Home Ed Childminding

[Wisdomandlaughter]

Hello! I would love some opinions from experienced Home Edders on the idea of Home Ed childminding- do you/ would you utilise a service like this on a regular or ad/hoc basis for your children?

For context, I’m a Primary teacher with 10+ years experience and a mum of two who is seriously considering home education for my own children. The day would be child-led with enriching activities and experiences but absolutely not a school environment.
Asking as I’m lucky enough to have the space to be able to set up as a childminder but, much as I love Early Years, I really enjoy working with older children and I know some Home Ed families who struggle to balance work with home education so wondering if this might be a thing to pursue?

Anyway, all thoughts, experiences and opinions would be much appreciated!

I’m a childminder, whilst I’m only EYFS I’ve not had any requests to look after home educated children. I also home educate my own and in my area there’s not much call for it

Check the legalities, if you are providing paid education you may be classed as a school that requires registration. A few years back a childminder was shut down as they had 8 primary aged kids there in school hours.

Yes, I would and did use childminders who home educated. It worked great for all of us, for a number of reasons.

The only trouble is that I am not sure the HE population is geographically dense enough that there would be enough potential mindees very close to you. I drove some distance because my child and I much preferred to use home educating CMs. Some other parents may feel strongly too.

How old are your own children? I don't know whether this appeals to you, but if you are good with adolescents and think it might be compatible with looking after your own children, there seems to be a shocking increase in the number of high school age kids having to be removed from school because they find the environment completely overwhelming. Technically it's safe for most of them to be left home on their own, and their parents will do that in desperation because school is not an option and the parents can't afford to leave work. But often they are lonely and could do with some company and to be taken out to activities while their parents are at work, at least for one or two days a week.

Tonnes of demand for this in my slice of south London!

You're right that the OP should look into this and ensure she isn't classed as a school. However, "school hours" are not relevant to the legislation. Childcare can be provided at any time.

If a childminder was shut down for operating an illegal school, it will have been because they were actually providing education rather than childcare, the number of hours per week was too high, and there were too many children (or even a single child with an EHCP).

As an aside, parents who do want to pay someone to educate their children can do so without it being classed as a school, provided there aren't too many children. Aristocrats have traditionally delegated home education to private governesses and tutors, for example. That is how the late Queen was educated.

Thank you all for taking the time to offer your thoughts! I’m in North Liverpool so there is some home ed here and I’ve heard the LA are reasonable, but definitely not as dense a population as in other places. My own children are 2 and 4 so EYFS childminding seems the more straightforward route, I just love the idea of supporting Home Ed families and school age children. I’ll keep you posted on what I end up doing!

Don’t forget, with regards to EYFS your own children are counted in your ratios. It will affect the amount of money you can earn. Many top this up with before and after school children. I’m EYFS only but my own children are teens.

I would have thought having EYFS children would be the less straightforward route, as you have to deliver the EYFS! By contrast, there's no requirement to provide any sort of education to older children. And of course little kids are usually harder work than big kids 😁But I do realise the market for CM services for older kids in the daytime is bound to be much smaller than for toddlers. Not only are there fewer such children, but their parents won't be able to make use of the free preschool hours. They can get a big subsidy toward the cost of registered childcare if they are working and on Universal Credit.

You could cast your net wide by advertising your services to the home ed community as well as elsewhere. Some parents of toddlers who are planning to HE them might like the idea of them being able to stay with you longer term.

I would like a HE childminder but they are few and far between. That said I would be cautious to use you because you’d be fresh out of school and won’t have had much time to get out of the school mindset… we’re much more unschooling in our style than anything else atm and my eldest in particular I think might begin to struggle if it looked anything like school-at-home

like @Saracen said geographically it maybe be tricky, I live in the London Essex boarder and there are so few HE kids there’s almost no HE activities her but back in south London there are MANY HE kids and you’d stand a better chance. Though some groups have still struggled to run because HE family’s are notoriously flaky. Have a look around for HE activities, and how many people are in the local FB groups (and is it active!) so see if there’s likely to be enough interest.

I’ve found a lot of the people who HE from the start get sticker shock with the price of childcare because they much more likely to have never used it or only used the funded hours. I went to visit Children’s Village and when they said it was £40 a day I thought not bad compared to our nursery and a LOT of the other parents recoiled 😬

a setting that could offer continuity beyond 5 AND could take older siblings is a huge deal to me

There's a facebook group for Registered Childminders who home educate that you might find useful.

IME, there isn't enough demand for home ed childcare to make it your total income. You either need to mix it with early years children or before/after school children.
Home educating families tend to be less willing to pay fees, less able to access funding and less reliable (in terms of wanting childcare full days and long term) than early years/working families.

The illegal school thing is only a concern if you have 5+ school aged children (or one with a EHCP) and you provide them with full time education (usually considered to be 18-21+ hours a week).

How can the kids be honest educated when they’re not at home but with a paid child care provider who is educating them? I’d class that as a sort of school

How can school children be educated at school when they also go to a child care provider? What a stupid question

Really, that’s where your mind goes with this?

Re @Blushingm 's concern:

Not a stupid question, just one from someone who's unfamiliar with home education. It is a common assumption that education would happen weekdays during the daytime, and that it consists of 30 hours of sit-down "work". Most of us are only familiar with the school model, which looks like that, so it's understandable that we'd assume home education would be the same. I used to think that too, before I learned more about EHE and saw it in action.

Home ed families can do their learning at any time. It doesn't have to coincide with school hours. The only reason school hours are standardised is so the 30 children in the school classroom will be in the same place at the same time to be instructed by their teacher. And of course many school-using families do, in practice, make use of school partly for its function as free childcare, despite the government saying that isn't its purpose, and they find it helpful if the school day is similar to their work day. But neither of those considerations apply to home education.

Home ed kids often do a significant part of their learning informally, just by playing and following their interests. Kids like my eldest may even do all of their learning in this way, and if/when they do start school or start formal study towards GCSEs, they are not behind their schooled peers.

The benefit of one-to-one attention and learning which is targeted at exactly the right level for the child and takes into account how they learn best is immense. That makes home education vastly more efficient than school, so it can be done in fewer hours. Did you know that when the Local Authority retains responsibility for educating a child out of school (for example because the child is too ill to attend school), they are only required to provide tutoring for a minimum of ten hours a week?