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.

I haven't RTFT but I agree with your op. My DD homeschooled hers till they each chose to go to school in Yr10. They've done brilliantly but I know of plenty of parents whose idea of homeschooling results in their kids receiving insufficient education to enable them to go on to further education.
Incidentally, the whole time my DD home-educated her DC no-one from any authority, Education or otherwise, ever contacted her to check up on their education or welfare. Her DC were OK but how many are not?

In reporting education neglect, it's to the Education Welfare Officer at your LA. However, this name has changed a few times in the ten years I've been home educating so it's not surprising most people don't know. SS should forward reports of educational neglect to them, but doesn't always - some areas are better for that than others.

I'm a home educator and haven't seen or heard anything from the council about it in over 4 years. We can't contact the school nurse team my kids are meant to have access to either, which has meant my oldest is now late for his teen booster (& my GP doesn't do them anymore). It does seem cuts has meant in many areas that we're just meant to get on with it, checks, if they happen at all, are barely a tickbox exercise. Being registered has helped me when dealing with other professionals and places, but it hasn't really meant much in terms of checking the kids. We've gotten more support from our local college than we have from the council.

The "schools suck too, start with them" irritates me - surely dealing with both is better, and home educated kids shouldn't be kicked to the bottom of the priority list just for not being educated in school. Maybe annual checks would be too frequent a standard and I do think checks in the community would be better than home checks, but most countries do require home educated kids to show evidence of progress, usually by reports prepared by the parents or in tests, and it hasn't ended unschooling or interest-led learning there. The HE community's "the sky is falling if anything changes the status quo where we don't really need to do anything, we can't possible recognize that some home educators don't have their child's best interest" isn't actually helping anyone.

I think there needs to be greater effort in connected home educated kids to the wider community and home inspections don't do that. More encouragement for home educated kids to take part in the kinds of community art, science, and other projects as school kids, and I think that kind of effort would possibly do more good than inspections, but I do think - having taken on the responsibility for ensuring my kids' legal right to an education - that it is not unreasonable that some sort of evidence could be expected to be provided on some sort of basis.

I think we are heading towards a compulsory register and monitoring for home educators.

Home ed has become far more popular and while the majority of home educators take the responsibility of education very seriously and do a good job there are those who are floundering, some who are forced into it and left to fend for themselves with no idea where to start and some simply don’t have the skills. I see posts in home ed groups that at times are quite worrying, dc who are left on their Xbox or watching YouTube all day(yes it can be educational but all day everyday is an addiction not an education), posts where dc don’t get much social interaction because of their parents anxiety stopping them going out. Parents who seem to be unable to look things up for themselves and need to be spoon fed information.

I don’t particularly relish the idea of meeting the LA annually, I have had no contact with them for the 4 years I have been home educating. I don’t know how successful it would be in catching children who weren’t receiving an appropriate education, it’s hard to say because of course an annual meeting is just a snapshot but I can understand why things seem to be moving that way.

Sounds like a lot of speculation going on here...

Home Educators are already a stigmatised group in society. Thanks in part to the efforts of the people like the OP who like to talk about all the hypothetically terrible things Home Educators could do to their kids.

Home Educators if known to the LA; normally have to deal with one officer who may have nothing more than a minimum C in Maths and English. This officer 9/10 times will start the relationship with deceit, claiming to a Home Educator to have more powers than they legally have. This officers remit is normally to force as many children into school as possible in order to cut expenditure.

Things some HE’ers have to put up with due to malicious briefings against them:

Some hospitals now regard any child being home Educated as a safeguarding risk and will report to the LA and SS if any come to their attention. Thanks to LA encouragement.

Some LAs attempt to illegally access HE Children’s medical records from GPs without cause.

Some LAs use or threaten police attendance at a property in order to intimidate HE parents into allowing unlawful home inspections.

Some LA’s perform audits of child benefit payments against the school registers and use fraud prevention as an excuse to extort registration if HE children with the LA whilst they freeze benefits until compliance.

No official will take the word of a HE parent over the word of an LA Home Ed official. This gives the official unchecked power to make a families life miserable with Home Educators having no recourse to stop them.

If a Home Ed family is in dispute with that one likely unqualified official the only opportunity they get to effectively appeal that officials opinion is to wait to face criminal prosecution for ignoring a school attendance order. Then they finally can put their case to someone actually neutral I.e a magistrate. Home Educators taken to this point win approx 66% of cases after the magistrate judges that their education provision was in fact sufficient.

As for those HE’ers who are in favour of registration i have encountered a few like yourselves. Happily had visits from a lovely person from the LA who was just ticking boxes. Then there is a change in staff; the new officer marks you down for not having a desk and chair solely devoted to education. They demand to see dates on all written work. They demand the names of all other HE children your kids interact with. They demand a report from a third party educator to validate your provision. If you do not comply then it’s a school attendance order and/or prosecution for you.

No one cares if a parent leaves their child in a school under special measures or is unsatisfactory; because as far as the LA is concerned the child is where they want them; not where is best for the child.

Home Ed parents sacrifice time, energy, income, pension contributions, careers in order to do right by their kids. Unfortunately a lot of society thinks this dedication should be rewarded with suspicion, sneering and an official attitude of ‘guilty of child neglect until proven innocent’. Local Authorities are daft if they are surprised a community has formed to stick up for their children’s rights.

They've done brilliantly but I know of plenty of parents whose idea of homeschooling results in their kids receiving insufficient education to enable them to go on to further education.

Lol, I left school with nothing, it was absolutely rubbish, but id doesn't stop further education, how ridiculous.

Of course H.ed families shouldn't be inspected, who would do it, and how would they be qualified?
What would they judge against, would the children need to be tested?

Minky3 that's brilliant

@Minky3 that is total tin foil hat territory.

Thanks Minky 3 :-)

Thank you @Minky3 I don't think a lot of mainstream school families understand what's happening in the HE world and only accept information they receive from sensationalist media. Everything you've said I've seen first hand in my own community. Doesn't matter what you do, the LA will pick it apart to enforce a SAO.

Minky3 is not in ‘tin foil hat territory’ - how rude.

I am the sort of home educator you probably approve of: my NT children love meet-ups and museums, books and scouts etc. We are unregistered because we have never outsourced the children’s education to schools but registration would likely be unthreatening to us, not least because we’re white and agnostic. But the things Minky3 describes are real. Brown families, especially Muslim, and poor families, especially if no man in the house, are more vulnerable to them.

I see your concern for neglected children, I share them, but Minky3’s concerns are valid.

@fullyhuman Thanks for assuming wrongly that I am white and schooling me in racism.

I’ve done no such thing: my ‘we’ refers to my husband, children and I.

Huh? Where was that in fullyhumans post? W asnt it a reference to own family?

Yes I think they should be checked but mainly for safeguarding reasons. I don't think they should be tested some parents home school because their children can't cope in the 'hot house' environment of schools today with the emphasis on tests and league tables. So by all means check them to make sure they are providing social activities, that they are learning and that all is OK but they should not be forced into a rigid curriculum

I'm considering home schooling as a stop gap measure and id prefer to be inspected so I don't ruin my child's education whilst I'm doing it! I'd like to be told that she's ahead of her peers or behind her peers so I can keep doing a good job or figure out a better learning schedule!

Sparklybanana even if you are inspected they are unlikely to go into that much detail. They don't normally test children! If you want to know if she's ahead or behind then using NC curriculum books will reassure you that she is working at the level required by the NC.

There also on-line schools such as Inter High that you can use.

I am not suggesting an OFSTED type regime. Just a visit to meet the kids, check that their education has actually progressed since the last year, and ask the parent about the type of education being provided.
This would have been spiffing if it had a happened when my child was in school. We might have discovered he wasn’t being taught or protected from violent classmates much earlier and saved ourselves much grief. Who exactly would you get to test the quality of the education I’m providing? Someone from the special school who thought a child that had been reading for more than a decade should learn to sound out, or perhaps someone from the LA who sat and received the fact he had to accept being hurt I cool because of the “cohort he was in”? I save the country tens of thousands of pounds a year and know multiple families doing the same. “thank you” is a more appropriate response.

I don't understand why some people are so defensive. Surely, surely if a child is off the "official" radar it is only sensible to check that they are in good health and receiving appropriate instruction.

I am not a huge fan of schools in the main, but I do think they offer social opportunities and a community spirit for most children. They certainly open a child's eyes to the world around them; at one end of the scale they do not think they are the centre of the universe (yep, seen a few of these types at home school events) and more importantly at the other end of the scale they learn that certain behaviour at home might be unacceptable, weird or even harmful.

I think entrusting a kid of any age to a school for socialization is bizarre. To chuck a kid in the midst of 25-30 children and two adults (if they're lucky) and expect a kid to learn from inexperienced children how to treat each other has proven to fail time and time again.
But thats a topic for another thread.

Yes I think they should be checked but mainly for safeguarding reasons

H.educators aren't going to need to be checked for this anymore than they check parents when their children are on school holidays.
13 whole weeks at least to conduct abuse, if they are going to.

13 whole weeks at least to conduct abuse, if they are going to

Yep. And 39 weeks where those children are seen by school staff day in, day out. Ignoring the role schools have to play in safeguarding is daft - it’s a huge part of the job.

@IrmaFayLear

I don't understand why some people are so defensive. Surely, surely if a child is off the "official" radar it is only sensible to check that they are in good health and receiving appropriate instruction.

Imagine a council meeting where the bosses are talking about budgets.

“Right everyone where do we cut next? Adult Social Care? Youth Clubs? SEN provision? Children’s Social Services?”

Everyone shakes their heads despondently. One boss speaks up:

“Hey what’s this budget of tens/hundreds of thousands for? Home Education duties? We don’t actually help those weirdos do we?”

“No but we have to try and ensure they are providing a suitable education if we know about them. Kind of a legal anomaly, parents are legally responsible for educating their kids but we still have to check if it appears they aren’t educating”

Council boss pouts indignantly: “Well I’m not going to sanction cutting those other areas when we are wasting money on those oddball parents. You hear about all the time in the media with their strange ideas. Few of them are qualified teachers; I heard most are anti-vaxers and religious fundamentalists! I say we find a reason to force as many of those kids back into school as possible. Act unlawfully if we have to; simply claim it’s ‘safeguarding’ you can get away with almost anything under that pretext. School is good enough for the rest of society so those families will just have to suck it up! We won’t lose many votes because there’s so few of them and most of society think they are eccentric at best and already as good as committing child neglect at worst.”

Everyone nods, hoping they have spared some money for other things.

Meanwhile Home Ed families in such places are subjected to a ‘Witch Hunt’ and a character assassination of their community by councils not interested in what’s best for their individual children but by what’s best for their budgets.

If you were a parent genuinely invested in your child’s education and you thought Home Ed was the best option to fulfill your legal duty would you want to subject yourself to the oversight of such a body? At best you will get a pat on the head and left alone for a few months; at worst you will suffer a campaign of harassment and criminal proceedings, culminating in potentially a worse educational outcome for your child. Do you think the good schools have spaces sorting open for a Home Ed kid to slip into? No they will be sent to the schools everyone is desperately trying to avoid and if it’s under a School Attendance Order then you cannot escape that school.

Of the few tragic cases where something terrible has befallen a Home Ed child; almost all (if not actually all) were children already known to Children’s Social Services who did not do their jobs properly. There is little to no evidence that the current system is failing. Just a lot of noise from the anti Home Ed lobby.

@Minky3 standing ovation WELL DONE

I've known several families who homeschool. All would say they're doing a fantastic job and their children would much rather be there than in school.
Some are correct.

The thing is that no one is saying that all homeschoolers are dreadful, that none of the children learn anything or that they're always being abused.

But it is far easier to hide if the above things are true and the children aren't seen 5 days a week for 39 weeks a year. Or perhaps they're not seen that often, which raises alarm bells on its own.

Wouldn't it be better if there was a system in place to check up. Not just to stop abuse, but also to make it not something people can hide behind?

I have seen people homeschool very well. I have also see the situation where it has worked for one child and not for another. I have also seen the situation where it works up to a point, but then fails. I've also seen the latter where both the child and the adult didn't really know how to say it was time to stop.
Maybe there could be a system not just to check up, but also to help reintegrate into schools if wanted, to help sort exams if wanted, to help them find homeschool groups for support?

It could be a positive thing for people who want to do it properly.

Still very defensive.

No one is trying to put a stop to home ed, just looking to make sure that children do not go under the radar. In Wales a more robust approach has been introduced after a child being "home educated" died of scurvy.

And your description of what a "council boss" might say is ridiculous. Actually someone in this position would not be an elected representative worrying about votes.