Sajo - if you are correct and trained teachers are the best educators; how do you explain the school system australia wide where "trained teachers" educate our children and have huge problems with bullying and literacy.Both of these problems are getting worse not better, even the government can see this and spend a lot of taxpayers money advertising on t.v telling us what we already know -that schools with "trained teachers" have class sizes that are to big, literacy standards that are too low, and bullying problems.These "trained teachers are producing adults who can't read,write,add up,socialize. What are these teachers being trained in? Yes many come out of school being able to do these things,but if "trained teachers "are the best, why are the failure rates so high in schools. Why are any failing ? What is our government doing, they have a system that by their own admission is not working, yet the only solution they offer is to change the laws for home educators( a system that has proven to work) where is their solution for the school sytem and those in it. They don't offer one.The government has failed those parents whose children are in the school system, we need to challenge them to bring their standards up to an acceptable level,their standards appear very low, regardless of "trained teachers" . This debate is not about guilt, it is about making the government accountable for their failures, and making them accountable for repairing them. Which ever system you choose( and last time i looked Australia was still a democracy and choice is our right) you should know it is the best it possible can be.Make the government accountable, don't give them excuses to allow their mistakes to continue and to affect another bunch of 5 year olds who have only a few weeks before they become entangled in the mess (we adults have allowed to happen) that is the school system in australia.

Sajo,

I agree that bullying in schools is a major issue that needs to be tackled there in some efficient and official way but it is the discovery of that effective method that is the problem. No one seems to know how to effectively stamp out bullying in schools. Even the experts talk about reducing it and limiting it but don't seem to think it can be stamped out completely.

For many of us on this forum, home education has been the answer and brought other unexpected benefits. However, what you say is true - not all parents are ready, willing and able to take their children out of school and take on their education themselves.

What Chris1 was trying to say, I believe, is simply that more parents are capable of home eduacating than you might think (or even that more parents are more capable of educating than they think they are). Even at the upper levels there is a wealth of educational material these days. Books are readily available, there are documentaries, the internet and community resources. The parent does not have to know everything or indeed anything about a subject to help their child learn it. Some parents enlist the help of friends or paid tutors. If a parent teaches children research skills then the children become capable of learning anything. Parents can be more like facilitators or coaches in a home education setting.

I too would like to be able to prevent other children from going through any kind of bullying but all I have been able to do is remove my own and therefore protect them.

Articles like this serve to promote an awareness of the depth of the bullying problem in schools. That awareness may change people's attitudes to bullying.

In the meantime, I recommend home education and defend parents' right to choose it for their children but do recognise the fact that not every parent is going to home educate their children and something needs to be done for those in the school system.

I am a home schooler from NZ and have found the NZ Govt. supportive of home schooling .We received $745.for the first child and $635 for the second and $300 from there on. You know as well as I do that money is not the issue for we didn’t do it for the money-( because it does not cover fully the kids extra curricular activities . Also once we threw in field trips and the purchasing of our resources. There were no rulings as to how the money was used. Once I got my exemption I didn’t feel intimidated by the Govt. and was left to do my own thing. My friends use different styles-purchased curriculum,ACE programme,Unschooling and I have used graded texts for core subjects and Unit Study method for others bec.that suits us the most. For us the system was good we worked in harmony.Perhaps it varies from area to area but there are many home schoolers in the area I lived, we all met once a week and no one had any complains in fact we got on with whatever we had to do and not worry about Govt.intervention
Now that I am here I keep in touch with my friends who have stated that an officer from The ERO (Education Review Office) would visit and have a general discussion and my friends who are home schoolers have had glowing reports and they really have a great rapport with them. They are really encouraged and often the general comment is that “you are doing the right thing by teaching the kids at home”. Also when I got my exemption from the Ministry-it was for an indefinite period. We could borrow resources from institutions that would lend to other teachers from school.
Imagine if we have to write for an exemption yearly. I can think of a 101 ways to use my time. I prepare my curriculum and that is time consuming as it is but we can see the end result of hard work but why should we spend time because of bureaucracy gone mad.

Why is it that people jump up and down about the qualifications of teachers. The only qualification most teachers have is an education degree. Entry to a Bachelor of Education course is granted with an extremely low VCE score, and the course is very easy. I am not saying all teachers are ignorant, there are a few who are brilliant, but they are in the minority, and constricted by the system they teach in.
Why is it that parents are so belittled in our society today? Why is there this attitude that parents are not qualified enough to teach their own children, when the ‘professionals’ we pay to do the job are often undereducated and failing at an alarming rate.
With regards to parents unable to teach their children at high school level, that is incorrect. The information available to people via internet, books and libraries is overwhelming. Look at the research. Many thousands of parents home educate their children up to university level all the time. To think that school is the only place one can obtain an education is sheer ignorance

Sajo. What makes you think we haven’t already done that? We have already sold our “family home” and moved. The issues followed us! We didn’t have enough money to move away far enough to be safe from the bullies in power in the NSW Education System.

My family’s complaints result from an attitude problem from the bureaucrats at the TOP and that has filtered down into the schools and it resulted in my family being systemically victimized, bullied, blackmarked and branded trouble makers. All because I made some public complaints about the system that embarrassed them, so they have systemically set out to discredit and destroy my family. Thing is that I had justifiable good reasons to make the complaints that I did. This type of victimization and bullying filters down to the teachers and into the community – the whole system is affected as people turn a blind eye to unfair treatment for fear of repercussions. People are scared to speak up for fear of becoming targets. They have good reason to be scared because the message has been loud and clear – if you speak out – You will suffer.

The problem with bullying will never be addressed whilst the victim is the one that is expected to either accept and/or move away from the problem. We need to deal with the bullies from the TOP down and set a good example and precedent. The system is set up to protect those in power, hence the no blame approach to bullying behaviour. We need to deal with bullies in power first - but in order to do that we need people power and people are scared. It has always been this way and for things to change parents need to respect each other, support each other and give each other the benefit of the doubt with regard to what is in the best interest of their own children. People always seem to side with the bully and more often than not it is fear based. We live in fear.

I feel for parents with children with ADHD. The school environment is the worst place for them as the environment is totally not suitable to their needs and personality. My children tell me stories about what some teachers do to these children and how many are victimized. It’s awful. They say that it doesn’t matter what these children do they are blamed for everything. The poor kids really do feel like they are being treated unfairly and many times they are. One day my 7 year old came home upset because the ADHD boy in his class that caused constant havoc picked up a chair and threw it across the room. What bothered my son is that the teacher said nothing. It was like “Oh well he has ADHD it is expected”…..Then my son said that later on the boy put his jumper over his head and the teacher went ballistic. My son said that the way this boy was being disciplined was very confusing and the poor boy was constantly stressed as was the whole class and the teacher. My son was in constant fear, in the classroom and out because he couldn’t trust the teacher to deal with the issues properly.

One more thing that my children tell me and that is that a lot of children cheat….They copy each other’s work and it is totally accepted by the teachers. That is how so many kids get through, but then suddenly find in high school that they are illiterate. My children say that regardless whether it is a test or not, more often that not teachers turn a blind eye.

Teachers cannot cope with what is expected of them and really it is not their fault. Their training is inadequate, their support is inadequate, their conditions are often difficult and inadequate and they are being controlled and stifled by the same bullies that create and support the bullying school environment for the children.

We desperately need change because not every parent is in a position to home school and not every child wants to be home schooled.