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.

not my experience with one family. they do not let dc use technology at all and dc are not allowed to leave the house without parents. at all.

Well that’s not just homeschooling is it? It’s not a reason to feel sorry for all homeschoolers only for kids whose parents micromanage their interactions and comings and goings.

I found HE difficult. I never thought i would need to do it and was thrown into it
We had 2 hours tutoring a week, 1 for English 1 for maths and I had to almost study myself in evenings to prepare to teach and help dd

HappeeAgain
That's absolutely appalling.

What should have happened is that any concerns observed in school should have been passed to the designated safeguarding lead. if there were enough concerns at any given point, the safeguarding lead would inform social services. Social services do any investigations and draw the relevant conclusions.

@HappeeAgain

How sad.

Almost exactly what happened to a friend of mine (who is now HE her child)

The child has PDA so masked very well at school, and the school thought the mum was making the meltdowns at home etc and school refusal up. Also the child is very keen to dress themselves and so would come in in dirty clothes and messy hair etc.

Ended up with SS getting involved as the school assumed negligence. So upsetting to see that happen to a family who are doing their best for their child with SEN. They're all much happier HE.

Also the child is very keen to dress themselves and so would come in in dirty clothes and messy hair etc.
The school would be right to raise that as a concern.

It's for social services to establish if there is any neglect going on. Not school.

Flip this on its head. Child attends school and appears to not be washed and dressed properly. Turns out they were being neglected and the outcome was so tragic that it triggered a serious case review. First thing would be to blame the school for safeguarding failings because professionals failed in their duty of care. A school saying 'we have observed X' is neutral. A school deciding 'yes we see X but it's probably nothing so I'll ignore safeguarding training in case mum gets upset with is' is a school failing in its duty of care because that would be the school making a pronouncement on guilt/innocence (which isn't their place).

It is not for a school to investigate. It is not for a school to decide there is abuse or neglect. It is for a school to follow safeguarding procedures.

Raising a concern based on safeguarding training and passing it to relevant professionals who are trained to work with families and establish risk is the school's job.

It has been dreadful. I knew about HE but never thought I’d end up doing it and never in a million years thought I’d do it twice but I will for my youngest as well because we can’t move and the LA have acted appallingly
Ss actually were ok although the CP investigation was v difficult they were thorough and listened but it was all unnecessary. Teachers trying to be social workers/police/spies/whatever the hell they thought they were has been damaging

I have two friends who are HE their children. One has help from tutors and, while giving some wonderful learning experiences to her children, makes sure that they are getting a good grounding in the essentials like reading, writing, comprehension, maths...
The other is a massively clever scientist who takes an indulgent approach to her two developing their own learning. They have great days out. Strangely enough there is a great bias towards science-type projects. One is now 12 and can hardly string a written sentence together and I worry for him, at what point will that be addressed. Problem is, I think most kids would prefer the interesting build a rocket project to learning to write, but being able to write is kind of important...
So I am uneasy about how HE seems to just wander along with no regulation or oversight. Sorry about that.

Yes @MaisyPops I didn't word that correctly.

Of course the school were right to raise concern.

But it was the sneaking and spying and rudeness and failure to believe anything my friend said (& acting very unprofessionally all round) was more what pushed my friend to HE rather than the school being concerned for her child.

Basically they refused to accept the child had any SEN and would rathe the mother was making the entire thing up. They even wrote in an SS letter that she'd had her child diagnosed by someone on the internet. When what she'd actually done was given up on the CAHMS wait time and paid thousands for a private assessment.

Yes even with nhs diagnoses and care plans I was still accused of FII (munchausens by proxy)
Having got all the files it’s hard to see all he medical evidence cast aside and hundred of pages of speculation. Things like
‘Something just isn’t right I can’t put my finger on it’
‘I think the mother has munchausens’

Continuously - Hmmmm. All my DS learned from school was that he was ‘different’ and someone to be sneered at. That children can be very unkind. That you just have to keep your head down and try not to draw attention to yourself to get through the day. Personally, I feel more sorry for him and the many other children like him going through the school system than I do about HE children. His experience of school is not something I’d like him to be able to ‘bond’ with other children over. My other DS is still in school but most of his friends and people he socialises with are outside school. He’s developed more independence from his activities outside school than he has in the classroom.

That makes sense PoxAlert.

I think sometimes people can be quick yo argue that schools raising concerns (which they are legally bound to do) is a pronouncement of guilt.

I see some poor safeguarding advice on here (threads where someone is concerned about a child and asks if they should report it leading it lots of pile ons attacking the OP and telling them to mind their own business), which is why I maybe got a bit frustrated there. Sorry.

Categorically schools shouldn't investigate.
They should pass on the information they have and the concerns they have. Nothing more.
It might be that a school does have grounds for concerns but actually There's a piece missing between what school see and the full situation. That wouldn't make them wrong for presenting what is in front of them.

Had students who are home educated and there is a mixed bag, some are extremely talented, some can’t handle any criticism AT ALL (used to being told they are brilliant no matter what) but all are much more worldly and catch up gaps in grammar really well.

I think it defeats the point of home education if there is regulation from the government.

I don't think that there should be an approval process, but I do think that checks should be made. The HE I know would fiercely disagree with that, but as far as I'm concerned, it's too easy for abused kids to go unnoticed.

Before DS went to school, my two closest friends were planning to HE. Once DS went to school, and to their horror, started to enjoy it, we barely saw them. They are absolutely against school, think it is evil. Neither of them have stepped foot inside one since they went decades ago, but the fact they had horrible experiences, has meant they don't want their kids to go through the same.
One of them also doesn't want their kid to be influenced by society. They told me they felt sorry for me, as I had to go back to work and send DS to school. I had always intended to HE, but I became a single parent, had to go back to work, and decided that school was for the best. I am under no illusion that our current education system is perfect, it is flawed, and does not work for everyone. It is currently working for DS, but if it wasn't I would look into alternatives.

But let’s really consider schools and how children mix in them, because ceirtainly in my experience early exposure to diversity very quickly leads to early development of prejudices and cliques of PLU. The Asian kids won’t talk to the black and white kids. The rich kids and poor kids just don’t get each other. Everyone stays on “their” side of the playground or on “their” tables. Even the girls and boys only talk to each other in a romantic context.

I work in a large, very diverse secondary school and this is not my experience at all.

The other HE I know are proper lentil weavers. They either live as part of the local off grid community, or are super MC hippies. Most of them send their kids to the local Steiner school (that's held in a yurt), a day or two a week. The school was going to get government funding, but they refused to put a bullying policy in place (children from MC hippy homes apparently don't bully), so you have to pay to go. It's basically private school for rich hippies.

Sorry I sound like a right judgey twat. I'm surprised at how my views on HE have changed over the years. I think it can be a wonderful thing, and parents should have the right to do it, but I think kids need to be checked on.

I think some parents who HE have very low expectations for their kids. This includes the mum whose DS spent all day on minesweeper and argued that he was learning lots from it, the HE whose kids are learning little but defends this by saying they can learn stuff once they are adults as learning does not happen just as children, and HE who think science and maths beyond the very basics does not matter as they have never used this info in their adult life.

I don’t think you can have any true idea of HEing unless you’re actually involved in the community in some way. Lots of HEders are understandably defensive and reluctant to share the details of their lives and child’s education so you’re not necessarily going to hear all the “success” stories. As soon as you say you’re HEing the ears prick up and the radar gets switched on to detect any slight clue it’s failing the child. Like all communities there will be those who aren’t doing their best, same with children who attend school or church or gymnastics or whatever. There are always examples of it’s not being done well. HEing is no different. It’s disingenuous to say “well the two HEers I know can’t read at 12” as proof that HE doesn’t work.

I think the point is that every child has the legal right to access a full-time education appropriate to their interests and aptitudes. They also have a right to be safe.

At the moment, some children are not having that legal right to an education fulfilled - either in school, because of the mismatch between their aptitudes (which could include specific SEN) and what mainstream education provides, or out of school, because the home education they receive is not appropriate.

Some children are not safe, again this could be in school (e.g. through bullying or through schools not picking up on signs of abuse which takes place elsewhere) or at home.

The question therefore becomes 'How can we, as a whole society, ensure that all children receive an appropriate education and are kept safe, wherever they are.'

This could well involve:

• Huge expansion of Special School provision
• Total overhaul of SEN support in schools
• Education provided by outreach (like the hospital education service sending teachers out to those who cannot be in school) or electronically rather than by children being in the physical confines of school.
• Arrangements for monitoring of home education by those who understand and support it as an option.
• Careful overhaul of safeguarding of children to take into account different settings where those children may be found.

All of these require at base, knowledge of every child in the country and where they are educated, at the very least.

With so many failing schools around I'm not sure who I would trust to assess this tbh.

Besides, HE is such a tiny proportion of families it really would be a hammer to crack a nut job to do what you propose, financially and logistically. We can't afford to run schools for the masses properly, retain teachers etc...where will the money and will come from to assess such a tiny minority?

I think rather than having HE children register, because they’re not in school, perhaps all children should register on a welfare register. Because this isn’t just about them being educated outside of school, it’s about their overall welfare. It’s just that school makes it easier to spot the ones who aren’t being cared for properly. My son was spending his days hiding in the bathroom or under the coats in the cloakroom and receiving zero education at all whilst in the school building. None of this information was shared with me until it had been going on for 6 weeks. The person who was supposed to spot that he wasn’t ok in school wasn’t doing that. And if they were they weren’t sharing it. When he started refusing school they looked to me to fix it. I can’t fix what the teacher isn’t doing in the classroom. Home wasn’t the issue. School was. This needs addressed too. It’s not just HE children that are vulnerable to educational neglect. I would support a register for all children to monitor their welfare.

I think rather than having HE children register, because they’re not in school, perhaps all children should register on a welfare register.

Exactly.

With so many failing schools around

That's a really interesting perception and way of putting it. I would put it another way round, in that I would say 'With a large number (but still a small proportion of the whole population) of children, particularly but not exclusively those with SEN, being failed by the specific school they are in at a particular time...'

I don't think there are many, if any, schools who fail all the children who attend them all of the time. (Even schools which fail the specific metrics we put so much store in - Ofsted, league tables etc can be very successful for some pupils).

However, I do think that there are a small number of children at ANY given school, however brilliant the school is for all its other pupils, who are being failed by that specific school at that specific moment.

Was the school DS was taken out of to HE a 'failing school'? No. It was good for the vast majority of its pupils, the vast majority of the time. Was it failing DS in that class, with that teacher and that specific peer group, in that particular term? Yes, absolutely.

where will the money and will come from to assess such a tiny minority?

So you are saying that this tiny minority is sufficiently unimportant not to matter? I suppose I start from the point that ANY single child who is neglected, abused or uneducated - whether that neglect, abuse or lack of education happens at school or elsewhere - is one too many, and so would want to set up systems that were universal, rather than saying any group is 'too small to bother with'.

Only if you deal with the piss poor state education system first....