Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think that radicalisation and home education is a red herring and Nicky Morgan wants an excuse to boss home ed parents about

101 replies

ReallyTired · 20/12/2015 03:24

www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-35144063

If parents are going to radicalise their children then it will happen regardless whether they attend school or are home educated. Children who attend school still learn about the world from their parents. Lots of children who attend state schools get indoctrinated by their parents.

I feel that the parents of children who have been found attending illegal schools should be barred from home education. Someone whose judgement is so poor to use an unregistered school with a narrow curriculum and lack of health and safety is unfit to become a home educator. Their children certainly need to be kept track of.

Leave true home educators alone. They are not responsible for the troubles in Syria.

OP posts:
AnyoneButSanta · 20/12/2015 11:23

There are loads of very good reasons to not send your children to school but there are a lot of really bad and worrying ones as well, including not wanting your child to be exposed to the modern world for religious reasons, full on anti establishment paranoia, wanting them to work full time in the family business, and covering up abuse. And there are some people who have good reasons to choose HE but then lack the resources (of whatever sort) to do so. And to confuse the issue there are people who have good motives and ability to HE but have also developed what looks a lot like paranoia due to the dreadful experiences they've had in the mainstream system.

Sadly there is simply no way to protect the children of sinister or incompetent parents without intruding into the family life of the perfectly good HE-ers. Child protection workers are not psychic.

howtorebuild · 20/12/2015 11:26

Interesting used of words there, I haven't met any Home educators who are any of the negative words you use to make them sound odd and to be suspicious of. Hmm

AnyoneButSanta · 20/12/2015 11:30

Pretty much by definition if you're mixing in HE circles you'll be mixing with bona fide home educators. You won't be mixing with people who are keeping their daughter off school because she should be doing all the housework or keeping their son at home so nobody asks questions about bruises. I'm not saying there's a lot of them but they do exist - the question is what's the best way to protect their children with the minimum of intrusion.

theycallmemellojello · 20/12/2015 11:30

I understand the argument that you shouldn't be inspected unless there's a reason to think something's gone wrong, but the problem is it's not clear how evidence of malpractice in home education could come to light in many cases. Where a child is not in school, it's very easy for their parents to prevent them having any contact with the outside world. Personally I think that on balance, the state's safeguarding obligations towards children trump parents' right to privacy and a more interventionist approach is justified.

IrenetheQuaint · 20/12/2015 11:32

What would be the problem with having an universal registration system for home educated children? It seems an obvious way to go and I don't see why it would involve intrusion into the lives of the many home edders who are doing a great job.

Children have a right to an education, after all. If their parents are putting them to work in the family business or neglecting them then it is the role of the state to step in and protect the child.

However, any regulations should be carefully drawn up to avoid causing problems for parents who just happen to be educating their children differently from the National Curriculum.

VegetablEsoup · 20/12/2015 11:34

maybe all children (in school or home education) should do sat tests and a general health check each year...

witsender · 20/12/2015 11:35

Against what criteria should home Ed parents be assessed? Ofsted? The same ones that most schooling parents and pretty much all teachers recognise to be more or less a steaming pile of crap? How would it work? You can't assess a class of 30 with a paid teacher in the same way as a class of 2 with the world at their fingertips. It just wouldn't work, as children and parents all have different ways of working which is precisely why home Ed should be encouraged.. Quite removed from the cost saving of them not being in school.

The govt knows this, which is why they haven't tackled jt sooner, and which is why this is about a minority. Let's just hope the majority don't get caught in the crossfire, we have to have some rights left intact.

BarbarianMum · 20/12/2015 11:49

I'm sure it is not beyond the wit of (wo)man to develop some criteria. They may not be perfect but then OFSTED isn't either. They just have to be better than nothing.

Original poster
ReallyTired · 20/12/2015 11:50

We have met several home educating families. Many of them are mildly eccentric but harmless. For example one lady dresses her children purely in home made clothes and both her daughters are very proficient with a sewing machine. (The also have a good standard of numeracy and literacy.) An ofsted inspector might think that this family have an unbalanced curriculum. Another family I have met had their son doing 30 hours a week of tennis. Home educators can cover the basic curriculum in about two hours a day. Schools waste a lot of time with crowd control.

I feel that there needs to be more focus on illegal or small private religous schools. If a school is closed down then those children need to be tracked.

OP posts:
theycallmemellojello · 20/12/2015 11:58

Yes, reallytired, but if you can see that those children are fine then why couldn't an inspections system be devised that would also be able to spot this, like barbarianmum says? Otherwise, you're basically just saying bad luck to the kids in home ed who truly are being failed - how can that be right?

Original poster
ReallyTired · 20/12/2015 12:12

What consitutes a good education is subjective. Also what consitutes radicalisation? The only way to prevent parents from radicalising their children is to take them into care. Where should state control of family life end?

OP posts:
theycallmemellojello · 20/12/2015 12:19

Yes, it's a difficult question. It's definitely true that the boundary between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable is hard to draw. But that's true for lots of areas of the law - almost every area in fact. It's not a reason to say that external regulation is impossible, and it's certainly not a reason for us to say that kids whose education is being seriously neglected are essentially on their own.

NettleTea · 20/12/2015 12:29

And it would be interesting to know what would constitute radicalisation? Obviously hate and religious intolerance would be an obvious, but what about those who possibly live on the fringes of 'normal' society? The hadouts to spot radicalisation make it look as if anyone deviating from the 'believe what the papers tell you, spend lots of money, and dont question the government or those in authority' are viewed with suspicion

Enjolrass · 20/12/2015 12:37

I home educated dd for a while. Due to bullying and school and LA reluctance to do anything.

I am very surprised by how little anyone else was involved.

We never even had an official visit. Dd could have been sat watching tv all day.

Personally, I would home educate now but dd wanted to go back to school. We like to travel and it gave us so much more freedom.

But I do worry that HE can be very isolating.

howtorebuild · 20/12/2015 12:46

Nobody looked in on us when dd was home educated either and she has SEN. She and I needed a break from being sanctioned by the state for her attendance levels due to her incurable health condition. She went back to school because she didn't like the isolation and she wanted to take GCSE's that were not my strong point. Dd's grades went up after the break and she is great at the self learning motivation required for a degree as a result. She feels safer with me that I will take her out of horrid situations, if required, so all good. We can't wait for her to finish, the fucking grief they give children who are ill is a national disgrace, and they won't even provide resources suggested by OT and Dr.

witsender · 20/12/2015 12:54

Of course they could create guidelines. They don't, or haven't, because apart from the issue with rasicalisation there isn't an issue!! Of course there is the odd outlier, but essentially the govt are not concerned about HE-ers. I don't HE, but a lot of these concerns seem a wee bit silly.

IrenetheQuaint · 20/12/2015 12:57

I think that requiring parents to give their children a 'good' education would be difficult to police and probably undesirable because of the difficulties of developing suitable criteria.

But requiring parents to give their children a base level of educational opportunity would surely be possible. Or alternatively, drafting a list of risks that would trigger the local authority to investigate further.

I have no sympathy with the position that it is OK for parents to deny their children an education.

Original poster
ReallyTired · 20/12/2015 13:08

"I have no sympathy with the position that it is OK for parents to deny their children an education."

I don't think that many HE people think it's ok not to educate a child. However different people have different ideas what makes a good education. Just like there are different parenting styles there are different HE styles. Automenous education is controversial.

Home education would not work for my family, but not every family needs to follow the same solution for educating their children.

OP posts:
snappybadger · 20/12/2015 13:11

Everyone seems eager to support to inspection of home ed families because these children are outside of mainstream and therefore observation. So do you also support the inspection into family homes where there are pre-school age children not attending nursery/registered childcare because the parents stay at hometown look after them? Or how about have SS come and do random checks on all homes with children to make sure you're parenting correctly/feeding healthily? Really how would you feel about such scrutiny of your home/parenting?

As others have mentioned the legal obligation to provide a suitable education lies with the parents. Inspection of schools is for parents benefit because they use a third party (school) to carry out this obligation. Rightly so they should be inspected.

If there is a safeguarding issue with any child either home ed or school there are already perfectly adequate systems in place to report and deal with this. The problems happen when these systems are not followed properly.

snappybadger · 20/12/2015 13:15

Irene no one is saying it is ok or that they want to deny their children an education. And the law already supports this by requiring parents to provide a suitable education. If parents are found to be denying their children a suitable education they are breaking the law.

snappybadger · 20/12/2015 13:24

Oh and to add (as this is a subject I feel very strongly about)...yes there may be a few home ed children who are failed by their parents. This would be extremely sad and unfortunate. But there are many, many, many more children failed by schools. Children whose parents trusted school to provide a suitable education on their behalf and whose children have not received that or have been damaged by the process. And unbelievably those parents have no come back whatsoever against the school or government. They can't sue them.

I can't think of any other situation where you put trust and responsibility in a third party for your legal obligations and you can't claim legal recourse against the third party if they fail.

SisterMoonshine · 20/12/2015 13:31

I don't see that they are picking on home educated children.
More, including them in concerns they have re. all children.

IrenetheQuaint · 20/12/2015 13:32

"And the law already supports this by requiring parents to provide a suitable education. If parents are found to be denying their children a suitable education they are breaking the law."

Yes, but it sounds like there is no enforcement of this law. Are you aware of any cases where parents have been found in breach? Plus it requires someone to pick up on the problem and report it.

BluePancakes · 20/12/2015 13:52

Well said SnappyBadger

Also, schooled children spend MUCH more time at home, than at school, so why aren't their homes also regularly inspected?