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.

You know what, I couldn't care less if someone came in and inspected my home. I seriously considered HE for a variety of reasons, and discussed forming a group with some other people (all normal!).

Being aggressively defensive and dancing around the issue of "parental ownership" of children is the very reason why I think there does need to be some kind of monitoring of HE.

Schools are of course not all brilliant. Far from it. But otoh they are not all dens of sin full of miserable bullied pupils wasting their time. And I am far from convinced that all HE children are skipping merrily off on nature rambles and enthusiastically engaging with museum visits every week.

@jennymanara and @ohrainydays - I’ll try to explain.

Would you do a yearly check on computers (hard drive and internet search history) to check nothing illicit? Can you see why some people would object?

Ok apply the same reasoning to home ed.
As people have said, some people who do home ed have had LA ‘inspections’ where the LA unjustly judge there to be a problem when actually the education was fine or better than they would receive at school. This is why they would object to a yearly inspection - because the LA were incompetent at inspecting and caused a lot of problems to them and their children.

It is all a balance of factors. The above objection has to be balanced against some abusive HEs being picked up by a yearly inspection regime as well as the same regime missing those who deliberately hide. As well as the opportunity cost (the vulnerable people who could have been helped by using the money instead to fund social services better). There may also be legal issues to consider (eg privacy, right to family life etc).

Does this make sense?

I have suggested a compromise measure where education is checked at various ‘gatepoints’ - eg 7, 14, 17 so kids can be checked for v basic skills, but also signposted to their options for the next stage and/or screened and offered help for SEN. Ideally this would apply to kids at school too because it provides independent scrutiny about individual children. Schools are under enormous pressure and as pps have said, some fall through the cracks (eg not able to read at 14 despite going to school). Options for physical exercise and mental health can also be discussed.

I agree OP. At various points during my childhood my brother and I were ‘home educated’. Except my brother was lazy and unmotivated so my mum gave up trying to get him doing any work. He spent the best part of years 3 to 8 playing Xbox and Runescape. By the time he got to high school he was so far behind he just ended up dropping out before graduating. I think he would have been so much better off at school with some structure.

Are people being aggressively defensive?

But otoh they are not all dens of sin full of miserable bullied pupils wasting their time. obviously not, but for the HE community MANY of their children have been hurt at school, so it’s hardly surprising they describe their experience.

And I am far from convinced that all HE children are skipping merrily off on nature rambles and enthusiastically engaging with museum visits every week. is that what good HE looks like ???

define 'successful'?

I think this is a tough one. I HE'd my DS for what would have been his first year of school with an initial intention of continuing indefinitely. But I literally could not come close to meeting his need to be with other kids so he now attends a small independent forest school which we are insanely lucky to have access to.

A few years ago I would have railed against the idea that HE'd kids need to be checked up on. My DS was years ahead academically because we just unschooled as a way of life and he learned rapidly as his natural curiosity is voracious. I was nervous of the idea of inspection and even from when DS was a toddler, I had started keeping a folder on my desktop of photographs of anything "educational" that we did. When I put up posters, bought games or books I'd look at them and our house as an assessor would. I resented the idea that someone would have to come and examine me and my parenting and decide if I could continue as I saw fit with my own child, as if I wouldn't know what was best for him. It does feel like an intrusion and while I understood why it would happen, it still feels like an overstep.

However, in the time that I did spend home educating, I did see children who were being let down. People who described the most dynamic home educating lifestyles online who were, in reality, really not providing their children with as much as they truly needed. And don't get me wrong, school wouldn't necessarily have met their needs either but there was often quite the gap in the way their parents described their education at home compared to the reality. I saw an awful lot of home educating families who I ultimately felt had chosen HE as a way of isolating their kids from aspects of the world that they didn't like. None of this was enough to be a concern in terms of child protection but it was sad to me as I had seen HE as a way of opening up my child's world and tbh, it ended up just being closed off in a different way.

I also became aware of a handful of families where there is, imo, genuine concern. There is, not too far from where I live, a number of families who have relocated here from other countries because of the freedom to HE with minimal interference. They are religious fundamentalists and their children live an extremely sheltered life and are in all honesty deeply indoctrinated in a way that will severely hamper their ability to engage in the world around them, now and as adults in the future. It's very, very worrying and after meeting them, I think I'd happily submit to more regular HE check-ups or adhere to some sort of 'world curriculum' if it could possibly lead to children like that having a better chance of genuinely learning about the world.

I mean that for independent schools too. It's good to have the freedom to teach our children as they need but we should be aware that there are parents who warp that freedom to suit their own 'needs' rather than their children's. I don't want to benefit from a freedom that allows a child to be abused. There isn't an easy solution, I want my DS to keep on having the best type of schooling I can find for him, which just isn't any of the current state offerings. But ultimately I want to find a way for him to have that, while also ensuring that other children aren't slipping through the cracks.

I’d like to see schools particularly special schools inspected.

I've followed this thread with interest since it started.

Throughout the first part of the thread, the term "unschooling" is thrown around and I'm curious as to what that means to the people using it. If one follows the tabloids, "unschooling" is certainly the buzz word of the moment in discussions of Home Education.

I think in order to answer any questions regarding a register, it'd be easier for everyone if yo u, OP, could firstly clarify what you mean "unschooling" (preferably without the use of a link (!)), so we are all on an open playing field and we can minimise misunderstandings (as seems to be the case here). The definitions given thus far tend to be a bit vague.

If, as seems likely, evidence - or (since little research may be available) logic - suggests that interventions such as Ofsted inspections would raise HE standards and / or help mitigate risk of parental neglect or abuse by a small minority, this outweighs home educators’ wish for privacy IMO.

CBeth thank you. I, and many others, have tried to raise similar points (earlier in this thread )and to explain and discuss HE in this thread. Unfortunately some people just aren't willing or able to see our point of view. I think it's very hard to understand HE for people who are used to the way schools work.

@Loopytiles Ofsted exists purely to inspect schools on behalf of those parents who have chosen to delegate their children's education to someone else. Home education is the default setting, you have to opt in to school.
So we have a situation where Ofsted inspections have led to teachers training their pupils just enough and the right things to pass an Ofsted inspection. Nothing more.
If Ofsted were inspecting home education, exactly the same thing would occur.

Do you really imagine it's not possible to hide evidence of abuse and neglect just for the duration of an inspection?

Ofsted are idiots anyway, my son's school was heavily criticised for not reaching the govt targets for ethnic diversity. A tiny rural school with 30 pupils, what are they supposed to do, kidnap kids to fulfill the quota?

It feels to me that you are interfering in a subject about which you know precious little. We have a legal right in the UK to educate to our chosen philosophy. As parents we choose how our kids are to be educated & home educators have decided not to go with the cultural norm. It is their complete legal right. There are such diverse, varied & legitimate reasons to home Ed & just posting an opinion when you’re not even in that world seems stupid to me. Why do we need unsubstantiated opinions cluttering up the world?

Not sure where you live but our home schoolers are checked yearly and they decide if you’re capable of homeschooling or they give you a court order🤷🏼‍♀️

As a teacher I wholeheartedly support the parents who decide to educate their children at home. School is a one size fits all system, however much it’s dressed up to have differentiation for each lesson.
Who is more invested in a child’s well being and education than their parent?

People who are wanting to have these parents monitored I ask you two questions.

Why?
In England it’s the parents responsibility to educate their children either by sending them to school or otherwise. This is the law. It’s not the state’s responsibility.

The state provides schools for those parents who don’t want to actively educate their child. To make sure the state is providing a good education OFSTED was set up to monitor and report to parents.

If a parent is taking on the responsibility to provide education for their child what point is monitoring? The parent knows what they’ve been doing at home.

We are so used to a nanny state that people don’t even know that it’s the parents responsibility and not the state.

2nd Q
Who is more qualified to know what their child is capable of doing and know when they are reaching their potential than the person who is living with and educating that child?

An untrained bureaucrat seeing a child for a few minutes or even reading a report written by the parents will have no idea if the child is reaching their individual potential.

And these bureaucrats are wanting to wield such power as to force a child back into the school system that traumatised them in the first place!

This makes no sense at all.

Those parents whose children go to school and thrive there are fortunate but you should not have a say in the lives of other families with very different children.

What would you say to having the contents of your fridge inspected a few times a year and be required to send the council your meal plans so they can monitor if you are feeding your family correctly?

You’d laugh at this wouldn’t you abd maybe be outraged?

That’s because as a parent it’s your responsibility to feed your children. No one questions this.

Well as a parent it’s also our responsibility to educate our children. That’s the law. Most of us send them to school to be educated there on our behalf.

So why would the state feel it’s in their remit to monitor those families who are fulfilling their side if of law by educating their child themselves?

If we don’t see the need to have every parents fridge and meal plans inspected why should the education side of parenting be any different ?

Absolutely @user1494182820 and @HeyAreYouOk 👏

Another comment I'd like to make: if I were home educating I wouldn't personally be too bothered about visits from the LA. I'm a confident, articulate, middle class person who's worked in education and in the civil service. I know what my rights are, and what my children's rights are.

Inspection is going to be harder for people who are not middle class. Not necessarily because they are not doing a good job, but because chances are the inspector will be middle class, and that will influence their view of how families should be. An overly inspected system will almost certainly have an implicit class bias.

Do we want a system where working class kids have less options than middle class ones? It's bad enough that we have school selection by house price.

Another point: I don't think those of you who have not home educated /been home educated realise to what extent education and family life are entangled in home educating families. So what was suggested as an educational check now becomes (in practice) a check on all aspects of family life. Is it surprising to you that people aren't keen on that? Would you want someone coming to see what your child reads at bedtime, eats for every meal, plays after school, and so on? Oh, and remember, this person might have a completely different background to you, they will judge you, and if they judge that what you're doing isn't good enough, your child will be placed into an educational system that quite possibly they have left because they were deeply unhappy there.

To be fair I have had a person from the LA come round and talk to me about what we were doing. It was fine, BUT I really don’t think it provided any safeguarding or educational protection. So what is the point of making it mandatory?

Not even schools are inspected yearly! So why should Home ed parents! Maybe parents should be inspected at weekends and holiday time too? This is peoples homes not public property. 5 home educated children who were previously known to the authorities have been neglected or abused. How many do you think have been abused under the very nose of school that you so faithfully put your trust in? Almost 45% of teenagers attending school leave without getting the required grades in core subjects! How many in the dole queue are from a home ed background do you think? And as for some requesting that home ed children should be spoken to alone, would you let a stranger talk to your kids in private alone? And if the question was do they want to attend school and of course they should be given that opportunity if possible then I hope your all willing to have your schooled children spoken to alone in private by someone they don’t know and asked if they want to attend school and if they don’t like school and don’t want to go anymore then you are forced to home educate them! Maybe stop believing the papers and the one friend who was a bit weird who was home schooled(I do believe their are a lot of weird, shy, naughty, odd, Academically behind kids at school too) and our government cos they are always right!

Home education is NOT the “default setting”! I respect home educators’ wish for freedom and privacy, but don’t think that this outweighs the interests of DC from a small minority of families where there is poor quality or no actual education, neglect, or abuse.

“5 home educated children who were previously known to the authorities have been neglected or abused”.

Source of this stat is not given, but the true figure will be much higher. And some parents will provide a poor quality education.

Of course poor quality education and abuse happens in schools too, probably at higher rates. The state already has a framework in place to monitor schools.

patte you are absolutely correct in all that. The big problem with 'inspecting' HE is who will do it and will they be able to do a good job of it?

In my county we have had shocking incidents with people inspecting educational provision who had absolutely no training whatsoever, who were expecting HE to look like school in a house.

The neighbouring county is a completely different ball game. Someone had a recent 'inspection' that actually focused almost exclusively on all the new provisions the council had put in place for the HE community, like free swimming, skating, sports sessions for kids if attending during normal school hours...

In fact that is our actual plan if any of this BS legislation actually arrives...move counties.

....and neither visit in either county provided a) safeguarding or b) educational monitoring worth the paper it was written on.

Well the thread is at least a useful microcosm of how society doesn’t listen to the points Home Educators make. Very few proponents of a register and visits here have attempted to answer HE’ers challenges.

It’s much easier to say a register and monitoring will work because ‘magic’; than to go into any detail or answer the practical, legal and ideological flaws to this approach.

I can see why ohrainydays believes annual inspections would have rescued her. Perhaps they would have.