A reader from the U.K., who has engaged in the discussion about the role of parents, comments on the relative infrequency of home-schooling in the U.K.:
Home-schooling is legal in the UK but it isn’t common. Most parents in the UK that have the time to homeschool either lack the required level of education/intelligence to do so successfully or have enough money to send their children to private school.
Most parents send their children to a local state school. The way the system works means that it is difficult to get children into schools unless you live near the school. This raises the prices of properties near outstanding schools. Affluent, educated people tend to be better at picking out good schools and gaming the system (buying a house next to a good school, using a family members address rather than their own, pretending to be of a certain faith to get their kids into a faith school etc). This means that those that might want to home school can generally get their kids into a “good” school and so do not need to.
The exceptions to this are those who cannot get their children into a faith school that matches their beliefs. This is rare as there are catholic schools, church of england schools, jewish schools and islamic schools in growing numbers. Some Jehovah’s witnesses homeschool for example…
In the UK the worst schools sadly tend to be in the poorest areas. The parents in these areas are either working 2-3 jobs to make ends meet and so cannot home school or are not capable of home schooling for reasons of language, education, intelliegence, motivation or a combination thereof. That doesn’t stop some of them from trying but it is rarely a success. More often than not we have to rectify the situation in a short space of time so these pupils have a shot at exam success.
Often home schooling is a necessity rather than a choice here. When a child gets permanently excluded from a school they can have problems finding a new school place. This is especially true when they were excluded for violence, sex offending or drug related incidents. The special schools for excluded pupils (called Pupil referral units) are full to brimming and very difficult to get pupils into. It is equally difficult to get pupils places in special schools for those with behavioural, emotional or social difficulties.
i suspect that home schooling may become more prevalent in areas where there is significant demand for school places. This is because there are not enough new schools being built. Central government think that local government should pay for them. Local government are faced with swinging cuts and simply cannot afford to do so. They think that if they wait for the situation to get bad enough central government will be forced to pay for it. In the meantime the pupils, parents and teachers suffer.
Unfortunately the government is more concerned with making education cheaper rather than better.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Unfortunately the government is more concerned with making education cheaper rather than better.”
This is a concise explanation of what is happening in the US now too.
It occurs to me that in England there is also far less polarisation of views and therefore fewer people that feel the need to home school. Lots of parents are disaffected with politics and wouldn’t really care if teachers expressed political views. There is far less controversy over things like the evolution vs lunacy debate. The history curriculum is also fairly uncontroversial as far as the general narrative goes. what controversy there is is more about what the focus should be (how much “black” history should be in it for example) and was the British Empire beneficial to the conquered rather than the narrative.
There are fewer people accusing teachers of being socialists are communists for the simple reason that they don’t really care. Lots of people would care more about a teacher being a member of the British National Party than the Communist Party. This is probably because Socialism is part of the fabric of british society and part of british history. Socialist governments have been responsible for some of the things of which we are most proud in Britiain so we have no reason to run around screaming if we think teachers might be socialist.
I think we in Britain have a better, or at least more nuanced and in perspective, view of what socialism actually is. Judging from some of the more ludicrous posts and articles on US education it seems to me that at least a significant minority of people in the US don’t actually know what socialism or communism actually are beyond the scare stories on Fox News labelling anything and anyone they don’t approve of as socialist. It is very difficult to debate people who are convinced they know what they are talking about when they actually do not.
“Socialist” in the US appears to have come to mean “not sufficiently right wing for my liking” or even “something I disapprove of”.
On the previous thread someone suggested that the very question “Do parents always know best?” is communist or socialist. This indicates to me that the poster does not know what they are talking about.
Generally when parents in the UK do not like a school or have problems with a school the issue is not with the curriculum (which is fairly universal) but with the quality of teaching or pastoral care.
Even people on the side of lunacy in the lunacy vs evolution debate acknowledge that kids won’t pass biology exams by writing “god did it”…
That’s a bit of a biased view of UK home education (note that it’s education, not schooling, definite terminology difference because we educate our children, not school them).
I think you’ll find that a significant number of home educators in the UK are intelligent enough to realise that they can do better than the school system, and either don’t bother putting their child into school, or withdraw their child when it’s obvious that the school environment is not suitable.
There are no accurate figures for the number of home educated children in the UK, it’s about 20,000 known but probably at least that many again who are not. In my local group (a couple of hundred), while there are some religious families, I don’t think there are many who would say they’re educating at home for religious reasons, they’re just of the opinion that they can do a better job.
There’s also a growing argument that slavishly studying for exams isn’t worth it either. With universities complaining about students with a string of A* results who are still below standard, there are a number of home educated children who have obtained a university place by alternative means because universities are coming to understand that a self-motivated student is likely to do well in their environment.
For what it’s worth, we didn’t bother with school, so I don’t even know if there were places at the local schools or not.
so that’s 40000 max out of how many million school age children?
I’m not sure exactly what you’re disputing here…
seems to me what you said is entirely compatible with what I said
There are estimated 2 million home schoolers in US 50 million children
Diane Ravitch
This isn’t uncommon in the US too. It is pretty similar in fact. Many kids who are home schooled are there because parents have had problems in their lives with school systems and don’t trust them. Many lack the education and knowledge to teach them and the drive to do it. They fake whatever paperwork they need to provide to the state and the kids grow up uneducated. We probably have more because of religious decisions but there is no guarantee that they are getting a good education. Some people do it well and those are the people you hear about, but others keep quiet and hidden to defy dectection.
It’s amazing how many people take a general point and make it personal…
“What you’re saying is wrong because it isn’t like that for my friends and I” is not an argument…