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.

[AGnu]

Yes, some response other than "the programme explains it all" as if we're all too stupid to have watched it properly the first time! We don't need what was said in the programme repeated, we want explanations as to why she came to the conclusions & why she's twisted evidence to suit the narrative.

It's like saying "we need to plant more trees because there's a horse in that field" & responding to any queries with "but the horse, I showed you the horse already." Except that doesn't explain what the horse has to do with the trees.

Apologies if that analogy doesn't make much sense, my 7yo has just interrupted me to discuss the spread of the bubonic plague in the 14th century. It was Boyle's law this morning because he'd been reading about deep sea creatures & wanted to know about pressure... It's half term here. Tbh, it's a relief when I can get them out of the house & find other people to answer their questions!