UKH

So, having homeschooled our daughter (year 1) during our lockdown. my wife is contemplating homeschooling her for real. We're not educationalists and there's a fair bit about the different types of homeschooling - Montessori, Charlotte Mason, Unschooling, classical etc. which we haven't even thought about.  Does anyone have any thoughts on the subject?  We'd look to follow a mixture of the UK and German curriculums (my wife is German and our daughter is bilingual) as our local curriculum isn't published.

It's crossed my mind (I have a daughter in reception) but the lockdown has made me realise that I would be a terrible teacher, and a big part of my daughters enjoyment of school is the social interaction, which couldn't be replicated at home. 

My husband was home educated, not home schooled. They just did normal family life for the early years of primary. Actively reading with your kids, following up any of their areas of interest and questions etc seems to cover most of the early curriculum. Even a trip to the shops is schooling - involve them in writing the list, finding the right things by reading signs, working out quantities of things etc. There are now so many educational resources online that you could use to supplement stuff.

His mum found a whole group of home educators in the area, so they would get together for "school trips" to castles, or a trip with a local ranger etc. One parent would run a drama class. They used their skills within the group to enhance all the kids educations.

To this day, his best friends are the group that he didn't go to school with!

He home educated most of primary, and then went to the last year of primary to make some friends there and did normal secondary school. Some other home ed'ers did the whole thing independently. I believe in the later secondary years they did some classes at a local college. 

It was in no way a lonely childhood for him, it was one which hugely encouraged creative and independent thinking. They did some mainstream stuff like scouts etc. 

One interesting comment he made once is that he found it odd when he went to school and suddenly age mattered so much. There is 5 years between him and his youngest brother, and amongst the whole home ed group there was a massive spread of ages. They all happily got together and played/ did whatever group activities etc without age being an issue, largely.

I think it's a great way to do it if you have the ability to have a parent at home to do it

I would worry about the likelihood of losing out on the social skills and learning together skills that would be present at school. Girlymonkey's husband sounds like he had a very fortunate setup but you might want to do some research and find out if your local area has a group anything like this because if not, your child is losing out on about 6 hours a day of interaction with others the same age. My suspicion would be that while they would learn much faster and more effectively with 1 to 1 tuition but would find integrating back into communal classes challenging when had finished home schooling. This isn't based on any evidence though, just my gut feeling. I think you would do well to find some sites on the internet where people have researched this stuff and found out how well it works objectively, rather than just in the opinion of random individuals like me

I wouldn't recommend it at secondary school level as the level of subject knowledge needed to effectively teach secondary subjects is significant and while many parents might be able to tutor 1, 2, 3 or even 4 subjects fairly well, it would be very surprising if they were able to tutor 12 or more subjects properly.

Edit: Also there isn't a UK curriculum. As a devolved area, it is different in each country in the UK, I think trying to mash about 4 curricula together might not give you the best end result, maybe pick just 2.

Justin Beiber and Miley Cyrus were both home schooled.

Why take the risk?

I think if as a family you can home educate happily and succesfully during lockdown when none of the normal social events or excursions are availble to you then you will be great at it once life gets back to normal.

I'd love to home educate my daughter, but my two concerns are firstly that we are a non welsh speaking family in a majority Welsh speaking area and we would be disadvantaging her in the short term as a lot of extra curricular activities (which she would need to do to socialise) are via Welsh, and in the long-term because she would need Welsh to make her competitive in the local job market as an adult; and secondly my husband and I are both introverts, daughter is an only child and we have no family locally, so whilst, as girlymonkey has explained, adequate socialising is perfectly possible for home ed kids I'm not sure we as a family would be able to pull it off.

However there is so much wrong with the education system currently, even before you add social distancing for small kids, that if my daughter is ever unhappy and not thriving I wouldn't hesitate to withdraw her from school and go down the home ed route instead.

If you are just going to follow the national curriculums then why do you want to homeschool?

I’d read up on different teaching philosophies and they might give you some good ideas about how and what you want to teach. It’s a great opportunity to teach differently though, especially when they are so young, they learn so easily when they are young if you give them a chance!

(We homeschool our 14 year old and our 6 year old)

Miley Cyrus is 27 years old and has about $200 million in the bank....

Also worth bearing in mind that if you try it and decide it's not working, she can always go back to a conventional school. My mother in law only really intended to home Ed for the first couple of years as she felt we start school too young here. She thought she would probably enroll them around age 7, but it was working well and all were happy so she kept going with it. 

How much money would they have to pay you to be Miley Cyrus?

Seriously

Edit:

My father is a schoolteacher who has also for the past 30+ years supplemented his income by offering private tuition. He's had a number of students who were "home educated" and needed, at GCSE or A-Level, a bit of guidance to get them through curriculum requirements to get important exam results (my father teaches English, and as we all know, regardless of all other factors nobody gets far without acceptable grades in English). 

All of the home-educated students seemed to be to be nice and bright and well-rounded APART from being quite socially awkward, as one might expect (not casting aspersions on your husband). Several that I still encounter from the same family, are similarly socially awkward well well into adult life. I don't think it's hampered them in anything they want to do, but they do have a "way" about them. 

Is that cause or effect?  All the home education families I know at the moment do so not from choice but because the child isn’t coping in school.  

Made me laugh anyway. I needed that

Don’t know, miss.

I tried to keep my post as devoid of judgement or personal opinion as was humanly possible. 

It depends to SOME extent on, among other things, [1] whether your daughter has a sibling or not, [2] you/ your wife's abilities as a teacher, [3] your willingness and available time and energy to carry on as a teacher for all the required years, [4] your daughter's personality (I won't go into details, you have to figure that out), [5] your daughter's ability in other ways to do homeschooling, [6] what the local schools are like - good or not (might be a factor in the decision), [7] can you run your home as a school for all the necessary years, [8] can you afford it

You might think, reading this, I am on the whole against it (for me at least). You'd be right. But that's just personal, don't be swayed by me, PLEASE

Here are 2 anecdotes from my personal experience, both true, [1] I knew a Middle School Principal (it was a top school) who insisted on homeschooling his own kids (his wife taught them) as it was the best way to go. [2] I knew a highly capable couple who homeschooled their 8 great and capable kids. Not one of them got into further education after school.... that always struck me as interesting.... and revealing. I've always wondered about that

Good luck

Whereas most of my husband's home Ed group did higher education. This includes Oxford graduates. My brother in law did an apprenticeship instead, and has not long returned from 18 months working for the British Antartic Survey! 

Of course, you tend to stay friends with people who share a similar outlook, so it may be that I know the home Ed friends who had similar goals and outlooks in life.

And not the desperate failures that nobody talks about 😃😃😃

You got a like for managing to tag not one, but three Smiley faces onto a short sentence about desperate failures👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

I can't be sure but you seem to be hinting something, or saying something, about my anecdote from my personal experience about the highly capable couple I knew who homeschooled their 8 kids - I had said that none of those kids went into further education after being homeschooled. I will now add that the couple were both well educated and that they both had university degrees; that the couple fervently wanted all of their kids to go into further education; and that also, almost all of those 8 kids' friends went to university

Getting a shower after a run would be great!

my experience of close friends home educating. was that it seemed to slide towards almost a series of private tutors, particularly post primary. Most people will accept that there are limits to what they can teach outside their own experience. Some of the science knowledge was very poor, but that was recognised and the kids were duly farmed out to other family or home ed. parents with that knowledge. I also think it's telling that most of the kids wound up in some sort of formal education in the run up to exams - I know many colleges effectively have a feeder stream/ class for just those kids, so it must be widespread. Most of the kids seemed to have gone on to HE eventually, but I wonder if some of the subjects are influenced by parental interest, and that they would have gone a different academic path with a broader "mainstream" education. 

If you have any specific questions about home schooling feel free to PM me. I might not know the answers but as I say we currently home school so we've got an inside perspective on it.

Not at all, just pointing out that there are a range of experiences of it. I am merely acknowledging that my view of it might be skewed by the route my husband took as the route you take may have an impact on the friends you keep close. 

You're so right. We know a huge range of home school families and the thing they have in common is that they all do things in very different ways. I think that freedom is the essential difference between homeschooling and 'normal' schooling.

The whole idea is _you_ are in charge of how you educate your children so you can do it however you think is best for them, generalising from anecdotes of how others have done it is pretty pointless.

I have been working with children in a variety of settings for over 20 years and as a teacher for the last ten - I have come across several students who have been home schooled through GCSEs and then gone on to A levels at school and you can pick them out a mile off - I don't mean that in a bad way, just that they in some way come across as different to other students - often much more mature and focused to be honest but as others have said can struggle in a social sense.

If I'm honest, I don't think that much of what is taught in secondary schools is 'rocket science' and would be happy to teach most things up to KS4 but I would struggle to deliver maths and english as the subjects and how they are taught have changed so much since I was at school.

The lack of social interaction is something that would worry me and I don't think it can be replicated easily outside of a school setting - it encourages you to interact with people from different backgrounds, faiths, classes, ethnicity etc - which can only be a good thing.

Just my 2p, and all just opinion. For the record I teach computer science, design and technology and art and have in the past taught IT and photography as well.

Thanks very much for your reply, girlymonkey - that's really clear