Please sign our flexischooling petition!

[flexischoolingUK]

Flexischooling is an arrangement where a child of compulsory school age is registered at school full time, but the school agrees the child can be educated at home for part of the week. Flexischooling is a full time education, just like full time school or full time home education. This is a legal option in England, Scotland and Wales, but isn’t very well known (even in schools).

In England and Wales, flexischooling, if agreed, is marked as Code C, authorised absence. The trouble with this is that code C still
affects the school’s attendance data, which can put schools off agreeing. Before 2019, Code B (educated offsite) was allowed and this code did not negatively impact attendance data.

In December 2024, the head of Ofsted, Sir Martyn Oliver, voiced the concern in his end of year report, that we have no way of knowing how many children are being flexischooled, as Code C is a generic authorised absence code, and it is impossible to differentiate between flexischooling absences and other authorised absences.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill proposes that flexischooling be managed by LAs. This seems like an inefficient and costly duplication of oversight and data retention, as flexischooling children are already registered at school full time, seen in school on a weekly basis, and schools are already recording attendance of flexischooling pupils on a twice daily basis!

We believe our proposal makes more sense logistically and financially. For schools to continue to manage flexischooling arrangements, but for a specific flexischooling code to be used (Code F) giving the government quantifiable data on the number of flexischooling children. Ideally, this code would not impact attendance data, as flexischooling pupils are legally receiving a full time education and it seems unnecessary for schools to be penalised for agreeing to a flexischooling arrangement in the best interests of a child. This is the current system in Scotland, flexischooling has no negative impact on attendance data.

We are aiming to reach 10,000 signatures to get a response from the government, but more than 10,000 would be a fantastic testament to the interest in flexischooling. We currently have at least 1 signature in all but 5 constituencies in the whole of the UK! It would be absolutely amazing to be able to say that every constituency in the UK had signed.

We are currently missing a signature in Nah-Eileanan an lar in Scotland, and 4 constituencies in Northern Ireland:

Mid Ulster - Mr Cathal Mallaghan MP

East Antrim - Rt Hon Sammy Wilson MP

Lagan Valley - Sorcha Eastwood MP

Belfast West - Paul Maskey MP

Whilst this petition isn’t directly aimed at Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales, signatures from these countries do count and the petition data will be available even after the petition ends, and could be used to demonstrate the high levels of interest in flexischooling in these countries.

And of course, if every single constituency signs, that’s a statement everyone in the UK can use, that this petition demonstrates the universal support for flexischooling in the UK, with every single constituency having signed! 🤞

Please consider taking 2 minutes to sign and verify your email (please check your junk/spam folder) as unverified emails do not count.

Thank you!

Happy to answer any question regarding flexischooling 🙂

Flexischooling petition link

It's interesting that there are a lot of home educating parents who are current or former teachers.

The idea that all teachers are subject experts is laughable. One of the trainees on my second PGCE placement was trained as a music teacher; she could only secure a job as an RE teacher - with no RE teaching experience.

I had to give another member of my PGCE cohort a crash course in Welsh, as she'd been hired as an English and Welsh teacher for NQT year but didn't speak any Welsh at all (and the school were aware of this).

Teaching and home educating are two very different things, but even if they were the same - there's no magical teaching superpower that you're born with. Anyone could do a PGCE and then say "look, I'm qualified to teach!". I know home educators who'd make terrible teachers but are great home educators, and teachers who'd make terrible home educators but are great teachers.

It’s pretty well established that children who are home educated have better educational outcomes. This is the first link I found https://www.home-education.org.uk/articles/wc/wc-he-outcomes.pdf

Im sure that considering using my own academic achievements, his access to multiple teachers with various specialisms in his immediate family and his current aptitude, as predictors for academic success, he will be just fine. Personally I’m more concerned with his wellbeing, quality of life and experiences outside of the classroom, but there you go.

I bet it was! That must have been so hard for you. That’s such an irresponsible thing to do to trainee teachers as well because it means they’ll be thrown into classroom environments with which they have not been given the skills of knowledge to cope/ manage. No wonder the retention rate is so low!

It also explains some of the astoundingly ignorant comments that have been made to me by teachers, even about the most basic things about autism (e.g. them not understanding that autistic children without learning disabilities mask at school, or them not understanding that a child being academically intelligent doesn’t mean they have lower support needs). I’m sure not all of them do independent research on this the way that you did, unfortunately.

Are teachers raising this with the TRA and asking them to update the PGCE to include proper training on this? You’d think it would be obvious it is an essential part of their training?

Where is this school? Is there a way to search for schools like this?

Yes. But in most cases it wouldn’t be agreed unless there’s a specific reason for it, as far as I understand? Unless it is a school specifically set up for this purpose (and I imagine such schools attract families where most of the children do have a specific need for this).

I don’t think the suggestion was that all children should be able to do this as standard practice in every primary school. The OP’s own posts stated that in an average school there might be one or two children that do.

Also what did that poster mean, “not using all of the education paid for”?

On the one hand people are saying this would add to the teacher’s workload, then on the other hand they’re saying it’s a “waste” because the teacher would be teaching a smaller class for some of the time, so the remaining children would get a better education while the parent is using their own time, money and resources to fill the gap!

The fact is that some children need smaller classes. So for many children having fewer children in the school each day and some learning remotely would be hugely beneficial. One of the main problems that’s counterproductive and leading to many of the additional costs and requirements for EHCPs, and teacher overwhelm, is that classes are simply too big: it’s a false economy.

All children/parents can request this. That is the current law.

In some schools, flexi schooling is offered to every child - I think the OP mentioned one primary where 80% of the pupils flexischooled.

Reasons for requesting flexi schooling could be:
parent wants to be more involved in their child's education
parent wants to teach child a home/community language
child competes/trains/performs at a high level
child is gifted or talented and the parent wants to stretch them or extend educational opportunities
child has SEN and parent wants to offer extra support
child attends another setting such as a language school or forest school

It's something we gave feedback to the course leaders on, but whether anything has changed remains to be seen.

Anyone could do a PGCE
There we have it.
Complete disrespect for teachers.
I have a degree, a Master’s degree and a PGCE.
My PGCE course only took 30 people and most people had firsts from good unis.
I am also a writer and editor and have 20 years teaching experience.
I manage a department of 30 other teachers.
I am a senior examiner for an exam board and mentor new teachers.
But I am sure anyone could do it.

So you were born with magical teaching superpowers?

Anyone who puts the work in can get a PGCE. It's like any other degree. We aren't unicorns, granted magical teaching abilities.

So, do you believe that all teachers are subject experts - like the teachers I know; trained in music but teaching RE, or teaching Welsh on the timetable without actually understanding or speaking the language? They're subject experts?

I did my PGCE with people who only passed their professional skills maths/English tests on the 3rd try 😂
And it was really not tricky - "In a class of 28 pupils, seven attend the maths club after school. What percentage of the class do not attend the maths club after school?"

You're lucky to get a qualified teacher in front of the class in schools these days anyway.

We have two facebook groups, Flexischooling Families UK, for families, and Flexischooling Practitioners UK for education professionals. We work with both groups to support flexischooling. We have a colour-coded flexischooling map with over 700 schools on that have agreed to flexischooling. Some of these schools actively advertise flexischooling, on their website and sharing posters for us to share across our social media accounts. Both Hollinsclough C of E Academy and Huxley C of E Primary only had 5 pupils at one point. These schools (and many others) have adopted a flexischooling model in the hope it will attract home educating families into schools or families at other schools who won’t agree to flexischooling to join their school.

Last year Huxley reached full capacity as a result, and I believe this year they now have a waiting list.

Parents in our facebook group have expressed the willingness to commute or even relocate to access this form of hybrid education.

If you would be interested to see more, please check out our Instagram account, where we publicly share posters for schools. @flexischooling_UK

Great question!

Parents keep evidence of the learning at home, and the school and family agree how this will be shared between them. In my experience, schools do not want reams and reams of information. A photo and brief summary is usually sufficient. Many schools use communication apps such as class dojo, seesaw or tapestry, which can be used to share evidence.

Flexischooling is far less disruptive than children being off sick unexpectedly. It is much easier to work around planned absences. Pupils are absent from school for numerous reasons, planned and unplanned, from flexischooling, part-time timetables, children attending alternative provisions as part of their EHCPs, doctor, dentist or hospital appointments, attending funerals, children attending competitive sports, performing children, traveller children, etc. Good, well run schools should not descend into chaos due to such absences.

If a school has 1 flexischooling pupil, then keeping track of which pupil it is and what day of the week they won’t be in school is easy. If there are two flexischooling pupils (Possibly 2 children from the same family), while it’s possible, it’s unlikely that these pupils are in the same class. Meaning the teacher of each class only has to remember that one of their pupils won’t be in school every Friday. This is no different, though in many ways easier for the teacher, to remembering that X child has a dentist appointment on Tuesday and Y child has a hospital appointment on Thursday this week.

The onus is on parents to do the research to find out what topics are being covered, IF the headteacher stipulates that they must follow the National Curriculum, there no legal requirement to. National Curriculum descriptors are available online, most schools have a curriculum overview on their school website, but specialist information, such as what phonics sound is being taught on that day may require a brief conversation once a week. E.g “Which phonics sound will you be covering on Friday?” “the ir digraph”. “Great, thanks.”

The lack of teachers is because of the lack of respect which is amply demonstrated here.
I am sorry you went to some kind of Mickey Mouse institution to qualify. You clearly did no research; a common theme on this thread.

Flexischooling is a full time education. No classroom in the country is exactly identical, despite following the same National Curriculum. Even classes within the same school, of the same year group will teach things differently. Different does not necessarily equate to inferior.

With clear planning and communication flexischooling pupils are not missing out, and in some cases may be more advanced. Having taught in a classroom of 30 pupils and then flexischooled 1 child, I can attest that it takes 30 children a lot longer to accomplish the same task as it does when working with only 1 child.

Flexischooling is not like a part-time timetable, or an absences due to sickness. During flexischooling the child is being educated. Yes, that education may not look identical to their peers in the classroom, but the breadth of learning flexischooling pupils can experience can allow them to bring a more diverse viewpoint back into the classroom, supporting their peers to deepen their understanding.

In terms of missing out on fun stuff, we actually have a clause in our flexischooling written agreement, which we encourage parents and schools to use, to allow for flexibility. So when there is a special event at school: a performance, a trip, a visitor, etc, that the child may attend school on their usual flexischooling day.

Many flexischooling children have SEND, and are overwhelmed by full time school. The flexischooling arrangement allows them to receive a full time education in a manageable way. The flexischooling days support the child to regulate whilst still allowing them access to a school based education.

The class teacher is not fully responsible for monitoring the offsite education. Flexischooling is granted at the headteacher’s discretion, not the class teacher’s. The headteacher is the one responsible for monitoring and deciding whether the child is receiving a suitable education during the home part of flexischooling, just as they are responsible for monitoring the education provision on-site.

Right. So not going to be the case for the vast majority of children then, as stated.

And these are, per your post, reasons why it might be requested. That doesn’t mean that it would be approved if any of those circumstances happen to apply: it would depend on the circumstances and the school’s assessment of whether it was in the child’s best interests overall.

So the claim that this is “an option for all children” is manifestly false and just trying to stir the pot and pretend that it will cause huge disruptions to teachers and schools and that the idea is that this would be a widespread thing for a large number of children when the OP’s own posts clearly state that in a whole primary school there might be 1 or 2 children with such arrangements.

Do teachers not have any input into their professional body? I sit on one of the Boards of my professional body and surely teachers should be feeding this back en masse through annual surveys/ contacting their representatives at the TRA/ through meetings with TRA staff to ensure this is addressed?

Oh come on. You might be a very experienced and senior teacher, but the fact is that the requirements to do a PGCE are not having a first (and that’s quite meaningless anyway, now, because the value of a degree very much depends on which institution issued it and in which subject).

You are clearly very experienced, many teachers are not. Some people are highly unsuited to the profession but meet the entry requirements for a PGCE (which aren’t very high) and can pass the course yet don’t happen to be very good at teaching.

And as a PPs have stated, a lot of the PGCE is about classroom management. Teachers at secondary school often aren’t experts in their subject these days. Teachers at primary school may have gained a PGCE while having sub-standard knowledge or skills in critical areas of the curriculum. Having a PGCE doesn’t somehow make you some kind of fountain of knowledge or teaching skill. It’s not disrespectful to teachers and the work they do not to put them on a pedestal as some kind of superior beings that know things nobody else knows and the only people in the world who can teach something to somebody: this manifestly isn’t the case and it’s not “disrespectful” to say so.

Posters who are qualified teachers have noted how the PGCE contains pretty much NO training about SEND, and that a lot of it is about classroom management rather than teaching, and how obviously in a 1:1 homeschooling environment those skills aren’t even required, and how many teachers have scant knowledge of many of the subjects they’re meant to be teaching.

Lots of teachers are excellent and they do a very difficult job but to try to pretend anybody who hasn’t done a PGCE is incapable of teaching anybody anything (even at primary school level! I mean, the spelling errors and basic maths errors I’ve seen from some teachers are shocking!) is clearly nonsense, and as a highly qualified and experienced teacher surely you know this very well.

I think in the vast majority of cases, parents would prefer not to have to follow the National Curriculum, and would prefer to tailor the education to the child’s needs, interests, strengths and weaknesses, but many are willing to accommodate the school’s wishes by covering the missed content.

In my experience, parents are the ones managing flexischooling arrangements. Most schools have never heard of flexischooling, so parents need to do their research, become confident and knowledgeable about flexischooling, and then educate the school, to have any hope of getting it agreed.

If they are successful, parents then need to begin researching what they will teach. The amount of involvement of the school, is really up to school. Some schools have a very hands off approach, others choose to be more involved.

In a recent poll in our families group, I was very surprised to find that over half were education professionals themselves. Teachers, who may love the profession in many ways, but have experienced life inside the classroom, have chosen this alternative approach for their own children. As they have first hand experience of life as a teacher, they would not be choosing this option if flexischooling arrangements were detrimental to the rest of the school, including the teaching staff.

In most cases, the parent will propose the days and times they would like as part of their request. The headteacher may agree to this, or, due to timetabling reasons, may suggest an alternative pattern of attendance.

That’s ok if it’s not your bag 🙂

Flexischooling has been around for over 50 years, and our flexischooling map has over 700 schools on. It’s a great option for some and many schools make it work and are thriving as a result 😁

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