Attitudes towards home education

[JudgedAgain]

In the last week I’ve had 3 comments about my dd ! In the past we’ve had comments too and I think maybe people don’t understand a lot about it ?

We don’t follow school hours - dd does 2-3 hours learning each day of core subjects and the rest of the time she decides what she does.
We are flexible in that she can switch days round and work on weekends to have ‘time off’ during the week. Last week she wanted to go shopping so we did this - we had 3 comments when out about why she wasn’t at school , one from a taxi driver and 2 from random people one of which said I’d should be careful as we ‘could be reported ‘ 🤦‍♀️ it’s not a legal requirement to follow school hours !!
We had gone on a weekday early as dd has many health issues and ASD so we like to go out when it’s as quiet as possible for her .

In the past I’ve had comments basically saying home education is an inferior option , that we ‘gave up’ that dd isn’t socialising enough (she doesn’t want to !) and how I should be following school hours as she’s not doing enough but if you factor in break times and moving between classes, assembles etc the core learning hours are very similar.

It’s just frustrating to feel judged and like I shouldn’t be out 9-3 with dd people think she should be in a classroom or at home at a desk working I think.

We don’t, we tried all sorts of groups and activities but dd was very unhappy and depressed and then anxious for hours beforehand so we stopped. We’ve explained to the LA that we offered opportunities and dd didn’t want to. She knows that at any time if she wants to try groups again she can but there’s definitely no shortage of groups to choose from luckily if she does ever want to

The beauty of home Ed is that it's easier to take the time the individual needs.

One of my kids has asd and social anxiety. I've never made her attend a group she didn't want to. I've encouraged but it's been on her terms. We've taken this very slow. One friend at a time. She's 10 now and has started choosing groups to join and it's amazing that she's come so far. If she was forced into it as a 5 year old she would never have got to this point.

My other daughter loves her friendship groups and meet ups. Can't get enough of them.

Safeguarding should occur when there is a need. Home education is not a need. Sadly it often isn't carried out when desperately needed for children at school. In tragically fatal cases of neglect where children have been home educated, they have almost always been failed by SS who were aware of their vulnerability. And that is all a school would do anyway - make SS aware.

Suspicion should certainly not fall on a parent simply educating their child. Those who feel differently would be better putting their efforts into ensuring that parents with challenging or differently abled children are appropriately supported, not strong armed into deregistering. It is amazing how little interest the LEA have in these children while they are at school and how hard they will fight to wriggle out of accountability to meet their needs, only to find that there is suddenly a keen interest in what is going on at home when parents eventually give up with school. I can tell you what's going on at home - a desperate attempt to provide the learning environment that was recommended but not provided at school. It's an old story. Get stuck into that and there won't be so many of these so called vulnerable home ed kids to worry about. Or is that too much like work and not enough like meddling...

@MissShapesMissStakes I didn’t say HE children were missing out on aspects of socialisation, ( your words not mine).
I was merely asking how HE parents replicate the social bonds and friendships provided by traditional schooling, totally genuine question.

Thanks for your answer.

Gosh, you don't know much about the life of home ed, do you? For someone who works in the sector it's interesting that you think some of these would only apply to school. A little less suspicion, a little more professional development.

@Shrewsbury247 sorry if I came on a bit strong. It's just that that is probably the thing I hear most. And I'm a bit sensitive to it. In fairness when I first started home Ed it was my biggest worry.

In reality, where we live, there are almost too many social meet ups! Basically if there's not a group on that your child might enjoy, you arrange one yourself and others will come. Which is great.

Facebook is the best tool where we live. The local home Ed Facebook group was invaluable when I first started. Eventually people seem to fall into groups of similarly minded home educators and then you only need word of mouth to fully book a group.

I've certainly found our niche now and we have a lot of good friends. My kids but also myself. Ive found the local home Ed community to be incredibly supportive and I love where we live because of that.

One of my kids is now old enough to start taking some iGCSE lessons and I'm needing support again to help me organise that.

@MissShapesMissStakes no probs, I was just interested as I don’t know anyone that does HE.
No judgement here, Great news that it’s working for you and your children.

MoreTeaLessCoffee

There's also a huge number of parents who have seen the harm caused to their children in the state system. They've seen their children's needs not met. Then they have the issue of the LA deliberately misrepresenting their remit.

A number of LAs seem to confuse EHE with safeguarding and like to overstep the legal lines of responsibility, which gets many parents' backs up.

For example, what does a work sample show?
There's no legal requirements for a work sample, though many LAs like to bully and push parents by arguing they can't make informal inquiries without it. They also don't need photographs, home visits, reports from private tutors.

As a class teacher I could get a piece of work that looks great for a child, but it might have been heavily supported, it might be draft 5, it might be that we've spent all week on that piece at the expense of other areas of the curriculum, it might be that the piece of work was scribed by a TA to look nice in the book. Another piece of work might look like a lower level, or with messier handwriting, but it's reflection of a work in progress. Looking at a piece of work would tell an outsider very little about the education I'm providing that child.

The problem with work scrutiny for EHE is that the person looking at the sample doesn't know the child, doesn't know their strengths and weaknesses, tends to have a very narrow of what achievement looks like and isn't actually best placed to assess whether the work is suitable.

We considered HE for our DC, and I wouldn't trust a council person to assess the suitability of any education I gave at home. They simply don't know what they're talking about in too many situations.

I also work in an LA. I totally understand parental frustration with the SEN situation nationally. I don’t know of an LA where there isn’t a backlog of EHCP assessments and a chronic shortage of special school places. I don’t work in the SEN team myself but I do work with them and I get it.

However, the LA is not one big homogeneous mass. There is a team specifically responsible for safeguarding in education and when they are inspected by Ofsted, they are specifically asked how they safeguard children who are EHE. So there is a statutory responsibility to know who and where those children are and that they are safe. The concern is children who might be at risk of abuse or neglect with no school to raise concerns, but it is also children with mental health difficulties who might hide them from their parents but disclose to a school friend who tells a teacher, for example. And there are parents who do not wish (for example) girls to be educated, or children to be exposed to secular views. It’s not about snooping on parents but it is about our wider responsibility to make sure all children in the LA are safe, as far as we can.

GiantCheeseMonster
I don't envy the safeguarding team at all on this topic, but I don't think the EHE teams help if I'm honest.

Too many of them overstep into areas that aren't theirs (eg safeguarding or EHCP), threaten school attendance orders (sometimes within the first couple of communications), and massively misrepresent their remit by pushing for meetings, work samples, photographic evidence, reports from private tutors and so on.

When so many parents have had a poor experience of the system I can't blame them for mistrusting the EHE teams when they show themselves to be not following the guidelines.

It’s not about snooping on parents but it is about our wider responsibility to make sure all children in the LA are safe, as far as we can.

You have no legal obligation or right to do so unless you have a specific cause for concern.

That’s simply not true. You only have to look at serious case reviews for children who were EHE to see that the LA is expected to take a proactive stance, just as we do for children who are in school. If there was a serious event involving a child who was EHE and the LA had not had any involvement because nobody had ever raised concerns, we would be crucified and rightly so. Safeguarding protocols apply to all children, not just those in school.

A proactive stance does not mean you check children at school out. You assume fine.

If they are in school they are seen every day by teachers. If they’re not there and there’s no explanation from parents there’s a text or phone call to see why. When they are there, any concerns are reported and any staff not doing so would be disciplined. School staff are actively trained NOT to assume that all is fine if there is any possibility it might not be. The cases of children like Daniel Pelka have tragically meant lessons have had to be learnt.

no, you don't 'assume fine'
ever

Part of the reason for the hostility from the home ed community towards any kind of register or control is that it is a slippery slope which goes nowhere good.

In France, for example, home ed went from being a right but subject to registration, to being a right but you had to prove your child was being educated to a similar standard than what they would get in school, to the current situation where you are not allowed to home ed unless you get authorisation from the government. This authorisation will not be forthcoming after the next couple of years unless there is a specific reason your child cannot be in school.

Governments are constantly trying to erode freedoms, and people involved in home ed are very wary of such situation arising. They are right to want to protect their freedom, and right to be wary of any attempt to impose on them something beyond what is legally required.

Was Daniel Pelka home educated?

@JudgedAgain how does a typical day work for you? I'm a TA in a school. I'm confident with my oldest going to school but I have a few drawbacks with my youngest who is now in year 3. (We have 2 secondary schools in my town)

We have a timetable for 5 days a week but we can swap days around (like in my OP dd had worked over a weekend to have 2 days ‘off’ during the week so it’s quite flexible if we need it to be either for appointments or non educational trips etc)

We do 2-3 hours timetabled learning each day. A minimum of 2 but it’s usually 2.5 and we go up to 3 hours if dd needs more time or if she wants to explore things further. Dd likes the timetabled work as she has ASD so the routine works for her. We change it each week so she does a range of subjects but she will do 3 days each week of English and maths as we concentrate more on that. She chooses to be up early and do the timetabled work early, in the afternoon she picks whatever she wants to do which is usually reading , art (when she has art timetabled in it’s more history of art or technique research then in the afternoons she actually does the practical work). She is secondary school age so we do give her a lot of freedom over what she studies within a subject so if it’s history we say ‘what would you like to learn about ?’ Then I usually set her some work and we often can link it to her other subjects and she will choose trips we do those as well and she then decides in the afternoons to do projects some weeks.
We use a combination of workbooks as she likes to work through them as well as things like Ed place and mathletics that she can dip in and out of and I set her work as well.

In the afternoons she can ‘work’ for any amount of time she wants to so she might do 1 hour of reading or she might do 3 hours of art. Because she’s doing timetabled work each morning we don’t mind at all and feel it’s good for her to make the judgement herself.

We will probably have to look at a tutor in the year or two before she does maths and English gcses.

We don’t do PE as such for medical reasons but we make sure dd is as active as she can be and we make sure we have lots of conversations around health and well-being etc as she’s obviously missing out on pshe type subjects so we cover all of that.

There are a lot of groups but she doesn’t want to attend but we make a point of every month or so revisiting the idea and letting her know at any point she can change her mind. It works really well for us I know we dont have to follow a timetable or any sort of curriculum or even work towards formal qualifications but we want to not to say anyone else’s approach to HE is wrong I think individual families need to do what works for them and a structure works well for us and dd

I know a child being home educated who is desperate to return to school. She's sociable and loved being at school but mum has made the decision to home educate.

I know another child who is 7 with jo additional needs and can't write their name and have no structure with home learning.

Then I know someone who does a great job and their child is doing amazingly. So I'm guessing just like schools it's a mixed bag.

We are HE due to dd being bullied in her old school, she loves HE.

Family, in particular, can be very derogatory about HE and there are HE people themselves that I've found difficult to deal with.

I think over time this will become a more 'normal' way to do education but there will always be those people who question your choices.

I find HE exhausting but rewarding, it's not a easy choice.

No. That’s my point - that schools have learnt not to assume safety but to take a proactive stance. The same has to also apply to EHE. I was addressing a poster saying that the LA should assume everything is OK unless a concern is raised. That’s not appropriate.

To be able to HE properly and well is a privilege. Many parents cannot afford it. I think this is where some of the comments come from.

Children in HE should be monitored for safety, just like children in school are. 99.9% of children are well cared for but as a society we have a responsibility for the 0.01% and HE shouldn't be an opportunity to abuse children. LA monitoring should check child safety and that the child is actually being educated.

The reason for this is that there are people who are doing nothing with their kids and say they are home educated. I think home Ed can be great but it needs much more regulation.

Over the years I have seen about 6 familes do HE. And all 6 were bad.