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?

You can't give the state the power to say that children have to be institutionally educated. That's the kind of thing authoritarian states just love. It's a terrible precedent - the state can only interfere in parental decisions where it's been established there is a problem. Any other way of approaching it leads to dystopian scenarios.

That being said, once a child comes to the attention of authorities, including through school, leaving school shouldn't mean they fall off. That's a problem around records or systems.

Lots of kids in school are abused horribly, so there really isn't much reason to think that restricting home education would make a dent in that.

And violent women.
Beinash Batool, Sara’s stepmum was convicted of her murder.

No, but surely there was a duty of care for the removal of a child from school to be followed up on. Particularly when social services had advised the school to monitor her because of Safeguarding concerns. That had been their plan. When their plan was no longer viable they surely had to come up with a new one.

This is Victoria Climbie all over again.

The finger pointing at home educators is whitewashing for the institutional incompetence that, once again, has allowed a BAME little girl to be abused and murdered in horrific circumstances.

Exactly.

Sara was a child who’d been in care more than once before she was of school age. She’d spent time in a refuge with her mother, who was fleeing her father. A sibling had stayed in care permanently and the family had been to family court multiple times.

No matter what her father did she was a child who simply should not have been able to fall off the radar.

That fact must not be lost in a wider debate about HE.

Far too many children are off radar. Home ed students should be checked up on weekly at random times.

Before taking sledgehammers to people with Home Ed we need to start with regular checks on children that are known to be living in unsafe homes.

Thats the big thing so many of these cases have in common. Not school or home Ed or anything else - known to social services already.

Umpteen social services involvements, multiple trips to family courts, known domestic violence, in this case even multiple times in care and children removed from the home permanently.

If weekly visits are going to start being demanded let’s start with the children that we already know need them. Rather than repeatedly letting them fall through gaps despite it being known they live in unsafe homes.

I don’t think anyone has said it is.
What people are saying is that if you are going to abuse a child it is slightly easier to get away with it by pretending to HE than if the child goes to school, where they may say something to a teacher, or bruises may be seen.

Which is what happened with Sara. They pulled her out, as far as I understand it, because things were being noticed by school and reported. School did what they could. They cannot remove children but only report concerns.

If the child is HE then that’s a lot of people who could be seeing signs and now can’t because they no longer see the child. It’s a bit easier to hide what you are doing - in keeping the child away from other people you are hiding any evidence.

I think family court judges have to accept more over sight.

Why wasn't Sara being checked up on weekly at random times?
If social services aren't checking up on children they know are already living in violent homes, with inadequate parents, and schools have made referrals about them - who do you think is going to start making spot checks on a hundred thousand home educated children?

You can't give the state the power to say that children have to be institutionally educated

You can. Home ed is illegal in loads of places in Europe and inspections, exams and annual reports are mandatory in other places (e.g. France, Ireland, Italy) where it is allowed.

My partner who worked in education for 2 decades says that a lot of this is the result of
academisation - schools under the LEA system were able to share and check records more easily with each other. Also school sizes were smaller, staff levels were higher of trained teachers rather than TA's

Most parents forced into home education would become aware of their own shortcomings as teachers as it isn't easy and welcome support, advice and guidance. Instead there is no oversight or interest and few resources for these parents.

I also don't know how you'd know what your children needed to learn in terms of sitting their exams later on and achieving in life. Especially when 9 GCSE's are now the norm requiring the teacher to have at least an A level in each subject.

On the poor child who died, there were multiple failings at much earlier stages in her short life where agencies other than the school could have removed her to a safer environment than she was left in but for whatever reasons they come up with, chose not to.

Having a step parent seems to be more of a common denominator than home educating

It’s absolutely shocking that no one joined up dots on your well cared for home Ed kids?

I home educate.

What would happen if no-one was there when an unannounced visit happened?

Many home edders don't spend lots of time at home. This week, we've literally been out of the house 9-3.30 every day, and on the evenings they're usually at some sort of club or activity.

If they kept sending people out for announced checks they'd be wasting lots of time and money, and no doubt would flag it as an issue.

What about the childs right to an education?

Clearly this has an impact on schools as well.

Apologies clearly my comment was crass. I have every sympathy regarding the appalling misery that poor girl endured. Awful awful situation. But such situations are not exclusive to home ed families and monitoring home ed families isnt going to solve the issue. (think of all the other well known examples of children who endured terrible suffering - and those kids were generally well known to social services etc)
And yes....... it might help save one child (which would be excellent) but it would cause distress to many others. The great majority of home ed families are doing a splendid job - monitoring would bring them no benefit at all, only hassle. Many of those who wanted to hide/continue abusing/neglecting their kids would take steps to hide even more successfully. Plus it would all cost far more than is available.
Oversight/monitoring of HE families is a sticking plaster suggestion to make people feel better when something like this happens but it wont truly help or solve anything.

How should people (authorities) tell the difference?

We're a home ed family. With some of my DC going through GCSE's and two younger ones, I've heard every argument from home ed people about how there shouldn't be a home ed register. They have never convinced me.

People should always have the freedom to home educate and have autonomy over that process, but I believe that every child being home educated should be on a register, and regular checks made. We submit a report every year and have had one in-person check for one of our DC in 15 years.

At the moment, our council gives families the right to refuse in-person assessments, but I gather that to do so is seen as a bit of red flag, but I'm not sure what comes next for anyone refusing a visit.

Why are the individuals who made these decisions nor held to account in a criminal capacity? Whatever judge made that decision also "caused or allowed the death of a child", just as much as Sara's uncle, who will (rightly) end up in prison. Why no consequences for the judge who sent her to live with a known violent abuser?

I find this staggering. Were you deliberately avoiding routine appts eg vaccinations? I had a baby during the pandemic and the doctors still called to get me to book into routine vaccinations, the HV still did home visits after birth and I got called into all the routine development checks face to face,
Yes it was less than when I'd had my first. But it wasn't a total drop off

We are a home ed family, I totally agree with the above

It isnt realistic to think local authorities have the capacity to keep an eye on all children being homeschooled. The health visitor is there to keep an eye on preschool children, but parents can refuse to see the HV. It isnt a police state.

This isn't about home education. It's about family courts that are unquestionable and social services that are overstretched. If those things hadn't been true Sara would still be alive.
I do think that there should be more in place to oversee home education, but it is not the problem here, it is a convenient scapegoat letting ss and the courts off the hook.

The objections of HE to any oversight or people visiting to check on their children is weird and worrying. Somebody calling in for half an hour isn't much disruption, how is it going to harm you?