To think that having to have a DBS check to home educate is unfair.

[Grimed]

Baroness Garden is intending all homeschool parents to be DBS checked. I don't think this is fair. What makes Homeschool parents more likely to be abusive? Surely regular checks from the local LA should be enough? If the education system is failing so many children perhaps that is what's needs examining not parents. What's next? All pregnant women get DBS checked?

Ah so it seems that you do think going to school keeps children safer than being home educated.

That is my personal lived experience. Who are you to deny and invalidate my lived experience as someone abused via HE? It's simply a fact that a lot of abuse and other safeguarding concerns only get noticed due to being in school.

I want people to stop getting safeguarding and education mixed up.

Me too. I've not once mentioned education, my sole concern is preventing child abuse, yet whenever I mention child abuse people insist on dragging it back to education which is completely different from safeguarding against abuse.

I want them to stop saying that lots of people take their children out of school to abuse them.

Please point to where anyone has said that "lots of people" do this.

But I personally don't have the perfect answer to the question "how do we make sure no child is ever abused?". Do you?

No but it sure as hell isn't "parents should have complete ownership over their children and should have total freedom to deregister them from school and vanish, reject any monitoring or safeguarding, and anyone who thinks safeguarding is important wants kids to be microchipped at birth and raised in prisons so they can be turned into government robo-slaves."

Someone earlier on this thread said it should be illegal to opt out of HV appointments - not sure why it’s such a jump to believe some people want to make Home Ed illegal. Several countries have already done so (Germany, France)

Actually being able to bring up a list and check if a child is on it.

Being able to bring up a list and check if the children who are on the list are OK. Like during covid, which is how this came up in the first place - not knowing where tens of thousands of children were and if they were OK.

Being able to bring up a list and see that x% are on it due to failures in SEND provision and use it to campaign for different/better/higher funded provision for children with SEND.

Being able to see particular councils are so bad at providing support for SEND, there is a huge disparity in the numbers EHE compared to an area that has better provision.

Being able to track over longer timescales and demonstrate that EHE children go on to higher education/different keystages, suggesting that there are particular failings in the national curriculum at a certain point. Or that a particular academy chain has a disproportionate number of parents EHE just before exams covers up offrolling and illegal exclusions

Being able to demonstrate that EHE is beneficial for those who do it and it doesn't harm their adult prospects.

Being able to show that there isn't a problem with EHE being used to deflect attention away from abuse.

Being able to show that EHE teenage girls that are deregistered do or don't tend to become parents themselves within 18 months.

Being able to show that the vast majority of EHE families don't have criminal records for violent or sexual offences or concerns reported by schools/doctors/neighbours/grandparents and it's therefore not necessary to flag it up as a potential issue....

There is so much in data that can be done to improve things for children, both current and future, if they have accurate details in one accessible secure record.

How are you going to tell if someone is ok due to being on a list?

the SEND support issue - that assumes that a) the ideal situation for SEND children is in school and b) only works if the need or condition is diagnosed. Many kids are undiagnosed until later on, some even until adulthood.

the point about measuring outcomes - again, that makes the assumption that a) exam results or certain careers are the goal and b) that all children start with the same ability. For example, if a higher percentage of children with learning disabilities are EHE due to schools not being a good fit, then EHE children will statistically likely achieve lower grades. That wouldn’t mean that was caused by the EHE though.

Given many people maliciously report home educating families, I’m not sure what the value is of that one either.

The only possible one I can see is teenage girls and pregnancy, but even so, what would you do? Ban de registration between certain ages for girls if the figures showed many were becoming teenage mothers?

I think a register will make home educated unhappier and stop them accessing help they otherwise could do.

If LA’s are going to use the register to triage which families they are going to prioritise for ‘safeguarding’ (harassment) and refusal to share or falsifying information on that register becomes a criminal offence then parents may well choose options that protect their children more but at a cost.

For example of you have to tell the LA if your children have any SEN so they can prioritise you for ‘support’ (another coded word for harassment), then you can either choose to get your child investigated and diagnosed but risk them being forced into school so they can experience the abuse and misery society feels they are due or they can continue their home education with lower risk of officialdom ‘support’ but at the cost of a childhood diagnosis.

Likewise if you are home educators who are religious you may choose to not inform the LA to avoid being targeted perhaps then you feel the need to hide your religious observances in case someone informs the LA or they find out by other means.

Im sure this applies to various other bits of data the LA will want to harvest and sell off.

It wiuld be a fun conversation with your kids if the LA gain the power to enter your home to do ‘safeguarding’ (harassment) checks just because you home educate.

’Mum why do these people show up out of nowhere, stop what we were doing then take me away to ask me a lot of questions about what we do?’

’Its simple little one, the general public and the government don’t like families like ours and think we are untrustworthy. They are looking for any reason they can to force you to go to school. If we don’t let them do this they will send me to prison’

Its either that or lie to them.

I don't think it should be legal to opt out of HV appointments

I am also more than content for home education to remain legal, as I have no problem with people who do it well.

What I do have a problem with is people who use it as a cover for providing no education whatsoever, providing only a religious education, or providing them with an education which leaves them unable to achieve their ambitions (entering them for 5 GCSEs including English and maths really is a bare minimum here).

Naturally I also have a problem with those who use it as a means to isolate their child, abuse them, and prevent anyone else from noticing.

Unfortunately the only way to tell the difference between people who are doing home ed well and those who are claiming their child is home educated is to check on them in person, for both education and safeguarding reasons.

If I home educated then I wouldn't want people dragging the name of home education through the mud.

So you think it’s acceptable for HVs to come into someone’s home, when there’s no evidence of any issues, just because they’ve had a baby? Or are you saying people should have to take their children to clinics to get weighed?

I did neither - do you think that makes me “suspicious”? Plenty of people do not need HVs. I know how to weigh a baby. I know how to look after a baby. If I have concerns, I’ll raise them myself.

GCSEs are optional and can be done at any age - some children cannot cope with exams, especially in the case of SEN (which is often undiagnosed). Does it matter if someone doesn’t take GCSEs at 15/16? I don’t think so. There’s no age limit.

The issue I have is the assumption - by that logic, every citizen should all have a yearly police inspection to check we aren’t committing any crimes. Unless there’s evidence, it’s wrong to force “checks” on people. You could say how would you get the evidence without checks, well that goes for crime as well - yet we accept that we aren’t just going to investigate random people on the off chance crimes are being concealed. There comes a point where we as a society have to trust people to a degree.

@Minky3 It is incredibly disturbing to see someone dismissing safeguarding children as harassment. It discredits everything else that you have to say. Child safeguarding is not harassment, early help support is not harassment.
Your depiction of schools is also absurd. The fact is that we are still very much dealing with the MH effects now of young people who are deeply traumatised by months of lockdown confined to the house with their families. The fact is that for a significant minority of kids school is a school a refuge and home is not a happy, safe place.

Don’t confuse lockdown “homeschooling” with home education. That has really skewed the public perception of what home educating is. I think what disturbed peoples mental health was being literally trapped in their homes with nowhere to go, while a pandemic raged - not the fact they weren’t at school. I found lockdown hard, because we couldn’t go to anywhere we usually go to. Nothing to do with not being at school.

It’s odd to me that people have a positive view of schools. They’re authoritarian institutions designed to make workers for factories (look at when the current schooling system was invented - we still use those principles).

I don’t have any issue with homeschooling and don’t think it’s inherently damaging and I know it can be done very well. I agree that lockdown was not homeschooling.

My point was really that not all children live in happy, supportive, non-abusive homes and not all of them will experience school as authoritarian places where negative things happen. We can’t just assume that homeschooled children are all happy and ok so long as they haven’t presented with injuries at A&E. Some form of checking needs to happen. If some adults find that intrusive then they find it intrusive. It isn’t about them. The balance of risks makes it necessary.

So why don’t we do this for crimes then? Why don’t we all have to submit to an investigation to see if there’s any evidence of wrongdoing?

When officials demand entry into your home, gathering extra information on you and monitoring your parenting simply because you choose the perfectly legal option of home education; with the stated aim of trying to get your children into school it is harassment disguised as safeguarding.

There is an example from the LGA where the LA took formal action to force a child to attend school because they messaged one of their school friends on social media ‘during school hours’.

A friend runs a catering business from home, and uses her domestic kitchen to cook the food she sells.

As a result, the council (environmental health in this case) have a right of entry into her home, which she cannot refuse. She must keep records - everything from risk assessments to what temperature her fridge is running at twice per day. If she gets it wrong, she could have her livelihood taken away and then be prosecuted.

Is this harassment from the council? Not in her eyes, or mine. It's a direct result of the slightly unusual life choices she has made, and is designed to keep everyone (in this case, anyone who eats her food) safe. There's no bleating about being "harassed" for the "crime of cooking in her own kitchen", nor "being treated like a criminal". She knows that while her kitchen might be safe, she knows that other people's kitchens wouldn't be safe, and doesn't want her own reputation tarnished by the irresponsible actions of others, so she welcomes the inspection regime.

@NotMyCircusNotMyCircus Personally, I think a lot of those laws are invasive and over the top, however - measuring the temperature of a fridge is an objective measurement. Determining the suitability of someone’s education is, in many cases, an opinion. It can easily be influenced by peoples prejudices. It’s not the same thing.

@ForestFae Of course it's an analogy, but it's similar enough.

Life choices having implications for safety of others, and compulsory council inspection.

Trust me when I say that there are a lot of things in an environmental health inspection that can be subjective. There are underlying principles, but any chef can tell you a time that one EHO told them one thing and another told them something contradictory (I also have some professional experience as a chef).

Sorry, I was accused of "whaboutery" earlier in the thread when I discussed abuse in schools ( which I thought was relevant to the discussion) so I definitely don't think you can bring catering into this discussion!!

Will they force her to go and work in a state run kitchen if she fails the inspection?

Right but home education isn’t even classed as a safeguarding concern - and how would you even measure a suitable education? How would you ensure people’s personal biases don’t come into play? And you get into the realms of standardisation with this, which is one of the things many Home Edders want to avoid - the rigid, box ticking, inflexible nature of schools.

the default educational responsibility lies with the parent - I think this is what causes a lot of these disagreements. People think he default is school when legally, the responsibility belongs to the parents it’s just many choose to use schools to fulfil this. There’s nothing suspicious or wrong with choosing to do it yourself.

One that also has a “needs improvement” rating and is underfunded, for that matter?

Will they force her to go and work in a state run kitchen if she fails the inspection?

If she fails it will be publicised by the council, and there's nothing like a 0/1/2 rating to drive the customers away, and if it happened the inspection regime itself could put her out of business. If she seriously failed to the point of being shut down on the spot (alarmingly, that's being below the standard required for a 0 score, but it does happen) then she would have to find an alternative way to generate an income to pay for, amongst other things, her council tax.

Failing standards of home education should absolutely result in having to find alternatives - be that a state school, private school, or (depending on the circumstances) paying for a tutor in areas where the education is falling short.

Schools can be shut down, merged or taken over by a multi academy trust if they are failing their students, typically after a poor Ofsted inspection, and heads routinely lose their jobs in such scenarios. I don't know why home ed people seem to think that parents should be allowed to fail their child with impunity.

Schools get inspected all the time. The explanation given to the kids is usually something like :Mrs X is here today to observe our maths lesson. Mr Y is from the school board. They come and visit schools to see how we run things here. Let’s show him how great we are at basketball here at Riverdale High.
Same thing could work for Home Ed. LA visit and check that the kids have time space and materials dedicated to school work and ask a couple of questions about their favorite school activities. Parents could tell the kids ‘Mrs X is here from the home schooling department at the LA and we’re going to show her how we do school in our house. It wouldn’t pick up cases of abuse where things are going fine from an educational perspective but it would pick up cases where Home Education is being used as a way of getting kids out of sight with no attempt made to actually educate them. And actually it would strongly discourage people from using Home Ed to do that as it would be inviting inspection rather than avoiding it.

Except that for home education, we don’t do “schooling”. So many people think it’s just school at home. It’s not.

I don't think anyone is saying that homeschooling parents are more likely to be abusive. It's just that children who attend school have regular contact with adults with some training in safeguarding, which gives a better chance of detecting when there is a problem at home, and home-schooled children don't.
I'm not convinced that DBS checks on the parents will help, except in a very few cases. What is going to be the procedure where the DBS is not clear? Who decides? Obviously very occasionally it might pick up someone with a disturbing history, but more often there will be something like an isolated incident from someone's teens, and who decides if that's an issue? And it might pick up potential violent parents, but probably not those who might neglect their children or abuse them emotionally.

It might be more to the point to require that home-schooled children have regular contact with somebody independent who has some suitable training - it needn't be a social worker - it might be someone from an activity they attend regularly, for instance.

@ForestFae there must be evidence of the learning that takes place though? I would expect a homeschooling household with early primary aged kids to have plenty of books at appropriate levels for learning to read and perhaps some resources specific to that task. I’d expect to see things that can be used for learning maths, although some of that might be integrated into daily tasks like doing the shopping (addition and subtraction) or baking a cake (measuring). Things like lego are also great for learning maths. I’d expect to see evidence of organized physical activity but that might be things like being part of a football team or a dance class or taking swimming lessons or just regularly going to the pool yourselves. I’d expect evidence that the kids had been visiting or learning about different places, going to museums or art galleries, historical places, visiting local parks, forests or beaches. And yeah I would expect some structure to the timetable and some space in the house dedicated to this stuff because it takes considerable effort to make sure kids are keeping up with the school curriculum, even if you choose to teach those skills and that knowledge in very different ways.

Not to mention this is a false analogy.

More like:

’A parent decides they want to feed their children a vegan diet. The council wants her to send in regular food diaries, submit to random fridge inspections and have her child interviewed by a professional butcher turned council officer. They should also be registered and notify the council of all places they eat out and when; they are also required to share any of their Children’s food allergies, likes and dislikes, E&D data and medical history; all of which the council may choose to share on a whim. The general public supports these measures because the parent isn’t a qualified dietician and constantly tuts about how the children will certainly not grow properly unless they eat meat. The national association of butchers helps this perception along by constantly lobbying against vegan parents and it’s ex-members are consistently hired as ‘nutrition support officers’ by the council.’