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?

I think one of the reasons many home edders are against compulsory registration is because of LEA's exerting power they don't have and doorstepping people, harassing them about meeting them when they don't have to meet them etc. Basically acting illegally! (There was a whole uproar about the Badman review, but as I wasn't home edding at the time i was aware of it, but didn't pay too much attention as to what exactly it was about)

I didn't want to meet our local EHE person, as is my right, so i emailed to decline. They still turned up, although i was out. They asked again, i refused, they still turned up.

I know people will think I have something to hide, I really haven't. I just didn't see the point in seeing them straight after deregistering my son. I sent them an email in the end telling them what we'd been doing. I might meet them later this year, now i've actually had time to settle into home ed.

I absolutely think that if a compulsory registration of all children, however educated, was brought in, then it could only be on condition that all those 'within the system' behaved as they should, with recourse for anyone subjected to an authority misusing the system

One of the tipping points in deciding to remove ds from his school was that they felt "sounding out words" and "reading aloud" were good targets for him to work towards next year. He's 12 and read before nursery. They'd been teaching him for a year. One of the reasons that swung it for HE for us was visiting the school she should have been going to and being told she had to work her way through the reading scheme, start with the books with no words. She was a fluent reader and it would have driven her mad. One the same visit the teacher in reception was doing a lesson about food, she asked the children what chips were made from and a child gave the wrong answer (can't remember what they said now) and the teacher tutted, shook her head and said it was potatoes. Then she looked at me and the Head and said, "Honestly they know nothing about what they are eating." I just thought no, this isn't the environment I want for my child.

I never had a visit in 7 years, I was registered with the library as a home educator, so I could take out extra books and keep them longer, so the local authority had access to that information. I think people get a harder time if they take children out of school, they never seemed interested in the ones who had never been to school but maybe that was just where I lived.

An online registration system (to basically say "Yes, Joe Bloggs is still being HEed") works for me, and frankly should do for anyone who isn't just objecting for the sake of objecting.

zzzzz we don't currently have a system that knows who is leaving the country - there was something called e-Borders that was supposed to do that, but despite ££££s it still isn't able to detail who has left the country. But in any case, knowing who was not in the UK anymore wouldn't help Kent LA who knew that Joe Bloggs was being HEed because he left primary school in Year 1 and his parents informed them that that is what they were doing, when the Bloggs family moves to Surrey (or Wales / Scotland / NI...). Kent don't know that the Bloggs family have moved unless they investigate the electoral roll and liaise with eg Tunbridge Council on who pays the council tax for the house that they were previously living in. Surrey don't know that the Bloggs family have a HEed child, and that therefore there is a child for whom they have a legal duty to ensure that he is kept safe who will not be covered by the usual CP safety net of school.

Yes, I agree we should know who is leaving the country, particularly high risk girls.

At the moment, though, if a high risk girl is at school there is potential opportunity for her to tell a trusted adult about her concerns that she will be taken "home" for FGM or forced into marriage. Teachers working in particular areas of the country are trained to look for warning signs, and they can talk to girls about the issue and teach them things like the metal spoon trick in case they need it. A school is also aware if a girl is missing for a few weeks, and can follow up with her when she returns, helping her access appropriate health services (and in theory support the police in bringing a prosecution...)

If the same girl who is at risk of FGM is HEed, there is less likely to be a trusted adult who she can talk to without fear of her family being told. There may not be anyone who can talk to her about how she might escape it. No one in authority will know that she didn't just go home for an extended vacation, but was subjected to horrific torture. The LA may not even know that she exists (because of the lack of data held at LA level about which children are living in their borough), so their ability to intervene is pretty much nothing

Sometimes a girl who refuses can be at risk of so-called 'honour killing'. It's rare in this country, thankfully, but it can and does happen.

I'm not afraid of home educators - I mostly think they're deluded. At least those parents who "teach" their children themselves. You can't possibly give your child a decent education, of the sort required to pass exams and get a decent job as an adult, if you are not a specialist in the subjects that you're "teaching". I'd love to know how (for example) unqualified parents expect to be able to teach complicated maths, or science, when they don't even understand it themselves.

It's a different matter if you pay for qualified tutors who do know what they're talking about, of course.

I'm not sure what I think about "inspecting" the academic attainment of HE children- although personally I loved the termly visit from someone who used to be shown exhausted to the door by my apologetic parents after what must have felt like several days of me reporting in minute detail what I had been doing, acting out plays, showing models, reading poems aloud, force feeding cakes I had made specially-and being dragged to see my hens and ducks and admire my account books!

But I do feel very strongly that a way must be found to prevent children disappearing. I think at the bare minimum there should be some sort of online register, and HE parents should be obliged to check in once a year to confirm their address and that they are still HE. I don't think this should be linked to any other register though, unless a child is flagged up as "disappearing". We are allowed not to register to vote, for example.

Thank you for replying zzzzz I will definitely apply for DLA for both, as you say it's worth a shot. Just waiting for their diagnosis reports. I'll be applying for EHCP as well just to see what happens - may be helpful in future when taking exams etc anyway. :)

I'd be more than happy with regular registration. Or even a phone call "Hi, are you still at X address, and HEing?" "Yep." etc.

The difficult thing is to come up with a registration method that can be applied and accessed universally, can be used easily by all those 'intending no harm' but is robust enough to at least start to filter out the worst abuses.

The question I ask myself - mostly because it is the most common form f HE I have encountered as a teacher - is "Can it be applied easily to teenage Traveller girls being 'home educated' by their mothers, who are commonly illiterate?" It has to be robust enough to deal with 'no fixed abode', or a series of seasonal stops at both formal and informal sites, and have at least the possibility of registration being completed orally.

(this is of course registration / follow up simply for CP purposes, which as I have said above is at least a first step )

Rapunzel

I'm so sorry that our society and our systems failed you so badly

I suppose this is judgemental, but as a teacher I think it is pretty appalling apart from in a handful of special cases. School isn't just about books and exams, it's about socialising with a large group of of other kids, and being exposed to a variety of different opinions and ways of living through that interaction. I feel like home education can be a vanity project for some parents, who believe that they can do a better job than people with two degrees in their subject (subject specific and pgce).

I feel like home education can be a vanity project for some parents, who believe that they can do a better job than people with two degrees in their subject (subject specific and pgce).

The thing is, while many teachers do do a very good job for many children, some do not - this can either be due to the specific teacher, or possibly more commonly because of the teaching context at the moment (target driven, high stakes testing and high stakes accountability measures, decreasing money - as well as a longstanding policy of integrating SEN children in mainstream rather than providing additional Special School places).

I would say that, in the vast majority of cases, non SEN children are likely to do adequately well in school, taught by professional teachers. Some of these might do marginally better if taught by the very best home educators, but to counterbalance that, some would do worse if taught be slightly less expert HEers.

However, many SEN children - particularly those with ASD spectrum conditions, where the institutional nature of school and its sheer number of people and stimuli contribute to their discomfort - do not do adequately well in schools as they are at the moment, or at least do not do adequately well with all teachers in all schools. It is for those children that I feel- as a teacher as well as an ex home educator - that home education (specifically, in many cases, the home environment and the known adult, rather than the educational expertise of the parent) can be a much more positive educational process than school.

Cross posted with this:

I'm really surprised a working teacher hasn't witnessed children failing at school to the point where they feel they would be better elsewhere.

I have witnessed children failing within a mainstream school who I have felt would be much better in a special school, should a place have been available and should parents have agreed to a special school placement.

Whether a child would do best in Mainstream school / Special School / Home Ed is perhaps less clear, because while it can be easy to see that existing Home educators are doing a decent job with an SEN child, it's not always possible to predict (from a teacher's perspective) whether parents will be successful (if that makes sense).

In an ideal world, as a teacher and ex home educator I would much prefer to see more special school places, and much, much better and better-funded SEN provision and training in mainstream schools, rather than see more SEN children home educated as a last resort, when their parents can see no other way forward.

Ah, OK - that's not my experience - local ones are co-located with a mainstream school but provide facilities, expertise and specialist support that as a mainstream setting we simply cannot.

I do also think that there are some limits to the range and level of profound and multiple disabilities (e.g. a combination of high level physical, sensory and mental impairments) that even the most inclusive mainstream school can provide for effectively (and enable the greatest progress of the child).

I agree that my experience does not include all special schools.

zzzz,

I do, honestly, think it depends on the degree of disability. The children I was thinking of had, for example, profound learning disabilities, coupled with multiple physical disabilities and multiple sensory disabilities. A school with hoists and full-sized changing / shower rooms, sensory rooms, adaptive equipment for sensory disabilities, specialist ICT, as well as specialist staff [who were great - they came out to visit us, but obviously could do much less on 1 visit per 6 months than they would have been able to do at their Special School base] would have been much better than a standard small primary with a 1:1 TA (and 35% of the rest of the class with SEN, though at a lower level).