Home education and access to LEA Ed Psych

[streakybacon]

Can anyone tell me if there is any solid legislation regarding home educators' access to local authority Ed Psych services?

Is this a service solely for children in state schools?

How does it fit with Every Child Matters?

I know of some HE families who have had statutory assessment with LA Ed Psych involvement, when the intention has been for the child to enter special school. There seems to be a lot of grey area here.

I'm asking because it may be that I'll need to apply for extra time for exams and according to JCQ that can only be given if recommended in Ed Psych report. Ideally I'd like to know what the legality is so that I can push my case if necessary when the time comes.

TIA.

I had the LEA lady at our house a while ago and discussed this (my DS has epilepsy and dyspraxia so very likely will be entitled to extra exam time in the future). She said that we would have to pay for an ed psych ourselves since we had withdrawn from state education (which we can't afford). Mind you, I wouldn't take one person's opinion on this. Not sure how you could find out.

Hi

This is an interesting question. The rest of my answer applies exclusively to England.

Last year I did a survey on how many local authorities claimed funding for SEN support and FE courses where children were home educated. MP Graham Stuart took it up and chaired a meeting in the House of Commons where home educators and local authorities talked to a representative from the Department for Education.

Everyone said that the rules needed to be much clearer about when you could claim money and what you could claim it for. DfE agreed to publish answers to Frequently Asked Questions so I collected up all the queries from LAs and home ed families and sent them off to the Department who published a set of answers last November.

One local authority had specifically asked me whether they could use the SEN support money for educational psychology services. They asked (quite reasonably I thought) how would they know what SEN services a child needed (and which they could pay for and then claim back) unless the child had been assessed.

Hence question 17, which sort of answers OP's query

Q17 Can part of the AP funding be used for an assessment of a learner's additional support needs, such as paying for educational psychology services?
A No. Education psychology services are part of the Non-Schools Budget (paragraph 1 of Schedule 1 to the School Finance (England) Regulations, and therefore cannot be financed from DSG. Support from this budget should be available to all learners who need it irrespective of whether they are educated at school or not."

edyourself.org/articles/AltprovFAQ.php#SENsupport

Of course this only says support from the Non-Schools Budget SHOULD be available to all learners, not that it MUST be available. So you have no redress if it isn't available.

I know who have got Access Arrangements for exams but where they needed an assessment, either they paid themselves or it was arranged as some kind of package deal, but it didn't come free via the LA as standard.

edyourself.org/articles/exams.php#additionalneeds

My five year old daughter has just had an assessment done by a Developmental Neuropsychologist. She was referred for it by her neurologist. This was a medical assessment done at an NHS hospital.

As we were discussing the results, it occurred to me that it was very similar to what I always imagined an Ed Psych assessment would be. So I asked the psychologist how his job compares to that of an Ed Psych. He said it was virtually identical, except that an Ed Psych would know more precisely about what happens in schools and would make specific recommendations about how a school might address a child's special needs. But the same, basically. Then I asked him, if ever my child wanted to go to school, what should I do to ensure the right support would be in place beforehand - should I ask the LA to have an Educational Psychologist assess her or what? He told me that since the investigations he does are so similar to what they would do, if he had recently assessed my daughter then the LA would probably just be guided by his report and not bother with a separate assessment.

So. Do you definitely need a recommendation by someone who has the words "Educational Psychologist" after their name, and nothing else will do? Is it possible you could get a neuropsychologist to assess instead, arranging a referral for it through the NHS? I mean, I assume the exam board would accept medical evidence relating to physical impairments such as blindness, so perhaps a medical assessment of your child's needs would be accepted too.

Hi

It depends how much extra time you want ( ie more than 25%) and whether extra time is all you need.

If you have prior relationship with the exam centre or another way of establishing "normal way of working" I don't think you need EP. Normal way of working or medical report would suffice.

This is from JCQ regs

Extra time Up to a maximum of 25%

A Statement of Special Education Needs relating to secondary education
An assessment carried out by a qualified psychologist or specialist teacher
confirming that extra time is needed to complete timed activities (must have been carried out no earlier than Year 7) ? i.e. candidate works very slowly allowance, such as 10% may be
appropriate)

Medical report
Normal way of working

www.jcq.org.uk/exams_office/access_arrangements/regulationsandguidance/
via edyourself.org/articles/exams.php#additionalneeds

Thanks for replies so far.

I've had some email correspondence with JCQ and was told that if ds only needs access to a laptop for exams then the decision rests with the exam centre's SENCo and no application is required. It's regarded as 'normal way of working'. I've had discussions with the exam centre and they are happy for him to have the laptop under these conditions.

I've not spoken to them yet about extra time because longer written exams are a way off yet and he may improve sufficiently to not need it. I just wanted to check here if there was any firm legislation to support an application before I make further enquiries.

My LEA is a bit rubbish with regard to home education. They are at best unfamiliar with legal requirements and make a lot up as they go along. I have met with LEA officers regularly (in fact had a meeting with them last Oct on this subject) but frankly I know more about this than they do and they are usually the ones asking me the questions . I'm still waiting for a response to issues I raised then and don't hold out much hope of them getting back to me.

Saracen that would be a useful suggestion to go via NHS except our local services are worse than the LEA. We have no involvement with CAMHS etc any more as they don't provide the resources ds needs.

Fiona, would it be possible to talk to you some more about this? Yours is a brain I could do with picking .

Thanks again.

Yep, pick away! Either on the forum here or by email

My son Theo made this contact box, it looks like there isn't much space but it just expands as you type edyourself.org/contact

Thanks Fiona, I'll do that. Probably in a day or two as I'll need some time to gather my (confused) thoughts .

Fiona, I've posted on Ed Yourself - apologies because it's quite long.