law and precedents set here, and the case law cites that home schooling should be sufficient to: "prepare the children for life in modern civilised society, and to enable them to achieve their full potential." This is clearly a broad statement, and intentionally so. This means that home schooling parents do not need to adhere to the curriculum taught in schools, nor do their children need to sit the exams that their school taught counterparts will undertake. Parents do not have to prove that they have the necessary skills to provide this education. Local authorities can request informal visits to home schooled children (but that's unlikely given how under resourced they are). A local authority could take steps to force a kid back in to school but they would have to be very unsatisfied with the level of home schooling. Time isn't tracked. It's not about the amount of time you spend teaching your kid, it's about providing a suitable education - whatever that means. The kid doesn't have to take a school test...ever! Given the research I've undertaken to date if I do decide to home school I would almost certainly join forces with a local group of home schoolers who tend to meet up once a week and compare notes whilst taking their spawn on day trips. I think it's healthy for kids to have a network of peers regardless of whether they're in school, and it's somewhat healthy to compare your child's progress with that of others. I would educate my kid in a way that he would be capable of taking and passing the exams all school taught kids take in secondary school when they're 15/16. Reason being that if he decides to go to college and/or university he'll have the same qualifications as everybody else. I think more than the decision to home school or not is the obligation parents have to ensure that they don't simply throw their children in to education without performing appropriate due diligence. Too many parents I know see schools as free childcare and justify their decision to pick a state school on the basis that "it's the law". Parents have a number of choices in how to educate their kids and blindly selecting the wrong path can lead to disastrous results.

pjc50 11y ago
I actually was home schooled for a couple of years (back in the 80s), which involved a fairly minimal amount of work as I'd already learnt to read and was naturally studious. I know a family who are currently homeschooling. It's very liberal, practically libertarian. And I think sadly the reason it's been allowed to continue like this where other countries have cracked down is that the UK does not have much of a tradition of taking your kid out of school for crackpot religious or political reasons. Maybe it will start to become a problem (qv the Scottish "named persons" scheme kerfuffle). I see CofE religious education as harmlessly ineffective, possibly even an effective vaccine against getting religion in later life.
- nibs 11y ago
  I can confirm this. I grew up on forested property in the Canadian shield with my two brothers being unschooled. For my parents, both of them hated school and hated being told what to do (mostly slow down you are making the other kids feel badly) so they just let us do whatever we wanted. We are in the Libertarian/pro liberty camp and my parents empowered us to do what we want since birth. I had far more fun than my peers, learned how to allocate my time and learned about various fields of study. We formed a community with other local unschoolers/homeschoolers. I went to school from age 12-16 and found it to be soul draining. It is the only period of my life I spent unhappy and disengaged. It was too slow, provided useless information and generally made people regress. I am planning to unschool my children. All of the scare tactics around socialization are so inaccurate. I just did what I wanted, which included team sports, and found myself in leadership roles often. Read John Holt if you want to better understand how detrimental school is to actual creative development. All four of my grandparents were educators of some kind and if not for that exposure my parents would never have had first hand experience with the detriment school has on developing young people
jvvw 11y ago
I am in the UK and was quite worried about the compulsory religious education (and it was a bit demoralising that when I asked about it at the open day, they assumed that I wanted lots of religious education and were gushing about how much they did!). However, so far it seems to have actually turned my five year old into a staunch atheist because the bible stories seem so implausible to him. Of course children and schools vary and there are plenty of other reasons to home educate, but so far my fears have been proved groundless in that respect.

pjc50 11y ago

I actually was home schooled for a couple of years (back in the 80s), which involved a fairly minimal amount of work as I'd already learnt to read and was naturally studious. I know a family who are currently homeschooling. It's very liberal, practically libertarian. And I think sadly the reason it's been allowed to continue like this where other countries have cracked down is that the UK does not have much of a tradition of taking your kid out of school for crackpot religious or political reasons. Maybe it will start to become a problem (qv the Scottish "named persons" scheme kerfuffle). I see CofE religious education as harmlessly ineffective, possibly even an effective vaccine against getting religion in later life.

nibs 11y ago
I can confirm this. I grew up on forested property in the Canadian shield with my two brothers being unschooled. For my parents, both of them hated school and hated being told what to do (mostly slow down you are making the other kids feel badly) so they just let us do whatever we wanted. We are in the Libertarian/pro liberty camp and my parents empowered us to do what we want since birth. I had far more fun than my peers, learned how to allocate my time and learned about various fields of study. We formed a community with other local unschoolers/homeschoolers. I went to school from age 12-16 and found it to be soul draining. It is the only period of my life I spent unhappy and disengaged. It was too slow, provided useless information and generally made people regress. I am planning to unschool my children. All of the scare tactics around socialization are so inaccurate. I just did what I wanted, which included team sports, and found myself in leadership roles often. Read John Holt if you want to better understand how detrimental school is to actual creative development. All four of my grandparents were educators of some kind and if not for that exposure my parents would never have had first hand experience with the detriment school has on developing young people

jvvw 11y ago

I am in the UK and was quite worried about the compulsory religious education (and it was a bit demoralising that when I asked about it at the open day, they assumed that I wanted lots of religious education and were gushing about how much they did!). However, so far it seems to have actually turned my five year old into a staunch atheist because the bible stories seem so implausible to him. Of course children and schools vary and there are plenty of other reasons to home educate, but so far my fears have been proved groundless in that respect.