To think Home Education should be made illegal

[Viviennemary]

I would like to see a ban on HE except perhaps in a very very few cases and with good reason and under strict supervision.

This is why we tend to only attend more structured home ed stuff, groups where there is a set thing to do rather than free flow type groups in a hall. Of course there are parents like this in all walks of life but when you have a large gathering of them I find it embarrassing.

I know several families who have HE'd for a number of reasons and they're all caring parents who have ensured their children have received a decent education. One of my friends in particular tried really hard to keep her son in school but nowhere could manage his additional needs adequately and he was really suffering. Banning parents like that from educating their children outside of mainstream schools would be completely wrong.
However, I think some additional oversight would be a good idea. Whilst most parents who home educate are responsible, loving people who keep their children safe there is no doubt that it can be used to facilitate neglect and abuse in some cases. It is understandable that the recent horrific case has prompted calls for reform but a complete ban would be disproportionate response.

Because it is removing the parents choice to do what they believe is best for their child. It is amazing that we have the choice to do that in this country.

However, like I said in my original comment was that there should be tighter regulations around it.

Isn't it funny that there are such a range of personal experiences. My experience is very different, I've been around a large number of home educated children ranging from young through to 16yrs, and they are, by far much better socially than the schooled children I encounter.

For some reason, where I live, the schooled children are scared to interact with both adults and children that they don't know, it's very odd. They also seem to have very tunnelled thinking, very much like they have been brainwashed by the state education system sadly. Whereas the home educated children I know are much more open minded, curious, and enjoy exploring and questioning things, something I find, in my experience that some schooled children are not allowed to do.

ETA perhaps in the case of the two home educated children you encountered, it sounds very much like they were ND, just from the brief description you've given. There of course are many socially challenged children in schools, I was one of them!

How is quoting an anecdotal story balanced?

Wow 😂

I used to be a teacher, and now I'm a home educator.

ETA as a parent, I'm still around schooled children a lot, due to friends, local community children, and children at all of the activities that mine go to, so in daily contact with both HE & schooled children from a parent's perspective.

How on earth can you home educate if you are not a qualified teacher with in depth knowledge of the curriculum? And.... safeguarding!!! Yes agree, only allowed under very specific circumstances and closely monitored.

I would like to see much more oversight of homeschooled children with a particular focus on safeguarding.

@SharpOpalNewt DS2 was LA funded to attend internet school throughout high school and also had LA funded tutors in addition for English lit and Lang and history in GCSE years. We also had LA SALT to begin with. I had to be unpaid LSA. Maybe because he already had EHCP, maybe because GP supported inability to attend? Maybe previous tribunal and legal intervention? He's autistic/ADHD.

He achieved 11 GCSEs, did maths, physics and further maths at A level (Astar, A, A) and now doing masters mechanical engineering at uni.

HE works for some DC who would fail to achieve in school and would be emotionally and psychologically damaged. We had no formal checks but he had more 1:1 with educational/LA staff than he would have received in school.

He would have been more likely to experience abuse outside the family and it would have been more likely to have been missed inside the family if he had been attending school.

Banning HE will do nothing to safeguard children at risk.

YABU.

School is not suitable for all children or families.

Families should be free to educate their own children how they see fit. There are also academic benefits to 1-1 teaching, and the flexibility of home education may be better for some lifestyles and careers.

Also you escape the risks of school, like bullying (ie, assault/harassment), sexual
abuse and gender neutral toilets.

But there should be oversight. Parents should have to prove their children are following the curriculum for maths, science and English, and submit proof of work etc.

They should also submit termly reports proving that their children are regularly socialising with peers.

I am somebody who experienced both school and home education (not done particularly well, but not hiding abuse) and this opinion comes from my experience.

Why would you need in-depth knowledge of the curriculum (assuming you mean the National Curriculum), when there is no requirement for the NC to be taught in HE?

Safeguarding is NOT a HE concern as it happens. Statistically, schooled children are much more likely to be abused than HE children.

Sara Sharif was abused for ten years, home educated for ten weeks.

She was known to both safeguarding teams at school and social services. She was failed by them, home education was nothing to do with it.

I posted earlier in the thread I think page 2, my dd was in school until the middle of October last year when she was in year 8, academically extremely able and in set 1 of 8 in a large secondary school having come from a small primary. The transition caused her to fall apart, she couldn’t cope and I was ultimately backed into a corner.

She should be in year 9 now choosing her options but she’s at home with severe
anxiety and agoraphobia and was diagnosed with ASD last November ( my 21 year old ds also has ASD and went to the same school and thrived ) and it has affected our whole family to be honest.

ive heard of 2 other families locally who have removed their dc from the school too and both have ASD. Coincidence? I think not.

my dd is well looked after, safe and healthy but it’s scary how so many children are being failed by being left to it, I agree there needs to be some sort of regulation and I’ve said all along I don’t want to home educate but I don’t feel I’ve got a choice. My dd’s mental and physical health was compromised and she needs to get better. She’s a bright girl and I know she has definitely fell behind academically but she’s still learning so much at home and is happier than she was. It’s a tough one.

every single case is unique.

Monitoring HE a moot point anyway. Just a nice little distraction from the failings of the SS, courts and education system in the case of Sara and others like her.

The authorities can’t get their shit together to safeguard blatantly abused children like Sara. There is no way they will find the resources to monitor all the HE children.

I work with quite a wide variety of children and parents who are either mainstream school or home ed.

There are home educating parents and there are home educating parents.

Some are doing it as a middle finger to society.

Some don't like things like the class sizes, too much homework, pressure to perform in tests (not just GCSE and above), and seemingly arbitrary rules and punishments. They think that mainstream schooling institutionalises children in a way that they aren't happy with.

Some are doing it because their child tried school and didn't cope or thrive there. sometimes it's because of bullying or factors in the child's life outside of school. Sometimes it's because of SEN or other disabilities.

Some can't be arsed, or wildly underestimated what is required of them, the educating adult, or have subscribed to a theory that children are naturally curious and will teach themselves. These tend also to be the parents who don't believe in rules and boundaries for their children.

Some are doing it because they think they can offer their child a better experience of education than they would otherwise get in school. They research what the local authority has to offer home educating families and make use of events, free museum and library admission and resources, tutors, home educating groups, after school clubs, public spaces, their garden, and generally make sure that they consider all aspects of childhood and a child's learning needs, to prepare them well for adulthood and employment. These children generally are prepared for and sit GCSEs, and may or may not enter/re-enter school at some point before then.

I see a huge variety and unique combinations of all of the above, and I have varying levels of sympathy and respect for the various motivations and approaches of the responsible adults.

My children are happily at mainstream school - this is mainly because I cannot afford to home educate. I would have chosen to home educate my children if I'd have had the resources to have been able to do so, and as somebody with teaching experience and qualifications I think I would have done a good job of it. I content myself with giving my children experiences around school that are educational in ways that school can't give them. We grow our own veg, watch wildlife, visit museums a lot. They have done a lot of Brownies and Scouts badges.

I find the idea of compulsory mainstream school attendance deeply disturbing. I think the freedom to choose to educate your children outside of the state school system is and should remain a fundamental human right.

Massive huge disagree. Home ed children "face the big wide world" more and sooner than children shut up in a school. But I suspect you're not interested in hearing the other side of this so I won't waste my time.

@GenAvocadoOnToast tbh I don't think the kids in that family will get a full education. They are KS2 and can't read or write as far as I can tell. Their mum says they will learn in their own time, but I'm not sure how!

However, another friend HE one of her dc as he had additional needs. Once he was at 2ndry level she had an arrangement with the small independent where his sibling went that he could be on a pt timetable (at full fee price.....) to do Maths and sciences. He didn't very often actually attend, and when he did it was only for those lessons - no lunchtime, break time etc as he found that extremely stressful. But the flexibility suited them.

Where in the big wide world are home ed kids going that school kids don't?

HE parents are not required to teach the NC. I didn't. And yet my son is academically ahead.

YABU OP but I do agree with you in that it should always be under strict supervision. I think there are many reasons why a parent should think it is in their child's best interests to be home educated such as if a child is experiencing bullying which the school is not addressing or the child has needs which are not being met. However, having said all of that, there needs to be much more scrutiny to ensure that the child is actually receiving an appropriate education , is safe and that they have the opportunity to socialise with other children. It is a complex issue - I myself have very bad memories of school - of being bullied not just by other children but also some teachers (one of whom was a paedophile but that is another story..) being hit with a ruler for dropping a book, feeling 'not good enough' when I was moved from my peer group into the 'top' class full of articulate middle class kids... .. My parents could not have educated me at home - they both had to work to make ends meet but school was not a happy place for me and I did not do well academically but have since thrived - many, many people do not reach their potential at school OP.

You could argue that if you went to school yourself you should have some knowledge of the curriculum, don't you think?

The purpose of school is to educate, not safeguard. How are pre-schoolers safeguarded? Schooled children during the school holidays, evenings and weekends? How is school an efficient protective factor when:

1. There are children at school who are abused at home and nobody finds out until it's too late.
2. Many children are abused at school.

Just that school = bad and HE = wonderful is far from fact, as many home educators know, they just won’t admit to any drawbacks.

Life isn’t black and white, there are drawbacks to everything. Not that you’d know with home ed, as it’s usually just “everything is awesome!”

I get the defensiveness, really. I was spoken to like shit over the years I did it for. I just wish people were more honest that it’s not perfect and there can be issues.

"But there should be oversight. Parents should have to prove their children are following the curriculum for maths, science and English, and submit proof of work etc.
They should also submit termly reports proving that their children are regularly socialising with peers."

I agreed with you until this point. Firstly, there is no curriculum for home education, so there is nothing to submit proof of work for a "curriculum".

Secondly, there are no "terms" for home education, so that isn't applicable either. Also, writing a report does not "prove" socialisation exactly.

Currently, this is just how the law works at the moment regarding EHE, there is no requirement to follow a curriculum, changing this would be detrimental to many children, specifically with SEN. The NC isn't exactly something that everyone agrees in terms of it's content.

When known to the EHE department, we are usually asked to provide annual reports containing progress. At the moment, any contact more than annually, other than formal, would be unlawful as it would be classed as monitoring which is unlawful in the UK. I'm just saying what it is now, not saying this won't change in the future.

As a former teacher, and now home educator, I find a lot of comments on these threads are written by people with a lack of knowledge of the current government EHE guidelines. They often have a distinct lack of knowledge of home education and how it works.

I always remember the local authority home ed guy telling me that if I followed the NC one to one with ds, a couple of hours a day, we’d have the whole school years work knocked off in a couple of months. We did follow it broadly though as he always going to go to school eventually.