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

Teachers are not responsible for planning the home part of flexischooling.

https://www.ipsea.org.uk/faqs/part-time-timetable This is the information on a part time timetable.
Part time timetables should be a short term solution to exceptional circumstances.

Flexischooling is an agreement between the headteacher and parents, for the child to receive a full time education partly at school and partly at home.

Some schools do pressure parents into agreeing to flexischooling (or indeed off rolling entirely) as they can't meet the child's needs, which isn't legal.

Then why are you expecting the school to meet and liaise?

Absolutely.
The teacher’s PPA time?? The sheer entitled arrogance

No
If a parent requests for example 1 afternoon of flexi a week, the headteacher might decide that Wednesday afternoon when the teacher has PPA and there is a TA covering the class is the best afternoon to do it.

How can the headteacher make a decision without meeting the parent?

But you expect teachers to liase with parents regarding learning. When would they do that? In my school for example, we do not have capacity to cover teachers classes for meetings, so this would happen after school. Which is our time to do work for our class. Not have a meeting regarding home learning!

So who is going to arrange and inform you of what content you will need to cover on the days your child is not in class?

We would absolutely love to have more tangible data, which is another reason a flexischooling specific code would be beneficial. We would be able to analyse progress of flexischooling pupils more effectively. At the moment, there is not enough official information, so we rely on subjective feedback, which obviously is not the gold standard in terms of data.
We have over 27,000 members in our Flexischooling Families UK facebook group, but only about 100 parents have responded to that particular poll. Facebook algorithms mean that not all members see all posts, despite admin using the @ everyone tag 😞

The school with 83% flexischooling is called Huxley C of E Primary. This school had only 5 pupils in 2020, and last reached full capacity by embracing the flexischooling model, and along with Hollinsclough C of E Academy, are happy to support other schools interested in exploring a flexischooling model. I imagine Hollinsclough also has a high % but I’m not aware of the numbers in that case.

”Liase with” is rather different to meet.

Flexischooling is incredibly hard on schools and teachers.

My DD2 was flexi schooled for 3 years while her drs tried to diagnose her and then get her narcolepsy under control. She could only manage 3 days in school (and sometimes not even that) and flexischooling meant on the other 4 days she could fit in the work in the hours she was awake and able.
I'm forever grateful for the masses of work put in by her teachers at that time, but that was 15 years ago and I cannot imagine teachers now remotely having the capacity to facilitate it.

It would be a massive ask if it's not for a very specific reason imo.

Personally I did not meet with the class teacher regarding flexischooling beyond normal parent's evenings.
All communication was done with SLT members.
Occasionally at drop off/pick up the class teacher would mention if there was something special coming up.

This phrase was used by the headteacher of Newcastle upon Clun Primary school when they adopted a flexischooling model 🙂

That said I will sign this petition about the code as it is simply that - asking for a specific code.

I actually think for safeguarding reasons we should have specific codes for as much as possible when children are out of school rather than generic absence codes

I can’t see flexi schooling not adding to a teacher’s workload. More admin for the school too.

I can understand limited aspects of this for children with particular illnesses/ recovering from - but with an end in sight. As a teacher I would have gone along with this.

As a parent of children attending school normally I wouldn’t be too happy if others in my child’s class were flexischoolers…..
1 The disproportionate amount of time that FS child took away from the normally schooled others.
2 The disruption caused by some part timers in the class, having to explain to/motivate my own children that the FS children weren’t skiving/having it easy.

Someone else wrote about either being in or out, As a former teacher, who has seen examples of home education, I’m a firm believer of in.

My concern is that a boost to flexischooling will result in schools pressuring parents to take children who are struggling for whatever reason out of school some of the time.

Flexischooling is not an ad hoc arrangement. It is a carefully agreed plan, so schools and teachers know exactly how many children will be in. Flexischooling is not generally agreed on various days within the same school. There are fixed days that chosen to minimise the disruption to the sequential teaching.

Not uncommon for a village school. My children's school had on average 70 pupils across seven year groups.

I will come back tomorrow and hope to answer more of your questions and concerns regarding flexischooling 😁

No, I meant the total capacity is 60 pupils, so hardly your average school.

So how would flexi schooling not impact on staff time when there needs to be liaison? And who monitors the work covered at home to ensure that learning is incremental and that all required areas of skill and knowledge are covered?

who are these parents who can dip in and cover GCSE courses across a broad range of subjects? Who checks whether they have a thorough understanding of the course requirements?

Honestly, if a parent chooses to Home School their child that’s their business. But flexi school sounds like a recipe for disaster. I think it’s disingenuous to make out it wouldn’t impact negatively on staff and thereby on other students, because a worn out overworked teacher who has more dumped on them isn’t going to be giving their best to the children in front of them.

School Attendance is a massive issue since the pandemic. The focus needs to be on getting students back into the classroom in supportive ways, not enabling this half in/half out approach.

and longer term what about university and career? Are these young people going to expect to go ‘flexi’? Tell their employer they can’t do afternoons at the end of every week because they ‘can’t cope with it’?

honestly, let’s make education as accessible and supportive as possible but let’s do away with this chaotic idea of flexi schooling

Lots of village schools are operating on that kind of capacity. So yes, very average for that type of school.

No not average, as I said it is a small school that recovered from low numbers.

Different schools choose to organise flexi schooling in different ways.
Some might use school communication apps to share work, some might ask parents to keep records, some leave it up to parents entirely.

Flexi is more common at primary level but at secondary it would be more likely that children attend for certain subjects rather than on certain days.

I worked in Scottish secondary schools. Some pupils in my LA were on what was sometimes referred to as a 'restricted timetable'. It did often cause difficulties for school staff. It was very often used in cases where there was problematic behaviour. I'm not talking of children who had ASN caused by a specific learning difficulty.

I'd say that the most positive use of it was with school refusers and was sometimes successful in easing children back into full-time education. It was also sometimes used in a positive way with children who were on the autistic spectrum.