To think there should be an approval process to allow parents to HE?

[abacucat]

Children's education matters, it is incredibly important and affects the rest of their life. I think it is fine for parents to Home Educate, but I think there should be an approval process before parents can HE. This will check the parents are actually capable of doing this.

Yes there should be. Look up Dylan Seabridge to see why. And it's worth noting that HE is actively illegal in some places.

"And the parents whose teenaged sons are playing XBox all day because they’re simply unable to make them attend school"

So how would having a registration system for he solve this? Schools don't care / can't help and don't want these children on their books as they are 'ruining their figures'

For some of those children, another school would work. There need to be more resources ploughed into making alternative settings and different schools work for this kind of child.

For many of them a home tutor would work if they still used them in any real way. My DM was a home tutor for many years, and tutored many such teenagers. She is very very good at ignoring children who don't want to do anything and then encouraging them, starting with the level they last engaged with (she used to make great use of my upper primary school aged reading books). Accolades from parents included "you're the only person who taught my son anything" and "You're great Mrs X".

And for parents who give up rather than engage with the welfare officer etc. (not sure on name these days!) going through a mandatory registration process might make them see that engaging with the school and the family support etc. could be the lesser of two evils.

If there was a "transition to Home Ed" team whose aim was to catch those for whom Home Ed was being pushed on the family by the school - and make the school stick to legal processes - this might make schools think again too.

This kind of team wouldn't therefore penalise any families for whom Home Ed was a properly thought out and appropriate solution.

I don’t think you can make it work practically OP, it’s an over reach to state authority. That said, It does worry me that there is so little monitoring being done by the LEA, to ensure that children are getting the education that they need and are entitled to. I know a HE family that adore their SEN son and took him out of school as he couldn’t cope but they cannot educate him in reality - the same issues the teachers had, they now have. Essentially he is receiving no education at all and is barely literate - how he shall be an independent adult I don’t know.

" engage with the welfare officer"
You are joking - there is no such thing anymore. There is no funding for any of this - it all goes back to the school who don't want to commit any money to it.

Home tutor- fabulous if you can afford it but most people pushed out of education can't.

Absolutely stupid comment saying home educators are naive. I will not have some draconian LA coming in to my home trying to tell me how to teach my own children. It's the start of a controlling state.

By definition, poor HE parents aren't going to be on MN discussing HE.

It's the start of a controlling state.

HE is illegal in a number of countries, including Germany. It's hardly jackboot territory to ensure that no children get dragooned into extremist sects.

So the parents doing a good job will be getting punished because of the minority?. You do remember children get abused in school right? And they don't get support or helped. Yeah, I was one of those children and I will protect my own children from what I went through until my dying breath.

I don't care if other countries made it illegal, that was the wrong step to take. Nothing like killing individuality and free thinking.

I know of a family where the parents are illiterate but claim
Their son will be home educated. They claim his school is too far away. They live in a city so unlikely.

6spring a home tutor was a service provided by the LEA for children who could not attend school. It's not a private service.
It was phased out because it was cheaper to insist that all children who are physically capable (not e.g. primary school children with compound fractures who can't weight-bear) should go to a PRU.

And there ARE services for families that can't/won't get their children to attend. We have a family support worker because our DS struggles with quite a few aspects of his behaviour. For us, we have meetings to look at priority areas and suggest tactics and while we've never had a problem with actual attendance, we've improved our morning battles quite a bit.
But the family support worker also goes to another family every day at 8 am to get their child ready for school. Things are out there if families will engage.

Home ed was made illegal in Germany when the Nazis were in power because they wanted all children to come under state control so that they would believe what the government were doing was right.

So using Germany as a reference isn't a particularly positive thing.

Exactly 👍

That's right, it's not the Lazy way out at all. I have my children 24/7... Its not easy on the slightest. Nothing sounds easier than dumping kids at school for most of the day five days a week.

In times where public funds are limited focus should not be placed on spending money to 'regulate' home educate it should instead be spent on ensuring that many families of SN children are not forced to deregister because the LEA do not provide schools suitable to their need.

We have not deregistered our son yet but he is not currently in school and has a PB for some funded education. We have the LEA trying to force inappropriate settings on our child who has serious mental health issues as a result of not being supported in school over the last 2 years. We are likely to be forced to deregister him to stop him from harming himself or worse.

There is not enough SEN provision in this country. This is where money needs to be spent.

what written evidence???confused

I used inverted commas around evidence! You’re usually required to make some sort of minimal written response to LA contact after de registering.

I don’t home educate, would add.

Actual home education is (normally) a lot tougher than getting your DC into school every morning. Ticking the box marked HE, telling your sleeping teen that there’s a pizza in the freezer and heading off to work can be quite a lot easier in the short term (though I’m sure most parents in the latter position have been through hell on the way to that state).

HE is legal in most democracies but usually a lot more restricted and controlled than it is in the U.K. - eg with compulsory annual SATS. No idea how that works in practice.

It seems like the same old arguments keep coming out regarding home education. It might be best to just pull up an old thread (there are plenty) and actually READ what home educators are saying before you rush to judgement.

zzzzz

My mother had to keep a daily record of everything we had done. She'd write down things such as which lesson we had completed in the book, how many corrections we had, etc. She told us that this was legally required of her so that she could indicate what we were learning.

We were very fortunate in that our homeschooling supervisor could see that Mum really knew what she was doing. It got to a point where his "visits" usually consisted of dropping off practice copies of the provincial achievement tests (children in my area write them at the end of Grade 6 and Grade 9; they used to write them at the end of Grade 3 as well) and maybe coming for coffee.

I think she was pulling your leg a little there ag, unless you are doing overseas?

Tbh, my life is infinitely easier now one child has gone to school. HE is certainly not the easy option.

Getting SEN coverage in state ed can be a PITA tbh and that is why many homeschool. That is assuming that you can even get a suitable place. Our borough has just had a very scathing report about Sen coverage and they definitely deserve it.

Agreed, our local school is lovely and we have been very happy with how #1 has settled there. But #2 is only 6, and not ready yet.