To think that Home Educated children should be inspected every year?

[jennymanara]

I think home education can work. I know a fair number of parents who are home educating from some who teach their kids to those who are unschoolers.
But I also think there are parents who home educate who are not up to the job and claim to be unschooling, but are in fact just educationally neglecting their children.
There should be an annual inspection of all kids being home schooled. This should check that children are actually getting some form of education, and not just left for example to play minesweeper all day, as one single mother I knew did with her teenage son.

Data sharing already happens if abuse is suspected for any child.

Therein lies the issue. The children that are invisible aren't HE children. They're abused or neglected children that the media is claiming are home educated because they've never been registered with a school, presumably most of them also haven't been registered with a GP or seen by anyone outside the home at all since birth, if their birth was even registered. Which would or should raise safeguarding concerns on its own.

We don't attend many groups at the moment but we're very visible. We're out and about in the community on a daily basis, seen by doctors, dentists, nurses, opticians, shop assistants, librarians and so on and so forth. Why should we be presumed guilty until proven innocent when none of these people have raised any safeguarding concerns?

There are any number of such ways that actually give a positive reason for HE families to make themselves known to the LA and to even if subtly put HE kids in the LA’s sight for a light touch safeguarding check. Say for example the LA EHE co-ordinator arranges a free tour of a normally fee paying museum on behalf of local registered HE kids. The officer is there at the start of the day to confirm attendance and welcome the families to the event, provide an opportunity to ask questions of them and share other useful info.

That would miss the HE who HE specifically to hide abuse. Sorry I know you are trying to be imaginative, but I think your suggestion shows a naivety.

@Awaywiththefairies27 we are not talking about children who have not been registered at birth.
My OP wasn't even about abuse, but about educational neglect.

@jennymanara

I’m not being naive. You are simply conjuring a hypothetical child out of thin air to justify eroding people’s rights and privacy. So if you get a mandatory register what about the HE’ers who ignore such a register?

So you impose a right on council officers to stop and search any suspected HE’ers out in school hours to ascertain identity.

So what about the HE’ers who ignore a register and stop going outside?

So you authorise the sharing of bank details of all suspected HE’ers to monitor their shopping habits to detect if they are buying things likely for school age kids so you can raid their homes?

What about the HE’ers who ignore a register; don’t go outside in school hours; and start only using cash?

On and on and on you can go with the hypothetical demon Home Ed family out to thwart the poor dedicated Local Authority and neglect/abuse their children!

Again I make the point; people in favour of a mandatory register are not generally in favour of ‘carrots’ as a tool with HE families. Because actually they are just anti-HE and want to stop it where possible; rather than support parents to make a success of it.

Of course I am not talking about doing those things. Unless a childs birth has not been registered, they should be in a school or HE register.

One last post before I hide this depressing thread. And I know, you'll call me out on a 'deflection tactic' by talking about schools. You speak about educational neglect. If you're going to tackle down on the minority of again, a minority that neglect/abuse their kids IN ANY WAY, you should at least pretend to care about the majority that are being educationally neglected in the very institute s you promote.
Case in point (and this will also link in/cause eye rolling amongst yall who believe further ed is impossible unless school is a predecessor).
Dh was 'under the radar' throughout his childhood. Putting aside his home life, he left school with ZERO Gcses', and was barely literate. He spent twelve years under the watchful eyes of safeguarding experts, SEN, as well as teachers, who had no clue that he couldn't read/write. TWELVE YEARS.
After leaving school he managed to get onto an apprenticeship which led to him being a qualified engineer. He then taught himself how to read/write well enough to be able to cope in daily life. Got himself into university.
He now has a masters, is a published author of many science journals and holds symposiums which are attended by hundreds of people.
four years ago he was diagnosed as having extreme dyslexia. It took ONE HOUR to diagnose.
So where was the checks donefor him at school? How could someone be allowed to go completely unnoticed? He couldn't read or write! 30 hours a week, for twelve years, and not one adult in schools/ the council whatever realised.
You can't target us for things that happen across the damn board.

My point is ‘invisible’ kids whose parents are hiding behind HE to abuse as a reason for a mandatory register. As these kids are by their nature ‘invisible’ no one can prove how many there are but everyone ‘knows’ they are out there.

So after a mandatory register what of those who have avoided the register to deliberately abuse kids? They are ‘invisible’ so no one can prove it but everyone ‘knows’ they are out there etc etc.

Apologies if I’ve missed it somewhere in the thread, but does OP actually define educational neglect? Is there a clear legal definition? If it’s failing to diagnose additional needs, well that happened to my ds, a pp’s dh, and countless other people in a school. Is it failing to support diagnosed needs? Well that happens in schools up and down the country every day. (And yes, I’m also aware of schools that do a very good job.) Is it teaching a curriculum that’s too broad / too narrow / too religious? Is it being too academic, or not academic enough? Focusing too much on life skills or neglecting to teach the life skills needed to function? Is it not taking and passing a batch of exams at 16? (The Scottish school system still allows those who turn 16 by December to leave at Christmas without sitting their exams.) It all gets too subjective, and any of the above could happen to schooled children as well as home ed ones. And as I’ve said before, current legislation already allows for intervention if the education provided isn’t “suitable for the child’s age, aptitude, and ability”.

@jennymanara - children’s services have been cut so badly that they won’t offer/appt a visit to check to our 26month old. They sent a developmental questionnaire for our own information that they specifically say for us not to post back. So basically there are no checks until school age and kids could be neglected all the way up to that point.

I understand a couple of gatepoint checks, eg abcs, numbers (reading and writing) by 7 and basic literacy/numeracy by 14 and a chance for the child to know options available for gcses, jobs etc. But why yearly checks? Isn’t that gonna be hugely expensive and people will still slip through the net (ie the register will pick up those at lowest risk of educational neglect)?

The other option is to make it a condition of receiving child benefit. And/or chase all NI numbers given out.

"Unless a childs birth has not been registered, they should be in a school or HE register."

You have missed out a group of children. The EOTAS group who the LA are supposed to be providing an education for but frequently don't.

I was home educated. The last thing we need is for home educating parents to have to do ridiculous amounts of paperwork like teachers have to - and I fear that's where this kind of suggestion could end up leading us. In addition, local authorities often expect "school at home" from home educating parents, and fail to understand other teaching methods.

If we're going to talk about educational neglect, then perhaps the government/local authorities should be considering the near half of children in school who don't get 5 good GCSEs. In my view, that's pretty neglectful.

Minky I think your suggestions work well for HE families who are either genuinely behind it as a philosophy or who are “having to” because there are no suitable mainstream options (I don’t think that this is ok, I think all children should be able to access an appropriate state school place, but that’s a different thread).

How will you safeguard those children who are removed from the state sector into “Home Ed” as a deliberate strategy to avoid the escalation of safeguarding concerns?

Ohrainydays, i’m so sorry that happened to you.

I’d happily support registration if I believed it would be effective in preventing cases like yours. I worry that it would deflect much needed resources from children at risk - the horrible truth is we as a society do not prioritise the welfare of vulnerable children enough to pay the money needed, budget cuts are so swingeing and children pay the price.

(FWIW I care not a jot about parents’ rights: I care about children’s rights and believe parents have the responsibility to ensure their children’s rights - to a suitable education, for example.)

@ohrainydays I'm so sorry this happened to you. You should have been flagged up by someone for not being seen by anyone in that time. The system failed you horrifically.

A mandatory register and home visits wouldn't have prevented your terrible situation unfortunately. Abusers will always hide abuse. My cousins were fostered out and had horrific things happen to them too, sexual abuse, torture and forced to watch their puppy be killed by Foster dad, they were seen by social workers and numerous other authorities for the duration. They were only removed when my one of my other aunties tried to adopt them years later. I was physically abused by my mother all my childhood and starved most of my teenage years through poverty, the school never picked it up either.

‘near half of children in school who don't get 5 good GCSEs’ is it that bad? We are really failing our nation’s children, aren’t we. And stats like that don’t have me rushing to enrol my children or accepting that my children’s right to a life-enhancing education is better placed in the state’s hands.

You are simply conjuring a hypothetical child out of thin air to justify eroding people’s rights and privacy.

Quite a rich charge from someone who literally invented a whole conversation in their head and presented it as evidence a few pages back.

That would miss the HE who HE specifically to hide abuse
But the defining feature is NOT that the children are HE, it that they are being cared for by criminals who abuse them. How does a register protect that child? Children are abused who trot into school every day. How does knowing they are there help?

This reminds me of the endless assessments for SEN. Assessment isn’t support and registers aren’t safeguards. How do we protect ALL our children from neglect/abuse in school, out of school or never schooled?

@LisaSimpsonsbff

Bring it on, I haven’t seen anything resembling evidence from you as yet. I illustrated the attitude of many LA’s based on Home Educators experiences. Let me know when you want to share anything of worth to the debate.

The crux of the argument always comes down to should Home Ed be legal? Because a register; 1 visit a year; 2; 7; private interviews with children; lie detector tests; tracking microchips; all of these things in theory could be bypassed by someone wanting to use Home Ed as a cover for abuse. The anti HE lobby know this and want to make HE illegal or unworkable bit by bit. There will always be the odd genuine case of a problem that doesn’t get picked up or the hypothetical HE super villain to use as a scarecrow to attack Home Education and threaten the rights of children.