Child benefit question post 16

[musicposy]

Some of you who know me will know I've been home educating my girls (Year 8 and Year 11) for some time now. DD1 is now 16 and I'm assuming I will be getting a letter at some point asking whether she is continuing her education post 16.

She will be, and has provisionally accepted a place at college for September. However, we're not shutting the door to home ed. She is well aware she is free at any time to change her mind and continue with her studies at home. So, in short, I think she will go to college, but she has moments when she thinks she might rather like to keep her life as it is.

Would I be best to tell Child Benefit at this juncture that we are continuing with home education? Would it then matter if she took up a college place?

The reason I ask is I've heard that once you start at college post 16 it's very hard to get home ed recognised for the purposes of child benefit.

Any experiences?

Posy, I would tell them that she is continuing with HE for the time being and then, if she goes to college contact them to make changes. it's almost impossible to get them to recognise HE post 16 if you take any kind of break. If the college course is only part time and forms part of her full time HE programme, it gets kind of difficult to convince them, but you should be OK because she was HE pre-16 as well.

Whatever happens, be prepared for a form that asks for subjects studied, hours worked, levels covered and all that kind of thing, and for them to keep trying to cancel your CB every 3 months or so.

If your DD takes a non-advanced college course, you can still claim CB and CTC for her. In Scotland, that's anything up to level 7 on the SQF, so I would reckon that in England it would be anything up to A-level or equivalent, so NVQ's up to level 3, BTEC diploma, NC (but not HNC), that kind of thing.

I still get CB for DS2, who has just turned 19 but is in a full time, non advanced course at college, but every couple of months they send notification that it is stopping and I have to fill out a form, even though I have given them end dates at least 10 times in the last couple of years.

Hi

I've got a page on my website about this
edyourself.org/articles/claimbenefitspost16s.php

"Child Benefit and Child Tax Credit are payable for qualifying young people in full-time education. Home education is recognised as valid for CB and CTC purposes. Scroll down or click here for useful links.

HMRC Guidance Notes say "We may be able to pay Child Benefit for a young person if they continue their non advanced further education at home. However, education at home must have started before the young person reached age 16." This guidance note is sometimes misread as saying that EITHER that the young person must have been home educated continuously without a break OR that the young person must ONLY have been home educated and not ever spent a day at school. Should any misunderstanding arise over this guidance note, your MP will be able to assist. Scroll down to the Links Section for more information.

Home educating parents may wish to bear the following observations in mind, which are taken from home educators' experience of the system. Once the parent says that the young person's continuing education will be home education, the tax office then asks a series of questions about "courses" and "exams". In the short term, parents who are concerned about whether the tax office will accept home education may be tempted to play up the fact that their son or daughter is currently studying for an exam or is on a course, as though this will somehow compensate in tax office terms for the young person's not attending college. However, it should be noted that home education, including autonomous home education, is itself recognised by the tax office, as long as the young person is "working towards" qualifications and is meeting the other conditions for being "a qualifying young person." The Links section at the foot of the page has further information.

In other words, if it is intended that the home education will continue until the young person is 19, and home education at 16 has only been recognised because of courses or exams, then once these courses or exams cease, the tax office may decide that the young person is no longer in education. In addition, if the young person is only studying for 1 or 2 exams, the tax office may judge that this is "not full-time". We are not suggesting that exams or courses should not be mentioned, simply that they could perhaps usefully be presented as elements of the larger picture of full-time home education."

Thank you for that, Fiona, I've read the links.

The whole thing seems like a ridiculous minefield. After all, children in school accept their college places provisionally until August when they get their GCSE results. We have accepted provisionally too. Whatever happens, she will continue in full time education. That is not in doubt at all.

One of the things we debated is her doing maybe one or two A levels and using the rest of the time to do intensive ballet or skating. This is not so different to vocational courses at college and would definitely be a full time education. But I suspect we are going to have a battle on our hands if we choose this route.

I also resent that she can't come out of college if it doesn't suit her and back into home education without us losing the benefits. She hasn't been to school since she was 12, so how will she know if it is for her or not?

Would the fact that we have educated for 4 years prior to this make it any more likely it would be reinstated? If DD1 is sure she is going to try college, should we state that first?

IMHO the safest is to say "continuing in home education" right up to the point when she starts college. Then say "oh, actually it's college instead" (if full time) or "oh actually it's a bit of college as well as the home ed like we said before".

Then you've got home ed on the books in some way. Which should cover your back for later.

I do know several people who got CB reinstated after being home ed till 16, then doing college, dropping out of college and returning to home ed. I've seen people say it's not possible, but I know that not to be the case.

The whole thing is screwy, I agree.

Agree with Fiona, that's what we did. I jut kept telling them that J. was continuing in HE, until he actually started college. Then I had to fill out another form giving details of the college, course etc. his is full time but, had it been part time, I would have sold it as part of his HE programme, just incorporating it in to all the other info that we have had to give them.

It is a bit of a minefield, tbh. They have tried to stop our CB 4 times in the last year alone and at least 6 times in the previous 2 years because J. has been HE post 16. Each time, we have had to fight to have it reinstated, fill out forms, give a ridiculous level of detail about "subjects" and "courses" that he was studying, why he wasn't sitting exams and all sorts of other stuff. Even since he started college, they have tried to stop it 3 times in spite of having all the details. At one point, they stopped all my child benefit, for all the kids, for over 2 months, while they investigated our claim. Some rubbish about not accepting that the children were living with me because they were out of the system.

I just had the letter and I phoned them today. They obviously don't have a clue about HE, but it went OK.

I said she would be continuing her education. She asked when we would be starting it. I said, we're doing it now, we've been doing it since she was 12. She said no, when we would be starting her post-16 courses, on what date. I said there isn't a date, we are just keeping going with what we are doing. She asked what we were doing. I said GCSEs. She locked on to this and said after the GCSEs, what date will you start the new courses. I said we just keep going, and there will be GCSEs in November, amongst other things.

At this point she got quite agitated and said she needed the dates we started the course on after our 6 week break. I said We don't take a break. She just could not grasp this and kept saying, "but 6 weeks in the summer?" I had to be so forceful. I told her she didn't understand, that our home education wasn't like that, it's a continuous process and there is no start and stop dates. Then she said, "but is it over 12 hours a week?" I nearly fell about laughing at this point! We often do 12 hours a day of what a school would class educationa nd I told her so.

She wanted to know subjects and courses and when they would finish. I gave her a date of July 2014, because if DD did A levels at home, that would be the date. She said they would pay it until September 2014, which sounds fine to me. I told her if she changed her mind and started at college I would let her know. I did not let on about her provisional college place because it is just that, provisional.

Thanks for all the advice!

Oh Posy they really have no ides, do they. we had the same sort of thing except we didn't do any exams or even any recognised courses. J. just suited himself really, did a lot of history, but not of the school variety, a lot of maths/science and then a lot of current affairs type stuff on things like endangered species/water shortages/peak oil and the like. They couldn't get their heads round it all. All the stuff about dates and times and number of hours and even if the work he was doing counted as "education", it was a farce.

Be prepared for them to contact you every few months from now on with the same load of guff.