Autonomous home education

[angelstar]

We seem to be pretty much autonomous in our approach to education at the moment due to dd not reacting well to formal work. I don't mind this as we do have lots of interesting conversations etc. I am worried though about the lady from the LA who is coming back in sept and wants to see work as we really don't have any written work. How do I prove to her that dd is getting an education? The LA lady talked alot last time about timetables, 25 hours a week, marking, assessing progress and planning. Any help would be great, thanks.

LA staff often come from a very schooly background and may not "get" autonomous education. Some parents therefore prefer to submit an educational philosophy instead of having a visit.

You say that the lady from the LA is "coming back." Did she raise any concerns about your daughter's education before? If not, there's no need for you to have anything to do with them anymore. The DCSF guidance to LAs states specifically that LAs have no obligation to carry out routine monitoring of HE families. That means there is no need for followup visits to, or enquiries made of, families who have already supplied information which appears to show a suitable education is taking place.

If you'd rather draw a line under it and have no further dealings with them, let me know and I can quote the guidance so you can send them a letter saying you have done enough now.

Hi

Basically what Saracen said.

Also if you are in England, you may want to quote from the Government's Home Education Guidelines which I have set out here as a web page so you can cut and paste edyourself.org/articles/guidelines.php

She didn't have any concerns at the last visit, which was her first visit. She said she was sure we would be fine and I would do a good job but I think she intends on visiting every 6 months to check progress. I don't really want anymore visits and would prefer to just submit an educational philosophy.

Then write to her and tell her that angelstar.

Quote the bit from the Guidelines that Fiona has linked to, that says that you have a choice of how to give the information-it says some families prefer to send an ed phil and written report instead.

You can write and tell her now and get it over with, or write wait til she contacts you, and tell her then.

Ten years of autonomously home educating our children, the children didn't want to meet the LA and didn't want to show them any work, so we didn't!

Do they really expect 25 hours a week? We get an awful lot done in considerably less time than that. One to one tuition really concentrates the learning experience. There's none of that "Johnny stop chatting....Billy don't do that" malarkey .