On the whole it wasn't organisations that provided activities and social opportunities for my children all those years ago, it was my husband and I any many, many other parents.

Things do change however, as home education grows, the opportunities to "sell" to this community grows too. We only knew of about 2000 home- edders in my day (through Education Otherwise mainly) and I don't remember meeting more than about 150 at a time but my daughter met up with 200 plus in a park recently for a 'not back to school' picnic. I think the opportunities for organisations to provide things for a community of this size are growing a lot. For example, she tells me her local pool has recently started to offer group home-ed swimming lessons during the day, the local college home-ed GCSEs, and there are numerous group activities you can do (if you can afford them of course) - Music, Drama, Gymnastics, Climbing, etc.

Not sure which organisations you mean Trisha. Maybe after-school ones such as guides and scouts? These are certainly needing more support, but it was possibly always the same as these are both activities that I volunteered for (reluctantly) whenever they were stuck for help. I really wanted my children to have the chance to have a break from me and was disappointed that more non homeschooling parents didn't come forward even then.

I think some children are naturally gregarious and there's no reason not to be just as gregarious outside the school system. And forming lasting, meaningful friendships and being gregarious aren't necessarily the same thing. I do think, however, that the social aspect of home-edding is perhaps the most misunderstood. It's certainly the thing that caused me the most stress before we actually started on that path. Now I'm really relaxed about it and can see my grandchildren enjoying the varied freedoms and social experiences that my own children enjoyed.

As someone once said to me, when in your life will you ever need to be in a group of 30 or so people where the commonality is your age?

I think that school gives children more freedom over their own friendships.
My best friend, still a very good friend more than 50yrs later, was not much liked by my mother. This didn't matter because we saw each other every day. I can see that my mother would have thought once a week ample! She would have made no effort for us to get together every day, in fact she would have argued that it wasn't good for me.
It was good for me.
I am not too sure that parent and child ideas on friendships always add up.

I don't know about that trisher. The home schooling group my GC attend has about 150 children of all ages. The meet up every Wednesday and usually there are about 40 children there. Different Wednesdays, different children. My DGD has made a really good friend already and they have only been going since January. Most weeks they have enquiries from other families too.

I think home schooling can be excellent and essential for some children. But even for children who struggle sometimes school does provide links and friendships which last into adult life. Of course there are organisations that can provide social activities for home schooled children, but I believe many of these are now struggling to survive due to a lack of adult volunteers. Could this mean that home schooling will not be able to offer a social side in the future?

Perfectly explained, NotSpaghetti.
We teach my grandson English and maths in the morning, but he usually reads a newspaper as well and something will come up in that which needs explaining or research in the afternoon. The good thing is that it can change when something local happens, so we can go out or stay in when necessary.
His sister, who is five years younger, would not like to be taught at home. She enjoys school, as did her cousins.
We do know that if he wanted to try going to school again, he could, and they would fit him in. He never learned at the same rate as others in his group, anyway.

I identify with the swimming, too. When he was younger, his mother used to take him to the pool in York when it first opened. As soon as any other children arrived, it hurt his ears, so he had to leave. He's not quite as bad now, but it's very much like the sensory overload in the autism film. Two babies in pushchairs in the same shop and we have to leave.

Pamish, I do understand your concerns but what we really never ever needed was a "proper planned curriculum "... and we did have great reports from the LEA without one. Having a curriculum would have stifled us I think, and the benefits of educating in our own way would have been massively compromised.

Just as another poster said, home education is not for everyone. I'm not advocating it for everyone.

In the UK, legally it's a parent's responsibility to see that their child receives an education suited to their age ability and aptitude (and any special needs they may have) and so long as parents do this, they should, I feel, be able to do it in their own way. Some people choose not to hand this responsibility to someone else specifically so that they can educate in their own way. Please don't let's force a curriculum on them.

DD took her children swimming this morning. There were only three families there. The facilities were fabulous, and the children had a wonderful time. One of the lifeguards approached my DD and asked her why the children weren't in school. "Oh, we home school" she said, then he asked it that was legal and she assured him that it was. He went away, and came back a short while later saying that he hadn't heard of home schooling before and did many people do it. He was astounded to learn that there are about 150 children in the home school group that they attend.
When they were finished in the pool, DGS1 said "I'm not as tired as I usually am when we've been swimming". DD asked him why that was, he said," it was much quieter and I didn't have to fight against the noise". This spoke volumes to her as DGS 1 has Asperger's syndrome.

I agree with other posters, one size does not fit all. I can understand the benefits of home schooling but I know for a fact that it would not have suited my daughter who thrived in the school environment and loved interacting and socialising with her classmates. She was, and still is a gregarious girl and loved going to school.

That's another good thing, NotSpaghetti, I agree, being able to go to museums in the quiet times. The staff who work there are always knowledgeable and want to spread their knowledge.
As far as cooking, shopping etc., that is part of the schooling. My grandson makes bread, cakes, etc.
We make bread using different flours and test it on the family to see which tastes best, which is easiest to knead, would it be better if proved for longer, etc.
It's all learning.
Many kids these days never touch real money, just play money. Shopping includes all the things that will come in useful for when/if he lives on his own. Working out which food is best value for money, etc., working out change. In the village we live in everyone gives him time to work it out.

OK as long as there is monitoring. It seems children can disappear off any registers so the possibility for all kinds of abuse is high. Overworked local authorities are not going to chase up children who don't apply for school places, and they apparently have no responsibility for home-schooled children. There needs to be some kind of check that children are getting a proper planned curriculum.

Sometimes people want to keep their children home because they have what we could call minority religious beliefs; what chance would those children have to understand the rest of the society they are shut off from? Extreme examples in the US are there as a warning.

As long as they are out of the home some of the time in groups of other children, preferably random ones not hand-picked, fine. Otherwise it's just not fair to the children.

Like other choices, Home Education is controversial. There are always implied criticisms whatever people say on the subject. Like home birth, for some home education is natural. For others it's an anathema.

We fell into it as we had a move back from the USA with a rising 5 year old and a new baby. We didn't want to send her off just as everyone was cooing about the baby (which obviously no one had seen) and intended it to be for 6 months or so.

As a family we then went on to home educate our 5 children - and we now have home-educated grandchildren. I found the idea that my daughter would chose the same path really scary as I know what needs to be sacrificed to do it well.

We only ever had one income (or 2 halves), and so although we have had loads of fun, we only once managed a holiday that most of our friends would have considered "normal". We have bought a house now, couldn't do it till the children were older, so still have a chunky mortgage. We pushed ourselves to provide everything we possibly could that might stretch our children - going to electronics shows for one and harp lessons with another. We bought a computer relatively early (1980) as we didn't want them to miss out on that. Consequently we had to be really creative with the cooking, shopping in general, and never had new furniture other than mattresses.

I'm not complaining. Just telling it how it was. And I know many people live like this all the time.

None of our children went to school but all of them opted to go to college rather than sit GCSEs and A levels at home. We do know families that have done these exams from home but once the oldest one went off to college at 14 the others decided it was a good idea. She chose it because her primary interest was Drama and that has to be done in a group. Our nearest home-ed drama group was miles away so this was her only option. Unlike me, who pretty quickly lost contact with all my school/university friends, she is still in touch with both ex home schoolers and some of her very first college friends.

Unlike Vanessa I never "taught" in the formal way her mother seems to have done. My husband and I (and friends, family and other home-schoolers ) were facilitators. and with the exception of English and Maths, anything was possible. We made contact with people with specific skills for specific children. One did some mig welding (!) two photography (including turning one room into a darkroom for weeks on end) and we had rockets, programmable computers, musical instruments, art stuff and general junk always about. We exchanged skills with other home schoolers (there is a big network) and met up with other families on a roughly twice a week basis. Sometimes we had children to stay over for arty stuff (my area), sometimes they went off to a friends house (to say, an engineering family), and three times a year we all went to home-ed "camps" of up to about 140 people where we did big group things, ltried new skills, and made new friends.

I do feel very privileged to have had all this amazing time with my family. I loved visiting museums and art galleries when they were quiet and the staff had time to give to my children on a 1to1 basis according to their interests. The energy involved was huge though. The scheduling, planning and organising. These are some of the things I learned. Also, that everything is possible. If you have a dream you can pursue it. SOMEONE out there will help you if you can just find the right person.

My children are all adults now. They are (mercifully) ordinary people. Their schooling is hardly ever talked about. And they are as different from each other as they could be.

Would I recommend it to everyone? No. There would be many less benefits to doing it then!

As a retired Early Years teacher, I believe that one of the main aims of a school, is for the child to learn how to get along in society. I would be the first to admit, though, that school life is difficult for some children to adjust to.
Home Schooling is not better, just a gentler, more sheltered approach to education.

Cross posted thatbags - you put it in a nutshell!

As I said, everyone is different, durhamjen and you can't possibly have one system that suits all.
I know someone who did flexi schooling and it worked well educationally but it was very difficult at break time because those they met in a lesson went off with friends they didn't know at break. They didn't have a good time socially until they went full time in the 6th form and were an equal part of the school.
While I agree that it doesn't have to be one person doing the educating I don't have anyone who could have coped with GCSE and A'level sciences and art.
We would have been fine with English, History and Geography but that is not what mine wanted.
I am not attacking home education, merely disagreeing with Vanessa in that it is not better. It is better for some children and school is better for some children.
Home education is just another method and how people do it, and how children experience it, falls into the good, the bad and the indifferent in the same way that schools are good,bad and indifferent.
Vanessa was very lucky that she got the education that she wanted, it suited her and she recommends it. She may be right for many people but equally she is wrong for others.
One size never suits all. Something that is perfect for one person is always a nightmare for someone else, in all things. e.g a week's skiing, out in the snow hurtling down slopes from lifts open to lifts close is perfect for me but I know lots of people who would be totally miserable if they had to do that.
I think everything needs to be qualified and it ought to read:
Why home schooling is better than school for some children . (or even Why home schooling is better than school *for many children*)
I can't agree with the sentence as it stands. My mother was home schooled for a while, it didn't suit her, and very few people know about it- she doesn't talk about it, even though there was nothing wrong with the standard of the education she received.

Provocative title. One size never fits all.

Of course home schooling is better - you can stay in your pj's and watch Jeremy Kyle without having to go outdoors!

My youngest son was flexi-schooled, although we didn't call it that. It worked extremely well for him and his given him an extremely balanced education with solid grounding in academic subjects (he's studying engineering at university) and opportunities to develop artistically and in other ways too.

Leticia, if your child has ASD, the worst time is the breaks and lunchtime, when they are often very much on their own.
We always used to say that we could teach our children ourselves, but they went to school for the social side of learning. However, forcing a child with ASD to join in playground breaks when noise is so awful for him just seems wrong to me.

Doesn't have to be just one person.
I teach my fourteen year old grandson for three days, his mother teaches him other days, and his father teaches him, too.
You use your resources. We all have degrees, and different areas of expertise and interests. His timetable is much more varied than that of some of his friends.
For physical education, he goes running with either or both of his parents, and plays football and swims.

I think flexi school gives the worst of both worlds unless they are a very outgoing, popular child. It is difficult to make proper friendships if you are missing for a lot of the time. The breaks and lunchtime are very important for forging friendships.
It could work well if a lot of the children do flexi - there seems to be a lovely little school in the Peak District that does that- but not if they are the only one because they will miss out on many of the things that bond a class.
Better to find, and foster, home school groups.

I can't see any problem with primary age, I'm sure most people could tackle most subjects. It isn't so easy at secondary unless they happen to slot into the expertise of the parent as in the case of Vanessa.

He did life drawing classes in addition to his school lessons, arranged in the evenings for the area's A'level students.

Fine when they are young hildajenniJ but I was talking about my son who uses art in his career and took it to A'level and needed specialist teachers.

In many ways I would love to home school my grandson, however, I know I am no where near academic enough to take him beyond primary school level. It must be quite a battle to get some children to engage with their lessons when they are home schooled. I would like to see smaller schools, smaller class sizes and a more rich and varied curriculum (one that is not assessment obsessed). It's a great pity that so much fun and enjoyment is being missed out on by continuously judging children's learning.

Although I am a teacher I absolutely believe home schooling is right for some children. My youngest grandson may end up being home schooled, as although he is not due to start reception until September he is probably year 2 level now. But he has other issues and we are not sure he will cope at school. My daughter is prepared to home school if need be, although she would like school to work for him. You can flexi school with support of your local school, which could be the best of both worlds. I am very opposed to the way our education system is going with constant inappropriate testing and narrowing of the curriculum so home schooling is a way round it.