Home schooling on increase

[Oh_hunnihunni]

Maybe, rather than getting all worried about the "standard of home education" they should have a good look in the mirror and consider whether or not the problem might be the standard of education in school.  My kids are homeschooled, as was I, so I know many many homeshooling families.  We're mostly all pretty deliberate about making sure we're setting our kids up to succeed.

Of course there are "homeschooled" kids that do no schooling and will struggle as a result, however it is very likely that they'd have suffered much the same fate had they been to school.  Kids finishing school functionally illiterate is sadly all too common.

We chose to homeschool (for now) for various reasons.  When our eldest turned 5, the local school where we were living at the time had an awful reputation, so we didn't bother.  From my interactions with the pupils of that school who lived in our neighbourhood, it was pretty obvious that our kids weren't missing out on anything good and were avoiding plenty of bad by not going.  After a couple of years of homeschooling, we then did put our kids into a different school for a year, however that proved to be pretty disappointing, so we've taken them back out.

Our main reason for taking our kids out was due to the poor level of education provided.  However, it also helps confirm our decision when we hear things like a friend's year 5 kid being taught about different types of sex (I don't at all think school is the place for sex ed for primary school aged kids), or my year 3 niece being read a book about how men can get pregnant.  Those are things I have/will happily discuss with my kids at the right time, but I'd rather choose the right time & age/developmentally appropriate level of detail rather than have a teacher choose.

I was home school boosted, with a teacher grandfather and an hothouse inclined father, so went to some great schools but came home to even more education. I was reading and counting before I started school, as was my daughter in her turn. And while I didn't set out as my parents did to homeschool her I ended up doing so when the public system failed her in her early teens.

Having gone on to research and investigate our system of education as a post grad student I know there are far better ways to educate a population, than the one we use. I am appalled at the waste we seem helpless to prevent, the lifelong scaring we inflict upon our own by insisting our school system is acceptable. 

So I am pleased more are abandoning it. Perhaps eventually someone with the power to make real change will notice and do something about it. But I am not optimistic.