HERE is the link to the document I am reading through.
HERE is the link to Part 1.
“Destinations of children missing out on a formal full-time education
From the evidence provided by local authorities we have been able to identify eight main ‘destinations’ where children missing out on formal, full-time education might be found.”
I am only going to quote the ones directly linked to home education, rather than going through all the nuances of each of the statements.
“*Receiving long-term tuition at home, either through an internet-based provider or through in-person tuition, when that tuition does not constitute formal full-time education in either duration or content.
*Elective home education where the parent is not able or not willing to provide education that would constitute formal full-time education in either duration or content;
*Unknown to children’s services where the child or family is not previously known in any way by the local authority responsible for providing an education place.”
Again
with the ‘formal’. <eyeroll>
Why is a child being unknown to children’s services an automatic red flag? If a family decide to home educate their children from the start, there is no need to inform the LA (and there are many reasons why it’s not a good idea), so why would a family want to?
I am not entirely sure that these eight ‘destinations’ are the only possible destinations, and I’m certainly not convinced they are all bad.
Next comes another diagram supposedly linking the causes and destinations. Elective Home Education is listed amongst all the other negative things.
“What this diagram makes clear is that understanding the full extent of children missing out on their entitlement to a formal full-time education is not a straightforward task.”
No shit. It’s especially ‘not straightforward’ when you don’t understand the terms you are using, misrepresent them, and generally seem to purposely confuse everything.
“Chapter 2: What are the numbers and trends in children missing formal education?
The Children’s Commissioner referred to children missing out on their education as ‘invisible’. This is a powerful descriptor.”
It is indeed a powerful descriptor. It is, also, unnecessarily emotive and designed to give a negative emotion. Not least is it untrue for elective home educators – as Graham Stuart MP said, we’re “peculiarly visible”.
“Available trends from published data
Although there is limited national published data about this cohort of children as a whole, there have been several insightful publications which demonstrate the rising trend in numbers of children being electively home educated and numbers of children leaving schools at times other than normal points of transition.”
All children who are removed from the school roll for home education should be known to the LA. This is the responsibility of schools to pass the information on, and there is no reason whatsoever why these children should become missing.
“The Associated Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) annual survey on home education provides the most comprehensive estimate of the number of children and young people currently being electively home educated in England.4 The survey, which is completed by local authorities every year, suggests that 55,000 children and young people were electively home educated on census day in 2018/19.”
ADCS ‘About Us’ section says (https://adcs.org.uk/general/about-us): “ADCS is a membership organisation. Our members hold leadership roles in children’s services departments in local authorities in England. They specialise in developing, commissioning and leading the delivery of services to children, young people and their families, including education, health, youth, early years and social care services. Working in partnership with other agencies our members work to achieve tailored and joined-up services for children, whatever their identified needs.”
The ADCS have recently published their EHE Survey 2020 (https://adcs.org.uk/assets/documentation/ADCS_EHE_Survey_2020_FINALweb.pdf) stating “we estimate that a total of 75,668 children and young people were being electively home educated on the first school census day, 1 October 2020.”
Maybe when I have more time, I’ll get to go through this document too (or if someone else has done the work, let me know and I’ll put the link here).
“The Associated Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) annual survey on home education provides the most comprehensive estimate of the number of children and young people currently being electively home educated in England.4 The survey, which is completed by local authorities every year, suggests that 55,000 children and young people were electively home educated on census day in 2018/19. This has grown from 37,500 in 2015/16. As shown in the chart below, the numbers climbed dramatically between 2016/17 and 2017/18 and have since plateaued. The ADCS survey also shows that 79,000 children were home educated at any point during 2018/19. This in-year variation suggests that a relatively high number of children and young people may be moving in and out of home education within an academic year. It is worth noting that this data is based on voluntary local authority returns. As parents are not currently required to notify their local authority of a decision to home educate it may be an underestimate. Other sources, including the Schools Adjudicator (December 2018) and the Call for Evidence (July 2019) suggest that between 53,000 and 58,000 children are home educated. 5 6 Although there is some variation on exact numbers, they all point to sharp increases, with the Call for Evidence (2019) suggesting a rise of 40% since 2014/15.
The ADCS survey also sheds some light on the reasons why parents are deciding to home educate their children. While ‘philosophical or lifestyle choice’ remains the most commonly cited factor, the chart below also shows that health or emotional reasons are one of the fastest growing factors for parents choosing to home educate their children. This reflects some of the issues and concerns voiced by parents in our survey and by the school leaders who engaged with this research.”
All these children are known to their LA as being EHE, therefore by definition they are not CME.
“Where the ADCS survey charts the growth in the number of children in home education (one of the eight destinations we identified for children missing education), the Education Policy Institute (EPI) provides some compelling analysis on the number of children leaving their current school for an unknown destination.”
The Education Policy Institute (https://epi.org.uk/) states: “About us: The aim of the Education Policy Institute is to raise standards in education through rigorous data analysis, research and the exchange of information and knowledge to help inform the public and hold government and decision-makers to account.”
“The report ‘Unexplained Pupil Exits from Schools’ (October 2019) estimates the number and prevalence of young people who experienced an ‘unexplained exit’ from secondary school, particularly through off-rolling or managed moves. 9 EPI defines the term ‘unexplained exits’ as any pupil move between terms when the destination of the pupil is not known, for example, they do not show up on another school roll. The data, compiled and analysed by EPI, shows that unexplained exits grew by 8% over the three years between 2014 and 2017 from 55,686 to 61,123.”
Here is a link to that report: https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/unexplained-pupil-exits-data-multi-academy-trust-local-authority/
“The scale of the issue is similar to those becoming electively home educated and is likely to capture many of the same children.”
No! Children who are removed from schools to be home educated are known by their LAs. If this is not the case, and schools are not fulfilling their legal duty to inform the LA when a child is removed from the school roll, this is bad behaviour by the schools, and electively home educated families should not be made to suffer for this.
“The FFT Education Datalab, in a blog series since 2015 called ‘Who’s Left’, have demonstrated similar trends for children and young people disappearing from school rolls. … They estimate that out of an expected GCSE cohort, the number of young people who left state education during secondary school rose from 20,000 in 2015 to 24,600 in 2019. Though FFT Datalab emphasise that not all those leaving state education are of concern, there is a high number in this cohort that are either not recorded as having sat GCSES or equivalent qualifications or, if they did, whose results did not count towards any establishment.”
The FFT Education Datalab (https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/) says “We produce independent, cutting-edge research that can be used by policymakers to inform education policy, and by schools to improve practice.
We are expert analysts of education data and use these skills to produce impactful reports, visualisations and policy recommendations.”
Let me repeat a bit of the preceding paragraph: “Though FFT Datalab emphasise that not all those leaving state education are of concern, there is a high number in this cohort that are either not recorded as having sat GCSES or equivalent qualifications or, if they did, whose results did not count towards any establishment.”
i.e. There is a strong implication that if a student leaves the state education and sits exams as a private candidate (so their results do not count towards any establishment), then there is cause for concern.
Home Educators are well aware that when they start home educating, they also take on full responsibility for the costs associated with that education, including sitting exams. Sitting exams as a private candidate will mean that those results do not count towards any establishment, and why should they? Why should the hard work that that pupil and their family have put into studying for exams, go towards giving some establishment that has done nothing for them?
“National estimate of ‘children missing education’
Without a clear sense of how many children in England might be missing out on their entitlement to a formal full time education it is very difficult to be precise about the scale or nature of intervention that might be needed either locally or nationally to address the issue. We have therefore used this research as an opportunity to use existing data published nationally, and complementary data held locally, to develop an estimate for the number of children who may be missing out on a formal fulltime education.”
“Our sample is of 17 local authorities, with varying rates of response per question. For reference, when scaling up the responses for our question on the number of electively home educated children, we reach an estimate of 75,000. which maps well to the ADCS’ figure of 79,000 for children who are electively home educated at any point in the year.”
There is then a diagram which states that 24,000, ie nearly 33% of home educated children, are actually CME. They say that this number comes from Appendix A, so I’ll go through that when I get there.
“Elective Home Education
Not all children who are home educated are missing education. For the purposes of this analysis we have assumed that 75% of the additional children being electively home educated, from a baseline of 2014-15 are those who will be missing out on a formal full-time education. It is these additional children who are more likely to be those whose parents have chosen to home-educate reluctantly due to shortcomings in the education on offer for their child or those who are home-educating as a result of pressure having been applied by the school. In calculating the additional children in home education, above the 2014-15 baseline, we have used the number in elective home education on census day because there is a more secure comparative timeline for this figure. Based on these assumptions we arrive at 24,000 for the number of children educated at home and not receiving formal full-time education.”
Repeating for emphasis: “For the purposes of this analysis we have assumed that 75% of the additional children being electively home educated, from a baseline of 2014-15 are those who will be missing out on a formal full-time education.”
So, after finding out that nearly 74k children are being home educated, they decide to assume that three quarters of the difference between 2015 and 2019 are being failed?? What an outrageous assumption, with seemingly no basis! I hope that Appendix A expands on this reasoning.
“However, it is important to recognise that this is an estimate based on a set of assumptions. By substituting a slightly different set of assumptions we can explore the likely range in children missing formal full-time education.”
So basically, you’re admitting that you can change the assumptions and numbers in order to skew the ‘research’ however you like, in order to get the response you want.
There is then a table, which claims that the number of home educated children who are not receiving a full time education, lies in the range 16k-32k, which is astounding and not at all based on my experience as a home educator in a local group, nor as part of Educational Freedom, nor from any anecdotes I’ve heard. And to repeat myself again, all these children that have been removed from the school roll are, by default, known to the LA, and if there are indeed this many children not receiving an education (which in my mind is patently false), the LAs are not doing their jobs properly.
Having said that, this kind of accusation could be exactly what has caused my local LA to start ignoring due process, and they are issuing s437s to many home educators as a matter of course, even if the EHEOs were satisfied with their educational provision as recently as last month!
“We cannot be certain of the overall scale of this problem. … However, depending on how ‘full-time’ and ‘formal’ are defined it could be as high as 1,140,000. It is unlikely to be lower than 210,000.”
There is no legal definition of ‘Full Time’ and there is no requirement for the education to be ‘formal’.
“The ADCS survey into home education explores this issue in-depth, indicating that in 2019/20, 38 of the 129 responding local authorities estimated that 6-10% of those in elective home education had Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) compared with 3.1% in the general population.”
This is no surprise given that children with SEN, indeed I’d go so far to say all children, work best when the education is tailored to their needs, and home education facilitates this much more easily than education in any establishment or institution.
I reiterate that because a child is home educated, whether they have SEN or not, does not mean the child is missing education.
“Chapter 3: Why are growing numbers missing out on formal, fulltime education?
Factor 1: The changing nature of children’s needs and experiences
Factor 2: Pressures and incentives on schools’ capacity to meet those needs”
“In setting out these pressures, our aim is not to make generalisations about schools’ practice …”
Interestingly, they seem to have not kept to that aim with regards to home education.
“The first issue influencing how schools could respond to changing pupil needs was the curriculum. School leaders and local authority officers argued that changes to the curriculum, with a focus on a narrower range of academic subjects and assessment through end-of-course examinations meant schools were not in a position to offer the breadth of subjects that might provide alternative pathways for children disengaged from academic study or in need of a more personalised curriculum.”
So if school leaders and LAs both admit that schools are not offering a broad and engaging education, why would anyone want their children to go there?
“Equally, however, while not all schools are engaging in these practices, all local authority officers that we engaged agreed that they had come across examples where a minority of schools in their local area had engaged in these practices. The practices described by local authority officers, and in part also recognised by school leaders, included –
• practices designed to manage admissions to the school in the first place – these included practices of changing pupil admission numbers, admitting pupils above that number so reductions through pupil exits would appear less conspicuous, and practices of subtly discouraging parents from sending their child to the school (including by indicating that the school did not support children with additional needs);
• and practices designed to manage children out of the school, including inappropriate use of attendance codes, part-time timetables, informal exclusions, off-rolling, and inappropriate use of permanent exclusion.”
So when schools are engaging in off-rolling and other illegal/dubious activities, there should be suitable sanctions. Home educators nor flexischoolers should be punished for their actions.
“Factor 3: The capacity of the system to ensure appropriate oversight of decisions taken regarding children’s entry to and exit from schools
Where a child is missing from formal, full-time education, in the large majority of cases this will not be the result of a decision that the child has made, but rather the result of decisions about the child’s education made by adults.”
Equally, when a child is enrolled in formal, full-time education at school, in the large majority of cases this will not be the result of a decision that the child has made, but rather the result of decisions about the child’s education made by adults.
“Aside from the instances of illegal removing of children from a school roll, in many of these instances there will be important nuances to unpick in order to understand how decisions about a child leaving school and potentially missing formal, full-time education have been reached.”
Again, there is nothing in law that says the education must be ‘formal’.
“They noted that the statutory framework set out a clear duty for local authorities to ensure that school-age children are receiving a suitable education. The issue was not a lack of clarity within the statutory framework, but rather a lack of capacity within LAs to carry out the sort of detailed checking that is necessary to ensure that where a child is not in school due to illness or has been taken out of school to be home-educated these decisions have been taken appropriately and the child is safe and continuing to receive a suitable education.”
Given that many EHEOs are not adequately trained in home education, are unaware of both the law and the EHE Departmental Guidance for LAs, I fail to see how LAs will be of any benefit to determine whether the decisions were ‘appropriate’ or not.
“Local authority officers argued that this issue had been compounded by two sets of factors. First, they noted that there were some barriers to collecting the right information to enable effective tracking of all children missing out on formal, full-time education. These included the discretion afforded to parents in whether they inform local authorities of elective home education arrangements and the different definitions of children missing education.”
What barriers? Children are removed from school roll. School informs LA. Simples.
Parents don’t have to inform the LA of EHE, because that is the school’s job.
EHE is not CME.
“The fact that there is not an agreed definition of children missing out on formal, full-time education, and an accompanying national dataset collection, helps to perpetuate what the Children’s Commissioner for England has called the invisibility of this cohort of children.”
That could be because EHE is not CME and the Children’s Commissioner is entirely wrong about calling EHE children invisible.
“Put simply, wider societal factors have meant that children are arriving in schools with a combination of needs, often linked to disruption in their family lives…”
So it’s the family’s fault their children have SEN? No.
Next time I’ll start on Chapter 4: HERE
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