To think that having to have a DBS check to home educate is unfair.

Who’s children are they again - the states or mine? I shouldn’t have to justify why my own child doesn’t attend something. The NHS should be able to tell she was in hospital, rather than harassing the parents of a child who was critically ill.

So I ask again, should we all consent to a police investigation of ourselves annually? After all, if no one looks how will they find evidence of criminality?

The vast, vast majority of children are raised by parents who love them. I think it’s more of a threat to children that their parents autonomy is being eroded, potentially meaning more restrictive home education, or more SAOs meaning they’d be forced to attend failing schools that are already underfunded, overcrowded and frankly, awful places for anyone to be let alone children.

There was a flag - your daughter missing an appointment - and you have literally objected to the GP asking why you didn't turn up, to the point of taking the question as a personal slight. I would have just apologised for missing the appointment, explained she was in hospital, privately muttered that systems should be a bit more joined up, and then moved on with my day.

Again, it's not your children people are worried about, and if no one looks no one will find evidence.

You're very focused on parental rights and privacy - what about the child's rights and safety?

and I went with her on a visit.
However, these extreme cases do exist. One of her little charges was discovered (I don't know how his existence eventually came to light; highly confidential) at the age of six. His very existence had been concealed up until then, and he was still in a baby cot at six years old. The staff were doing their very best to move him through many developmental stages

That is obviously an awful example of abuse. I can see why you think it's relevant to this discussion. However it's got nothing to do with home education. This child had been concealed and abused. No "home education check" would even have found him as there was no record of his existence. What "systems" do you think would have discovered the abuse earlier ?

I also question why your colleague let you come on this visit and why she shared confidential information with you.

There needs to be some sort of evidence to investigate. Or should we all present to the police once yearly to ensure we haven’t committed any crimes? Nothing to hide, right?

It comes down to your beliefs about civil liberties. I don’t believe I should have to sacrifice my right to privacy purely because I had a baby. My children are always out and about, they’re seen by multiple people. I shouldn’t be obliged to let a stranger into our home unless there’s evidence something is wrong.

I get that, but I also think it’s gone a bit too far with parental authority almost being usurped by the system in some cases. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

Innocent until proven guilty only works when there's an investigation and possible court case.

You, on the other hand, oppose anyone even looking to see if there's something wrong, let alone actively investigating.

A former colleague of mine moved into mainstream education when she had children; she had previously worked in an educational unit attached to a major mental hospital, but this was incompatible with raising young children, as the unit never had conventional school holidays, only closing for the likes of Christmas Day. So, in this context, you can imagine that she was educating the highly exceptional cases. She was still in touch with the unit, and I went with her on a visit.
However, these extreme cases do exist. One of her little charges was discovered (I don't know how his existence eventually came to light; highly confidential) at the age of six. His very existence had been concealed up until then, and he was still in a baby cot at six years old. The staff were doing their very best to move him through many developmental stages.
On a less extreme level, children can "slip through the cracks" if the family moves about a lot, and "home education" can be a euphemism for "not actually being educated at all". If a school has a highly transient population, it can be difficult to follow up on a child who just stops turning up.
This is not to denigrate home schooling; I have a good friend who did a fine job with her son! But she was checked up on, and took no exception to it; they could see that he was thriving, and she had his best interests at heart.
The extremes I referenced are so far outside the experience of "normal" people that it is hard to imagine them, but sadly, the systems have to be in place because of them.

I was using it as shorthand for the costs involved generally in educating your child in a way that enables them to go off and achieve their ambitions in later life.

Brownies has sub fees, musical instrument lessons cost, even the local science centre charges admission (£12 / adult and £10 / child, I've just checked). Likewise materials for activities like craft and woodwork.

While there's no legal requirement for HE families to do exams, it is completely fucking irresponsible not to ensure that they sit 5 GCSEs including English and Maths. That will hamstring them for life, with everything from access to jobs to further and higher education restricted.

Unschooling - letting children learn only the things that interest them - is a recipe for children who don't like maths simply not learning maths, and having other major gaps in their knowledge too. I have no objection to letting a child choose if they want to study the Tudors or the Victorians, but some things are too important to be left to the child's own choices.

As for allowing health visitors in - it's not about you, it's about children - both yours, and the ones that are actually in danger. No one is suggesting that reproduction is a crime, only that this is one of the few ways we have to identify pre-school children with parents who really aren't coping. It's not possible to identify families where the children are being neglected without also seeing families where everything is a-ok. Sometimes in life, we have to do things we don't enjoy for the sake of others.

Thanks, yes it was really bad timing which obviously made it worse.

I get that, but I also think it’s gone a bit too far with parental authority almost being usurped by the system in some cases. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

I would suggest, however, that even if they weren't free, if you can't afford a one off £40 for a DBS check then you have no hope of affording the textbooks, exam fees and other costs involved in home education.

This shows an ignorance of home education - we aren’t required to do exams, and we don’t have to use textbooks. Unschooling, child led autonomous learning are two similar philosophies that don’t tend to do written lessons. This is exactly the issue, people who don’t home ed think or expect home ed to be “school at home” when for many of us, that’s not how we want to do things. Both of those are perfectly valid educational philosophies btw.

I don't, however, think people should be able to opt out of health visitor services, seeing as they do perform a vital safeguarding function.

This is worrying - you essentially believe parents should have to prove their competence. I’ve never seen a HV for my younger children because I didn’t want to - why should I have to admit a stranger to my home, for the crime of daring to reproduce, a natural human function? It’s nanny state nonsense.

Ditto what @JemimaPuddlegoose just said but also

The DBS check would add nothing except serve as a financial barrier to home education

DBS checks for volunteers are free. www.gov.uk/government/publications/disclosure-application-process-for-volunteers/disclosure-application-process-for-volunteers

I would suggest, however, that even if they weren't free, if you can't afford a one off £40 for a DBS check then you have no hope of affording the textbooks, exam fees and other costs involved in home education.

I’ve not seen anyone answer the question about whether parents of pre schoolers should face the same regulations

Seeing as children under the age of 1 have the highest homicide rate (28 per million) and child homicides are most commonly perpetrated by the parent or step parent (source: learning.nspcc.org.uk/media/1652/statistics-briefing-child-deaths-abuse-neglect.pdf ) then clearly there are some gaps in the safeguarding provision.

Of course, we don't know how many of those would have had a relevant criminal history that would have been flagged on a DBS check, and how many would be 'first time offenders' (as with the recent Leiland Corkill case).

I don't, however, think people should be able to opt out of health visitor services, seeing as they do perform a vital safeguarding function.

I know of home ed kids who don't go to the docs since they have a homeopathic lifestyle. They are NOT abused. So no, the assumption that if they don't follow the social norm then there is abuse involved is not true.

Depending on the medical issue at hand, that could easily be medical neglect, and it could ultimately be fatal.

Tripping over in the park and applying some arnica to the bruises? Honey and lemon for a sore throat? All absolutely fine.

But some children have medical issues that can range from needing antibiotics for an infection that could easily turn into sepsis, through to developing something like leukaemia (the signs of which can be really quite non-specific). Imagine wasting time with homeopathy when others would have taken their child to a doctor who would have spotted the signs of leukaemia.

And that's before we get onto the crackpots who like to treat things with black salve or drinking their own urine.

I’m going to take the absence of a smoking gun Home Ed invisible child case in the media

There absolutely is a smoking gun HE invisible child case in the media: Dylan Seabridge. He had never been to school, was registered at a GP and dentist but had never been seen by them. He died of scurvy, otherwise known as vitamin C deficiency.

www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jan/22/concerns-raised-about-boy-who-died-of-scurvy-a-year-before-his-death-leaked-report

Of course, the vast majority of child abuse cases aren't reported in the media (for good reasons - mainly the child's privacy).

But this is an anonymised case from Wales of severe sexual abuse and the child literally never being allowed out of the house, to the extent she'd never seen a cat or dog, and nor did she know what Christmas was
www.walesonline.co.uk/news/couple-who-locked-child-away-15020159.amp
www.itv.com/news/wales/2018-04-27/man-who-raped-daughters-and-kept-one-as-a-slave-jailed-for-life

Of course if parents had made a concerted effort to conceal a child from the authorities from the start (refusing ante-natal care, freebirthing, failing to register the birth and so on) and that child eventually dies... they could bury them in the back garden and no one would know they were missing because no one knew they existed in the first place.

As for LAs overstepping, there are many who make demands which aren't within the law (demanding copies of work etc) and then threaten SAOs if you don't comply.

I genuinely don't understand why you would be so resistant to photocopying your child's work, even if it isn't required by law?

I'm sorry your kid had to be in hospital and I can imagine it was stressful getting a letter like that then.

But it's right they do follow up - a sudden missed appointment, the same with suddenly missing a day of school etc without explanation can be a sign of a problem eg parent keeping kid away from adults who'd notice bruises etc.

We've been followed up - got a letter from the public health team asking where DD was as she wasn't registered in school. It was reassuring to know she couldn't fall thru the cracks and it was a quick phone call to let them know she was at school in a different county. The same when we relocated - school we left needed the details of the new school so she couldn't just disappear.

The issue I have here is it shouldn’t automatically be a concern if a child doesn’t go somewhere anyway - what’s with this assumption that parents are abusive until proven otherwise? I remember getting a snotty letter from my GP once demanding to know why my daughter missed an appointment - she was in hospital at the time, with something life threatening, and I was furious that I was basically being asked to justify where my own children were, especially when she was seriously unwell at the time. Why are we assuming parental incompetence?

The vast majority of parents are doing what’s best for their kids. Why is the assumption otherwise, especially when the parent takes a different path to the mainstream?

When you homeschool your children you do remove them from having day to day contact with others on school, without the presence of a parent. This reduces the likelihood of others picking up any signs of abuse. It means the child has fewer opportunities to tell a trusted adult they know well (e.g. a teacher) if anything untoward is happening at home, without any chance of being “caught” by the parent. Regular inspections are one thing, and necessary, but they aren’t going to provide the same context or ability to pick up on concerns as seeing a child day in, day out when you can pick up on signs of abuse, or change in behaviour or repeated absences and so on.

The problem is that whilst the majority of parents choosing to home school their children are choosing that path for good reasons, there are is a small but noteworthy minority who are using home schooling as a way to keep their children “off the radar”- whether that is due to needing to hide evidence of abuse/make sure child is isolated and has no-one to tell and that includes enforced child marriage, FGM, children being expected to “work” at home and some very religious views relating to female children not requiring to be educated and so on (which are forms of abuse too). Then there are also concerns about those who chose to do it do they can indoctrinate their children into their extremist views without interference from outside.

of course DBS checks aren’t going to weed out those who have not been caught and so I doubt they are being proposed as the only measure to try and protect children who may be at risk if homeschooled. Because these children do exist and we are pretty poor at identifying them until it’s far too late.

Yours have been @ForestFae but many won't have been - my DD has seen GP once in last six years and optician once. HV virtually non-existent in our old area. Many kids have very very few encounters like this, even when they have committed, interested and engaged parents because the kid is healthy.

The HE family I'm concerned about has avoided interactions with healthcare as far as possible.

And unlike in nursery, where they would follow up if your kid didn't come in one day, things like Rainbows and Brownies don't.

I don't agree with DBS checks for HE families (or parents of under-5s etc!) but I do agree with some kind of check being in place to ensure the kids' wellbeing and also that they're receiving a suitable education.

I’ve taken 2 of my 3 kids to see in person health professionals in the last 3 months.

I agree with this.

If someone has a record of offences such as terrorism, or grooming (of any kind) or most forms of violent offending, then I think it is very much in the DC's interests for this to be known. Otherwise, as now, they just become invisible. And that is an avoidable risk

Who are all these kids who are repeatedly being seen by doctors, dentists and opticians?! A sizeable proportion of children can't even register with an NHS dentist and have you tried to actually see, in-person, a GP recently?! Some parts of the country barely have a health visiting service.

Still no one has answered if parents of under 5s should be DBS checked. As I said earlier, HVs are optional (we personally opted out), nursery is optional. Why suddenly at 5 should a parent have to be DBS checked but not before?

My HE son is "visible" I suppose. He goes to a number after school activities and sometimes to home Ed meetups.
However, because all those activities are voluntary, noone would bat an eyelid if he stopped turning up.
Infact, he has lost interest in a few things and dropped them without explanation.
No one checked up and why would they? Kids pick up and drop hobbies all the time.
Noone rings SS to say that little Johnny's not been seen at Scouts.

Not quite. If a child attends school and is clearly bruised or neglected or sexually inappropriate, teachers will raise concerns. If a child is being abused or neglected in an unchecked home schooling situation in the wilds of nowhere, then no one will be there to raise an alarm.

DBS is the least the gov can do for homeschooled kids.

Yes. It's a total lie.

Not only have there been cases of abusive parents using home Ed as a cover to take their kids out of school and away from prying eyes, there have also been a number of instances of abuse within the Home Ed community itself.

Lianne Smith was in a relationship with Martin Smith from 1993.

They moved to a remote caravan and began home educating Lianne's children in 1996. Martin Smith began raping Lianne's daughter around the same time.

Lianne became a regional advisor for Education Otherwise and worked for Children's Services in Staffordshire eventually rising to temporary head of that department. While there she consistently advocated for home education and argued for a light-touch approach to home educating families.

After the abuse came to light, Martin and Lianne Smith fled to Spain in 2007. Martin was eventually arrested and shortly afterwards Lianne murdered her two youngest children. They were both convicted in 2010.

One of Lianne Smith’s colleagues at Staffordshire Council, Olaf Hindmarsh, went on to take quite a tough attitude towards home educating parents in Staffordshire. As a result, he became something of a hate figure within the Home Ed community, most of whom were no doubt unaware of the reasons for his hard-line stance.

Peter Tufnell and Jo Berry were another high profile couple within Education Otherwise. Peter Tufnell wrote a chapter of the book Free-Range Education (published 2000) which was praised in some quarters as a charming portrayal of a caring father fully involved in his daughter's education.

While Jo Berry was a local contact for Education Otherwise, Peter Tufnell abused a large number of children within the Home Education movement and was eventually imprisoned.

There seems to have been little to no media coverage of this due to Jo Berry's links to the establishment (her father was Sir Anthony Berry who was killed in the Brighton bombing).

An associate of theirs Jan Fortune Wood (ex-wife of Education Otherwise grandee Mike Fortune Wood)
did write a novel loosely based on events called Dear Ceridwen. The central character is a woman who is in denial that her husband is a paedophile.

Around the same time that Martin and Lianne Smith were fleeing the country in 2007, Education Otherwise was undergoing an internal shakeup. 11 members left the board of trustees and 8 new trustees were appointed, including Jo Berry.
She became responsible for Child Protection within EO. Jo Berry remained on the board of Education Otherwise until 2010.

During this period the board of trustees ended their practice of keeping a record of paedophiles who had been removed from EO and some of the people on the list rejoined.

The Badman Review of Home Education falls towards the end of this period, beginning as it did in 2009. The purpose of the review was to reassess the legislative framework around home education and to consider a register of home educating families to be kept by local authorities. Education Otherwise (successfully) opposed any further regulation of home educating families. Home Educators such as Simon Webb who spoke out in favour of a register were attacked, banned from online spaces and harassed.

Simon Webb kept a blog during this time called Home Education Heretic which is still available online. The comments give some idea of the tone of this internal "debate".

There have been several changes of personnel since then and I don't believe that the clique Jo Berry was a part of are influential in Education Otherwise anymore.

However as recently as 2017 a prominent home educator, Andy Blewitt was arrested for sexually abusing his daughter. Andy Blewitt had been the main organiser for HESFES (Home Education Seaside Festival) which was known for its lax attitude towards the safeguarding of older children. Teenage drug-taking, drinking, nudity and underage sex were all tolerated. More cautious Home Edding parents avoided HESFES and quietly warned others off it. Others attended while their children were little but felt compelled to"reassess" as they reached their teenage years.

With the government again considering regulation of Home Education, Education Otherwise's position remains as staunchly against regulation as ever. Response to the recent Education Committee enquiry from Education Otherwise, from other support groups in the same milieu and from individual parents mobilised by the same are identical to those written in the Badman era.

At ground level, Parents seeking advice from the Home Ed community are often encouraged to limit their interaction with Local Authorities and to give the minimum information required by law.

My own interest in these matters was piqued by receiving advice like this. I thought it all seemed a little paranoid and wondered what might be behind it. I was particularly offended, (in a way I can’t quite identify), at being told that although I might well talk to the LA and be OK, my decision to do so could disadvantage other home educating parents who might then be expected to do the same.

I have now concluded that some of this culture has its genesis in abusive parents wishing to normalise reticent and cagey behaviour, the better to hide their own family secrets.

No it’s not bollocks. Being visible doesn’t mean the LA “does checks”, it means they’re seen by professionals and the public.

What qualifications do you have to deem that woman’s home education unsuitable? That she’s got mental health issues? Seems a bit judgemental

The same that any other children receive. They are registered at birth, they see doctors, opticians etc. There are very few cases of children being shut indoors and never leaving the home - children who are deregistered are already known to the LA.

”Home educated children were found to be disproportionately scrutinised, being approximately twice as likely to be referred to Social Services at 9.39 – 10.19%, as were children aged 0-4 years at 5.24% and children aged 5-16 who attend school at 4.93%. Despite that double referral rate, Child Protection Plans were in place for only 0.17 - 0.24% of home educated children compared to 0.69% of all 0-4 year olds and 0.49 of 5- 16 year old schooled children. Referrals to Social Services were found to be 3.5 - 5 times less likely to lead to a Child Protection Plan with home educated children than with referrals of schooled children aged 5-16 at 9.5% and 5 - 7 times less likely to lead to a Child Protection Plan than referrals for children aged 0-4 years at 13.23%. Rates of home educated children subject to a Child Protection Plan at 0.17 - 0.24% of the population, were also found to be less than teaching staff guilty of abuse offences 0.18 – 0.46%. Home educated children are found to not be at increased safeguarding risk, rather they are shown to be at lower risk than other children.”

www.home-education.org.uk/articles/article-safeguarding-myth.pdf

‘Studies have shown home educated kids are twice as visible as schooled children’

thats absolute bollocks. Because the local authorities don’t have time to regularly check on home school kids and everyone knows it. The woman on our road who home schools is a medical professional ( doesn’t work as she home schools) and on paper seems brilliantly qualified but we know she’s absolutely got serious, undiagnosed it seems, mental health issues and her children are not benefiting from her attention.
pretty sure she could blag here way through any check though.

They should be. Homeschooling is big in our town and all of the homeschoolers share resources, ideas, sometimes ‘stand in’ for each other or teach another kid who isn’t there’s so should have DBS.
they aren’t expensive, are not difficult to apply for and last for 3 years. Why shouldn’t you get one?