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.

LAs can’t cope with the backlog of DOLS authorisations, nor fund SEN properly so that parents are not forced to remove their children from school, because the child can’t cope. Given that LAs cannot carry out their own statutory responsibilities to children in schools, where are the resources going to come from to fund these additional checks?

@ohrainydays

No it’s about children’s rights. The right to a personalised education, the right to learn at their own pace and the right to learn about their choice of subjects. In their choice of environment they find safe; to choose who they associate with (not 29 other random kids their own age); amongst kids properly supervised by adults who don’t have to flap about a risk assessment in order to intervene in the rare cases of bullying in Home Ed groups. To learn with people who intimately know their special educational needs if any and can adjust to them without a 12 month review period and a fight with the school. Their right to a private family life without complete strangers being in the perfect position to abuse them.

The anti Home Ed lobby want to ignore the rights of children as laid out above. They attempt to deprive kids of those rights by smearing their parents and accusing them of selfishness as you just implied.

We are coming up to the summer holidays again. The traditional time where schooled kids parents start exclaiming ‘Oh what am I going to do with the kids for all that time?!?’. They will be doing less than we do that’s for sure as that’s our circumstances all year round and we educate our kids at the same time with likely less income and more expense. HE parents bring selfish and focussing on their rights indeed.

@ohrainydays

My point is that the anti-HE lobby (yes there is one) will not be satisfied with a mandatory register. The hypothetical abusive ‘HE’er’ would ignore a mandatory register. So then they will start lobbying for the next invasion of privacy and children’s rights. Such as mandatory home inspections, mandatory interviews in private with the kids and on and on it will go. Part of the recently closed Children Not in School consultation are suggestions to allow LA’s to track the movement of HE kids as to what groups they attend and when/how often by forcing all groups HE’ers attend to also maintain registers and share the details with the Local Authority. Not too far off microchipping. Yes it’s an exaggeration but based on a grain of truth.

A witch hunt for the hypothetical super villain pretending to HE will never be satisfied. All it will do is further stigmatise and harm HE families every further step it advances. The argument of ‘oh well these precautions are not meant to harm you of course only ‘the bad ones’” never holds up to reality. Give an official power over core parts of a families private life whilst giving said family no power of appeal and stigmatise them to the rest of society and that power will be abused. One LA recently just got rid of a children’s Social Services Officer for grooming children under their care. This would happen in the Home Ed community also except no one would believe if we complained.

Some people have negative experiences with HE. A lot more have negative experiences with schools. A lot more kids are victims of abuse and attend school regularly but are nevertheless missed, some even abused by other pupils or the staff but nobody ponders whether schools should be allowed unlike HE.

The anti-home ED lobby includes:

Most LA’s
The ADCS
The Humanists Society
The Children’s Commissioner
The DfE
Several Lords/MPs such as Lord Soley and Frank Field MP

Somewhat connected are most schools as they have a vested interest in discouraging the possibility that their service may not be what’s right for all kids. Teachers normally take a dim view of HE as some see it is a challenge to their professional standing (even though nobody ever claimed a HE parent could try and teach multiple groups of 30+ strangers).

@ohrainydays

You are simply wrong and frankly ignorant on the subject. If a child deregisters from a school they are automatically put on their LA’s register already. Go and learn a bit about the subject and come back later.

The fact you are willing to expose innocent families to harassment and abuse for making a legal decision in the best interests of their kids is disappointing. Also that you take my hyperbole as a literal fact even after I have explained that it’s an exaggeration to demonstrate a point simply exposes your bigotry.

Thanks for making my other point though; concerns and complaints of HE families are ‘paranoid ranting’ not something the rest of society should take seriously. That kids to live outside ‘the system’ (I.e schools) should not be legal proves my point that a mandatory register will not satisfy people like you. What you actually want is for HE to be illegal. It’s not enough that our kids are seen by family, other adults, the rest of society, doctors, hospitals, dentists, opticians, tutors etc no we are ‘entirely out of the system’ and so must be trying to hide something.

What a lot of people there are who are too scared to say outright they don't like HE.

let's be honest here people; 'educational neglect' is what you're using to say I DONT LIKE HOME EDUCATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!%%&#+£(£:£+£;

Abuse isn't exclusive t o He, homeschool, whatever you want to call it.

Your points have no merit. As other's have highlighted, there are many other alternatives t o a register, which strangely have been blanked by the the anti -h.e busybodies on this thread.

Poster s have tried to get through to you with valid, ideas, thoughts and opinions which you've ignored, or pretended to mis-interpret to cause friction.

Poster's have then used humour in a way to get th eir argument across, which again has been picked apart (although I'm convinced you knew it was humour, I'll give you some credit and assume you're stupid), and tak en literally. It screams desperation on your part

to Anyone that thinks the examples of LA interaction are scaremongering: I challenge you to try and defend your children's right's when one brownnosing jobsworth is coming after you like the terminator. But saying that, you'd probably get along with them - you can all be close-minded and prejudiced together.

the ULTIMATE in kudos to @Minky3 who's patience is admirable.

ohrainydays I am really sorry you had this experience. Nobody is trying to minimise it.

I just don't think registering home educators would necessarily help. For example, children who are already on the CP register are still abused , children are abused at school, in foster care and at home. Being on a register and being "seen by professionals" regularly doesn't stop abuse.

Kids are repeatedly raped while in school, too. School, and all its inspections, does not stop it.

for you about that tho rainy

"Safeguarding checks need to exist to protect the minority who are being abused or neglected under the cover of HE."

How would these checks be carried out? What would they entail? Should they also be done to children who are below school age?

'Busybodies' BUSY BODIESSSSS as in plural. Multiple. More than one.
If I wanted tk call you personally a busy body I would. I find it despicable that you think I'd pick on anyone who's gone through what you have.

OK, so to do be able to discuss this we first need to establish what you mean by "the system". I would assume you meant "the school system". But now I think you actually mean "the world outside your home". Is that right?

Also, what do you think would have helped you?

Safeguarding checks need to exist to protect the minority who are being abused or neglected under the cover of HE.

I'm sorry you went through what you did ohrainydays but what is the answer. They'd never have found us when H.edding as was barely living at our property, usually on the road. We sent in any info they asked for but might have received it months after they sent the original.

We do need to check all children during school holidays especially, as parents could so easily abuse their children then. During the pre school years is also a time when parents could abuse without officials realising.
In fact I was told that december was when abusive parents were usually at their worst.
There's a thread today about grooming that school didn't pick up on.

I've also posted, rainydays, and I was home educated. I don't agree with you. I'm sorry that you had the horrendous experience you had, but there are also children who are raped literally at school, including by teachers. No one suggests that's caused by the fact the child went to school.

Parents absolutely do have and should have the right to decide what education their child should have. They have that right because, in general, parents know their children better than anyone else and are therefore best placed to decide what they need. The existence of some bad parents does not negate that principle.

I used the term 'busybodies', I've just checked it's there.
I did say 'you', you're right. It was aimed at the 'you' as in the pro-register people as a whole. I wasn't directing it at you personally.
Not that my words mean anything on here, and you can discard it or accept it if you want, I'd never, ever pick on anyone because of abuse. It just doesn't make sense, it's weird, and its a topic close to home. I'm sure you can accurately interpret that.
I could've, and evidently should've w orded it differently. Inconsideration and laziness on my part.