Does interhigh count as a school or homeschool for lea purposes?

[pinknutcracker]

just that really does interhigh count as an actual school rather than hs?

I would say homeschool as it is not funded or regulated. Isn’t it for parents who homeschool but can’t actually teach the gcse syllabus in a variety of subjects? They have specialist teachers and the children attend online classes.

Online schools are a resource parents can use for delivering home education.

BTW the usual term is "home education" rather than "homeschooling". There are two reasons for this. First, for ideological reasons, many home ed parents want to emphasise that the way we educate often looks totally different from school; it isn't usually a school-at-home model.

Second, government communications have sometimes used the term "homeschooling" to refer to remote education delivered by schools to children (e.g. during Covid lockdowns) as distinct from elective home education, in which parents choose to educate their children without school. They haven't always been consistent with their terminology. All the same, "home education" - or better yet, "elective home education" avoids confusion.

Thanks so @Saracen do the government look at online schooling as not homeschooling but home educating? I am new to this and want to let the lea know of our plans and worried about getting it wrong.

I was looking into this for my DS and wondered the same. It seems as though it should be considered actual schooling as it is an independent fee paying school but just without any physical premises, delivering education as all independent schools did during lockdown. But on their website they state that their school is aimed at "homeschool parents who want their child to follow the national curriculum". It looks like a great option for children who struggle with the school environment rather than the education aspect.

It’s home ed OP

When the parent has chosen to educate their child rather than asking the Local Authority to do so, and uses an online school, that is elective home education. The online school does not have to deliver a full-time education; the parent might use it for some of the education while arranging the rest of the education themselves, supervising homework set by the online school, etc. I doubt that any online school would have enough contact hours to qualify as a school in the same way that a bricks-and-mortar school would.

In some cases, when the parent wants the LA to educate their child but the LA accepts that there is no suitable school for the child, the LA provides alternative education at their expense. Most LAs refer to this as EOTAS (Education Other Than At School). A few children do receive LA-funded online schooling under EOTAS, for example if that is specified on their EHCP. It's fairly rare. LAs would rather try to push kids into unsuitable mainstream provision than acknowledge that it's unsuitable. If your child was receiving EOTAS, you'd know about it because it would have required a long hard battle for you to get the LA to pay out!

I'm using the word "chosen" loosely; I'm well aware that many parents feel they have no choice but to pull their kids out of school. But unless the LA admits that there is no suitable school available, they will say that the parents have elected to home educate, and so will the law.

Interhigh isn’t a registered school. Online schools can become accredited, but Sophia High School is the only one who is at the moment and even then it isn’t considered the same as a registered brick school.

It is possible to force the LA to make arrangements even if they won’t admit there isn’t a suitable school because ultimately it isn’t the LA making the final decision. It is the court via JR or SENDIST (depending on whether you are talking about s19 provision or via an EHCP) who decides.

@Saracen thank you for all that information. I am choosing to homeed, my op is due to dc current school asking why we are leaving and I was trying to work out if online school still required all the same procedures as it would for declaring dc will be homeschooled to lea as in our lea we have to fill out forms to homeschool so I wasn't sure if I had to fill them out.

Just so you know, you don’t have to use the LA’s form if you don’t want to.