Flexischooling FOI

[julienoshoes]

There has been a response from DfE for internal emails on the subject of Flexischooling during March and April this year, which was the period during which the guidance on Flexischooling, changed for a second time.

Fiona has sorted them in chronological order, so there are now several sets of Freedom of Information responses covering January to April on her flexischooling web page here

edyourself.org/articles/flexischooling.php#FOIs

Thanks for this. I am not entirely sure that. I really understand what the current situation is though. It seems to state that the schools used to be able to agree for flexi- schooling and they received funding for the child. The child was marked as being educated off site (code B?) which didn't count as absent.
Then they reviewed it and decided that they wouldn't support flexi schooling at all.
Now you can carry on doing it if you already have an arrangement, but kid is marked as absent. And it doesn't seem clear as to whether you could make a new arrangement for flexi-schooling, or what the impact of these 'absences' would be, for both the parent or the school. Will the school still receive payment for the child, but have to account for the absences, which I am guessing will be authorised, but will still count when the council looks at absences? If that is the case then I can see that it's something which is allowed but will make a school very reluctant to do, as they will appear to have a lousy attendance record. If the absences are deemed unauthorised (which is what I am guessing was the case during the short time that the arrangement was withdrawn as an option) then the parents could be liable for prosecution.
From my reading it seems to be a case of those who already have the agreement can carry on, but the schools are going to be punished by having their attendance record blighted. And the chances of any new arrangemnpents seems minimal.

Yes. Schools used to be able to put Code B and now they are told that they mustn't. And schools will run into problems by having high rates of absence from putting Code C instead. It seems to me that it will be more difficult to talk a school into doing flexi than it was when the school could safely use Code B.