Select Committee on Home Ed

[AgnesDiPesto]

Saw this on NAS

The Parliamentary Education Select Committee has announced a short inquiry to look at the support available for those who home educate their children. Among other things they will look at what progress has been made since the Department for Children, Schools and Families (as was) looked into this a few years ago. The Committee will not look at wider issues, such as safeguarding or curriculum.

The Committee is chaired by Graham Stuart MP, who is the Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Home Education.

You can read more about the inquiry here If you want to make a written submission, you must do so by noon on Monday 9th July 2012.

Thanks for posting Agnes. Sent mine last week after several days of agonising and tweaking. It is very detailed.

hope you don't mind Agnes but Iv'e copied it into the MN HE FB group?

Ive been trying to write something sensible to say that I think that required external specialist support currently only practically available to children attending school such as SALT, OT & equipment, (alpasmart, IT programs etc) etc should be made available on an equal basis to home educators as at present this doesn't happen. Also a guarantee of local exam centres for home educated older children.

The pathfinders studies were looking at a combined care plan that incorporated healt, social care and education + a personal budget. However the paperwork I've seen to date all assumes a school environment.

My son's "ideal" secondary education is infinately cheaper for an LA To administer than "school" but the current regime makes it really hard to access any state funds to make my dream reality. This is crazy as even with expensive support he'll fail abysmally in mainstream and special schools lack the academic rigour he needs to obtain an "adequate" education unless we go for the stratospherically expensive independant option. I suspect there are many, many children at the borders/higher end of the AS/ASD spectrum in a similar position too.

My dream:-

I'll try and explain where I'm heading from my own example. In an ideal world I'd like DS to do secondary school via interlink high an online homeschool option. However I'd the LA to pay the fees and possibly for an untrained "supervisor" to sit at my home for a couple of mornings a week so he's not home alone while I work. This would still be much much cheaper to any LA than my son attending school with 36 hours ASD Trained TA time.

Then I'd like him to access SALT & OT for 30 mins a week. More than happy to take him to a clinic for this, so not asking for the higher costs of a home visit. We all know that under the current system a secondary aged child as ZERO chance of obtaining this unless he's at school, and even then it'd take a tribunal to do it.

The social care aspect of the plan would be socialisation opportunities - here I'm lucky as he could join in mainstream activities like a swimming club or music group with minimal additional support by secondary age.

I'm looking for official research etc that I can quote or reference so that my submission looks like a sensible alternative education option rather than the ramblings of a hippy mother iykwim & would be very grateful if anyone can point me in the right direction. At the moment I sound like Gordon Brittas but I know that my "dream" is a realistic, viable chance for children like mine to get a proper formal education wiv qualifications etc at the end of it that the state system just doesn't provide.

Sorry for the ramble, as I'm still trying to get it clear in my own head.

bochead I found it quite hard to put mine together because I kept getting my wires crossed with a head full of the SEN Green Paper, a bit like you. It was hard keeping the two separate.

For the Select Committee Inquiry, it might help to look at the guidelines for preparing your submission here. I actually found the 'getting it in the right order' bit harder than the content, which was a bit odd.