to think home ed families are going to have to accept more oversight?

[DrZaraCarmichael]

To try to prevent more cases like Sara Sharif. Taken out of school - where teachers were raising concerns - and then apparently fell off the radar.

Yes children's services have to look long and hard at themselves but taking a child out of school, especially when there has been previous SS involvement, has to raise a whole field of red flags surely??

I can see how families who are home educating for the right reasons and who have nothing to hide will see this as intrusive and unnecessary. But something has to change, right?

Given that many home educated children have SEN, and in many cases they're being home educated because they've been deliberately off rolled by schools, I would welcome anything that protects the interests and safety of children who are already vulnerable by virtue of their disability. Too often home schooling is not so much a choice as a necessity, with parents left floundering as a result. Greater involvement wouldn't just protect those who are being abused, but provide better support for parents of kids with SEN who are barely getting by, just doing their best. Given the number this affects though, greater oversight simply won't happen unfortunately.

Well, in some circumstances yes, but in living memory babies were removed from single unwed mothers for supposed wellbeing reasons.

Safeguarding is a very nuanced area and lots of parts are very subjective. Take a 'dirty' house or 'unkempt' child. How dirty is too dirty? Or what is the line between an 'unconventional lifestyle' and a 'chaotic lifestyle'? I actually pity the professionals involved in making these decisions but blanket increased state control is not necessarily the best answer.

They should obviously trigger further checks but some of the most intractible cases I've come across of victims being sent back to abusers by the family courts are "naice" MC families with at least one well resourced parent who can manipulate the family court system.

They often have very little SS background and fly under the normal radars (or talk their way out of questions from schools/SS).

The government do not own our children - we do

Nobody "owns" a child. This focus on the "rights" of the parents is totally wrong, and thankfully contrary to UK law. The rights and needs of the child are all that matters.
Parents have responsibilities and duties, not rights.

However you are correct in one thing: in the UK it is the responsibility of parents to ensure their child receives an education, not the responsibility of the government. The parent has to ensure the child receives an education by regular attendance at school or by other means.

The main problem with the idea of a HE register is cost. If the government found a spare £billion, would it be better spent on a contract to some big IT company to set up a HE register (let alone paying for inspectors to visit HE families), or would it be better spent on employing and social workers?

@whatafustercluck do you have children with SEN, particularly those who have struggled in school? There are reasons some families are very suspicious of extra 'support'. I understand what you're saying, and I've seen a minority of families HE very dubiously but I've seen a far greater number who have dropped out the school system for whatever reason and thrived away from 'support'.

Schools Week had an article that suggested it would be a reasonable guess that around 13 per cent of home educated children have unmet needs (note, not necessarily a formal 'statement' but given the problems parents face with wait times for diagnoses and ehcp needs assessments then 'unmet needs' is an accurate description). More then 100,000 children are home educated.

Yes I do. My 8yo dd is on the autism diagnosis pathway and has gone through two periods of school avoidance due to burnout. So yes, I'm well aware of the challenges. My point is on the side of those parents who have no choice but to homeschool, those who have had to give up work to do so. Those who would welcome more support/ involvement from authorities because they're struggling - financially, emotionally and physically (at her worst, my dd beat the living shit out of me to avoid going to school). I know they can thrive, and it's precisely because I know this that O believe the focus should be supportive first and foremost.

Yes, but LA home education officers aren't there to offer support, they don't have the skills and training to offer support. Ideally children with SEND should be offered a viable education by the state, but all too often they aren't. You want to come in to my home and tell me I'm doing it wrong, there needs to be an alternative to me then. At the moment I'm the only option.

I think people asking for this oversight are imagining perhaps a child protection social worker with a background in education and a fulsome understanding of SEND issues doing the checks, well it won't be. It be some jobsworth with little or no training. Most of the parents home educating in my town have autistic children who have been utterly failed by school. They are wrangling children with issues such as learning difficulties, pathological demand avoidance, ocd, anxiety etc. I just don't for one minute believe the state are going to find people to carry out this oversight job who understand these issues, after all schools certainly don't understand or care.

Right ok. That’s totally different from being abused.

And it’s a guess. What constitutes as needs being unmet?

Is that educational needs - are the parents waiting for help? eg are they at home waiting for a school that can cater for the specific needs?

Is that safety needs - are they being abused?

People do not have to follow the curriculum. Would this be classed as not having needs met?

💐

I agree entirely with everything you have said. My biggest beef is with schools who off roll sen kids. They should have a viable alternative, I agree. But it's a sad fact that there often isn't. So how are those who are home schooling their sen kids being supported? They're not.

It's still an unknown adult stranger who holds power. It takes a very well trained person to navigate this correctly to a not do further damage and b pick up on issues that need to be identified

What happens in reality is a poorly trained person, who will go after what they feel are easy targets ie not the children most at risk. Expecting the complying parents to jump through impossible hoops. Often with a superior attitude and a negative opinion on home ed.

Sorry to hear you are part of the club.

So say the LA decided to exercise this duty to support by instead of offering financial help, by insisting that every child who is HE follows the National Curriculum at home, including taking SATS papers to objectively measure attainment? Or that all children were required to attend x number of clubs a week which had LA officers in attendance to check 'safeguarding' and level of 'socialisation'...

Of course it's totally different to being abused. I said I'd welcome greater involvement/ support for parents of sen kids who have no choice but to homeschool. Currently they're just left to it, for better or for worse. They're no longer the department for education's 'problem'.

Wasn't this nothing to hide nothing to fear concept used by Germans as a reason why Jewish people had to wear the star on clothes to identify them as Jewish.

Pretty much every other country in Europe has some kind of oversight. Your ridiculous over-exaggeration does not put you in a good light.

As a HE parent you’ve no idea how batshit this sounds to me 😜 How this level of scrutiny and suspicion is completely unnecessary. I’m a veteran home educator and no-one I’ve ever met needs to go from once a year to this. (Plus the HE team are swamped. The reality of something like this being funded and actioned is minuscule!)

This tragic case would not have been prevented by such scrutiny. Until SS is run properly there is NO way the HE team/LA would be able to cope with such a system.

I don't think there should be a "one size fits all" approach in checking up on the safety of children who are not in school.

Say a social worker / education officer / whoever visits the home of one of the posters on this thread. The parent explains all the very valid reasons why their child is better not in school, talks about engagement with other HE families, or trips to the museum, or visits to GP/optician/dentist, child appears happy, well-adjusted and there is nothing in the home environment which raises red flags. Family is marked as "low risk" and isn't checked again for a year, or 18 months, or ever (as long as no other people raise concerns about the children).

But the same official goes into a home where the parents don't seem to be doing any education with the kids, who are sitting in their pyjamas at 3pm playing on the Xbox, where there is no engagement with a network of other families, where the kids don't attend scouts, or dancing class, or any sporting clubs, not registered with a GP, and where the reasons for the kids not being in school are that they disagree with school as a concept, or are anti-vax, or see themselves as new age hippies who prefer to let their kids be free spirits - a much higher risk assessment.

And the thread is godwinated.

Yes absolutely there is no difference between some on going contact with children outside of mainstream education and making them wear yellow stars. 🙄

Just seen on the news that Starmer has said more oversight is needed for HE because of this tragic case.

Why am I not surprised that fucker isn’t blaming SS which the child was already under and using it as an excuse to get in to peoples homes and make it more difficult for people to HE and to take control away from people.

He has done his best to make it difficult for independent schools and is now gunning for HE.

How can one man upset every section of society

Well maybe they should pop into everyone's homes every Friday night?

they knew about the abuse BEFORE he pulled her out of school.

SS closed the case BEFORE he pulled her out of school.

For all those posters saying more regulation in HE isn’t right, won’t work, upset the children etc. how do other countries where there is much tighter regulation over HE, cover these objections/concerns?

Other schools don't tend to have a school system that destroys children mentally

There is already a register of HE children though! This is just a political soundbite that makes it sound as if the government are doing something when in reality it is just a distraction from the abject failures of social services, the education system, the courts and the police.

Making HE the scapegoat is an easy get-out for them.

It is purely a matter of cost to my way of thinking.
Other countries might decide to afford this, but the UK can't afford it without raising more tax.

I have no ideological objection. But it won't be worth the money. Far better to spend on sorting out the social work system and family courts.

As another poser mentioned pages back, the government will be wary of a register as it will highlight how many SEND children are HE due to the school system's failure. They don't want a light shone on this.