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.

A home educating parent doesn't have to mirror every element of a school-based teacher's work, though.

A teacher has to deliver lessons to meet the objectives and needs of an entire class. Options available in home education can include: 1:1 private tutors; a tutor or a parent with relevant knowledge/skills coming in to teach a small group of home educating children; a parent delivering 1:1 education. Those options mean a lesson can be planned to meet objectives for just one individual or for a small group, rather than a full class. That means things like learning objectives, settings for learning, etc can be individualised in a way that isn't possible in a school classroom.

School lessons need to be delivered in a particular timeframe (a certain number of hours per day/week/term, within a structure of school start, finish and break times). Home education doesn't have to stick to that. Things can start early, finish late, take place over 7 days rather than 5, not follow school terms, etc. It can be designed around the strengths and needs of an individual child.

A lot of a teacher's time is also taken up with transitions between classes (introductions, wrapping up, children moving between rooms), managing class discipline, managing class safeguarding and pastoral care, etc. It can be much easier to manage transitions for one child you know well, rather than 30 you don't know that well, especially with the ability to tailor transition timings and approaches to what's best for an individual. It's easier to maintain discipline for one child (and can be done in a way that works for that child) rather than 30 - it's even easier to work with a child who has severe behavioural difficulties on a 1:1 basis rather than within a group of 30. As with the majority of parents everywhere, the majority of home educating parents care about and want to protect their own child, so child safety remains important - 1 child is a different setting than a class of 30, and safeguarding needs can be prioritised without having to juggle this against the competing demands of a full class. Things like bullying by classmates are far less likely in a home education set-up, and where issues arise, they're more likely to be picked up early by adults who will take the victim's experiences seriously. Bullying by teachers/school staff is virtually removed as a concern, but if there are issues with tutors, again these can be picked up early and taken seriously.

Being a good home educator is hard work. There are differences between home education and school teaching that mean the two don't require the same skills in all areas, though.

Another thing to consider is that there are classrooms across the country where whole classes are receiving lesson time delivered by people who aren't 'trained teachers' or who don't have specialist subject knowledge or familiarity with classes.

I agree with home education when it works better for the family. I don't agree with at risk children being taken out of school. If children are under any sort of protection order they should be at school daily. Of course life isn't that simple & the people at fault are the abusers but it is insane to me given the history that Sara was allowed to be removed from school. I also think HE children should have to be physically seen by an outside agency, unplanned, once every 6 months/ yearly. 99% of children I'm sure would be doing well but it's worth it for the ones who aren't. It's too easy for things to go under the radar imo. (I also realise whilst in school Sara's teacher reported things over and over and she was still returned which I can't understand at all- and the other children who reported abuse)

@AllYearsAround thanks for clarifying re benefits.

I don't understand how people are HE if they are working. I appreciate that HE doesn't mirror a classroom curriculum but surely it's very difficult to HE effectively and work. Can anyone explain?

You assume that those of us who were forced into HE our children do not do it properly but this overlooks individual needs. For my autistic son, it wasn't about home educating him in the way you describe; it was about rehabilitating him through an unschooling approach until such time he felt ready to reengage with formal learning. It worked and eventually he went to college and achieved a foundation degree. It was all about working around his needs which the school system had totally neglected in their push for academic success. Too broad a curriculum, too much pressure, poor SEND support plus bullying from peers and some teachers - it was a disaster and I knew I could not replicate that approach as it would have been retraumatising.

I did freelance consultancy work, 99% of which was done evenings and weekends. I did about 20 hours a week. My DH was the main earner.

Firstly, HE doesn't take very long. The government consider a "full time education" as 18 hours a week and most home educators find they need a lot less sit-down work time than that, particularly pre-GCSE. Even if you're doing book work for that long, it's only two full days and an hour in the evenings.

Secondly, parents often work part time, opposite shifts, weekends, flexibly from home etc.
They use childcare settings or home ed clubs for part of the week.

For example, you might have two parents each working 4 days a week. One day the kids go to a childminder. One day they do a childcare swap with another family. One day they go to a home ed learning community.

I have to say that since my son has been at school I'm amazed at how little learning they get through day to day compared to how much we used to do at home.

It's the HE kids who are doing less learning than schools that people are more concerned about. Sometimes a lot less

My almost 15 year old has a reading age of 7. He attends school. I have hassled and hassled. It took 18 months for an ed psych to visit school when he was Y3 as school only have so much funding for this per year - it's around 4 or 5 visits across a whole school. School is far from perfect in providing adequate education. They will often minimise needs or say they ''don't see that' when parents have valid concerns. LA's are unwilling to spend even where a child has an EHCP, they have to be fought all the way to tribunal.

I know as I did this in the summer. Chronic speech problems, complex SEND, and the LA still - even after sitting in front of a judge and panel - haven't got therapy in place, 18 months and counting.

It's a toxic situation for many families with children with SEND. We have spent 8 years and god knows how many 1000s of pounds, not to mention the constant stress. We end up spending more time on admin than family time, or even therapy at home, ironically.

Can you see why so many SEND families choose to HE? If it was made illegal, it would cost the state millions. LA's don't get enough money for the children still at school currently. Education system as a whole is on it's knees.

Money spent on better welfare checks and detection of abuse across the board - including very young children (disporportionate victims), and the majority of children who are at school would be a much wiser use of resouces.

SW and police already had rights to look at Sara's home situation and enough red flags to sink a battle ship. The failing is that they neglected to exercise those rights both whilst she was at school (abuse happening from 2019, so this was a long time to fly under the radar of anyone) and at the point that her so called 'family'.removed her from school and abuse escalated.

@Changeagain3 not directed at you, I agree with your post and was expanding on your point about school failing 1/3 of pupils in terms of maths and English.

I work in post 16/vocational education, we have large classes of disaffected students who have be failed in terms of basic literacy and numeracy. Many have a poor understanding of the basics, such as what division means.

Our teachers pick up the pieces, if they can, to provide a second chance. Sometimes the students have developed very poor self esteem and it can be hard to find a way back from that after years and years of school.

Check your privilege.

You're clearly naive about kids with additional needs

That's not true though in lockdown and not everybody homeschooling has unfortunately received a great education. I'm qualified to Masters level but how on earth would I teach GCSE English Lit, Spanish or Geography now?!

If they are receiving tutoring from expert educators or small home ed groups that's different of course

But they do learn social skills, exposed to different communities, and are kept an eye on by teachers in terms of safeguarding.

Many home educating families employ tutors on enrol children on online courses so they learn as an adult would e.g. I might sign up to duo lingo if I wanted to start learning Spanish. Since HE has gained in numbers, provision has boomed (including a lot of burned out teachers leaving school employment for self employment). Society is changing, people are looking at school and deciding that it doesn't provide well for their child. Far from wanting to ban it, I think it is a very hopeful sign of the times. Though I think SEND funding should be reformed to reflect this, and that LA's should be held accountable for their failing of SEND families at school and in HE. The amount of illegal activity on their part is breath taking, there should be fines for them breaking the law.

I home ed and I'm a trained teacher who had year of teaching experience and was highly skilled.
Since home educating I have met some of the most amazing home educating parents (some are teachers but others have never taught).
I have learnt so much from those who have never taught.
In both situations the best home educating experiences are families where they have a not schooled perspective to education.
We are getting there but it takes a while to move away from the narrow perspective of school and how learning happens in a school environment but once you can that's when the best learning happens

Valid points. However, from a different point of viw school can mean exposure to very poor behaviour and peer pressure to copy this. It can mean exposure to bullying from staff or peers. It can be just as culturally isolated (I think DS visited a mosque and a gurdwara once at primary, most of his schoolmates were and still are white just because of rural demographics). Different to a more urban school with a mix of communities.

Safeguarding is a moot point, Sara was abused since 2019 and was in school for years, safeguarding concerns from school did not trigger any action. I think sometimes there can be a certain level of false confidence i.e. we have reported this now so SW will take over in addressing concerns, when in reality SW teams are over stretched, underfunded and don't investigate further, as they clearly should have given Sara's background and Urfan's long case history as an abuser.

Typically you might teach the subjects you're comfortable with yourself, and for the others there's a vast array of online resources and tuition available. See e.g.
https://www.tutorsandexams.uk/learning-partner/tuition-company/
and
https://www.tutorsandexams.uk/learning-partner/online-school/

HE usually requires one parent to give up work. That leads to a huge number of "economically inactive" adults, many of whom would rather be working and have a kid in a school that actually meets their needs.
HE is often the choice of last resort when schools have failed, and is made at considerable economic sacrifice to the family.
A government that gave a shit might actually think about the cost to the economy of tens of thousands of people ceasing work to HE because their children have been failed by schools, and realise that failing to meet needs in school has both short-term costs to society in terms of a reduced workforce, and long-term costs as many kids failed by school leave without good literacy and numeracy but with significant damage to their mental health and self-esteem.

Yes. OP is a troll. Throw in a controversial hand grenade and then pretty much disappear.

You wouldn't need to. It is important you know your limits.

We use a combination of small group study, classes, workshops, tutors, parents with a particular skill and so on.

But just in the way I taught myself computer programming in the 90s, my children have picked up things they are particularly interested in given time, resources and support. As these were things they loved and had a particular aptitude for, they didn't want formal tuition as they felt it might turn it into a chore.

Home educated children also learn social skills and are exposed to different communities.

And in terms of safeguarding my son was always visible to various professionals so not really sure your point holds water. The majority of children abused or murdered by their parents will be schooled children.

Totally agree but with additions because you've forgotten all the cases of abuse under CSA (compulsory school age).

All children into supervised care from the age of 6 weeks and parents back into full time work to keep the economy going. Either that or local authorities coming into people's homes and checking children regularly up to the age of 5 when they can safely go into full time school. Checking cupboards and fridges to see what food they're eating etc and talking to the children in private.

I think 6 weeks is old enough. Okay parents could still abuse their newborns but if weekly health visitors are made mandatory that should negate that. But with regular authority intervention up to the age of 5, it would then completely stop all abuse of children from the age of around 6 weeks until they go to school where they'll be safe.

ETA Poor Sara was murdered during the summer holidays despite SS and the school being aware of the abuse so regular checks of all children, at school or HE should be also carried out over the holidays.

🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

Totally agree. I would have been very happy to have a friendly person visit frequently and have a nice chat about how things were going.

Good, so you should.