To think that if you want to claim benefits your children should have to attend school

[foreverondiet]

I have just come across a number of people who have left an extreme religious cult / sect (not really relevant what religion).

What shocked me was that the person I spoke to has had to as an adult learn english, and he told me that he was brought up as one of 11 children in a household where neither parent worked (and lived of benefits).

Ok so far, but my problem is that they denied their children a secular education - basically private but legal religious schools for primary (with bare minimum allowed for secular education), and illegal schools for secondary, with basically no secular education at all - inspectors told either that the children where being home schooled or that they were at school abroad. Some children in the sect as very low performing private (but legal) schools just do the absolute secular education they can get away with.

He is working as a labourer (and not claiming any benefits - he has left the sect), but ideally he would like to get some GCSEs / A levels / college - so to improve earnings potential. I felt a bit sad for him that he had endured this sort of abuse - he told me its still continuing - 9 of his siblings have stayed in the sect and doing the same with their children. If anyone works its part time in low paid work due to lack skills. He thought that one of the reasons for the lack of education and the lack of english was to make it so hard to leave.

AIBU to feel very angry about this? Obviously don't think these people should lose benefits but surely ridiculous they can claim benefits including housing benefits whilst choosing to send their children to private (and often illegal) schools.

NeedsAsockamnesty That's my point, someone should be checking so that people couldn't hide behind it as a way of getting away with not educating their children.

forever If the school is legal and teaching the minimum required standard then they are getting an education, not a good one but it is an education, which is presumably inspected and deemed to be of a sufficient quality and therefore, as much as I personally disagree with not offering a child the best education you can, I'm not sure it is actually abuse, although clearly the standard for a legal school is far lower than it ought to be.

Why should they?

Most parents are not child abusers ad that also goes for those that HE.

Should we treat every parent as if they are an abuser?

Years ago you could claim income support until your dc left school. Nowadays you can only claim it until they start school or turn 5. After that it's JSA which involves proving that you are actively seeking work or facing sanctions. So the scenario you are describing would be pretty difficult to get away with these days.

it's a bit jumbled but is your point that if someone wants to pay for their children's education, they shouldn't be claiming benefits in order to pay for it?

If they want to send their DC to weird schools I don't see what that has to do with the state as such, but I would agree that it's a bit rich to get the state to pay for private education - unless there is an extremely good reason to do so, which doesn't sound the case here (DBIL was claiming benefits (not in the UK) and sending his kids to a private Steiner school which I was a bit about, I must say).

But, as PPs have said, in this whole sad story it's a very minor point.

Because clearly people are abusing it, I don't mean they should be inspecting all the time, just sending in a sample of work once a year would be enough to let the LA know if there were children who weren't being educated without being too much of an inconvenience for the majority of parents who are doing it properly.

The problem with asking the HE comunity to come up with a plan to regulate is that you end up with only about 20 across the uk who would respond, most of these 20 will be fairly well known in HE circles and like to think they are experts.

And they tend to spend the time they are not educating their children falling out with each other publicly and unpleasantly usually about this very issue.

Bickering with each other on facebook groups and blogs encouraging all sorts of petty nastiness.

Your name appears on any type of consultation document and bingo all of a sudden your being blogged about and low profile home educators are very put off from engaging with it.

People especially those who try to avoid the school system do not tend to like other people making decisions about how they educate that's why they choose not to use a one size fits all system.

There are already ways of working out the difference between a CME ad a child being HE.

And a lot of people who HE do not do work in the same way as a teacher type would. They may have nothing to send,that does not mean they are not doing any just that its not in documented format. Those methods of education are not wrong they are just different.

Ah ok, maybe that wouldn't work so well then but there must be a way of doing it so that cults can't use home ed as an excuse. (I can't think of one but there are plenty of people smarter than me and it is something that should be looked at)

We already do have the laws availible to make checks if there is reason to believe a child is being neglected (not providing an education is neglect).

We already have systems in place for dealing with abusive cults.

The only thing we do not have is the legal right to treat HE as a cause for concern as a stand alone issue.

Schools are inspected to make sure that the general education provided is of a sufficient standard.

They are not inspected to make sure that e.g. the autistic child in 3 A is enabled to access any education at all or that the child in 6 B is not being bullied to the point where he cannot concentrate. Dd's school got a Good Ofsted despite the fact (which they didn't mention to the inspector) that they just left her out of any lessons she couldn't access in her wheelchair.

Sending a child to a legal if rubbish school is not home educating.
In this case ofsted is in the wrong for not closing the school.
Where does home education and evidence of work come into it?

Says what I feel:

^YANBU to think that all children shoud have an education,and the law agrees with you.

YABU to think that needs to happen in a school.

Child abuse and law breaking has fuck all to do with benefits or even home education.^

I agree with others that the benefits are a bit of a red herring.

Awful situation though.

I think HE set ups (whether group or individual within the home) should be subject to Ofsted or ISI just as state and independent schools are. All education should be inspected for the sake of the children receiving it. It's not about looking for abuse or judging, it's about checking children are learning. If a teacher needs to be checked surely somebody else delivering education does too.

I think HE set ups (whether group or individual within the home) should be subject to Ofsted or ISI just as state and independent schools are. All education should be inspected for the sake of the children receiving it. It's not about looking for abuse or judging, it's about checking children are learning. If a teacher needs to be checked surely somebody else delivering education does too

How would you asses a autonomous none work book based education?

By talking to the child.

I agree manicinsomniac , It is great that the option of HE is available as school does not suit every child, some times the school routine does not suit the parent early mornings collections, It should definitely be regulated to ensure that the child is getting a proper education along with socialising participating in some sort of after school social club with other children

There seems to be two issues here and illegal schools and cults and clearly wrong.

But SN aside I don't think being on benefits should exclude you from being allowed to home educate your children but it should not be the reason you don't work. So it shouldn't be used as a reason to claim.

A few things - surely if you are on benefits the state is funding the "alternative schooling" you have for your child - some of the schooling is private and legal (generally primary school and girls secondary) but still underachieving, some illegal (boys secondary) pretending to homeschool etc - I don't think that's right even in the case of the legal but underachieving school.

In terms of income support or jsa - in this sect they have many many children (no contraception and get married young) probably trying to use breast feeding for family spacing, so could have 12 children over 24 years - that's 29 years of income support.

But what would you ask them? And how would you decide if they were or weren't being educated?

It's something that runs a real risk of turning into a if its not our way then it's not good enough thing.

As things stand at the moment HE parents have the right to request meetings with the LA or attend them if the LA offers them and they so wish (many LA's give the impression these meetings are obligatory).

HE kids still come into contact with doctors,health visitors if they have younger siblings,clubs.they often do exactly the same type of things that other children do.

The only people they do not come into contact with that other children do is school teachers. It would be quite unusual in home educating families for the children to be hidden,and as things stand at the moment children who are kept under the radar who have birth records would end up subject to quite intense scrutiny because well its a bit odd.

Do we all have to be judged by the lowest common denominator?

Fwiw, I have an intense dislike about HE and yes I do have personal experience of it but I will defend anybody's right to do it until I'm blue in the face and I would outright challenge anybody who claims that a child being HE is more at risk of abuse. And interestingly according to a very well known chap in HE circles (one of these aforementioned bickering 20) there is quite a lot of evidence around that points towards HE children as a rule doing much better educationally (from an attainment perspective) than state school attending children.

Oh and being a home educator does not exempt you in any way from having to job seek if you are claiming job seekers allowence.

forever

We have a benefit cap that prevents huge sums of money going to one household. It is only possible for each household to claim IS until the youngest child is 5 after that its job seekers, with job seekers you are expected to job seek for 35 hours each week. This is the same as everybody else on jsa.

Once money in any form is given to someone it becomes their money to do with as they wish.

Often cults will make money by any means prostitution is not a unusual way so I doubt benefits enable cults because if they were not available to cult members other ways of obtaining money would be found. Really benefits have fuck all to do with this

OP, perhaps you should educate yourself about H.ed before you start spouting rubbish.

We have benefits and H.ed, the examples you give have no bearing on benefits nor H.ed as most people know it.

Apart from this, great post.

I don't have any knowledge of how the benefit system works, but the scenarios you describe, OP, sound unlikely cushy.

What's your real concern? If you genuinely think they're pretending to HE then tell somebody.

Foreveronadiet - would the way that man was treated have been any more acceptable if his parents had worked, and funded it themselves? I would say not. For example, the Duggar family are entirely financially self sufficient, and home school all their children, using a system where creationism replaces Darwinism, and which effectively isolates the children. But they aren't on benefits.

It sounds like a real child protection issue as the children are missing from education - that's an imprisonable offence.

However schools aren't always the definition of high standards, take the 55% of secondary academies in England who:-

1/ Do not have to employ qualified teachers
2/ Do not have to follow the national curriculum
3/ Are acquiring a terrible record for refusing to admit/illegally excluding/managing out SN pupils. (I'll include the emotionally damaged children of a cult that despises education in this category).

1 in 6 of all school leavers at 16 in England goes off into the big wide world without the functional literacy and numeracy skills they need to get and keep a low-skilled job.

State School really isn't working for a significant minority of our children, that's why we have such thriving private schools & a growing home ed sector here in the UK - fuelled by parents who do want to ensure their children get an education worth having.

Although I don't approve of popping out a baby a year on benefits, that really isn't the BIG issue here. The issue is parental neglect through failing to fulfil their legal responsibility to ensure that every child they have of compulsory school age is receiving an education adequate to their age, aptitude and ability. The legislation is in place to address this, and tbh I'd report the families concerned to SS.

I must also agree if one of these schools you state as being legal and registered failed these children, Ofsted hold some responsibility here.
They should not have left without performing checks, even if they were told some dc were H.ed