Home Education and benefits issue....

pipkin71

Alibambee, there is the option of self employment, if your daughter does not want to return the children to school.

She only needs to work for 16 hours in order to qualify for tax credits, so she could look for cleaning jobs which would give her plenty of time to educate her children, as it is only part time.

It's great that you are supportive of this.

Has your daughter asked for advice on her local home ed board?

There are quite a few options available to her, in order to make up a 16 hour working week and that may be her best bet, in order to continue home edding.

Good luck to your daughter and her children. They will have some amazing opportunities open to them

pipkin71

viktory wrote: »

Parents who home school their children do not have to allow council officials into their home to see how their children are working and how well they are learning.

This is true.

If children are known to the LEA, then if they choose not to allow the education advisor into their home, they need to send in an educational philosophy.

If the advisor is not happy with that, then they can ask for further details and, of course, have the option of taking a family to court to ensure that a full time education to the child's ability is taking place.

Ivana_Tinkle

If your daughter only needs to work 16 hours per week, could she say that she's available to work two, eight-hour days? That way, she could still home ed the kids five days a week.

Incidentally, and I know this will shock the poster above who thinks you shouldn't home ed unless you're sure your kids will get 10 GCSEs (just like all state-school kids?!), plenty of us home edders take a far less structured approach which might suit your circumstances better. Try googling 'unschooling' or 'autonomous education' if you're interested.

Oh and BTW, your daughter is very lucky to have such intelligent and supportive parents!

Jowo_2

millym wrote: »

...So it is actually cheaper for the taxpayer when a parent decides to homeschool their children. The OP's daughter educates her 2 children at home, so I definitely think an allowance should be payable. .....

Maybe it's 'cheaper' for the public purse for the lady to educate her two children at home, based on the 6k cost of educating a child at a state school or maybe it's not.

After all, the average single parent with 2 kids receives about £200 per week in benefits, plus council tax discount and LHA, and this can total 15k per year if the rent is quite modest.

Then there's the loss to the public purse because the lone parent is not contributing any taxes to the state.

So it's actually going to be fairly costly to the public purse for a lone parent to be workless for decades until their youngest one reaches working age.

krisskross

HappyMJ wrote: »

It's around £6,000 per student per year to educate a child in school.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-12280492

But that will include all salaries, upkeep of the building, utility bills etc. 2 less children on the school roll are not going to mean a saving of £12000 now are they?

The only way it would be possible to save this £6K per child would be to close all the schools and provide no education.

Uncertain

Incyder wrote: »

Put them in a school, the poor horrors. Otherwise they are going to become self obsessed misfits with zero social interaction skills.
It's hardly preparation for the big wide world staying at home 24/7 with one parent.

What an utterly offensive and ignorant post!

You know nothing of the OP and the OP's children and, I suspect, precious little about anything else.

Take a walk past a couple of less desirable state schools one day when the children come out and see how well they have been prepared for the big wide world!

mummytofour

I work with children with challanging behaviour and I have seen what poor teaching can do to a child. I am an advocate for choice and while I admire thoese who home schoo,l I will say just because your dd has had a bad expirance there are some totally fantastic schools out there. Frequenlty those children who are home schooled do go back to mainstream education at a later date, for all sorts of reasons. I never seen anything as forever, ppl change and life changes.

Any parent who has children 7 or over is exspected to find work, those are the rules. Your daughter can work and use a childminder and get help with childcare via tax creidts. Yes it may not be what she wants but many many many single mums have to find work to support their children that is part of life. We are very lucky in the UK and I think sometime sppl forget this.

AliBambee

Thanks again for the further replies, some of which will be useful.

When I mentioned 'toxic' schools, what I meant is the atmosphere as much as anything. I am not assuming that all teachers are bad (although they are not all good either), but the environment often leaves a lot to be desired.

The scripture that says 'bad company is the ruin of a good character' sparked the adage 'you can tell a man by the company he keeps'. If you are around people all day who have limited moral guidance or conscience, then sadly, you may well follow their lead - and children by nature are very easily influenced.

If you are a parent who wishes your children to be respectful and honorable, loyal, and honest, to be able to make wise decisions in life, to build and keep a good conscience and benefit from it then school is not a good environment in which to nurture those qualities.

Many children are permitted to watch highly immoral and gratuitously violent movies. They play horrendously violent and increasingly evil video games. They are encouraged by the media to grow up way too soon, and to flaunt their sexuality at a very young age. Drugs are rife, smoking is 'normal', knives are carried with impunity. Disrespect and arrogance is the norm. Without good moral guidance, children can be very cruel and hurtful, displaying traits they often, all too sadly, witness in their own homes.

Teachers too may be all too ready to teach our children things that they either are not ready for, or that we do not wish them to know at such vulnerable ages. As we have experienced on various occasions, some teachers also consider their influence to be of more importance than yours as a parent, arrogantly over-riding your wishes. The education system also herds children into boxes they may not always fit, whether they can cope with it or not, academically, or emotionally.

Toxic? I am afraid it is. Our grandchildren witnessed many of these attitudes and traits even in their little provincial junior school. Are we stupid or foolish for wanting to protect their innocence for as long as we can? We do not wrap them in cotton wool, they know these things go on, but there is a big difference between knowing about something and being exposed to it all day, every day. If you know the fire will burn you, why step in it anyway??

As far as work is concerned, my daughter is not workshy, as I mentioned, she was working three nights a week up until she started teaching the boys (they would sleep at ours and we would have them the next day whilIe she would sleep), but to me it is the principle. It's the 'herd' factor again. Everyone has to comply with this arrangement whether it will work for them or not. The chances of her being able to find something that will support them enough within an arrangement that will not be too disruptive to the teaching will be hard. Even if she could find something self-employed, it has to be regular, or the system can't deal with it.

If the right kind of work was easy to find I probably would not have needed to write this post, but sadly it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain.

JC9297

I agree with a previous posters analogy with NHS/private medicine. Lots of people would prefer their children to go to private schools because they think the facilities/education/opportunities etc. are better, however their financial/family situations mean it isn't possible. If your daughter would prefer her sons to be educated in an independent school she would, I'm sure, accept it is not a viable option due to her financial situation, at the moment the same applies to home schooling.

You seem to have a very negative attitude to state schools, I know lots of well-rounded, well-educated, witty, sociable, pleasant young people who have attended state schools, perhaps they are the exceptions but I don't think so.

AliBambee

Well that may be so, but how well they stand up to it and how well they turn out has a lot to do with a child's strength of character.

Some may be better equipped to cope with it than others.

I hated school - although intelligent enough and with an inquiring mind, it did not nurture my strengths enough to make me want to go on to further education, even though I have, and have always had a thirst for knowledge. Fortunately I had the strength of character to snoot my nose at the moronic name-calling and personality defects that I encountered around me every day and develop a thick enough skin to ignore it.

Sadly, my daughter didn't have that ability or confidence, and has ended up with depression and self-esteem issues ever since - as also has my son - plagued every day until he grew tall enough at 15 for the bullies to stop persecuting him. Apart from all the other factors, their experiences were enough to help her decision to home-ed. She didn't want her boys to run the risk of having to endure the misery she herself had encountered, especially as the older one is quite a sensitive child and was already being affected by bullying.

School taught me very little that I use in my every day life. That was learned from my parents. Quadratic equations and binary equivalents ended up in the bin with all the other useless drivel that I have never used to this day nearly 40 years later. I could change a plug though, cook a decent meal, design and sew a dress, read a book in two hours (Mum used to get me 16 books a week from the Mobile Library!), make conversation with anyone of any age, learn how to drive and treat other people with respect. Those were skills that I have used extensively in my life, and they all came from my parents.

I would consider myself well-rounded, often witty, intelligent, sociable and pleasant, but I developed those abilities in spite of school, and most of them were inherited from, or taught by, my parents. I very much doubt that I would have missed very much had I not gone to school. I have covered quite a few professions in my life from admin, to computers, to upholstery and furniture restoration - all self-taught (Mum could turn her hand to most crafts, and Dad was a very accomplished joiner and cabinet-maker). I have even been a computer trainer and Upholstery tutor in my time. My parents taught me how to learn, and that, more than anything is what has guided my life.

The current education system is a bit of a lottery one way or another. 'Throw it in the pot and see what comes out'. Some may deal with it ok - others may be scarred for life.

Personally I would rather not take that risk, and neither would my daughter.