Why do people fear Home Educators so much?

[sebumfillaments]

Not a TAAT but inspired by the other thread, I was stunned by the level of vitriol aimed at home education. Is it all borne from fear and ignorance?

Home Ed isn't about replicating school. And education isn't (in our case) about gaining qualifications from an institution to increase their value in the workforce!

So why so much animosity?

and anyone with anything to hide or who simply couldn't be bothered or who couldn't make the time could just not engage.

So the same as refusenik HEers then?

And the same as Daniel Pelka's parents who starved their child to death under the noses of half a dozen teachers? And how many DC like him?

No system is going to catch everyone but either the aim is to specifically check the welfare of all DC using specialist staff, OR it's just a moral panic about those weirdy home educators.

You need to look at percentages, not absolute numbers, because the schooled community is so much bigger - and also detection bias.

Well yes but you also need to consider that if "home education" is involved in a big CP scandal, it's big news. We don't NOT hear about HE DC coming to grief.

I can think of two cases that involved nominally home educated DC. In both cases there were huge red banners separate from the education issue.

I do find it very worrying that children can "disappear"....

Yes, exactly the same. Your idea for HV checks for all is both unworkable and pointless. It's a nice idea, but that's all.

how about HE parents coming up with something constructive rather than a huffy 'I don' want that' when monitoring of children is proposed?

I don't think you can look at schooled or H.ed dc as ne particular group though.

When my dd was H.ed she saw teachers from the LEA, was involved in LEA ensembles and groups and saw a sw twice when they visited me for an unrelated reason. (reference for friends to adopt)

Now she is back at school she has no input from the LEA at all as she is at private school. She doesn't see any hcp outside school as nurse and doctor at school.
She does have dentist and optician appointments but also had these H.ed

Just one person's experience of H.ed and school.

I very rarely post on these types of threads, but I have been reading this one with interest and just want to give a slightly different view than those on here already.

I home educate 3 children. None have been to school. None have special needs or any bad experience with the "system" that led me to home educate them. I have no axe to grind with schools, those who send their children to school, or any group that educates their children in a way different than I do mine. I chose home education because I felt it offered my children the best possible opportunities and future - the same reason, I am sure, that all parents choose their way forwards.

My eldest is about to enter school for the first time this September at age 16. A 6th form college to do his A levels. He has completed 7 GCSE's as a private candidate. We have the results for all except one (French which we will get this coming Thursday). He has: Maths A, Further Maths A (it does not go up to A and in fact he achieved 92 out of 100), English A, English Lit B, Physics A, Computer Science A*, and we fully expect an A in French next week. He was not tutored or taught any of these subjects. As with all my children, I have facilitated their education, providing them with the right resources and environment but they have taken control of their own learning.

All my children are extremely social and involved in large numbers of clubs and activities both within the home ed community, and as they have got older, outside of that community. Just like schooled children, they have many interests outside of their school work and actively pursue them.

I am not on here to brag about how well my son has done, but to show you another side. There are many families like mine that home educate successfully by choice, not because our children were failed by the system, or because we are "hippies" that want to turn our backs on formal education. We are the unseen/low profile families though. As with all areas of education, and life in fact, there are success stories and failures and lots in between. Home education does not work for all families - I have seen some spectacular failures over the years. But school does not work for all families either. There is no one size fits all approach in life.

how about HE parents coming up with something constructive rather than a huffy 'I don' want that' when monitoring of children is proposed?

But why on earth should we? We are fine as we are. It's others that have the problem with it.

I'm personally very prepared to have a couple of visit a year for CP purposes. I'm horrified we have had none at all.

I wouldn't mind educational reviews either if they were performed by someone who actually understands education.

I feel if there was more in the way of reviews there would be a higher probability of the review being done by someone competent to do it.

DH is totally opposed the idea though...he's heard too many horror stories of LEA's cocking up.

**how about HE parents coming up with something constructive rather than a huffy 'I don' want that' when monitoring of children is proposed?

'But why on earth should we? We are fine as we are. It's others that have the problem with it.'

The point is that we're not really concerned about the children who are doing well in HE. That's great if you are doing well. But there's no way to spot if there are CP issues. Children who are in school get seen by CP trained teachers on a daily basis during term time and teachers do report suspected neglect/abuse. You will accept that there are CP issues in some HE households? How can they be protected? Even if it's only a tiny minority, that tiny minority deserve to be protected.

"Interestingly I "disappeared" my eldest accidentally. Dh was working overseas and I was a bit nervous about being alone with dd in a foreign country. I decided I'd join him after her 6 week check (and in fact had discussed it with hv and go). When I toddled back 3 weeks later to have her weighed the HV was furious because I hadn't informed her I was going awayconfused "

Really? How very strange. Why on earth did she think you had to tell her if you went on holiday?

This Parliamentary Committee report summarises a lot of the issues around HE pretty well. It's from 2009 but I don't think that it would look very different if written today other than the risk to certain groups of children has arguably increased.

I understand from friends who were working in the DCSF back then that the response from the HE community was surprisingly hostile (individuals received threatening letters that stopped just short of death threats ), so as Bertrand said, since then HE has repeatedly been put in the "too difficult" drawer.

I don't, however, think that HEers on this thread and in the mainstream HE community understand what our very liberal rules and regulations mean for many children, particularly those who spend hours and hours at a madrassah or yesheva to the detriment of a broad curriculum. I would bet good money that, however diverse, mainstream HE groups do not have large representation from the very religiously observant families.

I don't, however, think that HEers on this thread and in the mainstream HE community understand what our very liberal rules and regulations mean for many children, particularly those who spend hours and hours at a madrassah or yesheva to the detriment of a broad curriculum.

But this is the point.

If we, as a country, struggle to find ways to protect schooled children from specific, known dangers (such as some very suspect, tiny private schools that OFSTED have commented on) and societal ills (trafficking or FGM, for example) then why are we not looking at those more closely instead of going after the largely uneventful HE community for ill-defined reasons?

zzzz,

So your position, if i understand it, is that intervention should be sufficient to identify risk of actual severe physical or mental harm - ie FGM, forced marriage, domestic slavery, trafficking, physical, sexual and the most obvious forms of emotional abuse - but should have no regard at all to the nature of the education taking place?

So in the distinction i made above, you believe in effective CP / safety monitoring, but do not support monitoring of any aspect of education (even though the law states that every child should be provided with an education, and the UN recognises the right of every child to have an education)?

So if a child is being 'home educated' in an unlicensed Madrassa, which - let's make this the most extreme scenario - actively peddles extreme Islamist ideals including holy war - then this is OK up to the point where the child actually makes the decision to leave the country and fight with IS, at which point (because they are at risk of actual physical harm), there should be immediate intervention?

Serf, my understanding is that many unlicensed madrassas and similar extreme religious schools are not actually registered as schools, and thus most of their pupils attend them under the guise of 'home education', having withdrawn from or at no point been registered at a mainstream school.

So a child attending such a school is not 'schooled' in the normal sense - they are group home educated, in an institution not requiring normal CP arrangements etc.

[Of course, many schooled children attend religious schools after school or at weekends - and I have had experience of CP concerns around this being raised and dealt with via the mainstream school and its CP links]

So as well as educate my own child who was hurt by a teacher in a school environment and who because of this is now too terrified to even step in a school, who was mute for three months after we pulled him out, who refused to leave his room or talk to anybody who wasn't immediate family for almost two years after and was self harming, I am expected to come up with some ideas to protect home ed children? Hmm, leave that with me...

Do you see where I am coming from? And I know SO many families who have been through similar.

OFSTED are trying to do their job and not finding it easy (and this relates to schools and school children);

www.theguardian.com/education/2016/nov/08/ofsted-wrong-to-penalise-islamic-school-over-gender-segregation-court-rules

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/11/ofsted-court-inadequate-rating-gender-segregated-islamic-al-hijrah-school-birmingham

www.theguardian.com/education/2015/nov/24/ofsted-finds-serious-failings-at-private-faith-schools

Serf, my understanding is that many unlicensed madrassas and similar extreme religious schools are not actually registered as schools, and thus most of their pupils attend them under the guise of 'home education', having withdrawn from or at no point been registered at a mainstream school.

How can we hope to tackle that when official schools full of non-HEed children are sailing on despite OFSTED's best efforts (in many cases)?

The focus on home education as a CP concern seems to be rather missing the point.

Serf,

I suppose I see it more universally. All children, wherever they are educated - private school, state school, religious 'school', at home - should have the same level of protection.

I don't see it as 'until schools are perfect, we should not look at HE'. i see it as 'let's look at a system where every child in the country is known to the state, and ensure that whoever they are, whichever religious or ethnic group they come from, and however they are educated, there is a mechanism to indentify, and if necessary intervene, if they are at risk of harm'. So to focus on a universal base level of safety for all children, delivered perhaps in different ways to different communities.

I agree that schools are not perfect - state schools are not perfect, private schools are not perfect, religious schools are not perfect, HE educators are not perfect. So lets focus on the CHILDREN, and think about how to deliver a universal level of care and safety to them all.

An educational establishment only needs to be registered as a school if it (from memory) provides full time education to five or more non-family-related children or one child with a statement of SEN. Madrassahs and other religious schools get around this by operating just below the threshold deemed to represent full-time education, or by flying so far below the radar that the authorities don't know that it exists.

olennas so your position is that HEers are too parochial to understand cultural differences? No, it's that most HEers won't be aware of what else is happening in their sector and why concerns have been raised repeatedly about why the relaxed framework we have fails to keep children safe.

It's a bit like the questions that the HV asks of new mothers to try to probe whether the mother (and child) is at risk of DV. It wasn't an issue for me or any of my friends, but I'm glad that the process exists so that it can help women who do need the support. Just because it isn't a perfect process, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't even try to do anything.