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Home ed

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Original poster

Can my home ed DC join the local primary school after-school choir?

108 replies

PerspicaciousGreen · 05/02/2023 08:19

We're thinking of having my DC join a just-for-fun choir. Our local primary school is just round the corner and has a no-audition choir for it's pupils. My thinking is that if schools can allow flexi-schooling at their discretion then in theory they could allow attendance at after-school clubs at their discretion too. It might be nice in the future if they could join a sports club too.

Has anyone else done this? Any advice on how to make the enquiry to make it most successful?

Also, we are currently unknown to the LA. Does the school have a duty to notify the LA if I pop up with my home ed children, or can I ask them not to? I'm not too bothered about it, but it seems like a PITA I'd prefer not to deal with.

OP posts:
Saracen · 05/02/2023 21:17

In answer to those who are concerned that the OP would rather remain unknown to her LA, there is no legal requirement for her to make them aware that she is home educating, and most home educators do not find any advantage to doing so. The govt has acknowledged that home education is not, in itself, a safeguarding concern, so this "red flag" idea is an overreaction.

Who would volunteer to do extra unnecessary paperwork when it isn't required of them? I've also never opted to fill in a tax return in the years when I am not legally required to do so (and when HMRC doesn't owe me a refund). Is that suspicious? I have other hobbies, and I expect the OP does too.

ChildminderMum · 05/02/2023 21:28

cestlavielife · 05/02/2023 11:38

See section 5 the LEA has a duty to knowabput your dc

5.1 Your local authority has no formal powers or duty to monitor the provision of

education at home. However, it does have a statutory duty (under s.436A of the

Education Act 1996) to make arrangements to enable it to establish the identities, so far

as it is possible to do so, of children in its area who are not receiving a suitable

education. The relevant local authority with responsibility for education will either be the

single-tier authority for the area in which you live (for example a unitary authority or

London borough) or the upper-tier authority for the area in which you live (for example,

the county council rather than a district council). There are 152 such local authorities with

education responsibilities in England as at March 2019, decreasing to 151 from April

5.2 The simple fact that a child is being educated at home does not mean that he or she

is not receiving a suitable full-time education. However, in order to fulfil their section 436A

duty, local authorities are entitled to make informal enquiries of parents to establish what

education is being provided.

5.3 The local authority is therefore likely to make such enquiries if it becomes aware that

you are educating a child at home - or may be doing so. As parents you are under no

legal obligation to respond, but if you do not, the local authority is entitled to conclude

from the absence of any response that it appears that your child is not receiving a

suitable education, with all the consequences which can follow from that (see below).

The LA has a duty. The parent isn't required to register with the LA or inform them of anything.

If the LA contact you, then you need to respond.

If a parent sees no benefit to their child why would they contact the LA?

Saracen · 05/02/2023 21:34

I totally agree that there are likely to be logistical obstacles to accepting a home ed child into a school choir, and that it wouldn't be surprising if the answer is no.

But I can't fathom why people are saying the OP is a CF for wanting to do it. She is saving us taxpayers about £6k a year per child by not sending her kids to school. Why should we begrudge her kids the benefit of some of the things schoolchildren receive, if it is convenient to provide it to them?

I know nothing about the OP's particular circumstances, but quite a lot of kids are home educated because they have SEN and have been let down badly by the school system. Taking such children out of school isn't always a real "choice". If I'd had to take on the job of educating my kids when I didn't want to, I would be very angry that people resent me for even WANTING to put them in a school choir!

Riverlee · 05/02/2023 22:11

“More time travelling, less time doing other more important things”

As someone upthread has said, travelling to clubs is a normal part of everyday family life.

You probably didn’t mean the ‘more important’ comment to sound pompous but it does sound like that. If you want to join these clubs, you have to compromise somewhere. If your not constrained by school,hours, just rearrange your schedule.

mumoffourminimes · 06/02/2023 09:45

Thank you @Saracen for being some sanity to this thread.

00100001 · 06/02/2023 17:11

Saracen · 05/02/2023 21:34

I totally agree that there are likely to be logistical obstacles to accepting a home ed child into a school choir, and that it wouldn't be surprising if the answer is no.

But I can't fathom why people are saying the OP is a CF for wanting to do it. She is saving us taxpayers about £6k a year per child by not sending her kids to school. Why should we begrudge her kids the benefit of some of the things schoolchildren receive, if it is convenient to provide it to them?

I know nothing about the OP's particular circumstances, but quite a lot of kids are home educated because they have SEN and have been let down badly by the school system. Taking such children out of school isn't always a real "choice". If I'd had to take on the job of educating my kids when I didn't want to, I would be very angry that people resent me for even WANTING to put them in a school choir!

It's because it seems odd to opt out of a system, but want to take advantage of it in a way that suits her.

Also, school's clubs are not the same thing as any normal place. They're essentially private member's clubs. And she wants in without being a member.

Saracen · 07/02/2023 00:06

@00100001 It's because it seems odd to opt out of a system, but want to take advantage of it in a way that suits her.

Odd? It seems very sensible to me!

I opt out of my council's food waste collection because I feed most scraps to the chickens and compost the rest. I still want the council to collect some of my recyclables - but not all the cardboard, because some of that is useful for compost. It would be silly to demand that I use ALL of the council's bin collection services to get access to some of them. I sort some of it out for myself, benefiting both me and the taxpayer by providing myself with chicken food and compost while saving the council the trouble of collecting and processing my food waste and cardboard.

When it comes to education, my special-needs daughter goes to a part-time woodworking course at the local college, which suits her perfectly. She doesn't take advantage of the college's maths classes, because I'm able to give her more appropriate one-to-one maths education myself. Should I send her to a maths class which wouldn't be right for her, just so she can be properly and completely "in the system"? Your "all or nothing" requirement puzzles me.

As I said upthread, practical obstacles do often make it undesirable to let home educated kids participate in school activities. Accepting that reality is different from denying that a parent might reasonably want this for her child if it happens to be easy for the school to provide it.

The OP is no cheekier for hoping her daughter might be able to join a school choir than I am for putting out my half-full recycling bins for collection.

Lifelessordinary1 · 08/02/2023 12:27

Put a post on your local HE page for people who may be interested in having a choir, if its only for fun you could set one up yourself.

People are unknown to the LA if their child has never been to school or if they have moved into a new area. Its very normal - we are second generation HE - my children and now my Grandchildren are HE so 30 years in the HE world and have never been known to the LA. I would say around 10% of HE families are unknown to their LA and they are not the families you need to worry about.

Dealing with the LA is just a proper ballache. Most people have no major problems but few people actually value the interaction - the LA have nothing to offer - the advice and info they do provide is normally out of date and often completely wrong.

Bizarrely they are not in any way shape or form experts in HE. Many LA teams do not even have a qualified teacher in them , never mind an expert in SEN or someone with knowledge and experience in HE. We know - we see the job adverts and have met the staff.

The experts are the long term Home edders local to you and online. As one of these long term Home edders we spend a lot of time correcting what the LA have told people so we do know how poor the service is.

So for us - like most others - we simply do not want to waste the time and effort on writing reports that most people do not even know are ever read, and even if they are it could well be by someone who may have been in the HE world for 6 months and have been an admin assistant before then.

Please do not think that LA's have professional teams ready and poised to support you through the process and to do a full and professional assessment of your education provision - they really don't.

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