Has anyone else home educated to avoid hassle over attendance ?

[backedintoacorner]

We can’t get the required level. Combination of pre existing medical issues and constant viruses etc .
can’t sign a contract as I know we can’t influence the % so there’s no point.

At this point seriously considering not returning after Xmas hols and just de registering to home educate as it seems to be either you are fine and can go 97%+ of the time or you’re not ok but there’s no allowance made so it’s constant hassle and threats of legal action causing stress on the whole family

Unless you are the school in question you don’t know there is reasonable and genuine doubt. OP said the school doesn’t disbelieve her and having had consultant and GP evidence it suggests there isn’t. Many schools do unnecessarily request evidence in exactly these circumstances. The government guidance and case law shows written medical evidence is not required unless there is genuine and reasonable doubt over the authenticity of the illness.

Absolutely go for it. Home education is wonderful and you can provide a much richer education that can be tailored to your child. It can keep your child healthier too

And you don’t know there isn’t 🤦🏼‍♀️

@backedintoacorner a 77% attendance score is exceptionally low. As a school governor we would be questioning what the school is doing to support the family to increase attendance.

The school cannot unfortunately flex, it has to be 1 rule for everyone and I say that as a parent of an immunosuppressed child who is on chem meds.

However, reading your posts it does sound like you are being over cautious.

Hand foot and mouth is not a reason to keep a child off school

Scarlet Fever, tonsillitis etc are not infectious after 24 hours on antibiotics.

Attendance at that level in the work place would be grounds for disciplinary action and termination of not addressed, why should it be acceptable in school?

Kids don't have to be 100% to send them back into school. I do think you should be making more effort to get your dd into school.

Deregistering her at this point will likely trigger a safeguarding alert and referral to welfare officers and potentially other agencies
Given her low attendance it will not be as starlight forward as removing her from formal education.

The school are doing their job.

With HFM she was in pain and whether infectious or not she couldn’t wear shoes due to the sores (some of her nails actually ended up falling off) and hands were so sore she couldn’t write plus her face and mouth so sore she couldn’t eat - she was in no fit state to be in school.

With scarlet fever she wasn’t ok till 5 days into the 10 day course of antibiotics - regardless of the advice to say a child can return after 24 hrs - that’s for the benefit of others as they are no longer infectious - but if the actual child still has a high fever and extremely sore throat they can’t return

I was going on what the OP posted, she stated the school have had much evidence from both the GP and the consultant and that absences are authorised which suggests there isn’t, the OP also stated the school don’t disbelieve her. It is highly unlikely if the OP pursued this the school could demonstrate they had ‘genuine and reasonable doubt’.

Home education is not considered a cause for concern. Besides, any school attendance or welfare officers don't have any power once they are deregistered. It is as simple as handing a letter in

Given her low attendance it will not be as starlight forward as removing her from formal education.

Unless there is an SAO or ESO in place, which presumably the OP would have mentioned, deregistering will be just the same as for any other pupil. Once deregistered if the LA then believe DD isn’t receiving a suitable education and they believe they can reach the threshold for a SAO they can pursue that.

This is such rubbish.

Schools can flex, in fact they have to. As a public service they have to be accessible to the population they serve and that will include children with illnesses, disabilities and long term conditions. The Equality Act (which is law in the UK) says they can't have discriminative policies, including attendance policies, so they have to be flexible for these children.

In addition, attending school is nothing like paid employment. School (or education at least) is compulsory for all children, and school have to be accessible for all children whose parents wish them to attend.

If children can't attend school at all due to illness or disability then the local authority are obliged to provide suitable alternative education.

I feel you are leading her down a blind alley, the school won’t be found wanting, the attendance officer/lead is doing what is asked of them, 77% attendance is very low and if they are shown not to be chasing these illnesses that’s when they’ll have questions to answer.

Asking for written medical evidence without genuine and reasonable doubt over the authenticity of the illness isn’t asked of them - the government’s guidance and case law shows that.

That sounds really frustrating - have they been doing this all along or more in recent years? I know some schools have really turned it up to 11 since coming back from the last lockdown and OFSTED is really focusing on this even knowing most schools have far lower attendance rates than before for many reasons.
This was not a reason I home educated, but it is a benefit to not have to worry about attendance and can focus on the kids when they're ill. With what you've said about preferring schools, if there are other schools available, looking around to see if any are better on this could be a better potential first move though at Year 5 and you seem really very done with all this, withdrawing til the end of primary and considering your options next year for secondary school could work well for you and your DC.

Going to withdraw will also result in different shirty letters and likely a request for a meeting - just like with proving they're chasing up attendance, they have to prove that they are not in any way encouraging home education/trying to get you to off roll. It'll be a process and there are template letters on this which can help. How much you'll get from the LA depends on where you are and who you get. I'm both a home educator and a school governor and while the LA will be informed, the framing it as a 'safeguarding alert' and 'referral to welfare officers and other agencies' is scaremongering that schools and school governors should not be doing - withdrawing to home educate is already sign that the relationship between the school and family has broken down and these types of threats never help, it just breaks things down further and will make many parents dig their feet in. When a parent says they're considering home education, the school may bring in agencies to try to give the parents other options - this might be useful for you - and when there is already a safeguarding concern, those agencies will try to do everything, I've seen some creative flexible solutions that have left me frustrated that schools' hands are often tied until they get that far, but the school can't actually prevent a withdraw in this type of situation unless the OP has left out some significant information.

And yeah, most longtime home educators I know don't use home ed groups socially and few will use the educational ones for specific topics. I did when mine were tiny but by your child's age, it was the annual 'not back to school picnic' or similar special events - and those only if someone we knew was going. We mainly used local activities all kids use and regularly time with families we knew - it may be worth ensuring continued contact with the friends your DC already has. I wanted my kids to be part of the wider community, not the home ed one, and a consistency that I rarely found in home ed groups. I'm very much more on the structured side - not a timetable, but a checklist because some things just take longer some days than others, and I use various programmes to cover different areas. Getting into a rhythm is what makes it work for us.

Have they specifically said it can’t be an appointment card or a prescription? All that happens after that is they start unauthorising illness absence and revisit if no improvement, it won’t just be a automatic fine. These rules apply across the board if you go over the threshold, the OPs child is a PA.

There is a specific letter that goes out re illness at an unacceptable level, I can’t see anything in the OP that says the illnesses have been diagnosed as relating to a diagnosed health condition, apologies if I’ve missed something OP.

These rules don't apply across the board, and vary massively by school. My DD was a persistent absentee and we provided a copies of medical letters at the beginning and then that was it. They didn't request any further evidence, they didn't send threatening letters, they didn't fine us, and believe it or not they still managed to get outstanding on their ofsted during this time.

its more a case of dd being weaker in general due to her underlying conditions we think they make her both more susceptible to catching everything and then being more affected by general illness and having a prolonged recovery time if that makes sense? So the underlying conditions are a contributing factor.

For the underlying conditions she has a few appointments a year which are authorised but they don’t cause that many absences themselves it’s more other Illnesses - she seems very prone to d and v bugs and throat infections

Again, asking for any written evidence in any form when the school does not have genuine and reasonable doubt over the authenticity of illness isn’t asked for. The guidance explicitly states this and also states schools shouldn’t unnecessarily ask for evidence particularly for illnesses that don’t require treatment by a HCP. Case law states written medical evidence isn’t required. Absence due to sickness must be authorised as per The Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006, regulation 6(2).

OP replied earlier to say her child’s school accepted this as evidence

We provided copies of letters from her hospital paediatrician which we already had.

They were not from her GP, we didn't have to pay for them, and we didn't need a new one every time she was off sick.

I would suggest this would be considered appropriate evidence.

Requiring a parent to pay for a letter from a GP every time they are sick (or even an appointment letter or prescription) is excessive and goes against DoE guidance.

What I meant by my earlier question, which you didn't actually answer, was what is the consultant doing to address the core issues, the core disability? Or the resulting illnesses she then picks up. Are you being properly supported. It sounds not, from a health point of view. What I mean is, irrespective of school / whether you homeschool or not, your child is unwell quite a lot of the time. 77% attendance is very poor. This means your dd is ill a lot. That's not good. surely that concerns you a great deal. The illness, not the school attendance bit?

We are seen in clinic regularly and dd has other therapies for the underlying conditions . The consultants position on the recurring illness (d and v, upper respiratory viruses and throat infections mostly) is that it’s bad luck and childhood Illness and that it’s typical in children with an underlying condition.

Obviously I don’t want my dd unwell and it does worry me but every time she’s in school she picks something up. I assume it’s partly due to the attendance targets themselves as children are going in unwell and passing things to each other all the time. We give all sorts of vitamins and supplements but so far nothing seems to stop all the bugs

I do think if we were to home educate that she probably wouldn’t be unwell all the time as the cycle of being exposed to things would stop

Totally different

They are children not paid employees

at one point I thought (nursery -year 1) at least she’s getting all the bugs out of the way and building her immune system but it’s just never improved

Has the sickness levels been like this since reception?