H.E and the L.A

[numptysmummy]

Have just started to HE my oldest daughter and need some advice. How do you keep your L.A happy and prove you are providing an education for your child when you don't have to follow a timetable/ curriculum etc? I'm really tying myself up in knots about this, in fact it's my only worry about the whole process!

Be interesting to see what others say as I intend to homeschool my children when they are a little older too. I think my plan is just to keep a record of what we've done, rather than to do log term lesson plans which we end up never getting around to.
Whilst they are small im managing that with a blog on homeschoolblogger. Feel free to have a look, it's really easy to set up and there is quite a community of home educators there.
I'm sure they'll have more advice for us as we get further into it.

Have kind of started a blog but i just can't find the time to keep up to date with it! It's about as interesting as watching paint dry!!

Keeping a sort of journal is really helpful and I find I get more use out of the small palm-sized diary I had than my online blog though the blog helped me regroup my thoughts about the education process a lot better and helped more with the ed phil? When I submitted my report and ed phil to the LA I realised that I didn't actually use a lot of the stuff that had been written in the journal, because I used more general descriptions on the report and didn't go that much into detail unless the detail itself was a good example to aid the general description. Some people prefer to write very long and detailed reports which are several pages long, and its completely up to you how long you want your report to be.

I think it depends very much how you decide to present your case to the LA. If you meet up with them, then you don't need to do any reports but be aware that what you say/do/show during the meeting will be judged subjectively by the LA personnel. It might help you to store away examples of your children's work and show them to the LA person during the meet, although you are under no obligation to do so. I chose not to meet but provided a lot of photographic evidence with my report.

Have a look at the websites about home education thread-I'll bump it uo for you.
They contain pages detailing the legal aspects of HE.

I home educated all three of our children through their teenage years-it will be 10 years next week since we walked our never to look back!

We were completely autonomus home educators.
We didn't do any formal work at all.
The LA rang up and asked to do a home visit, and I thanked them for the offer and said '
No thanks'

Instead we sent in an Educational Philosophy and a short written report.

Our children chose NOT to show the LA any work, and NOT to meet the LA, so we respected their choices and didn't allow the LA access to the children or their work.
The LA have accepted this every year.

The LA has the right to make informal enquiries, but it is the parents choice on how they give that information.
Some people choose to do as we did and send in the Ed phil and written report, some just send in samples of work, some choose to have a home visit (with or without the children present +with or without showing work-again parents choice) and some choose to meet with the LA in a neutral enviroment.

Does that help? I'm dashing out to work now, but shout if you have other questions!

you'd think I'd be able to spell autonomous after all the years we have been doing it wouldn't you?

I always miss out that last O!

As Julie says.

The point to bear in mind is that it isn't up to you to prove you are educating your children properly. The law is on your side and you're assumed to be doing a good job unless proven otherwise. If the LA has good reason to believe you aren't providing an appropriate education then they should take an interest. Legally, the level of "proof" you would have to provide is what would convince a reasonable person that on the balance of probabilities the child is receiving a suitable education. This is straightforward to do since the law defines a suitable education in such broad terms.

LAs very rarely take families to court for failing to provide a suitable education, because it is so difficult for them to win.

They sometimes like to pretend they have powers and responsibilities they don't have. It's wise to respond to their enquiries with some information about your children's education, in whatever form you prefer. This should be a one-off. In the absence of any specific reasonable concerns, there is no legal basis for the LA to continue to monitor you after this.