Hi,
Well, I began homeschooling as my son was bright and he was: a) not understood nor catered to at school, ie he wanted to read books in kindy, the class had to sing 'a is for apple a, a, a' - he was bored and the teacher complained that he was distracting himself.....
B) he was bullied by a group of year 6 boys who all ganged up on him and hit him with sticks and cricket bats - after I saw his face and the bruises - I never ever was going to send him back there! And this was at a private school with small class sizes and a 'zero tolerance' stance on bullying - it still happens, schools are unnatural, that many people confined together all day - it's too much. Few adults spend 6 hours per day with 30 people all the same age, all in one room, all at once in their working lives ( oh, I forgot, then they have to lunch with up to 1000 people in a yard at lunch breaks etc).

From my experiences with my children (they chose to go to school for a few months when my eldest was in yr 6 and my dd was in yr3 - they were curious and the school had a good rep so I let them - academically and socially they were fine - but the bureaucracy was annoying) schools really try, and some of them try harder than others, but in my opinion a 30:1 ratio (students:teachers) is just not good enough, nor is 20:1 - children thrive when learning at their own pace, whether that's faster or slower than 'normal'.

I no longer believe in institutional education - it obscures a child's talents by comsuming too much of their time with jumping through hoops to make themselves mediocre - which is what teacher prompted class tasks really do (everyone - draw a chicken - what if a child would rather be reading a book, running, making lunch, playing violin - is the chicken drawing exercise going to give the child a memorable experience? maybe one or two in the class - for the remainder of the class the poor kids' time is being wasted! Another example I saw in my dd's classroom: ' everyone here's a diagram of a heart, colour it in and label it like I have on the board' - this kind of stuff teaches in a shallow way that bores most of the kids most of the time and they switch off and think 'gee, science is boring' - when you are homeschooling you can go as deeply into a topic as your child wishes, allowing much greater experiential learnoing and if they are disinterested you can move on - minus the busywork filler).

In my ten years associating with homeschooled kids I've learned that every person, child and adult, has abilities and talents and these are best fostered out of the school system. Also, when I see homeschooled children playing together they never go off in neat age brackets, they mix in large loose groups, they never bully each other - they don't need to, I feel that they do not behave as bullies because they feel secure. Their parents never left them at school at 5 feeling lost, alone and scared. They feel happy about themselves, they do not have to compete with anyone - I just find homeschooling better on so many levels, emotionally, academically, socially - and the lifestyle is less stressful - that 8.30am deadline and 3.30 deadline are always in the back of your mind.

I also dislike the way in which school compartmentalises society: kids are at school, babies at daycare or at home with mum/dad, adults are at work, the elderly in homes - I dislike institutionalision of humanity - I feel it robs us of experiencing the fullness of life.