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.

@Tallgreenbottle Nobody has any idea how HE children are doing in the UK. The only research there has been is self selecting. Imagine if research into children's diet in the UK put an advert out for parents to take part in research into children's diets? I am pretty sure the results would show that every child ate at least 5 portions of fruit and veg every day.
And most local councils do no monitoring at all of HE children as I am sure you know.

@MadamHattie it was on you as the parent to ensure he was at least learning the national curriculum. And it was on you as the parent to ensure this was assessed. It's not hard to use the internet to download past papers and answers or even assess your kids understanding. You don't need a pgce for that generally did you expect the council to provide assessments for you? Because you only have to contact them and you would've been given a wealth of information.

And once that has been sorted I imagine there'll be a lot fewer children being home educated in the first place. And those that are will be through parental choice, not desperation.

When my sister was home educating one of her DS's there was someone who came around every October to review their work and how she got on, this was pretty sufficient but maybe two a year would be good?

Some years they didn't show up though

Funny @jennymanara as most councils do quite a lot in my experience. Here in Liverpool it is frequent and every home ed parent has the chance to build up a good relationship with them and the lea if they wish.

Absolutely agree. As a brownie leader, I knew of one family that home-schooled very well, and had very well-adjusted and intelligent children.

I also sadly knew a friend who was home schooled for most of her teenage years as her parents were both physically abusive and controlling and wanted to control her access to the outside world.

Personally, I agree that if home Ed. You should have to register with the LEA, ( even if you do it from the beginning so the child never needs to attend school).

You should have termly reviews by the LEA where the children are spoken to privately, and the LEA review the plans you have in place for their soical development, literacy and numeracy.

Incidentally the fully functional home. Ed family I know have told me they fully agree with this; as they know of other home. Ed families where the children very rarely get to mix with others.

I was HE less than 10 years ago (for the last 3 years of high school.)
My mother bought me a few books but didn’t encourage me to use them let alone enforce it and for those 3 years I basically did fuck all My mum was a crap parent in other areas too - it was easier for her to remove me from school than to actually help me re adjust to education after I was sexually assaulted at 13.
We got one check, my mother lied to the lady who came out from the LEA.
There were never any checks again, I fell through several nets and could easily still be NEET. However I got a job and am doing quite well despite my lack of qualifications (though I’m looking at doing an OU degree v soon). As far as I’m aware nothing has changed in our county with regards to home ed students.

I would definitely support more checks, but I’m unsure how effective they’d be. Abusive or crap parents would just lie through their teeth and wave off the LEA with a smile...

@tallgreenbottle Plenty of local authorities do not visit HE children. Yes guidance was recently published saying that all local authorities should, but it is guidance only. Local authorities do not even know all HE children who live in their area as there is no compulsory register. Moreover
"When local authorities offer to visit a home educating family, in 28 per cent of cases the family refuses"

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2019/02/04/number-home-schooled-children-doubles-four-yearschildrens-commissioner/

I am sure you know that HE blogs often advise rightly that local authorities can not legally compel a visit to HE children. They can ask to visit, but if the parent says no, there is nothing they can do.

If all HE children were already visited annually to check on their education, then I would not have posted this thread.

The whole point of home education is that the parents opt out of the role of Government in defining what it means for their child to “progress”. There are already court orders by which you can be forced to send your child to school.

@angrysquid I am sorry to hear that, and yes I have heard from other adults whose parents lied to any visitor. But the checks do need to be far more rigorous. Speaking to the child alone, and asking for proof of what the parent says the child has learned.
I am aware thought that the HE "community" would fight this tooth and nail. They fight even the tiniest attempt to oversee HE children.

@herculepoirot2 How can the court order parents to send their kids to school if the local authority can not even legally force a child or parent to meet and talk about what kind of education they are having? My guess is that these court orders would only ever be used if parents were in dispute and one took it to court.

'I'm not surprised parents are forced to remove children so often."

Also all the children with sen who get permanently excluded and have no school to go to.
Local Authorities are by law supposed to provide something at this point but most of the time they don't and many of those children are left without an education.

If they can't manage that then I doubt they will have the resources to chase up/ check up on home schoolers.

Yanbu. Home education can be brilliant, but it can also be awful, and the truth is that some children need protecting from their own parents.

I don't think most decent home educators would object, unless it involved forcing standardised testing which would be a step too far.

Checks would have to be very light touch, with no assumption that the national curriculum was important.

1. Is child being well cared for (ie look healthy, caring for teeth)
2. Can the child talk about stuff they have learned, or for some children can this be evidenced another way, including evidence of progression
3. Does the child go out in public in some way
4. Does the child report they are happy to be home educated

So if a parent chooses to educate in practical basket weaving only, then tis probably has to be accepted provided the baskets and skills get more sophisticated as the years go on, and the child is happy.

I would want the body checking HE children to see evidence every year that the child is learning things. I do think educational neglect is not taken seriously enough in Britain.

of course, the fact that some children can just disappear is frightening.

There was a channel 4 documentary about it, pointing out how can SOME children can be victims of terrible abuse or indoctrination. That would be worst case scenario, but we shouldn't let that happen. A yearly check is already nothing, but no check at all?

It's also true that the idea of SOME parents about HE is to do nothing at all, as they "learn as they go". It might be less damaging, but these kids will have to get a job one day, and without any qualification, it's not doing them a great favour either.

Local Authorities ( and governments that underfund education) do not care about educational neglect. They cause much of it.

jennymanara

I’m not saying you’re wrong. I just think educating your own child according to your lights is a right, and this isn’t really something the government should be interfering with.

I dont think parents should have rights, children are not possessions. They have responsibilities.

Yes, the responsibility to educate their children. But yes, they do have rights. They are the decision makers on behalf of their children, not the government.

Nobody has any idea how HE children are doing in the UK.

The tests for schooled children don’t tell us anything useful either.

I would want the body checking HE children to see evidence every year that the child is learning things. I do think educational neglect is not taken seriously enough in Britain.

There is significant educational neglect happening in schools all over the country. Children are learning the wrong things in the wrong ways and it’s a fucking disgrace!

There is lots of research into education in schools and it is rarely self selecting. Self selecting research is pretty useless as a research methodology.

@jennymanara we home educated our two boys for several years. We were never 'inspected' and they played Minecraft a LOT. For years actually and it seemed non stop at times. And that's all you would have seen them do or talk about if you knew us/came round to our house.

We didn't follow the national curriculum, in fact we didn't formally teach them anything. However Minecraft does have many educational benefits.

But what you won't have seen is that we talked with them/to them a LOT as well. Discussed anything and everything. We went on lots of days out. Where they showed an interest in anything, we went to find out more about it. We all learned something along the way.

My eldest taught himself how to strip down a computer and build one from scratch, getting himself a part time job at the age of 13, repairing computers for paying customers.

They both returned to mainstream education at the age of 14, because they wanted to. They settled in really well, mainly because it was a small school with amazing teachers.

Whilst many of his peers failed their GCSE English language and Maths, my eldest son passed with flying colours. In fact he got the highest scoring mark in literature. He's just taken 4 A levels.

My youngest has just taken his GCSEs and has 3 offers from 3 colleges in his chosen subject.

Unless you're actually living with a home ed family for some considerable time, day in day out, you have no idea what they are actually learning along the way. It's just that schools are very good at telling you what they are putting in front of the children, but that doesn't mean they are actually learning and retaining any valuable information. Both my kids are independent thinkers and doers, which is exactly what we wanted for them.

I think people get very worked up about kids having an ‘appropriate’ education - as in keeping in pace with their cohort.

A yearly check would be a lot of extra effort/money and quite intrusive. It might help to do something like an alphabet and number check at 7 (with info to access SEN services if appropriate) and basic literacy and numeracy at 14 (and give info on how to access gcses/qualifications) and a check at 17 to give info on options for work/study. Physical and mental health could be screened too.

Maybe kids at school should have this too as some kids do slip through the net and struggle. But it would cost a lot of money...