Guest post: "Home education is a contentious issue. I know there will be parents who may be upset by my Dispatches documentary"

[NiamhMumsnet]

Last night on Channel 4, my Dispatches documentary explored the fast-growing world of home education. It’s a contentious issue, and I know there will be parents who may be upset by it. They feel protective of their right to home school - parents, like Marcello, who appeared in my film and who educates his son at home, who make a philosophical decision to home educate and who put a lot of thought and dedication into providing their children with a high-quality education. These are the traditional home educators and I am not suggesting that they shouldn’t have a right to do so.

But this is not the experience of a large majority of the group of children without a school. I am worried about families who have ended up home educating for other reasons, and whose children are not receiving the good education in school that all children deserve. Many of these families embark on home education as a last resort or stop-gap until things settle and another school is found.

Take 12-year-old Lily, who I met while making the documentary. Lily is autistic and has been to 11 schools in eight years. Her mother, Mandy, says she was told Lily was ‘uneducatable’. As a result, Lily is now being taught at home. Lily is an amazing child - smart, ambitious and clearly capable of doing very well academically - yet she’s been told that no school can teach her.

I also met Sam, who removed her 12-year-old son Baillie after trouble at school. Their relationship with the school broke down and they were made to feel like Baillie was a ‘burden’ and ‘annoying’. Sam is clearly a loving parent, but she admitted to me that she had huge doubts about her ability to be able to educate Baillie in a way that a school could. She was receiving no support at all.

Part of the reason there is so little help is that we don’t even know how many children are home educated, why they have been taken out of school or even if they are safe. Our Dispatches film found that 92% of councils in England do not feel they have adequate powers to assure the suitability of education children who are home-schooled receive, and 93% of councils say they don’t feel confident that they are aware of everyone who is currently being home educated in their area.

Thousands could also be ending up without a school because of ‘off-rolling’. Often these children have special educational needs. In fact, our research for Dispatches suggests one in five children who are home-educated have SEN.

Sadly too, there are some families who are very aware of the lax rules around home education, which are used as a cover to stay out of sight from the authorities – something we know can have tragic consequences for children.

I think there is now an overwhelming case for all parents who are home educating their children to have to register their children with their local authority. They should also be asked why they are home educating and whether they intend for the child to re-enter mainstream education at some point.

On off-rolling, I hope Ofsted will come down hard on schools who are letting down some of the most vulnerable children. There should be financial penalties too for schools who are gaming the system. And school policies also need to acknowledge that poor behavior may be linked to additional needs, such as SEND, and make sure that all children with additional needs receive appropriate support.

Parents who are home educating have told me that they need more support, so within three days of a decision being taken for a child to be withdrawn from school to be home educated, a local authority should visit the child and family to provide advice and support on alternative options, including other schools the child could attend. There should be another visit a few weeks later to see how the family is managing.

I would also like council education officers visiting each child being home educated at least once per term to assess the suitability of their education and their welfare.

Some children have very positive experiences of home education. Others have told us they feel lonely and depressed, left alone for long periods in unstructured days. They miss their friends at school and can become isolated. These are the ‘off the grid’ children I am worried about. They have the right to a good education and childhood, and the system needs to change to make sure they do.

[Melah]

Sorry. Not sure if I’ve posted in the wrong place 😪

[Edders71]

Hi Melah, I’m sorry to hear things are so bad for your son. Unfortunately extreme school anxiety is a situation that’s fairly common. Home educators will always tell you that your child’s mental health must come first. If he’s so anxious then he’s not going to be learning in any meaningful way in school anyway, so in my opinion, you have nothing to lose by taking him out now. Home ed doesn’t have to be forever, school is always there. Perhaps you could persuade your husband to trial HE for a year and then reasses?

Usually people are against it because they have preconceived ideas about it - the kind of thing this programme perpetuates - however the reality of home ed is that it works for many people and there are lots of people willing to offer support and advice.

I would usually suggest you join a local group - if you go to the Education Otherwise or Ed Yourself websites you will find a group local to you who can offer advice on what activities they have available in your area. Alternatively the link below is for a national group where you can post and ask questions. Find out more, talk to your husband. There are many people in our community who have been in your position, they’ll be happy to advise you. All the best xx

m.facebook.com/groups/680880411948698?ref=bookmarks

[extrastrongmints]

A few things Anne Longfield doesn't seem to appreciate.

Firstly, the 1996 education act places a legal duty on the parents to ensure their child receives an education suitable to their age, ability and aptitude, taking into account any special needs they may have, through school or otherwise.
What does this imply? If the schools available to the family have continually failed over a period of years to provide an education that is suitable to the child's ability and aptitude, and failed to take account of special needs, then there is still a duty on the parent to provide a suitable education, and their only remaining choice to meet their legal responsibility to their child is "otherwise", i.e. home education. Parents whose children may be gifted, or have special educational needs, or both (i.e. twice-exceptional / DME) are doing exactly what the law requires them to do by removing their children from a school system that has failed to meet their needs.

Secondly Ms Longfield assumes as a starting point that children are better and safe in school and bends the evidence to fit the facts. She drags up the spectres of illegal Islamic schools and abused children dying of scurvy to smear home-schooling through lazy stereotypes. Her argument is essentially that children would be at less risk if they were all in school because schools are safe places. Does this stand up to scrutiny? Well:
There are equally serious problems in legal schools.
There is endemic bullying in British schools.
2,579 weapons were seized at schools between April 2015 and the beginning of 2017, including axes and air guns, as well as almost 500 knives
5,500 sexual offences were reported to police as having taken place in UK schools over a three-year period to July 2015, including 600 rapes.
There have been a number of homicides in British schools.
The government continues to encourage the uptake in schools of a game which has led to numerous catastrophic injuries and deaths in British schools
So let's not pretend that schools are wonderful, safe, nurturing places where nothing could ever go wrong. Many parents remove their children from school to take them out of harm's way, because they reach a point where they can no longer sit back and watch as more damage is done.

Lastly Ms Longfield's guest post is peppered with phrases like "I think" and "There should be", but is curiously lacking in supporting evidence of why there should be. A few cherry-picked anecdotes and wishful thinking do not prove a case. An example is "They should also be asked why they are home educating and whether they intend for the child to re-enter mainstream education at some point". No justification is given as to why they should be asked this, and no indication is given of what use would be made of the answer - it is purely personal opinion originating from a prejudice that school = right, home education = wrong. This prejudice is not compatible with the fact that that both choices are equally valid under UK law. Symmetry would dictate that all parents whose children are at school should be asked why they are sending their child to school and whether they intend to home-educate at some point? Curiously, she doesn't suggest this.

[SignOnTheWindow]

I don't know how much you had to do with cutting the excerpts for this documentary, Anne Longfield, but you came across as utterly contemptuous of even the 'philosophical' home educators you purport to support.

The documentary was confused, misinformed, misleading and directed towards the wrong end.

The significant questions that came up for me were:

Where do the children under school age figure in your compulsory register?

How would a compulsory register and termly inspections for each household of home educating family be funded? After all, Local Authority funding has been cut to the bone, just like that of the schools that are failing our children.

Could you explain how exactly a compulsory register would have helped the children in the abuse cases you mentioned? All were known to the authorities a very long time before their deaths. Why would a register succeed where Social Services failed?

[AGnu]

I think I should be provided with a constant supply of chocolate pop tarts & there should be no health consequences from my amazing new diet.

That's how this works, right? We can insist on things happening that we have no right to, with no mention of how to fund it or why it should happen & get to dictate what we expect the outcomes to be without any actual evidence or listening to people who have actual relevant experience... Hush, dieticians & doctors, I'm far too busy looking out for my pop tarts truck...

[AGnu]

Where do the children under school age figure in your compulsory register?

Good question, Sign! I hadn't thought of it that way before - why should a child be more at risk when they turn 5 than they were before?!

[thoroclock]

Exactly! Apparently once we've taught our children to walk and talk and they reach 4 years old we become completely unable to teach them anything else and in addition we become neglectful.

How about there is also a register to check our children are receiving the correct nutrition to have healthy, strong bodies? Once a month our store cupboards and fridges are checked for their nutritional value and we have to keep records on what we've fed our children every day. Seems the next logical step to you surely?

[marfisa]

I was home edded as a child, from the beginning all the way up to university, and while certain aspects of the experience were positive, I ended up with lasting psychological scars and mental health issues. It was not the academic side that was lacking, it was the social side. My parents (my mother in particular) were controlling to the point of being abusive, our family life was very unhappy most of the time, and I longed to go to school and meet other children. I am now a university academic and estranged from part of my family. I would never consider home educating my own children.

For the sake of all the 'off the grid' HE children whose needs aren't being met, I am very grateful for what you're doing, and I absolutely agree with your recommendations.

I wish some of the home-edders on this thread would realise that even if they're doing a great job and their children are fine, this is not the case for all HE families.

[OneInEight]

As usual too many assumptions and generalisations.

The fact is there are significant difference in the pupil profile between home educators and mainstream education. it is meaningless to compare the outcomes of the two populations, therefore, and conclude school education is better.

Even breaking down into SEN and not SEN may not be much better because I suspect the main categories of pupils that are forced into home education are pupils with ADHD and / or ASC rather than all SEN pupils (which encompasses a much wider range of difficulties). Basically, you need to be much more careful in your comparisons to ensure you are comparing like with like and the efficacy, or not, of home education. ds2 was actually going backwards academically in his last year at school so he would not have got any GCSE's on this projection if he had remained at school. It is meaningless to say he has performed abysmally compared to the average sixteen year old - the important question is given a pupil with his level of SEN would he have been better off staying within the school system or as we chose to home educate.

You make the assumption that GCSE's are more important than mental health. We had a different view in that if was more important that ds2 was alive at sixteen than he had GCSE's. He is but might well not have been given how depressed he was in the school environment. You can catch up on GCSE's at any time but regaining good mental health that, as we have found, is much more difficult.

In any case I really think GCSE's is a poor measure of outcome for comparing home educators and schooling and is biased towards those who are in the school system. Surely, what is more important is looking later in life - is there a difference in employability, income and mental health between the two groups.

[Cantankerouscat]

I know a family with a 7 year child with significant sen and in the process of receiving an ehcp with a recommendation of special school( far to late of course) where it was suggested by the school that the child was removed from school and home educated to avoid the school excluding the child.
The parents knowing that this would mean the local authority would no longer have a duty to provide an education, refused to do this and the school permanently excluded the child.
I think this experience isn't unusual.

[anniehm]

I could have very easily be part of these stats - dd is autistic and was really struggling in school at several points but we worked with the senco and cahms to work out a plan that kept her in school - the difference is that she wasn't badly behaved and we backed the school up. Too many of the schools SN kids had parents who couldn't care, failed to follow through with behaviour plans at home etc, in fact the senco doubted many really were adhd, they were simply badly behaved, and yes they wanted to offrole them as the very kids set fire to the school when ofsted were in! That's not a medical problem it's a criminal one

[QuickSharpSloe]

@anniehm that comes across as rather patronising, that your dd is well-behaved as you work with the school. The experience of many is either not working with a child (for example I know a child with CP sent out daily for slouching!) or tolerating them until they hit exam years way off target. CAMHS in our area is closed to non suicidal children right now.

I’ve really tried with my autistic daughter to work with everyone, but school didn’t support her. She has poor verbal skills and meltdowns. Her LD means she’s excluded from learning effectively and sensory difficulties often lead to meltdowns, often things that could be quite easily managed. For example the teacher shouting whilst she has radio aids on, I explained even flicking it off or taking it off would really help. In the end she refused it as it was painful. So she’s now hears v little of lessons too.

She’s no criminal, in fact at home I have no behaviour difficulties and if I hadn’t witnessed school behaviour I’d struggle to believe it. I don’t though allow children to poke her for entertainment, I don’t scream in her hearing aids, I talk so she can understand, I do work she can access, I don’t turf her into groups of hundreds of noisy children. So I don’t see the reaction of sheer panic of her screaming on the floor or running away. I also can work at her pace, so she’s not a hindrance in a group of 30 to other’s learning.

I’m far from a parent who doesn’t care. I care enough to re-organise my life to educate her as I believe in her. I honestly think she’s employable and can get there. I’m not without a reality check either, I taught for 15 years, 6 as a SENCo and 4 as a deputy head.

[Seedsandblossoms]

Whilst I respect your right and work to campaign for children's rights, I felt that the data and 'evidence' used in this programme was so flawed that it undermined any credibility in your argument. Such a shame.

Yes - off rolling needs to be challenged and stopped.
Yes - illegal schools need to be closed.

Please do both. This would involve schools, LA's, the Government and listening to parents who feel pushed out of the system.

The answer is not a compulsory register of parents who have chosen to exercise their right to educate their children in ways other than school.

ALL LA's have the names and addresses of ALL children who are off-rolled. ALL LA's can contact ALL the families to offer support or find out their reasons for leaving school. Those families can express their feedback about the school and ask for support should they need it. Sadly LA's do not fund or cannot fund much support for these families.

For all other families - we are parenting - which includes meeting the holistic needs of our children including mental health and learning. Parenting in this Country is the right of the parents and not the role of the State. You cannot claim on your statistics that Home Education is an immediate risk factor - even the serious case reviews you quoted were known to some authorities and it was the failure of those authorities to intervene and exercise their existing powers which also contributed to circumstances. If Home Ed were such a high risk over school- educated children, we wouldn't have the suicide and mental health statistics that we do amongst schooled children.

Yes, I agree that a lot of vulnerable children might end up homeschooled in our current system if schools claim they cannot or will not meet their needs. But please think of the complexities of the policies which have caused this upswell in parents opting for alternative education. Ofsted tunnel-vision on what good performance should look like, increasing pressures on young children to be assessed and monitored, lack funding to schools and lack of funding to LA's. So much could be done to positively impact the system and support children's needs better. Ploughing all media efforts into supporting the creation of a database. Knowing what you know of funding levels and LA priorities, do you honestly think this is going to change anything other than allow you to say, 'we have a register and parents are responsible for signing up to it'. Do you think those very few minority families who this is all designed to stop, will comply? Most children in the UK a NH number. The system cannot even manage to cross reference the NH number with the pupil number, if it did the LA's could do their homework themselves.

The database and the monitoring sets a tone that says the state assumes you as a parent need overseeing in your duty to parent and meet your child's needs. If this was the case what about under-fives? They are among the most vulnerable in terms of your statistics for safety. The policy just isn't coherent and it doesn't show proportionality or appreciation of all that parents bring.

Please use your influence to fix the systems first before conflating the issues and vastly exaggerating the risk amongst those who are responsible enough to choose a more effective way of educating their own children. I agree "invisible kids' is a frightening thought and a headline grabbing title which I'm sure you all felt would make a great impact in the papers. However, when you actually talk about thousands of children as 'invisible' it becomes derisible - the are absolutely not invisible.

Such a missed opportunity to advocate for HE children and alternative approaches to learning and education and to work positively with HE families who largely make choices for children's rights to be well and happy and thriving. Please listen in again and call out the real issues which lie with Ofsted and Government and Schools.

[Cantankerouscat]

anniehm the family I mentioned did work with school. They asked for extra support in school and asked the school from early on to apply for an ehcp but were told this wasn't needed. The child, diagnosed with several types of sn before starting school was permanently excluded for lashing out when in distress because they had no one supporting them.
The school and local authority have persistently and blatantly broken the law regarding their treatment of the child both before and after the exclusion.
Thankfully the parents now realise this is the case and are pursuing legal action to force the authority to provide the education the child should be having.

[Gillway]

Zzzz Potentially the impact on your life will be further legislation allowing them to enter your home to inspect when you least expect because they don't believe your child is getting a 'suitable' education.

[Gillway]

And where is Niamhmumsnet the OP. Is she still proud of her documentary? Will she ever be made to see that this doc is propaganda helping the government on its trajectory to set SEN children back fifty years? Come back and tell us what you are going to do to help SEN children access education!
www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/31/un-panel-criticises-uk-failure-to-uphold-disabled-peoples-rights

[Gillway]

Zzzz this isn't about you as an individual. It's about all Sen kids attempting inclusion in schools being forced out to home school when they and their parents have a right to a free, suitable and full time education and to 'achieve the best outcome' as per The Children's Act. The law is being warped.

[JtotheY]

No Anne, you've not been looking into home education. If you had truly looked at home education you would have given a look at all the brilliant families and huge communities out there. And the young adults doing well in life having been hone educated. You would have seen what amazing things the children do and how incredibly lucky they are. Not just the few you have selected to put fear into people. Propaganda at it's finest.

I was confused by the program. Was it about illegal extremist schools or was it about sick individuals who hold their child hostage from 13months old? Either way unrelated to home education. There could however be more emphasis on the social services and now they let down that poor boy who died at home in the middle of nowhere. He was reported and known to social services. How did they miss it? Were there not concerns raised at no one seeing him from 1yrs old? Surely someone would have chased his preschool vaccinations at the very least or his 2 year check?

Extremist schools. I don't know what else to say. Not home ed. Completely unrelated. I hope the government and Ofsted do a better job at shutting them down rather then wait for you to appear while on dispatches.

If you were interested in actually showing home ed there are literally thousands of us you could have spoken to or taken part in your show. We are not invisible we are out there filling up museums, parks, leisure centres. Normal families going to normal doctor and dentist appointments. We are NOT invisible.

Your show should really have been purely about schools letting down children particular those with SEN. And looked at WHY so many thousands of families are home educating. It's not the easy option so WHY are we doing it? It almost would seem schools are letting families down making home ed the favourable option wouldn't it. And maybe your show should have looked into the poor school children that commuted suicide just last year alone. 219 if my memory serves me correctly. And looked at the children abused while still attending school and even when known to social services.

What a biased and generalising show that was. It was painful to watch. But I suppose showing the positives of home education wouldn't help you at all would it. Just imagine how many people would be deregestering! Which reminds me... the LAs do have figures for home ed. They know exsctly how many children have deregistered.

[AGnu]

Oh, I've just remembered the description on C4 said something like "are parents rights to HE coming before what's best for the child". HE isn't a parental right, it's the responsibility of a parent to ensure their child's right to an education appropriate to their age, etc. It makes me twitchy when people start talking about a parent's right to HE because none of this is about our rights, it's all about the rights of our children & the responsibility we have towards them.

Using the word responsibility wouldn't fit with the biased narrative of the programme though - couldn't possibly have any suggestion that HE could be the responsible choice by caring, responsible parents!