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.

Of course there should be compulsory registering of home school children and regular visits.

@MNHQ WTAF is going on here and why was this woman given yet another platform wherein posters come on who have lived experience and are yet again totally ignored?

The C4 documentary was like the Daily Mail on TV, the way they portrayed the lady who struggled to read was demeaning. I particularly liked the way they lumped in child abusers with people whose kids had chronic health conditions and then threw in a few Muslims at the end - something for every misanthrope eh? This woman had a chance to hold schools and the Government to account, she had a real opportunity to investigate off-rolling. She could have gone round to the homes of mums to be filmed sitting talking to them, and then going to the child's previous school and saying hey - why did this happen, this looks like your fault. But why do that when you can turn up during breakfast and start eye rolling when someone won't get out of bed (ideal opportunity to show just the sort of people we are dealing with here eh? All on benefits were they Anne?)

Self aggrandising tabloid journalism just with some moving pictures.

Melah It is so hard to get kids like your son support and I'm sorry he and your family are going through this. I was the anxious child with suicidal ideation, personally, I found group therapy was a big part in helping, but it's very individual and can be difficult to find. You may have seen this before and I'm not guaranteeing it will help, but . I agree with maybe asking to try it for a year, or even a term while looking at the possibility of other education options.

marfisa I entirely agree that not all home educated children and families are fine and that it doesn't help to pretend that all of the issues are to do with schools when many are within our own communities that have nothing to do with schools. The scaremongering about education authorities and schools that happens a lot, as seen a bit in this thread, is not helping either. I have a great relationship with my LA, though sparser than likely ideal due to cutbacks.

However, I'm not seeing how her recommendations for a register and frequent visits in the home would have changed a situation of a controlling parent socially isolating their kids. Those types of parents aren't likely to be caught out - as I'm sure you're aware, controlling parents can be very good at playing professionals against their kids - and none of these recommendations encourages any form of community involvement or interaction. A stranger coming every year or term isn't going to fix any of that.

For a term, I had weekly visits from the council's young carers' team in which we asked for help specifically for social isolation issues and got nothing but someone who wanted me to paint my kitchen, gave me a bag of tins and tried to give us things we repeatedly said we did not want because 'it makes the volunteers happy', and mocked my daughter for being upset that she'd been bullied at a local community group for having visibly disabled parents, including by the adults.

I'm happily registered, I've had these visits and done the reports willingly (and basically got a leaflet of links and a secondary school recommendation to have my kids test for a school out of our catchment), I've had the school nursing team around my home a few times. I'm quite open to it, I think home visits can have a place in helping people, but it's not a general solution to the issues home educated kids face, in good or bad situations. Without the funding for exams and other resources, space and encouragement to be in the community, and actual solutions, this is just a pat on the back, tickbox exercise that will do pretty much nothing for home educated kids in needs and I am tired of this solution being brought out time and again when anyone who has had regular home visits can discuss the limits to them as a way to change anything, especially with money as tight as it currently is.

that should be *"it made volunteers and donors happy". As already said in this thread, the services for vulnerable kids has been cut and pushed onto charities with no real responsibility over the last several years, adding this onto LAs isn't going to get anywhere when those of us open to home visits have already been getting them less and less frequently over time.

For every "Morcello" in your film, who I have little doubt is able to provide a high quality education, there are many others who do not have the skills to offer an education similar to what they would receive at school.
I think there should be more diversity in schools, by that I mean the current one size fits all clearly doesn't work. There was a move away from so called special schools a decade or so ago and a push to educate all children in mainstream schools. This doesn't seem to be working. Perhaps there should be more specialist schools for the so called uneducable children? Lily, who featured in your programme, is clearly highly intelligent and with the right support would probably end up at Oxford. She is more certainly being failed by the system.

At the very least there should be a mandatory register of all home educated children and a statutory right of OFSTED to visit every home educated child at their place of education, as many times or as regularly as OFSTED sees fit. The ability of parents/carers to decline such a visit strikes me as the single more defining factor which allows the Dylan Seabridge's of this world to fall through the cracks and will fail the most vulnerable children. If nothing else changes, this needs to change.

Whilst I am not an advocate of home education, I do think that parents of SEN need to be listened to so the governing body can understand and address the often complex needs of these children within a formal educative framework.

The responses here have brought tears to my eyes. My DS is 2 and my biggest concern since pregnancy has been schooling.

These ‘quirky’, ‘geeky’ kids should be the UK’s future inventors and entrepreneurs but many cannot cope with the Gove-ian Victorian school model

I was one of these and it has taken decades to repair the damage. I have already decided to HE, if that's what it takes to safeguard my son. It won't be "philisophical", it will be to avoid permanent physical and psychological damage.

Can someone explain how a government who have identified mental health needs soaring in primary aged children, and has put in place funding for whole class interventions e.g. mindfulness, has NOT linked those increasing needs to the setting where they spend the majority of their waking hours?

I think that until the government / schools
A) deal with the bullying that is rife in our schools (pushing some children to suicide),
B) deal with providing adequate sen support to all those who need it,
C) provide a tailored education to those at the top and bottom of the academic spectrum,
D) vastly improve mental health services for children and young people,
Then more and more families will opt (or be pushed into) home education.
I could also mention excessive testing of tiny children in England, or the dumbing down of exams in Scotland. These are what the OP should be looking at, not demonising a whole group of people, the vast majority of whom are doing their very best.

And yes I know there are some issues within the home ed community.
I also know that hundreds of men abuse or even kill their partners every year. No one is suggesting a register of all women who live with men, and a compulsory visit every few months to check for abuse! (Analogy stolen from a poster on another page, but I thought it was very apt.)

I found the documentary interesting and feel that, all things taken into account, it did a fair job at bringing a range of issues to the notice of the general public. It had to begin from the starting point of assuming no knowledge on the part of the viewer.

There are complex issues in the mix, including an issue with un-registered schools being set up under the umbrella of 'home education'. But it is just part of the overall picture that people in policy roles need to consider. I don't think that they were wrong to show it and it surprised me just how toothless Ofsted seemed to be - I assumed that they would arrive with police or another enforcement authority. I suspect that the unregistered school in question has probably emerged again in a different location or under another name.

However, I felt that the film was intrusive at times and potentially served to expose/embarrass some of the parents who had invited Anne and camera crew into their home. The footage of Sam reading with Baillie should have been edited in a different way.

I think the footage of Leo did illustrate, albeit in a bit of a clumsy way, the tension between adapting education to a child's needs (which is as home education should be) and simply letting them do whatever, whenever. Obviously his mum couldn't parent in quite the way that she would if cameras were not there, but I don't think Anne Longfield was wrong to wonder how much education was taking place.

There is also a huge issue around registration and data capture. I believe that all children should be assigned their UPN (pupil number) at birth. If a child who is known to GPs or known to HVs does not show up at school, then yes - that should be followed up.

"It had to begin from the starting point of assuming no knowledge on the part of the viewer" and exploit that you mean? Because you seem to have come away with the view that most people choose to home educate - maybe the "register" could be a list of all those who had been forced out of school through "off-rolling"?

... but I don't think Anne Longfield was wrong to wonder how much education was taking place. - yes she wrong. Because she could have spent that meeting finding out. The families trusted this woman to help them publicise what is going on with schools who have put them in that position in the first place, and as Bailey's mum said, who then wash their hands of it and leave parents with no support.

I home educate my 6 children who are 14,12,10,8,6 and 3.

I have never had a problem with the annual visits we have and my children eagerly show their workbooks and projects each year.

From watching this documentary it seems that this is perhaps the start of a slippery slope - will I soon be expected to open my home to oftsed or have my children examined for signs of abuse just because we home educate?

The programme was insulting to home educators who take home education seriously. You clearly picked the participants who either didn’t take things seriously or didn’t want to home educate in the first place.

Most home educators I know would not allow their children to play on the computer all day or sleep in until the afternoon. Most are capable or reading .

Since your documentary has gone out we have had two people accuse us of “hiding our children” . We have never had that before - you have made life more difficult for thousands of loving parents.

Dear Anne Longfield, It would be great if you could come back and reply to all these posts.Thank you.

I should have added as well that there are many home ed children who work towards GCSEs - mine included.

As you said in your own documentary many home ed children who are GCSE age were in school until then. So if they are unable to sit GCSEs then it is the schools that have failed them not home ed.

The fact is most teenagers leaving for home ed are already broken by the system OR have special needs which means that even if they were in school they would not be leaving with arms full of GCSEs anyway.

There are some very interesting claims/allegations from 2015 on Anne's Wikipedia page about having to pay back HM treasury for misuse of public funds.
Maybe get your own house in order before looking down on home educators if those claims are true.

DishingOutDone
I don't believe that most parents chose to home educate - I know that the provision for SEN pupils is often pitiful. But surely the point is that there are no figures around reasons for home educating and therefore nothing gets brought to national attention or reported. So perhaps a register would be helpful in that respect? If DfE had to report annual statistics on the reasons given for home educating, then perhaps some traction around SEND issues would emerge?

In the case of Leo, Anne Longfield and the camera crew turned up (presumably by appointment?) and observed/filmed what was happening. That is an established method of documentary making. She could only comment on what she observed. The camera could have arrived as Leo was doing some maths, or painting, or constructing a model, or writing in his journal...but it didn't. None of those activities would have been unreasonable for a weekday morning, even if he had needed to get up a bit later due to the bad night. He was in bed for hours while the camera crew were there and Anne Longfield had to draw a conclusion from the multiple unsuccessful attempts Leo's mum made to get him to engage in something educational. The final clip showed them doing some writing together, which was fair enough, plus the trip to the canal.

The Office of the Children's Commissioner (currently represented by Anne Longfield) has potential to be part of the solution here, not part of the problem. It is a high profile role with influence in government. I strongly suggest emailing Anne Longfield directly if anyone on this thread has issues they want to raise.

DS3 did no work at school today and was also being disruptive. This isn't unusual. Let's say he still behaved the same if he were HE. Is him behaving like that in school more beneficial somehow?

MaybeDoctor - The government recently had a consultation on home education in which it asked all relevant parties to contribute - including home educating parents, education authorities, and so on. Plenty of home educating parents wrote on the reasons we do so and the issues we face.

Also, registers for home educated kids already exist - whether we do so voluntarily or are put onto it once we're reported by any number of professionals or other people who choose to do so or when we deregister from schools, they exist even when not mandatory at this time (well, they are kinda mandatory if someone else reports you or you deregister from school. It's actually pretty hard to go under the radar). The government could ask that information again if they wanted it now from those already registered just as the council can email or write me when they want any other information on the education I provide. Add a survey to the request for informations, which many of us already put our reasons for and issues in home educating.

Many of the parents who do not choose this will have had long battles with the councils that there are plenty of records of if anyone actually cared to look into it.

The records already exist. They may not be as public like how many kids leave or don't finish at a particular school, but the information is there. They may not on every single child, but enough to be able to look at trends and discuss the issues. It's previous obvious from this that they don't want to do that. They want to pat themselves on the back for giving the same recommendations and scaremongering that come up every year or so for decades now. It's very tiring when you try in good faith to work with the councils and the consultations and everyone and nothing ever comes of it but nonsense like this.

And kids are already given numbers by the NHS when first registered. I have to list them on quite a few forms. Why do they need another number and how would that help?

Thanks everyone for reading and commenting - we're asking Anne Longfield if she can respond to some of the questions raised here. We're sorry, we should have arranged for this at the outset, but we will do our best now.