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.

The authorities CAN do something if they find a child is not being educated. Section 437 -444 of the Education Act 1996. Government Guidelines on Home Education state: ‘A school
attendance order should be served after all reasonable steps have been taken to try to resolve the situation.’ So, if it is found that a child is not being educated according to the law then the parents can be made to send their child to school.

This is also useful:
"Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 applies to England and Wales:
Compulsory education

7: Duty of parents to secure education of children of compulsory school age

The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable—

a: to his age, ability and aptitude, and

b: to any special educational needs he may have,

either by regular attendance at school or otherwise."

So as you can see there are already laws that regulate home education.

Here are some more information about Home Education (your LA should also have information on their website:

edyourself.org/
www.educationotherwise.org/
www.home-education.org.uk/faq-carers.htm

@pianopiano Okay there is someone on my area who has responsibility for HE in the local authority. But on the website all the information is geared towards parents who want to HE. There is absolutely nothing about what to do if you have concerns about a child being HE. And HE is popular where I live. I suspect strongly that lots of those reports to SS about HE are actually about educational neglect, which SS does not deal with.
So what I would want first is a clearly point of contact for members of the public to report suspected educational neglect to, and who has a statutory responsibility to investigate it.

Incidentally all those saying about state schools and why don't I care what is happening there. I am old enough to remember the private sector arguing that there should be no safeguarding legislation covering private schools as what about all the abuse happening undetected in state schools. Whatabouttery is a classic distraction technique. In the real world it is perfectly possible to try and improve different sectors at the same time.

@nofilter HE are an easy target! Are you kidding. There has been campaigns for many years to get the most basic oversight of HE introduced. It has all been unsuccessful. The HE community and a very powerful lobby group.

To those asking how do I know the parents who are providing a poor HE are in fact doing so - when a parent has health problems so they are struggling to do the very basics of feeding their child, I highly doubt that the so called unschooling amounts to more than what they boast they are doing - usually planting some seeds very occasionally.

Local Authorities don't have enough staffand funding for this. They don't have enough staff or funding for the children out of school, they are supposed to be providing for but aren't getting an education.

@PianoPiano I know the law. Do you know how many prosecutions of HE parents there have been for children not being properly educated?

There is ONE local authority who actively checks children are being HE properly and threatens court action if they are not. ONE. And this local authority is very heavily criticised in HE communities.

In nearly all areas of the country in reality, there is no one who will do anything about a child suffering educational neglect. Laws are useless without any active enforcement. And enforcement is totally non existent in most of our country.

Also to the commenter who talked about workbooks - leaving a child to work through workbooks or online learning is very common amongst HE.

OK, well I am sure that SS are able to let the Education Department know if there are concerns about a child's education. And now you know what to do. Most people know that their LA has an Education Department and how to find their number on the internet. Or phone your LA and ask.

And, yes, it is fine to want to improve several sectors at the same time. But when so many children become home educated because schools are failing them it is only fair to point out that schools do need to improve. There would be fewer home educated children if schools were better.

SS will not get involved. No they are very unlikely to report this. And as I said tell me how many court cases there have been?
You haven't as you know outside this one local authority it does not happen. Do you really believe all HE are being properly educated?
I think personally the HE is all about parents rights and is about treating children as possessions. It is all about what I as a parent think is right, and absolutely nothing about the rights of the children. And the parents I know, including those who do HE well, absolutely embrace this philosophy of their rights, even though they are very crunchy and attachment parenting.

Lol, oh dear.
I think it's very difficult to gain a whole view of a child's education if you're only looking at a snapshot. The health of the parent's is a valid point.
You seem very keen on the idea/problems with unschooling. Do you have any thoughts on the other approaches?

@yachiru You are not reading my comments properly. I am said unschooling as an educational philosophy is very parent intensive and can be done well. But many parents who educationally neglect read a blog post on unschooling and say that is what they are doing when they do nothing. That is not unschooling, these parents do not understand what unschooling is. And unschooling is the current trendy HE style amongst crunchy parents.

No I don't know how many cases there have been. I know of one personally, but I have no idea about the statistics. I am sure you can find out if you want to know. I am not sure how that is relevant.

No, I don't know which LA you are talking about.

Why are HE parents treating their children are possessions and not parents who send their children to school? The law states that it's the parents responsibility to ensure that their child gets an education. Do you want the law to change?

And if your health is so poor that you struggle to cope with everyday tasks, then don't HE. I suspect in some cases the child is really kept home to be a companion to the parent.

Hmmm how do you know that "many parents who educationally neglect read a blog post on unschooling and say that is what they are doing when they do nothing". Just how many such parents do you know?

Many HE parents are treating their children as possessions because their focus is on their rights as a parent.
The law making parents responsible for getting their kids an education is framed as a responsibility, not a right.

I apologise if I'm misreading it. I'm trying to understand you.

Many HE parents are treating their children as possessions because their focus is on their rights as a parent.

They would doubtless argue that the state treats children like pawns in a system far more concerned with documenting the accountability of that system than benefiting those children educationally.

CF. SATS (never heard a teacher say a good word about these), spoon-feeding to test, literacy teaching through phonics when there's not enough evidence out there to testify to the benefit of bludgeoning reading to death in this way, policing the colour of the stitching on their shoes, demanding healthy lunchbox contents while feeding them shockingly unhealthy ketchup, cordials etc. with their school lunches, divesting parents of the onus on which they deem it best to take their child out of education for a period, etc. etc., ad nauseum.

Parents are far more likely to do 'right' by their children than the strictures of such a system. And were this option open to me, I'd home educate my child in a heartbeat.

The Nanny State already has far too much control over families and children. The last thing it needs to be given is any more. And I speak as an educator - one who values education above practically all else bar health.

@yachiri No need to apologise. Perhaps I ma not explaining it well enough?
But generally people who see children as independent people tend to talk about the rights of children. Their right to be safe, to be treated well, to have a voice, to be educated.
Those who see them as possessions tend to talk about parents rights. My right to hit my child i.e, discipline my child in the way I choose. My right to educate my child as I choose i.e. no education, or teach them strange beliefs, or thinking a lot of things are irrelevant as "I never used all those things I learned at school".

@MarieIVanArkleStinks I am not against HE. Done well it can be brilliant. But not all parents do it well. Which is why it needs proper over sight.

I agree with you on that jenny. My dh would too (had countless discussions with him on this).

I know far more children in traditional curriculum education than children in HE who are learning/have learned absolutely nothing worthwhile. I agree with the PP that just because they are playing Minecraft a lot, doesn't mean they aren't getting educated. DC's small private middle school had this amazing history teacher who allowed the kids to present their projects in Minecraft. They learned so much more about the 7 wonders of the world trying to make them completely accurate in Minecraft, than they would have learned memorizing stuff presented in a classroom.
I wish I had HE'd my children. In the end, by high school I found a way to pick and choose (we are in the USA) by playing the system, but I wish I had started earlier.

If schools, particularly SEN staffing, were properly funded and could offer all children a decent education then a lot of people who HE would be able to send their child to school.

My DD is 3, she’s the youngest of 6, I worked in schools for my entire working life and I’m now having to learn about HE because I’ve already been told that the chances of her being found a place that will both educate her and keep her safe is slim.

In all the discussions I’ve had with other Home Ed parents locally all bar two are doing so because there’s no appropriate school placing for their child.

However that, like any proposed checks, would cost money and there’s none of that spare floating about just now

@yachiru Thanks.

I think there should be something. Not an inspection as such, more like the development checks the hv's do for pre-school children

I would love this.

We homeschool our son and HE is so rare in the Netherlands that most people don t even know it's legal.

We send in our letter every year and it's rubber-stamped. They don't even need to see us.

We've travelled a lot and often use the back gate to come and go so it can be weeks or months between times when our neighbours see us.

I'm torn on this topic... on one hand I appreciate the lack of bureaucratic interference, but on the other hand my little boy could be kept in a crate and no-one would ever know.

Contrasting this with my own experience of being homeschooled in New Zealand and hosting a lovely guy from the Education Dept. a couple of times a year who would spend half a day with us to gently support and assess the situation... a physical checkup once or twice a year feels like a reasonable middle ground.

@jennymanara thanks for your patronising link explaining quadratic equations, however being able to show how they might be used in ball throwing and other 'everyday' activities doesn't mean they are.
Most people don't use quadratic equations regularly, I imagine most people haven't used them since they did maths at school.

@ihopeyourcakeisshit Patronising link? Of course people don't use them when throwing a ball. They use it to work out things related to that. As I said I use them to calculate prices for goods. I am sure plenty of people don't use them though. Lots of people are in jobs like carers or call centres where they only need basic literacy. And I see lots more people using complicated methods to calculate things as they don't understand basic maths which would help them do it far more quickly,

You remind me of the HE parent who told me that she did not understand fractions but it does not matter as hardly anyone uses them once they leave school.
I can remember lots of HE parents used to argue that their kids did not need to know how to do mental arithmetic as everyone would just use calculators in the future. Thankfully that particular bit of "wisdom" seems to have disappeared.

You said quadratic equations are used a lot.
I said they are not.
They are not remotely the same as using fractions, percentages etc.
I have to say I'm not engaging any more with you on this.
You irritated the shit out of me by starting a goady HE thread and not even getting your OP accurate.
Justifying your equations post is nonsense, but it's so much easier to spout off about it on here than step up and intervene when you have apparently seen HE kids being let down.
Well knock yourself out.
I'm not a Home edder btw.

@ihope In what way is my OP inaccurate?