I was at a HE meet the other day and we were talking about the proposed changes to guidance and how some L.A.- not ours luckily- are totally over reacting in their requests for evidence of learning.
Every single person was detailing how they would fabricate this evidence as we simply could not produce it educating our children the way we very successfully currently do.
So - we are the excellent well motivated caring HE parents that you all say are not the problem but we are talking about fabricating the evidence to pass monitoring and how with very little coaching of our children we would get away with it. Then the inspectors would sod off and leave us to carry on exactly as we are very happily now
If us great HE parents can see how we could do this very easily then manipulative abusers would do it in a heartbeat and it would make it easier for them to get away with it for longer. Once a child had been seen and passed ok - then little attention would be given to any reports or anything. That family of 13 in the states that were found chained up had passed their annual HS inspection demanded by their state.
There is no workforce that could effectively monitor anyway. They would need to be experts at all levels of education including all forms of SEN. Fully understand all methods of alternative education and how that would relate to expected standards at all ages. Plus be able to subtly identify any red flags for abuse, trafficking, etc etc. These people do not exist and it would be difficult to ever find 2 or 3 in each local area. Therefore the people monitoring it would be similar to the people monitoring it now. Some are nice and try to be helpful but start talking about HE philosophy or SEN appropriate levels and they are so clearly out of their depth. They could be deceived and mislead so easily.
A highly skilled multi disciplinary team would be the only way to do this effectively and that would be enormously expensive and may never actually be needed in a given area- reports of HE children to SS is far higher than schooled children but SS investigations shows actual abuse rates are lower than the mainstream population. Looking at rates of abuse and rates of HE - a typical L.A. would see a case a decade and these would mostly be picked up in traditional ways , family/neighbour reporting or GP/hospital. Therefore an incredibly expensive team would be largely a waste of money.
As loving HE parents the idea of any monitoring is extremely concerning due to the level of stress and anxiety this will cause the children. Think of SATS but on every aspect of your child life and done annually. Do you really think this could ever give an indication of what a child's life is like?
Annual monitoring would be utterly pointless and cause substantially more harm and distress to children than it could ever prevent in 100 years and a system that could potentially work for safeguarding would require so much resource to be diverted to it from already stretched services that it would put substantially more vulnerable children at risk due to cuts elsewhere.
Yes a handful of HE children have slipped through the safeguarding net over the years but so have thousands and thousands who have attended school the whole time and even had substantial SS involvement - their abuse was missed so how is 10 minutes a year is going to find it out. A child can easily be overlooked repeatedly in a class of 30 and I'm sorry but many children do not have a relationship with a teacher where they could disclose.
As the OP clearly shows HE children are far from invisible - in fact they stick out like a sore thumb.
The idea of a register and monitoring of HE seems like a no brainer but when you see how it fails to work in other countries and really think it through- you realise it is a pointless exercise and will cause far more harm than good.
What is needed desperately though - and the lack of it is what causing the problem - is more clear guidance on how agencies should work together and who is responsible for what when genuine safeguarding issues are raised and a child is HE. All the cases mentioned here and in virtually all known cases agencies have been aware of concerns about the HE children but mistakes in communication have been made. Spotting HE safeguarding concerns is not the issue- in fact statistacally they are far more likely to be referred. It is working with the families when a major element of most safeguarding plans (school) is missing that is the problem