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.

I don’t think it should be banned, but I do think it should be more monitored.

if you choose to home educate, then you need to provide the same education as a school would do imo.

Exam fees are generally 40-50 pounds (combined science is around 90) . I don't know if schools are able to bulk buy for cheaper.
With admin fees charged by an exam centre that becomes 200-300 to the home educator.

The govt could allow home ed kids to sit exams much more cheaply and easily than they currently do if they wished.

I know, that drives me mad. It’s the “gotcha!” for a lot of home educators when you talk about socialising.

And I absolutely understand that position.

I’m not against home education at all, I did it myself for long enough. I’m not for schools either. I actually don’t give a shit what anyone else does. But you can never have a discussion about the drawbacks, and I do understand why, but I just used to find it incredibly frustrating when I was doing it, and everytime I would say anything remotely negative, I was shut down.

I think if home education is banned, the state should provide educational vouchers which can be used by parents towards private schools with an ethos they agree with. It is dangerous for the state to have a monopoly on education and for parents to be deprived of all educational choice.

And as for the potential for abuse, that is a concern, yes, but some state schools implement a culture of abuse of students in the form of totalitarian and "zero tolerance" discipline structures that some students, especially ND ones, find difficult and stressful to cope with. Some students are in a constant state of anxiety and their bodies constantly in high alert trying to cope with school. HE is the only escape for some.

@catherinedurrant

"Locally, our EHE community also does more sport than any of the local schools we checked."

Do you mean that they only do PE twice a week? Most schools also have a break twice a day where hundreds of kids run around together. They have various sports clubs available at both lunch and after school.

Plus kids who attend school aren't actually limited to what the school provides. Lots of kids do loads of extracurriculars outside of schools too.

I certainly wouldn’t ban HE. I also acknowledge the absolute paucity of provision for SEN children that many parents struggle with; it’s a national scandal how these children have been failed. Anyone dealing with this has my profound sympathy.

And yet there’s something about the rhetoric of parents demanding to be “left alone” to educate their children without interference which I find extremely troubling.

In a minority of cases I think HE probably is absolutely the best option. But the argument put forward on here and elsewhere that a) it should be more or less default b) that parents automatically get it in the way the government doesn’t and c) that qualifications don’t matter really worries me. It’s a very unhealthy sign for our society that we normalise the idea that it’s acceptable for a child’s education to be completely at the mercy of their parents’ choice on education.

Of course an SEN child who is struggling will do better at home. A child with very motivated and educated parents who devote themselves to its education may well thrive.

But there seems to be this base assumption in parts of the HE community that it’s completely acceptable for a child’s chances to be limited to the capacity of it parents. So if one parent has a phd in advanced physics the child benefits. With another child, tye parents didn’t do GCSEs themselves but tell themselves that getting change from the shop is all the life skill they need. Where is the parity of opportunity and the vetting to make sure the child in the second scenario isn’t being short changed (and that’s before you introduce the safeguarding question). It’s a total game of Roulette for HE children.

Yes there are some awful schools and in some cases parents are right to remove children. But at baseline, for most children in most situations, school offers a basic threshold of education which allows a child to learn beyond the capacity of its parents. And that is at some level regulated and measured. If we are going to allow parents to remove their children arbitrarily from these environments we owe it to the children to verify that the parents are actually doing what they say they are doing.

Schools do not allow children to sit exams who have no hope of passing because it costs them money.
If the government is going to pay for exams for HE children, then it would have to be able to assess whether those children have a reasonable chance of passing. Most HE will not even provide samples of work, they would not co-operate with this.

There are a number of organisations which support home educators, and their children meet up and do social activities.

My DDs have been home educated for most of their school lives. They did try mainstream school for a couple of years. I’m still paying for therapy to help them process the bullying, exclusion, peer pressure, stress it caused them. Both my DDs have ASD, are academically gifted & mainstream schools are simply not set up to meet their neuro diverse needs. What would you suggest OP? That they spend year upon year trying to be round pegs in a square holes until they feel totally shit about themselves? FYI we’ve recently had a Home Ed assessment and we passed with flying colours. I’ll carry on Home Educating my DDs until they are old enough & confident enough to go to college or into the workplace and face people like you …

@CatherineDurrant kids who go to school get access to sports in school and out of school. I didn't choose my child's primary because of access to sports because we do that at evenings and weekends (and do a lot of it).

Though many do.

.... at baseline, for most children in most situations, school offers a basic threshold of education which allows a child to learn beyond the capacity of its parents.

But surely if the parents went to school themselves nothing ( apart from additions to the syllabus) should be "beyond the capacity of its parents"?

They cost more than that to sit privately. And I agree councils should consider this. They give no support at all to home school parents & their kids. Even when the homeschool is due to school failure.

The cost depends on what admin fee the school or centre charges you. The actual exam fee charged by the examination board is quite low .

We paid £44.45 exam board fee plus £95 exam centre fee plus £30 speaking test invigilation fee for a mfl last year.

I know that this is cheap compared to some of the larger exam centres.

@Zebrashavestripes

No, because by definition subjects are taught by people with some competence in those areas (in theory at least).

Any parent, even a bright and motivated one, is going to do better in some areas than others. Its highly unlikely a parent would excel at everything.

School gives children access to a menu of subjects which their parents can’t offer. If the parents are bright and highly educated they may be able to step up to this but even in this situation it’s unlikely they will be able to teach all subjects well.

If the parents don’t have a GCSE to their name there is almost no chance they will be able to offer the knowledge and skills a child needs. The fact that they are unilaterally deciding that their child won’t need any more than they can offer seems highly problematic to me.

Agreed. The school system is abusive for kids with special needs..

There are an estimated 6000 supposedly HE kids in illegal extremist faith schools. They could use some oversight.

It costs a lot more than that where we live. And yes I know it’s the venue that charges most of it. There’s not a lot of options where we are unfortunately.

One of the exam centres offers the option to sit a mock - at additional cost to us of course, so that the child can have the practise of sitting it in the same conditions they sit the exam and familiarise themselves with the environment. If it's a service they offer, there must be some call for it.

Yes, I'm sorry about that. Finding a more cost effective arrangement is one way the govt could help, even if they passed the exam fee on to us.

I know lots of families struggle with exam arrangements and end up having to book into hotels because there is nothing close enough.

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That's an interesting idea, exams could be paid for by the Lea for families which have cooperated and shown that their kids are capable of entering.

I disagree my daughter has had a brilliant education through the special school system and now attends an amazing 19+ college which has helped her get 2 jobs.