Work samples

[Rhayader]

My local authority have asked for work samples from my home educated child. When I Google this all of the websites say to refuse to do this. Is there a reason why I shouldn’t just send some work samples to get them off my back? He’s year 3 if that makes a difference.

Their email says “If there is no response we will assume that you are no longer home educating and the Department for Education’s Children Missing Education (CME) guidance will apply.” I don’t know what this guidance means but I don’t really want to have a big battle.

Check out HEFA on Facebook- lots of posts saying why you shouldn't provide samples

Can I ask why people wouldn’t provide work samples? Genuinely not being arsey, just interested to know! I work in a school and when Ofsted descend and demand we have no choice so I’m genuinely just interested as to what happens if you refuse in Home Ed. Does anyone know what they do with samples that are submitted? Do they assess them?

Lots of reasons. I'll list the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Some of these reasons are to do with your own personal circumstances, i.e. the LA may treat you worse if you submit samples than if you don't. Other reasons are more community/politically motivated, and are to do with establishing expectations that an LA won't overstep its remit, in just the same way someone might refuse to comply with an unjustified police stop and search which appears to be to do with racial profiling, though it might be easier to comply on this occasion because you "have nothing to hide".

Legally, it's a question of provision rather than the child's performance.

For an individual child, there can be no benchmark against which to assess the child's attainment other than the child's own capability. The LA isn't in a good position to know the child's capability and whether they are meeting their potential. Measuring attainment makes a little more sense in the case of a school, where there are multiple children and one can consider whether the group is underperforming statistically compared with other groups of children.

Some families don't do school-style work. If those families who DO do school-style work submit samples, it may create an expectation in the LA that all families should educate in that way. LAs are notorious for saying things like, "other home educating families are happy to provide xyz" with the implication that doing otherwise is dodgy.

If a parent is conscious that work samples will be submitted to the LA, they may put inappropriate performance pressure on their kids to produce something good. Parents get anxious about this. It feels like there's a lot at stake, especially in cases where school was disastrous for the child. Think of the pressure which many schools put on Y6 kids to perform well in SATs, and then imagine how that would be intensified if the school were to be judged by the performance of just one single child. Kids who were traumatised at school can live in fear that they will be sent back if their work isn't up to scratch.

Some LAs who receive work samples will subsequently deem the family to be failing if insufficient progress is shown next time. But children often have periods of no apparent progress followed by periods of rapid progress. One of my kids was exceptionally good at maths aged four, then set it aside for years before having another burst of interest and dramatic improvement from 9-12 (but focused on concepts rather than arithmetic), did little with it until GCSE and then blitzed through the whole school curriculum in a few months. I don't know what the LA would have made of that! Such patterns are pretty common with individualised learning.

Some people regard a demand for work samples as indicative of distrust on the LA's part. If I report that my child can confidently add numbers up to 100, asking to see a worksheet on which she has done so feels like an inspection rather than the informal inquiries which LAs are meant to be doing at this stage. And it would be easy to fake, so what's the point?

Have you read through your LA's policy on home education?

That's the best place to start, as even if you decide not to provide samples, you still need to know what their procedure is and what will happen next.

For example, my LA's policy states that while parents are under no obligation to provide samples, the LA still has a duty to safeguard their child and to ensure they are receiving a suitable education, and so in light of the LA's duty, they deem it justifiable to assume that the child of a parent who doesn't engage at all probably isn't receiving a suitable education.

From the letter you received, it sounds like your LA's policy is similar, so it makes sense to familiarise yourself with the CME guidance they cited, so you know what the LA will do next.

They can't make you provide samples, but they also have to discharge their own statutory safeguarding/educational duties, and so while a decade or so ago, it might have been more realistic to expect an LA to back off if a parent refuses to engage, I doubt that's a realistic outcome in the current climate, with LAs having missed so many opportunities to spot abused children who have fallen through the cracks.

You've seen the stress caused by Ofsted inspections in a school, where there are multiple staff and hundreds of children. Now imagine it all comes down to one single child and one or two adults! Even in school, as you said, you "have no choice" but I should think if you DID have a choice you would push back, as is starting to happen anyway in the wake of Ruth Perry's death.

Refusal to submit samples: When looking at a child's home education, an LA is obliged to consider all of the information available to it. They are not allowed to dictate the format in which the parent supplies information. So if the parent will not submit work samples, the LA has two choices: look instead at whatever the parent DOES submit, or take legal action against the parent. There are just a few LAs in the country who routinely take the latter approach, though the law does not support it. They have successfully bullied most local parents into compliance. IIRC the few cases which have gone to court have all gone against the LA, but exasperated judges have no sanctions at their disposal to stop the LA from taking other parents to court. I remember one case in which the LA took the SAME parent to court year after year and always lost, because the judges could see the child was receiving a perfectly good education.

What do they do with samples? There's a good question! That's anybody's guess. Every LA is different. It's a postcode lottery.

When it comes to school inspections, Ofsted is a national body which theoretically applies the same standards to schools everywhere. Ofsted inspectors ought to be following the same approach everywhere. By contrast, LA approaches to home ed vary hugely. There's no required training, and many staff know little about home education. A previously "good" LA can change when staff change and decide to alter policies. A few LAs actually have an explicit policy of trying to push as many children into school as possible! Small wonder many of us think it safest to keep them at arm's length.

If allowed to meet a child whose "work" they have seen, some LA staff will threaten the child with school if they don't improve. That can be very distressing for a child who came out of school due to bad experiences there.

Oh, I totally agree. Ignoring the LA altogether is a bad idea. I assumed the OP was wondering how to engage with the LA, not whether to do so.

Thanks all. I definitely want to engage with them! We are following a pretty traditional system and I could quite easily just send them some photos of a bit of writing and some maths assessments but I wanted to understand why this isn’t advised and what they will do with his samples. Is there a chance that they just show up at our house?

There's always a chance they could turn up on your doorstep, though that's very unprofessional and wasteful of resources. Some LAs do this under the guise of "safeguarding", which is quite unwarranted because the evidence is that home educated children are actually at LESS risk than those who go to school. (If someone did have reason to believe that your children specifically were at risk, that would be a job for trained social workers and not home ed staff.) If someone from the LA home ed team appears on your doorstep, you can just tell them you don't receive visitors without an appointment. Some parents feel that their children would be frightened by having a potentially pushy official come to their home unexpectedly and demanding to see them, and seek to prevent this by stating that they would like all contact to be in writing.

However, "doorstepping" is more often used as an initial contact by LAs who hope to catch families unawares and invite themselves into the home to "inspect" provision. Even if a home visit is acceptable to you and even if home visits were a good way to gather information about the education - which is dubious - surprise visits are a daft approach. They should WANT you to be prepared with all information to hand, having thought through what you want to tell them, so they can form an accurate picture of the education being provided. They should not want you to be so flustered that you forget to mention the science kits or your recent museum trips or the fact your kid socialises at youth club or is learning Spanish by talking to the au pair.

Anyway, I think it's fairly unlikely you'd get doorstepped at this stage, especially if you answer their correspondence in some way which indicates your willingness to provide information in some format.

I have no idea how the LA assess work samples as the home ed officer role generally requires no qualification or experience in either school based education or home education.
Why would I allow some unqualified person to judge my child's work?
There's no legal framework for what a child's 'work' should be or consist of.
There's no requirement to follow the national curriculum.

Have you written a comprehensive report on what your child is learning? If so there is no need to provide work samples.
You could send a bit of writing if you wanted to, but what if the person receiving it doesn't like it? What if they decide your child's handwriting is too messy?
What if they decide that because you agreed to send samples you're a soft touch and now they want to come and have a look round your house too.

It isn't necessary and just opens you up to more issues.

Sorry to keep banging on about it, but the best way to find out if they're likely to just turn up at your house is to read your LA's policies and the CME guidance they said they are going to follow next.

Every LA does things slightly differently, so while everyone else could tell you how their own LA tends to do things, there are two main reasons it's important for you to know exactly what your own LA's policies are - 1) to know what to expect and plan your response in advance and 2) so you can challenge them if they're not following their own policy (which occurs pretty often, unfortunately).

When I look back at the number of times I only knew to challenge the LA because I knew what the relevant law and their own policies said, I find it scary as to the things I nearly agreed to or accepted just because some random (often new or temporary) council worker tried to pressure me into doing what would make their job easier.

If they turn up unexpectedly but the policy says they should only do that in x circumstance, you can tell them that at the door and ask them to explain their reasoning as to why they believe x circumstance has occurred (e.g. "but I sent you an email and was happily engaging with you, and your policy says you only turn up when there is no response", etc). And if you know the policy says that they can just turn up, then at least you'll know to expect it and can prepare accordingly.

Also, quoting their own policy back to them is an excellent way to make them check their actual policy and to ensure they do everything by the letter with you, IME.