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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Homeschooling pros and cons.
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Also, 16-19 funding streams come from the LSC (the Learning and Skills Council). The under 16 funding stream comes through Local Authority (LEAs went years ago in the shake ups following Victoria Climbié and Every Child Matters, it's now all one service together with social care and other children's services). I can tell you from past and bitter experience negotiating funding at that bridging age is painful if not impossible, and that was before we got the present Government's changes under Gove.
The students we've just sent off to college in September at 16 have conditional places for 6 weeks, in some cases, dependent on attendance. Further Education colleges' funding is not based on numbers on roll, but far more stringent criteria, such as attendance, punctuality and exam results. So they are getting far more ruthless at kicking students out who don't perform. That batch of students are also being charged for some of their course materials - it's not free.
Locally, there is very little in the way of evening classes for basic functional skills such as Functional Skills English and Maths, either.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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justlooking
Shipmate
# 12079
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Posted
Current home educators will know how the system will affect them. It's going to be an interesting few years from 2013.
Posts: 2319 | From: thither and yon | Registered: Nov 2006
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
I know some very competent homeschool parents (including a Methodist pastor -- how she juggles this with her pastoral schedule I can't imagine) -- usually highly educated people themselves who get so frustrated with the limitations of the public school system, and/or with their children's boredom with non-rigorous or creative curricula, that they simply decide to take things into their own hands. (Which, I understand, was the impetus for the contemporary homeschooling movement in the US -- it was a couple of angry Berkeley professors, not anti-intellectual fundies, who caused a stir by moving up to the mountains with their kid and defying the authorities by homeschooling him. He wound up going to an Ivy League university, BTW.)
On the other hand...while wandering down an Internet rabbit hole en route to searching for something else I once wound up on a forum for Christian homeschool mothers. I was absolutely appalled by their grammar and spelling. How does someone like this teach English to a child? Or even if they had limited education themselves, how could they go through all their teaching materials without some of the spelling and grammar information actually sticking in their heads. Good Lord A'mighty. I don't even want to know what they had to say about teaching mathematics or science. But for them it's not really about education, but rather about raising up ideologically untainted soldiers for their culture war and keeping their female children in fundamentalist-Christian purdah.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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justlooking
Shipmate
# 12079
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Posted
There are groups in the UK which are like that. There are also 'Christian schools' which conform to the US model. OTOH, like Curiosity I've taught in the state school system and the kind of values I've met there make me glad my son took another route.
Posts: 2319 | From: thither and yon | Registered: Nov 2006
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
On the other hand...while wandering down an Internet rabbit hole en route to searching for something else I once wound up on a forum for Christian homeschool mothers. I was absolutely appalled by their grammar and spelling. How does someone like this teach English to a child?
I know what you mean. My son took AP English in high school. His senoir year AP English teacher gave him an A on his first paper of the year, and wrote in big letters across the top of the paper, "EXCELLANT." Tonstant weader fwowed up...
--Tom Clune
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Posts: 8013 | From: Western MA | Registered: Jul 2004
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Emma Louise
Storm in a teapot
# 3571
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Posted
Thanks for the discussion. We will probably use the local school but I do keep veering back and forth through the various arguments. Unfortunately what puts me off tends to be other homeschoolers...
However, I first became interested in homeschooling when a couple in my Oxford church homeschooled as they moved countries a lot. (They have continued to home school even though they've settled). They are an amazing family and have some wonderfully well brought up children. Meeting them certainly challenged my pre-conceptions when I was younger.
I have since met a variety of homeschoolers, and certainly wouldn't want to replicate the very-freaky-christian ones or the completely unschooled ones but I guess the joy of homeschooling is it is tailored to your own family.
Posts: 12719 | From: Enid Blyton territory. | Registered: Nov 2002
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
Here in the States, on the Food Network, there's a series called "Pioneer Woman Cooks" starring Ree Drummond, a writer/photographer who exchanged a fast-paced career in the city for life on an Oklahoma ranch with a real cowboy spouse. She's became a nationally popular blogger and cookbook author.
The show is about cooking, of course, but each episode features some aspect of her family's life. One intriguing aspect of this is her homeschooling her several children. Now, she and her husband are churchgoers but don't seem to be flaming fundamentalists at all -- I think they're MOTR Presbyterian -- so that doesn't appear to be her motivation. Maybe the local public schools don't measure up. Whatever the reason, she homeschools, and a recent episode showed her and a couple of homeschooling in-laws/friends having a "co-op" day with their children, making jam together (while learning about measuring, food safety, the mechanics of canning, etc.) and then going on a field trip to a stream and doing water quality testing and studying pond life. It seemed far more interesting and relevant than anything I ever did in grammar school.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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angelfish
Shipmate
# 8884
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Posted
Emma Louise, you can do both! Send the children to the local school and spend weekends, holidays and homework time finding creative ways of improving their knowledge and learning skills.
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"As God is my witness, I WILL kick Bishop Brennan up the arse!"
Posts: 1017 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2004
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
.... and invite your friends' and neighbors' kids to join you!
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
I think the greatest value of home-schooling is that the child can go at his own pace. If he grasps a certain topic quickly, he can immediately move on to the next topic. If he has trouble, he can spend as much time as he needs. Since the teaching is one-on-one, it immediately becomes obvious whether a child gets something or not. Also, there is no stigma attached to a failure to understand.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Janine
The Endless Simmer
# 3337
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Posted
"Homeschooling pros and cons"?
Most cons wouldn't BE cons if they'd had the blessing of a homeschooling experience. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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I'm a Fundagelical Evangimentalist. What are you?
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Posts: 13788 | From: Below the Bible Belt | Registered: Sep 2002
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