Hi Mark, it sounds like you are doing a fantastic job at both parenting and homeschooling. I agree that there are lots of resources out there, although of course not everyone has access to them.

I find it interesting that you have experienced so much negativity around homeschooling. I'm not sure where you are geographically but it's not my experience. But I do live in a pretty liberal, slightly hippy and relatively wealthy city in the South East of England so maybe my experience is not representitive. But I see a lot of 'just homeschool, it's great, no downsides' around here which I find concerning because it's not a very realistic representation.

I think quite honestly what I would like to see is parents being required to show their workings before taking their kids out of the system. Not lesson plans or anything like that, but being required to produce a clear and coherent plan for how they will educate their children each year, with clear goals and benchmarks.

I think if someone can't manage that then they probably won't manage to teach their children effectively but also it would mean that parents would have to engage critically with the scale of the task at hand.

Anyway, I digress. You are right that choice is a central theme, but I do also feel quite negatively about ideological home schooling. I think there are lots of reasons to take children out of school - but principle or parental negative experience are not good reasons.