To disagree with home ed

[Freshton]

Unless in extreme cases (ie SEN, extreme mental health or other complex needs) or parent is qualified teacher, I fundamentally disagree with home ed.

It's insular and doesn't prepare kids for the real world.

I've seen first hand some shocking examples that I can't go into for confidentiality reasons but common thread was parents arrogantly assumed they had same skills as teachers with masters degrees. Reality was kids were really behind, had no proper structure or routine.

It's worrying that so many people see home ed as a viable lifestyle choice. I know school system not perfect at all but isolating children at home or in small home ed group echo chambers isn't healthy.

When money is so tight that the LA can not fulfill it legal responsibilities in education I question how they can spread their remit to effectively support outside of education

What this means is that the will further reduce the support i. Education to stick their nose into home Ed and cause more problems their

Which means that this has no benefit for any child I. School or home Ed but will cause damage

If the aim is to damage kids in schools, kids in home Ed and not safeguard children at risk of harm then that's possible but if the aim is to protect and enhance then that is highly unlikely to be the result sadly

Exactly they have no money so how are you expecting the new rules to have any positive impact. It's just sound bites to get votes by throwing home Ed under the bus. It will not aid a single child sadly

I completely disagree with you.
No one is throwing home Ed under the bus.
No one is trying to get votes.
The fact you can say ‘stick their nose in’ to HE illustrates pretty perfectly this attitude of isolationism and knowing better. But maybe there are people out there who think they know better but actually mean harm and do harm. (And we know that there are)

There is a need to protect all children not just those in schools. Children ARE vulnerable when they are rendered less visible to society and we should protect them.

I wish people/the system cared enough to protect my child when they were in school but they didn't

It so interesting how people would gladly throw vulnerable children in school under a bus to allow a better educational outcome for jon sen pupils but are up in arms about protection for home Education.

It just shows you haven't had to experience the reality of how bad the system can be

The groups my two go to are structured

Forest school caters to the whole age range - toddlers messing about in the mud kitchen, older kids learning to identify species, set up nest cams, build fires, in between age children fitting in with nature crafts and popping into each group depending on their attention span

Gymnastics - where the little ones play structured games and the older ones are having instruction from the tutor

Equine place - where children are learning horse care, foraging, equine body language under the owner with actual talks and doing, and the children expected to listen

Home ed trips with guides showing us around places, handing out worksheets and giving talks where the children listen and respond

Just as a few examples.

If local home ed groups are not groups with a purpose and are instead just a coffee meet up then I can see where that becomes an issue. But then any parent can plan a home ed group or meetup, just create the type of group or activity that you want your children to be part of and others will turn up. Dont go to the wishy washy ones if thats not your thing.

The thing is, a lot of parents just aren't great and don't always have their children best interests at heart. They make bad choices, and their children end up paying the price. Sadly, those are often the only parents people seem to focus on, everywhere. It doesn't matter what kind of school or education they get when the parents are bad. No child living with bad parents is safe, whether they go to a physical school or an online one. It’s wild how everyone keeps bashing home education like it’s some kind of abuse hotspot just because they’re not out in the public eye. Honestly, why does anyone care if you can’t see them specifically? Meanwhile, we ignore the fact that children in regular schools are dealing with abuse and bullying every day and still not getting help, even though it’s right there in front of everyone’s face. Let’s be real: if a child got bad parents, they’re not safe no matter where they learn.

Just a friendly reminder to keep things positive. Do your own research, meet new people, and don’t let fake news, stereotypes, or bad stories stop you from learning and exploring.

I’ve got friends who are coding from home as software engineers, all while home educating their teens. They’ve been rocking this setup for years! They use private online schools that feel totally like regular school but digital, plus they bring in private tutors for extra support. The trick is they all respect each other’s space, so parents don’t hover in the same room while the children study. They even have a whole room dedicated as a classroom, decked out with PCs, laptops, and books, while the parents work from their own home offices. The children still get plenty of social time through outdoor groups and activities, so their lives are super social and active. Everyone’s loving it—it’s structured, disciplined, and professional, in the best way possible. The children don’t have any special needs and have personalities that make this setup a perfect fit. Basically, they chose this life so the whole family could be together more.

Children need protecting whether they are being home ed'd or not. In the awful cases that come out where parents home ed, the children were known to be at risk and the state did not intervene as they should have. While being less visible to the state is a vulnerability, home ed children are not at more risk of harm than those in school. There is no need to systematically monitor them to put them on the same footing as children in school.

Children who are home educated are less visible to the state. But they are also less at risk of state harm. Pulling the state into their lives more than they currently are, increases the ability of the state to harm them through institutional failure, pressure to conform to state mandated processes or outcomes and increased stress on the family.

The most common reason cited by parents for pulling their children out of school to home ed is that schools are damaging their children. There is no good reason to think that the state will suddenly be better at meeting their needs once they are out of school.

More than one thing can be true.
Children can be harmed in more than one way - by the state but also by their parents through actual abuse or neglect.

https://www.facebook.com/1212271077/videos/2007280139799822/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v

This fictional piece is where the school and wellbeing bill is leading.
If you care about harm to children you need to care about the harm this bill will cause too

Yes. And home ed, balancing those two things, is no more or less safe than being in school. So what is the basis for banning it as the OP suggests? Or putting more state oversight on it?

I certainly don’t think it should be banned, and have huge admiration for those that do it well (and for those forced into it by school failure with SEN/mental health).
There are many bodies that believe, and cases to back them up, that some children are more at risk of abuse because they effectively disappear from the system (and in some cases are not seen by gps, dentist’s etc.) so there is no oversight. Another small group of children have their education significantly neglected. Many on this thread have attested to that.

But I’ve said this already and been shouted down so I guess you will too!. I would have thought it was in the interests of the HE community to support measures (more oversight?) to protect all HE children as it is a growing phenomenon. But everyone seems to take it so personally, if you do it well then why not help protect children who’s parents can’t or won’t. (I get why the threads title is annoying though)

I certainly don’t think it should be banned, and have huge admiration for those that do it well (and for those forced into it by school failure with SEN/mental health).
There are many bodies that believe, and cases to back them up, that some children are more at risk of abuse because they effectively disappear from the system (and in some cases are not seen by gps, dentist’s etc.) so there is no oversight. Another small group of children have their education significantly neglected. Many on this thread have attested to that.

But I’ve said this already and been shouted down so I guess you will too!. I would have thought it was in the interests of the HE community to support measures (more oversight?) to protect all HE children as it is a growing phenomenon. But everyone seems to take it so personally, if you do it well then why not help protect children who’s parents can’t or won’t. (I get why the threads title is annoying though)

So you think OP people should be obligated to have their kids educated by the state, unless they are wealthy?

That's more than a little authoritarian.

Because the measures that are proposed will actually harm children and dilute resources so that those actually at risk are still not getting support.

How?

The mainstream school we have says they cannot meet need - yes we’re in the SEN category but they say there are at least 10 other children who they cannot support but won’t get specialist support. What is the right answer here?

Surely in those cases, the biggest risk is children who never enter the system in the first place?

What about children under school age? Health visitor checks aren't compulsory, nursery isn't compulsory etc so if home ed needs to be more strict to attempt to monitor these children then surely that means that health visitor checks for under 5's should be mandatory and maybe nursery should be mandatory for 3+ year olds. Early intervention with eyes on children would likely provide better safeguarding than leaving it until school age.

Because so many reasons

if it's harder to deregister parents of children in crisis won't be able to take them out for home ed quickly- meaning they are left in an environment making them ill.

Children currently home educated due to past school trauma may be forced back into the environment

Children with SEN that aren't getting proper education to meet their needs will have to remain in school resulting in poor educational outcomes for them, the suggested packages of support won't meet needs and children will.either be left to fail or become more disruptive and difficult which will.have a negative impact on other pupils too.

Children that are home educated will be need checks at home (according to plans). These checks will take manpower and time. If these checks are done by unskilled people (likely by my experience) they won't know what they are looking at and could very well make wrong assumptions about the quality of education. Resulting in return to school orders that are not needed. This will cause damage to young people forced into schools.particularly those previously failed by schools.
Will they be trained to recognize the signs of abuse, but also recognise children who are autistic and struggling with strangers entering their safe space? Will they know the difference?

Will there be 2 people one trained in home Ed and one in safeguarding doing these checks or will they focus on one area only?

How big will the team be because social services are failing to safeguard children known to be at risk now. If they have to monitor every home Ed family they will have even less time to focus on the known at risk children. These children known to be at risk should not be ignored due to time constraints

Lastly, what about those children under compulsory school age - how are they going to be safeguarded. All do abusive parents just have to make sure the child is under 5 so that they fly under the radar

Yep, children being abused at any age is obviously a bad thing

Of course. It's odd that the focus seems to only be on children of school age out of sight when under 5's are regularly out of sight and I don't see hardly as much people talk about introducing mandatory checks to check on them.

Worth checking at all ages absolutely.
But one doesn’t negate the other, and wasn’t the conversation here.

Where's the thread or calls for under 5 monitoring

Never seen one but seen lots of anti home Ed ones

Have you heard of ‘whataboutism’?
It's a way of deflecting from a question you don’t want to be asked.

Have you heard about minimizing actual concerns from actual home families with SEN children who have been treated awfully by schools, LAs and the government who want to further removed legal protections from vulnerable children

And its interesting how people are all about protection but when it's pointed out all the groups that are protected then that's not relevant

It's never the conversation here.

Which makes me think it is more about home ed itself rather than actually safeguarding children.