An increasing proportion of children around the world are being home educated. More parents are electing to either remove their children from mainstream schooling or not to enrol them in a mainstream school in the first instance. A 2024 census suggests the number of children being home educated in the UK alone has reached 117,000 – a 20% increase on the year before, and more than double estimates from 2010 (though the lack of official registers mean the exact number is impossible to track). Parents often cite a range of reasons for not enrolling their children in schools. They include pedagogical beliefs, issues surrounding bullying and anti-social behaviour in schooling environments, and religious beliefs. Increasingly, if their child has special educational needs (SEND), they cite a feeling that those needs are not being met in mainstream schooling environments. But despite the growth in popularity, little remains known about how homeeducated children go on to experience the world of work once their home education is complete. A NEW NARRATIVE The UK media often presents a negative image of children who are home educated, what kind of social skills they have, and the education they receive. Narratives tend to stereotype these youngsters as lacking in social skills and falling below their schooled peers in terms of grades and future employment outcomes. A lot of attention is paid to the call for a home education register among politicians and government, and little to the reality for those who come through home education – a group who share an experience of the phenomenon, but who each have their own individual journeys – and what happens to them afterwards. In my work, I wanted to enable previously home-educated people to have a voice. I wanted them to be able to communicate their experiences in the ways they wanted them to be represented in the public domain. VALUABLE CHARACTERISTICS I interviewed 31 previously homeeducated people aged between 18 and 56 about their experiences of home education, work and employment, and other parts of their lives they felt were relevant to those two areas. This was a chance for them to be heard, as opposed to having their voices squashed and experiences reframed to fit particular narratives. Several of those I spoke to felt that home education provided them with a unique set of skills and traits that put them in advantageous positions with employers. There was also a consensus that most employers engaged with by participants across the sample found them to be 44 |
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTI5NzM=