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Home ed

Find advice from other parents on our Homeschool forum. You may also find our round up of the best online learning resources useful.

Home education practitioner

38 replies

Mrsmagpie80 · 05/09/2021 23:23

Hello everyone i have been reading through the posts and they are so informative. I have recently been employed by my local authority as a elective home education practitioner after teaching for 20 years. I have always had an interest in home schooling myself and had I been braver I probably would’ve left school and home schooled my own children which is why my interest in this role was sparked. My question to you guys is what will be my barriers to engaging with families? What kind of support would parents appreciate? I’m keen to be helpful rather than seen as nosy!
Thanks in advance.

OP posts:
1Micem0use · 11/09/2021 20:03

@CarrieErbag For the sake of other children, who are not being educated and may be being abused, wouldn't you agree there should be proper regular checks?

MakingM · 12/09/2021 11:10

OP, if you’d like a practical suggestion for an immediate action then the most beneficial thing to do would be to look at home education information pages on local authority websites, yours and others, and compare them. You’ll be able to tell which councils know and respect the law (more like Worcestershire) and those who are simply using home education officers to try and force families into making the choices they want them to make (more like Leicester).

It’ll give you a good idea of where your council is on that spectrum and how much work you may have to do to engage with parents - particularly those parents who are very experienced and have been protecting their family’s right to home educate for a long time. Many new home educators don’t appreciate how much work those parents dedicate to protecting home education as an educational choice and there’s no reason why they should - in fact experienced parents do it so they won’t have to and can simply concentrate on educating their families. Personally, I’m very grateful to them as I know how hard they work for us.

As others said, know the common philosophies well - their rationale, intended outcomes, etc. As a teacher you might find it interesting to look at actual schools that deliver popular philosophies to increase your own confidence in them if that is lacking too. Summerhill School in Suffolk. There’s a Charlotte Mason school in Cambridgeshire. There will be others too no doubt.

Good luck!

PileOfBooks · 13/09/2021 03:19

I'd love to hear how you get on OP. I nearly went for a similar job when mine were small (and at the time considering home ed - in the end for us school worked out far better than we imagined ) and I remember my friends who do home ed telling me similar to abovd.

Xtraincome · 17/09/2021 11:45

We don't home ed but are strongly considering it. I emailed our local HE person and they sent a nice rounded email covering the school side and the home education side of the counties approach. It was in line with the law and showed no bias either way. She left it open for me to reply and ask any further questions. Perfect.

However, I know this is not the usual.

Namenic · 17/09/2021 12:01

Perhaps just listen to them and ask them if there is anything they would like help with? Eg - do they wish to do exams? And if so are they happy with how to find exam centres? Are they aware of funding x - if available? Do they wish to participate in flu vaccination programme?

Niffler92 · 17/09/2021 12:11

Stop using the term ‘home schooling’ for a start it makes it sound like you don’t know the law, which to be honest is often the case with professionals.

PurrBox · 17/09/2021 18:40

We had a great relationship with our lovely HE practitioner. He wrote us a wonderfully supportive and friendly email, which made me feel good on a day when I was not feeling confident.

Our two closest friends who HE also really liked and appreciated the visits from the LEA. One family ended up inviting him to their daughter's concerts (she was a very serious cellist); he loved attending and supporting her as she improved. He had information and links to groups for people who were feeling isolated for one reason or another, and he was happy to just cheer on families who were already confident.

Xtraincome · 17/09/2021 20:03

@PurrBox which county was this lovely guy in?

PurrBox · 17/09/2021 21:55

Xtraincome He was in the outskirts of Oxford, about 10 years ago now, though.

Xtraincome · 18/09/2021 16:31

@PurrBox boo! We need him Northamptonshire way Grin

BiBabbles · 22/09/2021 09:52

I think you've had some great advice - I strongly agree with the exam centre access, activity support, among other ideas brought up.

One thing I wanted to add if you're still reading is finding ways to connected with other departments. I know for me, I've had great help when I had malicious social service reports across both areas, but I think there are some missing tricks.

A light example - if the council welcomes schools to submit artwork or similar, it would be a good to include home educated kids too. It's a great way to include home educated kids in their wider community and build that trust that is sorely lacking.

A bigger example: young carers. These services have been cut to the bone for years, where I am a child basically has to be managing essential medications and doing a lot of personal care to qualify for actual support & even then it can be patchy. The rest are shuffled off to charities who, in my experience as a disabled parent, do fuck all (telling a disabled parent to paint their rental kitchen 'to cheer things up' as a response to my child has been bullied was not helpful). I wish there had been a way when I was trying to get support for my kids as young carers that it would have flagged something for the home education person because what we needed was access to social and emotional support for my kids as low level young carers, not people bringing us tins, telling us how to do up the house, and dismissing the bullying as 'something kids have to go through'. It really put me off reaching out for other services when this ended up upsetting my kids. I literally had people on new years eve showing up at my door shoving stuff at me 'because it's important to the donors' - I had stuff, and I'd rejected that Christmas stuff 3 times since we don't celebrate that holiday.

You likely can't do this, but I also have a wish that home education be included in school admissions applications online - just let us be in the drop down box and save everyone some time. Two of my kids, being registered as home educated since they were little, were given secondary school places and it was such a pain to cancel the places. I had to email repeatedly, had truant officers at my door that I had to explain that too, it was annoying that that department couldn't accept tht as I didn't have another school place that we didn't want that one & that there seemed to be a disconnect going on. Took months each time when I could have in a couple minutes happily filled in the online form, put home ed and we could all be on the same page with far less time wasted for everyone.

I had a fairly good relationship with my LA. I haven't heard from them in I think about six years - I cancelled one appointment because I was in the midst of funeral planning, and haven't been able to get in touch since (keeping the website up to date so messages don't bounce would also be useful).

mummyacademic · 12/10/2021 11:31

@Mrsmagpie80 This might be a useful source of information: epic-information.com/

dashoflime · 12/10/2021 11:59

I'm not sure if this is something LAs already do, or if they never can, or somewhere in between.
But I would like some help getting my son appropriate SN help if and when we decide to send him back to school.
I would like it if the LA Home Ed person could liaise with myself, CAMH and the SEND people at the school/LA, to help him move back into the education system with appropriate supports.
Home Ed is absolutely the right choice for us now, but I feel it might be too limiting at secondary level.
Im a little concerned that I might have frozen him out of future support by taking out of "the system"

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