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Home ed

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Petition Against Home Ed Register

411 replies

Isawthesigns · 09/11/2021 15:43

Now It Is Evident The Goverment Is Committed To A Register Of Children Not In School Which Will Be Followed By Assessments And Monitoring

Please Sign And Share The Petition Help Us Defend Our Right To HE Without State Interference

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/594065?fbclid=IwAR0o70ZNS9miOu6k8l769Kcu9XJnFbkAYggnqkbHzaknueGt39nnQrbhZTo

OP posts:
Mosky · 10/11/2021 21:43

@Larryyourwaiter

I know someone who is currently homeschooling as they didn’t get the school they wanted. She works FT from home and he is basically playing on his Xbox and has been for 2 years. He does have a place next year but he’s going to be so far behind it’s ridiculous. He is naturally clever but his social skills now are non existent. DD was friends with him but can’t cope with him now at all. I can’t believe it’s been allowed to continue legally.
Yes, I know one like this. The child eventually returned to school but hadlost two full years of education.
Tillysfad · 10/11/2021 22:11

20:28mumwon

The service you're describing, that you can't imagine why anyone would refuse, does not exist. You can stop judging parents who turn this down. It isn't being offered. LEAs do not provide any form of support for home educated children.

I'm glad school worked for your DD. I can assure you that there are experiences out there you can't imagine, where school is absolutely not the right place for a child and there are also parents who are more capable than you realise.

Tillysfad · 10/11/2021 22:13

what's to stop barely literate parents taking their out of education to 'educate' them?

This kind of off rolling is usually the school's idea, the school's fault and will never be fixed by a register of any kind.

GreyhoundG1rl · 10/11/2021 22:14

@Tillysfad

what's to stop barely literate parents taking their out of education to 'educate' them?

This kind of off rolling is usually the school's idea, the school's fault and will never be fixed by a register of any kind.

??
Tillysfad · 10/11/2021 22:14

I do worry that it might set off a slippery slope whereby the government will want to assess and monitor HE children. For many, HE isn't 'school at home', because the school system doesn't work for those children and their parents are taking a different pedagogical approach. If the child is tested and found to be 'behind' (because they aren't following the National Curriculum to begin with and/or have SEN) the assessor could say that they need to be sent to school.

That is the active intention.

Tillysfad · 10/11/2021 22:15

Yes greyhound it usually is. Particularly right before exam season. You have no idea.

RedCake · 10/11/2021 22:18

The off rolling driven by schools is a very real thing. Give schools enough resources and the HE community is reduced.

5zeds · 10/11/2021 22:21

Just to correct a misunderstanding. HEing doesn’t mean you have to be a brilliant at teaching every subject. There are tutors and exchanges and on line learning.

Tillysfad · 10/11/2021 22:24

17:30SirChenjins

Yes, it is a privileged viewpoint. Many children haven't a hope of being able to travel to a different school, being accepted by a different school. Just waiting for an assessment can take years during which time school provision may be hellish and totally inadequate. You do not necessarily require a teaching degree to teach your own child effectively. A class of other people's children, yes. What is very sad is the number of home educating parents who are trying to inform themselves about interventions because their child desperately needs help the school didn't provide. LEAs turn up to court with reasons why they shouldn't help. You can't just find a different school like changing hairdressers. I'm sorry but it's an extremely privileged viewpoint. It's true I don't know your situation but I suspect you should know better.

Snugglepumpkin · 10/11/2021 22:35

It absolutely is not a safeguarding issue & the DoE have stated that it is not - councils already keep unofficial registers anyway & have all this information so it's a load of nonsense.

More paperwork for you to pay taxes for someone to invent, someone to fill in, someone to file.
For zero reason.

Thesearmsofmine · 10/11/2021 22:42

I home ed and I am not particularly against a register although I would say that compiling a list of children who are home educated isn’t going to do much from a safeguarding point of view. A list does nothing to protect children.
So a register would ultimately come with other requirements which is concerning to home educators because many local authorities already attempt to act outside of the law. My LA is a decent one, others are not so lucky as many of the people working there seemingly have no idea of the law surrounding home education, either that or they know perfectly well and choose to act outside of it.

Nillynally · 10/11/2021 22:43

Absolutely fuck no. After reading your capitalised post: no with bells on.

RedCake · 10/11/2021 22:54

Where is the funding coming from for the register? Would everyone feel the same if c£6k for every child in the LA area that was HEd was taken from the school budget.

You are spot on @Snugglepumpkin

It is a proposal that makes people instinctively want to protect children but really is just a waste of money.

I am signing because this will not protect children or benefit HE but waste time and money.

jebthesheep · 10/11/2021 23:15

Disclosure: I currently home Ed my child. There seem to be a lot of people commenting here who understand HE to be children taught by parent(s) at home or not taught at all.
The truth is HE kids are taught at forest schools, in parent run groups, and very often (particularly in the secondary years) by professional teachers face to face or online either live or self paced. All these are examples of what officially comes under home education. There are more variations than you can shake a stick at and more reasons for doing it too.
Unmet SEN and unresolved bullying are the most common reasons I’ve come across but children involved in elite sports/arts, parents who have to move around a lot and don’t want to leave their children at boarding school, those who believe that the subjects offered at their local schools are not the ones that would best suit their child’s abilities are all examples, but not an exhaustive list.
I’m not really too bothered about registering personally. The local LA’s are aware of most HE children anyway. Those parents who are providing well for their children but are currently not known, will hopefully not be too adversely affected initially.
There is a real concern though about children whose needs are being poorly met by the state. Their parents should be able to take back responsibility if they are able to do so.
Poorly resourced schools can let children down or put them at risk - especially if they have additional vulnerabilities or needs.
Some LA’s are very reasonable while others are prejudiced and bullying. The people who fear a register are probably those who have encountered the later. Perhaps if a register proposal came with a built in guarantee that the current law would be followed by all LA’s, there wouldn’t be such a concern.

Tillysfad · 11/11/2021 02:02

This topic has been chosen because good people who don't know much about LEAs will back it naively, assuming that anyone who doesn't back it doesn't care about safeguarding.

You're being played.

These people are not out to safeguard. They don't have a legal remit for that, the skills or the training. Nor do they provide support (other than a sheet with the Twinkl website on it, yes really). They have no way of assessing children's education other than against how their school educated peers are performing and most of the time they are not trained to do that, nor or they interested in doing that. It's perhaps difficult for people who have never tried educating their child to understand but the system really does work, just at a different pace. There is no effective way of comparing the education styles and the government accepts this-the LEAs do not. They're not qualified to assess if a child is achieving their potential either through school (not being education professionals with time and certainly not with the time to come to a considered decision) or in another way. I don't think they will be offering to have every home educated child evaluated by an educational psychologist which might be a slightly more accurate way of doing it. This is purely about being in a position of more control in order to get more access to children's work for the purposes of building a case against every child being back in school. They're very frustrated at the moment because they cannot get that access legally. They frequently announce to home educating parents that they believe every child should be in school. And they misrepresent conversations with children and pull apart their work to try to apply pressure, often pestering parents during learning time and adding huge amounts of pressure. It has reached the point where most home educating parents do not feel safe having a conversation because they are so scared of being misquoted. These are often families who have already been through a difficult time and come up against brick walls when seeking help with bullying etc. It is a different form of bullying. I cannot emphasise enough that LEAs are not acting in good faith and they are not being honest about where this register is going. Nor are they satisfied with a suitable education because that doesn't serve their purposes.

For those who have laughed at the OP's grammar, I wish you could see the letters sent by these people who introduce themselves as being responsible for monitoring home educated children (they are not legally able to do this but tend to claim they are). The letters are unbelievably badly written. It's as if an unknown office temp has introduced themselves as your boss. They want the law to change so they don't have to just pretend they have these powers and it's a scary thought.

MyOtherProfile · 11/11/2021 05:07

There is a real concern though about children whose needs are being poorly met by the state. Their parents should be able to take back responsibility if they are able to do so.
This is true. But there's also a real concern about children whose needs are being poorly met by HE parents. Obviously many many HE parents are doing a great job but IME some really aren't. And that's why I'd never sign OPs petition.

MyOtherProfile · 11/11/2021 05:11

@Tillysfad your post is a disgrace. How dare you write off all LAs with one fell swoop? Many are doing s fantastic job with a minimal budget thanks to the government. I work for one and see it from the inside. That's as bad as saying all HE have ulterior motives and are intrinsically stupid or bad. Imagine if someone said that!

5zeds · 11/11/2021 05:41

@MyOtherProfile honestly I haven’t heard of any LAs “doing a fantastic job” and I don’t think you should be attempting to shame and silence a parent describing her experience of what is being provided. As for the “on minimal budget” nonsense, how dare YOU. I’m absolutely sick of LAs playing that particular violin.

MyOtherProfile · 11/11/2021 05:57

@5zeds might be worth questioning the government and their ever shrinking budgets to LAs then. And one person's experience isn't enough to write off all LAs, any more than negative experience I've witnessed is enough to write off all HE families.

jazzupyourchuff · 11/11/2021 06:00

There are as many different types of HE parents as there are parents who send their kids to school.
However, my kids attended a very liberal school which attracted a certain type of parent. The ones who stuck out to me were generally very late most mornings, high levels of absence, kids sometimes in what looked to be pyjamas. One even said to me when she de-registered, 'well it's just easier isn't it?' In what world would having a primary aged child at home and teaching them the full curriculum be easier than getting them to school once a day?

ThirdElephant · 11/11/2021 06:04

@5zeds

My objection is more that I think it wouldn’t work and would be expensive. All children are already registered at birth in the uk. They also have Drs and dentists and midwives and health visitors and benefits, why do we need to register their “education” separately and couldn’t we just use the data we DO have
Health visiting can be refused without prejudice, there's no legal requirement to have your kid registered at a dentist (most of my class don't have one) and if a child isn't registered at a doctors, no one checks up on it.
ThirdElephant · 11/11/2021 06:10

I don't get it @Tillysfad. In my experience, LAs don't care about getting home educated kids back in school, because home education is much cheaper than education in a school, and because they're overstretched and underfunded as is, so have no time to chase. In my LA (as in most of PP's local authorities, by the looks of it) no checks are done and no one comes by to even see if the child is still alive, much less quiz them and interrogate their work.

I think a standardised register system would be safer and more effective for all concerned. I doubt they'd be permitted to force kids back to school unless there were legitimate safeguarding concerns because ultimately the government do not want to pay for more kids than they have to.

ThirdElephant · 11/11/2021 06:16

Health visiting can be refused without prejudice, there's no legal requirement to have your kid registered at a dentist (most of my class don't have one) and if a child isn't registered at a doctors, no one checks up on it.

And also, you have to physically take a child to a doctor for that doctor to see if there are any concerns.

5zeds · 11/11/2021 06:29

@MyOtherProfile is it one persons experience though? I think not. If you went to a hospital and had a botched operation would it be ok to say they didn’t do a good job and that many others in the waiting room had suffered the same experience? Would it be unfair or shameful to say what you saw or unreasonable to say you found hospitals unfit for purpose or damaging or that people were scared? Personally I would expect that nearby hospitals who were acting correctly to be less concerned with silencing victims and more concerned with holding incompetents to account.

Louise5754 · 11/11/2021 06:50

I would wonder what you are hiding.

Do they not go to the doctors or hospital? They always ask me which school DC go too. So they must know you HE?

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