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.

farming their kids education off to the state system is for the best...

Hmm. That’s a pretty judgemental attitude.

One thing I wonder - how do HEdders afford it? Like, one if the reasons I “farm” out my child is because I have to work full time. Do you fit HE around a job? In which case how does childcare work?

@SmileEachDay

I think HE becomes a challenge financially if a parent has to leave work in order to do it. My family is fortunate enough to be able to get by on one source of income (dh works).
As far as other expenses go; I'm extremely good at budgeting, and I'm good at thinking outside the box in terms of education opportunities.
I'm a bargain hunter too!
Lot's of places offer free/discounted visits and whatnot. Libraries, museum's, Heritage Open Days, IntoFilm, to name a few.
We can also take advantage of not having to do things during term-time, when pricex tend to be hiked up.

Forgot to add, my kids are fortu nate to know a lot of people with different skills etc. Eg, one family member owns a successful bakery, so my kids have baked bread, cakes in a 'proper' bakery kitchen, my sister owns horses so my kids have been fortunate to have a mini 'apprenticeship ' with a farrier we know... You get the idea. A lot of HE share skills with each other.

Interesting, Coffee

Do you think it is a “middle class” choice - for want of a better phrase, with absolutely no criticism intended - one that is unavailable to those on low incomes, single parents etc.

The money side is something a lot of people wonder, but don't often ask lol .

I don't take it as criticism at all, I think it's a reasonable question.

I've met/spoken to HE that are on different incomes, or are single parents. Some will bring up that they struggle, some will say that they'r e fine. I think people can be taciturn in regards to it (it's personal, right!).

I think you make things fit for your family. I'm just lucky that I know a couple of people, like the one's I mentioned. I've never thought of it as a class thing; dh grew up in poverty, he got out of it by working his ass off. I'm an orphan and I weren't left any inheritance so we certainly weren't born into it etc. I've never considered us to be 'middle class' - not really sure what the definition of it is.

From the gist of it, it's cheaper when yo ur kids are young, it gets costlier as they get older (computers, exams if they're taking them etc). Again, that's just the impression I've got from others.

I don't think I've really answered your question lol, I don't think I can as I've only ever HE'd in the current situation that I'm in. Maybe someone else can help out here

Loads of single and poorer parents home educate. It is much harder just as life is much harder, because they need to fit work in and/or manage on very low budgets. I know families where the parents work opposite shifts and partnered and lone parents who work part time and use childcare. I don’t know any home educating families where both/the only parent/s work full time; it would be difficult to provide a full time appropriate education then. Not impossible, but hard.

The families I tutored for were well off enough to afford tutors combined with parental teaching time - some used tutors as childcare and worked part time.
Very, very expensive though.

Quite right Fatjesus.
I’m beginning to wonder whether some of these people know the meaning of the word “arrogant”!

DS1s ss placement failed when he was 14. He had an EHCP (obviously as he was at ss) and the LA didn't want to know. They left him without educational placement or tutors through EOTAS for 2 years saying it was pointless. We had to start judicial review proceedings with the help of SOS!SEN to get home tuition. He has just sat 5 GCSEs.

But lets focus on parents failing to deliver appropriate education instead of LAs! LAs fail to deliver their responsibility and can be held accountable with existing laws.

Its really arrogant and controlling to believe that you can do a better job than a state school. My dc got all that from a state school, even 1 to 1 when they needed it (ds was dyslexic and had 121 help through primary

I don’t think it is arrogant to say I did a better job of educating Ds than a school. It is a fact.

Just because your child got 1to 1 help through primary is great for you.

Not all schools are the same

What would you have done if because your dc hadn’t mastered reading by year 2 and ended up sat in a classroom trying to guess the subject being written on the whiteboards. They couldn’t do any of the written school work and homework took hours as they had to trace the answers you had written onto their work sheet.

If they didn’t do the homework then they missed every break and lunchtime play because they had to sit in the classroom staring at a blank piece of paper

And when you go in to explain that the homework was beyond them the teacher gives you that blank stare and tells you she is paid to teach the national Curriculum and everyone needs to do their homework.

Would you really have left your child in that situation?

No good going to other schools in the area because their responses were along the lines of they would take them but they would treat them exactly the same as they had in the original school or they would most likely be bullied because they couldn’t read or write.

Would you really have left your dc in a school getting more and more depressed everyday and at home spend hours in the evening forcing a child who is deeply frustrated and dealing with the resulting crying and screaming each night whilst they try to trace out unfamiliar letters out on to a sheet of paper

DH and I are former home Ed children who have grown up. I'm now 29 and DH is 31. We have four children, all are home educated. We don't pay for tutors but we do attend groups, meet ups, and a lot of clubs/groups/classes etc with other home Ed families. As well as the usual field trips to museums, art galleries, science centres and the like.

DH and I were both home educated the final few years of high school. Our parents didn't teach us, we learnt autonomously and yes, we played a lot of video games too and still do. We can also create, code and mod them. I have high functioning ASD.

I left at the start of year 10, he left at the start of year 9. We both took nothing from school except the various physical and emotional scars from bullying. We were taught to read and write before we started school and learnt maths predominantly from relatives and financial management and our own need to solve problems that crept up. We both grew up poor and underprivileged, we were both failing and being failed in the school system terribly. I wouldn't be alive if I'd stayed in school, I was deregistered when I tried to commit suicide from the daily assaults I endured.

I was determined not to fail after I left school and so have two degrees I don't use that I learnt simultaneously through distance learning, Law and Psychology and a year of a design degree I did for fun.

He set up a business from home and was able to retire before he turned 20. We met when we were in our late teens while I was still studying, he taught me the trade he's in when I completed uni and now we're both semi-retired with multiple businesses we run passively, both separately and together. He's the tech and I'm the creator for our larger businesses. We can work as many or as few hours as we like. We don't have to work at all if we don't want to but we do, because who can say no to earning more.

By no means do we speak for the majority of HE families but someone asked to hear from a former HE child 10-20 years later so here I am, 15 years later. I would have none of what I do today if I hadn't been allowed to be HE. In school I was so anxious about seeing my bullies in classes or worse, classrooms, toilets, changing rooms, playground etc that I couldn't and didn't learn anything there. All my knowledge I've learnt outside the confines of the mainstream school classroom.

Whilst DC are in school they are the legal responsibility of the LA wrt education.

Failures to progress are not investigated, or blamed on parents or the child. Support specified in EHCPs is not provided, DC with autism just need to learn to fit in.

Schools are illegally excluding and off-rolling vulnerable pupils. Or simply making their life unbearable so that parents are forced to remove them for the sake of their mental health, often backed by GPS and CAMHs.

LAs and schools claim this is elective home education in order to abdicate legal responsibility for the provision of education.

It has been noticed that there has been a huge increase in 'elective' home education that cannot be explained by alternative educational philosophies or lifestyles or dysfunctional families wanting to fly under the radar.

But as LAs have washed their hands it is now the responsibility of parents. So investigation is now back on the agenda now that it is diverting attention.

Calls to regulate HE are responding to the dog whistle but failing to identify the root cause.

@SmileEachDay
I'm a single parent, I was also unemployed for time after my ex left but since i dont smoke/drink/ go out to pubs it was never really a problem.
I'm pretty frugal. I'm not a fan of designer clothes. I want something cheap I can chase my kids up trees in. So ASDA or second-hand is fine. Especially if it enables me to continue to home Ed.
We make the most of a number of local groups and source free events, online recourses and free websites (we still do).

My local home ed page was an absolute god send. I once went on explained that I had become unemployed and asked if anyone had free recources and/could recommend free websites etc.. and we were offered 10 weeks with a maths tutor for free because someone had paid for it but then had to work out of country and it was non refundable. They were going to just abandon it.

Knowing that I couldn't in any good conscience put my children into the education system I left the profession and went back to uni. Since children are not biologically programmed to learn between the hrs of 9-3, we don't have a problem.
I'm in 3.5 days but only until 2 so we have 3.5 afternoons and 3.5 full days that we can learn around. I have early risers. Kids are up by 6am so we have a lot of day to work with and they go to a home ed, 'gentle parenting' child minder (which are like gold dust).

I don’t think it is arrogant to say I did a better job of educating Ds than a school. It is a fact.

Totally agree, in our case it was for a better fit, more time, and a more effective and efficient learning environment

Fact here too. Ds learnt to talk, read, do basic maths at home, a triumph for someone with his challenges.

@salsmum Wed 17-Jul-19 17:47:25
"A terribly abusive foster 'mum' by the name of Eunice Spry keep her charges out of school to hide the bruises etc., on the guise of home schooling them and got aaay with it a lot longer because there weren't enough checks made so I think yes they should be answerable just as regular schools are checked."

Eunice Spry did have an annual visit by the LA Education department. The children were all washed and dressed and brushed and polite and well-behaved. The education provision was acceptable. There was no evidence of abuse or safeguarding concerns.

A once-a-year visit will not generally pick up abuse if the abuser is clever enough to hide it. Eunice Spry fooled a lot of officials, including the police.

I should also say that Eunice Spry was abusing children before agencies began working in a more joined-up manner, and these days the police would definitely have checked with or referred to social services before giving her a clean bill of parenting.

fee.org/articles/yes-parents-are-capable-of-choosing-how-their-children-should-be-educated/

"The idea that parents get in the way of children’s education and can halt their flourishing is nothing new. As he was designing the architecture for compulsory mass schooling in the 19th century, Horace Mann argued that education was too important to be left to parents’ discretion. He explained that strong parental bonds are obstacles to children’s and society’s development, writing in his fourth lecture on education in 1840:

"Nature supplies a perennial force, unexhausted, inexhaustible, re-appearing whenever and wherever the parental relation exists. We, then, who are engaged in the sacred cause of education, are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause."

Mann goes on to say that “just as soon as we can make them see the true relation in which they and their children stand to this cause, they will become advocates for its advancement,” supporting the complete shift in control of education from the family to the state. It’s for the good of all, Mann said—except for parents like him who homeschooled his own children while mandating forced schooling for others.

I wonder how many commenting are home educators and have any concrete insight into home education apart from media input and the 'family down the road'

Some of these comments are quite breathtaking and some are making me chuckle

Children in state schools are inspected regularly but this has not prevented bullying, sexual abuse, grooming, low achievement and general neglect.

med I think its because the children aren't inspected...the school is.

I think the inspections don't look at individuals at all....

@smileeachday Either they have one SAHP, or they are self employed, or they use childcare and do HE in the evenings and weekends.

M3lon
Children are seen daily by teachers, welfare staff, volunteers, office staff daily. They are questioned verbally and inspected using overt and covert methods . They have circle time where they talk about personal feelings etc....... yet all of this does not prevent bullying, neglect etc etc.
Ofsted sometimes question children at the gate and in the classroom. I know this as I have been through a number of Ofsted inspections.

I disagree with you 100%. I home educated 5 kids till this year when 3 decided to go to school and 1 is over 16. My 14 yr old DD will remain Home Ed.

I do not agree to visits at all. I do not want strangers in my home, making judgments on things the quite frankly have little to no knowledge or experience of. I will send a report once a year outlining what we have done, and I will not send samples of my child's work as that belongs to my child.

Monitoring or assessing is subjective and wouldn't work.
What form would it take?

Who would judge it?
Who would pay for it?
What would they judge the education against?

How are the checks carried out?

How often?
Where?
Would the visitor expect School At Home?
What if the child isn't at the same level as their peers in one area, but ahead in another? does that mean education is lacking?
What next?
Ofsted check schools to make sure taxpayers are getting value for money. Home ed families receive no taxpayers money and thus are not under the purview of Ofsted

Safeguarding is a different subject. Safeguarding and Education are different things.

Do you also think all under 5's should be checked regularly?
All school-aged kids during holidays?
Home Ed kids are not invisible or locked away, and if you have concerns, you have powers to have someone come and check them out. The same powers as if you were concerned about a schooled child.
National Curriculum levels are arbitrary and if a child who is home educated isn't meeting those levels, it doesn't mean they are not being educated.

Home Education doesn't look like school education. Some families don't use books, some don't do formal work. And they are not wrong.

Also, why make 99% of the home ed population have to have a visit just to catch the 1% who are not doing their job as a parent?

med there are two problems with what you say. 1) see all those people doesn't stop kids being abused. The overwhelming majority of abused kids attend school, many without the abuse being detected.

2. Home ed kids are seen by a lot of these type of people in a week too. So if that method was actually effective (which apparently it isn't) then it would work for them too (it won't because it isn't effective).

So. Either all homes and parents should be inspected yearly, or none should....what do you think? Are you inviting the inspectors to your home just in case you are a) abusing your kids, b) too stupid to hide the fact for a few hours?