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?

Similar here granny the DCs' first school was fine for DD, and yet so horrendous for DS that he left halfway through year one. They have the same level of autism diagnosis as well but it is entirely bad memories for DS while DD can look back on her time there quite happily (it was at juniors that her issues started)

just because someone chooses home ed doesnt mean its ok to make sweeping statements about schools (same for the other way round)

Couldn't agree more. I've seen an awful lot of generalisation both ways round over the years. I don't think this thread has been so bad but it definitely exists and is frustrating in both directions

My dd, also autistic is at the first school that couldn't manage ds and his autism. They're not doing a bang up job with her either to tell the truth but she loves it there so we persevere and she is functioning to a certain extent.

I obviously am going to feel the "user" has a better understanding than the "provider", you feel the opposite.

No, that's not what I am saying at all. What i am saying is that, for any given child, the best education setting (even at the broad brush level of HE / MS school / SS) varies depending on the child, their needs, the specifics of their home life, and the specifics of the SS and MS school involved.

I am quite happy to agree that it is entirely possible that the SS that you chose for your child was not a good fit for them, and was, for them, a worse choice than an inclusive ms school and HE.

I am not quite sure why you feel I cannot say that, knowing the specific child, their specific home life and therefore HE available, and the MS school and SS involved, the SS would have been the best option FOR THEM.

You seem determined to say that SS is never the best option, for any child, regardless of disability or any specifics of home life or MS school, and thus the only options for any child with any level of SEN are MS school or home ed. This seems to be based mostly on your own experience and the experience of others who live locally to you. With SEN being such a vast field, with so many variations in kind and degree, and SS being highly varied in their provision and support, I am not sure why you feel there cannot be any possibility of different opinions being formed for different children in different settings.

I suppose I had seen the difference between us as being 'caring for the needs of different children, in different geographical areas, with different home lives and different needs', much more than as 'parent vs teacher', which you seem to see it as?

Well for me, I don't think all SS area haven of good support and the rest of it. I visited 16 SS and there was only two! which I found would be a best fit for DS .

One thing that SS do have is the money, resources and training (I'm sorry to say). The mainstream school I worked at was fantastic for SEN, mainly due to the Head Master. But they lacked the money and the resources... however, the few parents of the children who attended the school (and their connections !) were able to build a sensory room and buy the school some sensory equipment/resources.

I don't think all SS or MS schools are great. Even DS current SS placement, I have a few disagreements with certain things ( thought he has made a lot of progress) but the alternative was terrifying...he would of been babysat at his previous MS.

*though

Sorry, zzzz. You do appear to be reading my posts in a way tghat I am not intending to - as accusatory, as throwing something in your face.

I am simply trying to make the - I thought relatively uncontroversial - point that the 'best' option for a specific child at any moment [which may well still not be perfect, but which is better than the alternatives] depends on the schools available - both SS and MS; the home setting / ability to HE; and the specific needs of the child. Homes, parents, schools and children are all different and thus it is possible for different positions to be true simultaneously:

• that Child X - say your child - is best, on balance, being HE at this point.

• that child Y - say the child I am thinking of - would have been best, on balance, in a specific SS at that point.

• that child Z - say my DS, who his first head said would never be able to attend a MS school after I took him out to HE - has fared best, on balance, in a different MS school.

None of those are value judgements, in terms of reflecting in any way on the decisions made in arriving at those decisions. It is not 'better' that your child is HE than that my child is at MS. It is not 'wrong' to say that child Y would have fared better at the specific SS available. There is no 'blame' attached to failures of school choice or selection, just a mismatch between the needs of the child and the provision available.

I am genuinely sorrty to have made you feel that am blaming you through a poor choice of words. A better form of words would have ben 'the SS that your child attended', niot 'that you chose' - I had intended no value judgement or blame in my word choice.

I understand your bitterness against the school that failed your child. I am equally bitter about the school that made DS a selective mute covered in bruises and acutely anxious enough to show many autistic traits - it is only, perhaps, that subsequent MS placements for him have been so very successful that I have not applied the same bitterness to the MS sector more widely.

I think there is a perception that SS is a haven of good practice and support

No - no more than all MS schools are good / bad or all HEers are good / bad.

However, it can still be true that SOME individual SS can be the best available option for SOME children with particular needs that match that school's provision. In the same way, SOME MS schools are excellent at inclusion for certain children with certain needs, and SOME HE parents are the best educational option for their specific children.

So why do you think "gcse more able training" is a good way of supporting those children who need extra in one way but DON'T think it works for disabled children?
Because more able GCSE training is about targeting the new grade 9s which are for the top x% of a cohort sitting GCSEs and a child with PMLD working on P scales (which is the example I gave) wouldn't be sitting a GCSE.
Feel free to tell teachers how a child on P scales would be able to complete my gcse paper where students have to spend 2h15mins writing 4 essays (1 play and an anthology of poems from memory plus 2 unseen poetry analysis with new content dropped from a level). It would solve all our existing needs for intervention.

You're quite intent on taking perfectly reasonable comments and turning them into sweeping 'you don't think disabled or SEN kids can achieve'. Consequently, I'm getting quite done with engaging with you.

zzzz, OK, I'm probably misunderstanding your posts as well!

I asked way upthread whether a SS was ever the best option for a specific child - and started the discussion about the particular child I have mentioned repeatedly, where I [and every other care, education, health and social services professional involved] genuinely - knwoing the MS / home / child / SS in question - felt that a particular SS was the best option.

As you have - as far as I can tell - never said that in fact that SS COULD perhaps have been the best option in that case, I had extrapolated to you believing that SS was NEVER the best option.

Apologies again for misreading, if in fact you had said previously that some SS COULD be the best option for certain children.

cantkeepawayforever You speak a lot of sense.

Different settings have strengths and weaknesses. The best decisions need to be made for children. Sometimes that's mainstream, sometimes it's a PRU or a hospital unit, sometimes it's a special school, sometimes it involves getting them learning a trade off site a day a week, sometimes it's school funding tutors to go to work at home 1-1, sometimes it's HE, sometimes it's a different mainstream school with a specialist support base attached.

Mainstream schools can't do everything. It's not failing kids to acknowledge that some settings may meet their needs more.

Maisy, fundamentally I agree with you.

i do worry that some schools do manipulate this, focusing on high-stakes accountability measures rather than ALWAYS on the needs of the child. This is particularly dangerous when the child is not protected by capable parents - while those parents who have posted on this thread are obviously extremely capable advocates for their children, not all parents do have the capacity to do so, for a whole variety of different reasons. Educational / health / disability professionals have a particular responsibility to work for the best interests of the child in those cases.

I also think it can be very hard when different parts of the team around the child (parents, educational professionals, health / disability professionals) pull in different ways, or where (sadly, all too commonly) there is a lack of capacity to help the child - for example, the perfect placement is full.

Agree with you cantkeepawayforever.

It's a complex environment meeting the needs of children who have vastly different needs (not just SEND). There's lots of options, but funding is scarce, multiagency services are being cut back and mainstream schools are picking up some of the issues that 5 years ago specialist support teams would do (eg last 3 schools I've worked in have had to have in house mental health staff to fill the gap where CAMHS can't step in). That money has to come from somewhere & sometimes that means the ideal situation can't occur (and why it's reasonabke that not all mainstream schools can ir should be set up for every additional need).

Nobody goes into education because they love ruining children's futures. We do want to help and part of being a professional is knowing when we need specialist support and alternative education such as special schools. People getting annoyed (as shown on related threads) at staff for not being able to do x y z are getting annoyed at the wrong people. If we could do more, we would. Kicking off doesn't magically make us find places/funds that dont exist.

zzzz,

I think there is a difference between making a school 'accessible', and making it 'the best option available for them to make progress' - and we should always be looking for the latter.

The medical analogy is perhaps again useful - yes, by being given the cost of a typical hospital operation, rigging up an operating theatre and bringing in / retraining some staff, a GP COULD remove a brain tumour. Whether that would ensure the best outcome possible for the patient is a different matter.

It's this comment from notgiving that resonates / haunts me Even DS current SS placement, I have a few disagreements with certain things ( thought he has made a lot of progress) but the alternative was terrifying...he would of been babysat at his previous MS.

By making the MS school accessible - which we did; by being advised by staff also employed at the SS and by following all their advice - which we did; by giving1:1 support in all aspects of care - which we did; by planning as far as we could to offer stimulation, do prescribed physio exercises, adapt resources to overcome some of the sensory barriers - which we did; we arrived at a situation close to safe babysitting. I don't think babysitting is what we should settle for from an educational institution.

You have also said that impact on the rest of the class is, sometimes, a reason that a MS placement might not be appropriate. I'm still not quite sure what level of impact is acceptable / not acceptable? The class as a whole had 35% on the SEN register, a very significant level of CP / safety issues - and also some exceptionally bright students (the three groups of course have overlap). To what extent is it acceptable to put resources (time is as important a resource as money in a school setting) to ensuring that every child CAN access an individual mainstream class, if that is always going to be a suboptimal solution, and denies other children the time and effort that could enable them to make better progress? Especially when there is a much more suitable placement a few miles away where all facilities and personnel and training were already available, so the additional time / effort needed for that placement were much lower? (So why should a GP surgery set up a temporary brain tumour operating theatre, when a specialist consultant is just down the road, with an operating theatre all set up, ready to go, and with a time slot available today?)

I should also point out that I visited the SS in question, with the child and with their 1:1 TAs. Yes, had the child transferred I would have been unlikely to visit - but the social services / medical / disability professionals, all of whom also supported the placement, would have all continued their involvement to monitor it.

I think funding in education could be spent better. It doesnt change the fact that someone kicking off at me as a class teacher and middle leader isnt going to magic up some money from somewhere.

A child in my school has around 13-15 different teachers. There is no way they can reasonably be pulled out of school to visit a child they no longer eductate. We have a SEN team who do all the handover etc and any visits that are needed.

It's frustrating to be told you only think that because , you have no teaching experience, don't understand complex severe presentation, don't know any other parents who all think the opposite, don't understand ms school, milder Sen, conflicting needs, the needs of very able children, what it's like to deal with all this day to day. Perhaps IDOunderstand and have a considered opinion on all those things and my opinion given all that experience is different than yours
You may have an opinion. That's fine.
I have never said you dont understand complex presentation - that's separate to what i said. Knowledge of your child's needs is different to having a working knowledge of 32 different kids and their needs and how to teach a subject, plus all the pastoral stuff. Whatevwr valuable knowledge someone has about their own child, until they have done my job they have almost no grounding to tell me how to teach and the demands of my job.

But we get used to it because every year there's a couple (not exclusively sen by the way) who think that knowing their child is the same as teaching.

Thankfully, most parents we work with are fabulously supportive, we're on thr same page, we all want to fight to get the kids the education provision that's best for them. The parenra bring their insights, we bring our professional view and we work together knowing we have different and valuable experience and knowledge.

most teachers have never visited the SS their charges move on to and have no idea what happens to them after that placement

I think that raises an interesting question as to where and when a class teacher's responsibility to a child ends.

If I, as a class teacher with in-depth knowledge of a particular child attend and give detailed professional input into reviews and meetings (with representatives from up to a dozen different groups, including the SS, and of course the SENCo) that come to the conclusion that a particular child is best placed elsewhere, is it always my class teacher responsibility to follow up that placement?

If, as a class teacher, I provide 'concern' reports on CP that ultimately lead to a child being placed in foster care, is it my responsibility to visit and monitor that foster placement?

If, again as a class teacher, I report information that leads to a family being moved (again) for their safety, is it my responsibility to follow them to their new safe house to ensure that they remain safe?

Even where a child who I have become extremely involved with, for all kinds of reasons, simply moves on to another class the following year, although I do continue to care about their welfare, and of course i will have handed over every possible useful scrap of information, is it my responsibility to follow up their progress with my colleague? Equally when a child moves e.g. from a primary to a senior school, is it the Y6 teacher's responsibility to follow up those children in their new senior school placements?

I'm not saying that a class teacher SHOULDN'tT follow up some children - and IME with children who are vulnerable in any way, including through SEN, teachers often remain interested in pupils long after their formal relationship with them has ceased. But should it be expected? And if it should be expected, when?

I would say to clarify, though, that in the case of a child with SEN where a different setting is recommended, I would expect the SENCo - even if not the class teacher - to be familiar with the alternative setting and to do liaison / visits around any transfer.

That has, in my experience, always been the case.

cant I think it's also very clear (and sad in a way) that to insure the best provision for your child/ whether it's in MS/SS/HED etc. Ultimately falls down to the parents.