HERE is the link to the document I am reading through.
HERE is the link to Part 1.
I have to admit, I’m getting tired now. In case you didn’t see my update on facebook yesterday, not only am I reading through this and watching the Education Select Committee on Parliament.tv, but I am also trying to help out local HErs, who have been wrongly issued s437s by our LA. They have since come back and said ‘oops, that’s meant to be s436a’ but they still want loads of unlawful information, and for it to be provided by this Friday, and with the threat of an SAO. I am pleased to see that some HErs are fighting back, each in their own way, either complaining by letter or email, or asking for the corrected letters with a new time frame in which to respond, or by seeking legal action to prevent this from happening to others. In other news, I have been asked to join a panel of people who represent HErs, so that is exciting and I’d like to know more about that. And finally (for this rambly intro, anyway), I had a response from ISOS to my email that I mentioned in Part 1. I have to say, I’m not happy with the response, as they seem to want to wash their hands of the damage and have ignored the affects by ridiculously grouping HErs with CME.
My letter:
“Good morning,
I have read through your recent publication on Children Missing Education (Nov 2020) and have noted that you have used the phrase “home education” 30 times, and “home educated” 37 times. Given that Home Educated children are not Children Missing Education, I am interested in why your document seems to fail to make the distinction between these two separate groups? Similarly, Off-rolling is not the fault of home educators, but that of schools.Furthermore, in your Bibliography, I cannot see a single Home Education organisation listed has having been used in this research, and there are many within the UK. Given this document is to influence policy, and many of these recommendations will have a negative impact for home educators, I would like to know why our needs have not been considered?
I hope I am wrong, and I have misread or overlooked a reference within the document itself. Please can you point me towards which Home Education sites or organisations you have used to complete this document?Kind Regards,”
Their response:
“Thank you for taking the time to read our report and for getting in touch. In commissioning us to undertake the research the Local Government Association asked us to:
Develop a national picture of trends in numbers and characteristics of children and young people who are missing a formal full-time education;
Understand the routes whereby children and young people end up missing education;
Assess the factors which are contributing to the increasing numbers of children missing education;
Describe the impact of children and young people missing out on education;
Identify good practice in how local authorities and their partners can reduce the numbers of children missing education;
Our focus has therefore, throughout, been on those children who are not receiving their entitlement to education, rather than those who are. For the purposes of the research we define ‘formal, full-time education’ as an education that is “well-structured, contains significant taught input, pursues learning goals that are appropriate to a child or young person’s age and ability and which supports them to access their next stage in education, learning or employment”. We define full-time as 18hrs per week. Under our definition, we believe children who are successfully educated at home would be receiving formal full-time education. We do not equate formal full time education with school-based education and we try to state as clearly as we can in the report that in the majority of cases children who are electively home educated are receiving a formal full time education, in the way that we have defined it for the research. We state:
“not all the children who are taken out of school at the instigation of their parents end up missing out on their entitlement to education. Far from it. Indeed, many parents provide an excellent education for their children outside of school. However, the more parents who opt for this route either out of desperation (because they simply do not believe that the education they can access is meeting their child’s needs) or out of fear of or hostility to the actions that schools and government take to safeguard the well-being and development of children, the more children are likely to miss out on their entitlement to education.”
We believe that we have not conflated the two groups of home educated children and children missing education. However, we do believe from the evidence that we have gathered from parents, headteachers and local authorities that there is a subset of children who are electively home educated in name, but in practice are receiving very little education. These may be children
whose parents have agreed to home-educate under duress (possibly as a result of an off-rolling action by a school) but are unable or unwilling to actually provide education,
whose parents are home educating as a last resort but who do not feel they have the skills or capacity to undertake this duty successfully (often in cases where the school system is unable to meet the special educational needs of a child)
whose parents are using home education as a way to avoid legitimate action for non-attendance at school or occasionally even as a means to hinder safeguarding concerns being followed up.
These clearly represent a minority of those children currently electively home educated, but they are a concern. It is also a concern that there is currently no definitive way of telling what percentage of home educated children are not receiving a suitable education.
We do not single out home education as the only possible route whereby children might be missing out on their entitlement to education. For example, we also draw attention to children who are currently on a school roll and missing out on education either because they are attending part-time, or because they are absent for long periods or because they have been subject to multiple exclusions. Similarly, we suggest that a proportion of children in alternative provision may also be missing out on education.
In terms of how we carried out our research, our focus on the children not receiving their entitlement to education guided our choice of organisations to engage. As such, we worked with the LGA and the National Network of Parent Carer Forums to gather feedback from parents who had direct experience of the issues we were exploring through the research.
I hope this helps to shed some further light on our research.
Best wishes
Natalie”
I think this does warrant some follow-up, but I haven’t got my head around what it should be yet.
Back to the report itself…
“Chapter 4: What is the impact on children, families and society of children missing education?”
“Of course, as we have outlined elsewhere in this report, the decision for an individual child to leave a specific school might be the right decision. There were examples in our parents’ survey of where that particular choice has resulted in better outcomes for the child in question. … However, in such cases, the parent has stepped in to provide or commission the education that the child needs.”
And that is exactly what ALL Home Education is – the parent facilitating the learning of the child. It does not have to be structured, it does not have to be formal. It does not have to follow a timetable, a curriculum nor a school day. It does not have to have a set number of hours each week (to be considered full time).
“The detrimental impacts we discuss in the following sections are where the child does not end up receiving formal, full-time education that is suitable for his or her needs.”
I repeat: It does not have to be structured, it does not have to be formal. It does not have to follow a timetable, a curriculum nor a school day. It does not have to have a set number of hours each week (to be considered full time).
EHE is not CME!
The report then goes on to explain the impact/potential impact of a child missing education. I don’t disagree with many of these points, only to say that an electively home educated child is NOT missing education, so should not even be mentioned in reports such as this.
“A child or young person that misses full-time, formal education lacks consistent access to teaching ... In missing out, either intermittent lessons or large periods of a term, a child may miss important work and fall behind peers.”
It explicitly states in the EHE Departmental Guidance, that HErs do NOT have to worry about keeping to the same levels as schooled peers.
“Local authorities emphasised that it was not just missing out on key periods of a school year impacting attainment that was a problem. But that missing out on careers advice and progress meetings with teachers and mentors to plan for the future also contributed to later low employability. This is borne out in the research - the Badman Review…”
Head. Meet. Desk.
Mention his name to any Home Educators in the past 10years or so, and you will be greeted with a collective sigh. Mr Badman doesn’t like home educators so was doing all in his power to stop it.
If you want some more info (because frankly, I don’t have the mental capacity to break it down and simplify it right now, here are some links:
Libertarian
Education:
https://www.libed.org.uk/index.php/reviews/178-articles/298-the-badman-review
Action
for Home Education:
http://ahed.pbworks.com/w/page/1553033/LiesDamnedLiesStatistics
Autonomous Education UK: http://www.uncharted-worlds.org/aeuk/2009-aeuk-select-committee-enquiry.html
Ed Yourself: https://edyourself.wordpress.com/2015/03/15/badman-review-of-home-education/
A thorough google search will bring up many, many more.
Humorously, this video of The Badman Song still brings a smile to my face.
“The Office of National Statistics has also quantified the link between low attainment and employability in the general population. … Evidence provided by local authorities, parents, schools and national bodies, as well as existing data and research, therefore, suggests missing out consistently on education affects the educational attainment for children and young people, which in turn has long-term ramifications for employability through into later life.”
And this is one of the problems with having a narrow, school-based view of what education looks like. Home Educators are very aware that there is no timescale for learning, and just because something has not been learned by a specific age, it does not mean that it can never be learned.
“Mental health and wellbeing
Unpacking the relationship between mental health and missing education is complex. As we have set out already in this report, poor mental health or emotional wellbeing, often linked to extreme anxiety, can be one of the factors that leads to a child missing out on formal full-time education. It was certainly a key consideration for many of the parents who responded to our survey.”
If you remove “formal full-time”, then it doesn’t read too bad.
“In a very small number of cases local authorities identified how the unsupported mental health needs of isolated young people who were not in school had tragically resulted in suicide.”
“Not in school” or “Children Missing Education”? They are clearly two very different things. Almost unanimously, the anecdotal evidence for Home Education says that the mental health of the child/whole family improves once the child has deregistered, with many parents wishing they had either made the change earlier, or that their child had never gone to school in the first place.
It would also be interesting to compare this statistic, with the number of schooled children who tragically commit suicide.
“As the NSPCC’s briefing on ‘Home education: learning from serious case reviews’ (March 2014) outlines, children who are home educated become isolated because they have no right to independent access to friends, family but also professional agencies who could provide distinct and specialist support.”
Well, NSPCC is another group that doesn’t like HE due to stereotypes and myth. In reality, Wendy Charles Warner reviewed all SCRs recently (I can’t remember the date off the top of my head, but was in the past couple of years – I’m sure a google would find it; I’ve even mentioned it in previous blog posts) and in NONE of them was HE a contributing factor in the death or serious neglect of the child.
“It must be emphasised that although legally, home educated children have the same rights to access mental health support in the form of CAMHS, by not being in school, a child will have access to fewer trained professionals who can spot warning signs around mental health, such as school nurses, counsellors, external mentors and in-school specialist support.”
Not true at all. Any caring parent will want the best for their child, and home educating parents are no different. If anything, HEing parents often have to fight in order to access various support and professionals! Having a lack of access is not, and should not, be blamed on the parents.
And incidentally, “school nurses” have a responsibility for all children of Compulsory School Age (CSA), whether in school or not.
“Social and emotional development
The lack of social interaction experienced by children missing education and the potential negative impact of this was a key issue highlighted in our regional workshops.”
That is simply because you have not asked people involved with home education; individuals, families nor organisations. Pre-covid (hands-up, things are a bit trickier atm with the constant lockdowns and tiered lockdowns), in my local area, we had a minimum of 5 groups or meets listed for every week day. As a home educator, you couldn’t do everything, but there literally isn’t enough time in the day! Home educators in other parts of the country report similar things. If you live in a particularly rural or isolated area, you may have to make a bit more of an effort, but with technology (proven, thanks in part to covid), there is social interaction even if you so have to stay at home for a period.
“Local authorities expressed concern about children’s low self-esteem and lack of confidence to interact with peers as a result of being removed from or missing full-time education and the possibility of poor emotional development in the longer term.”
Any
evidence for this? Noting, again, that being removed from education
(I’m assuming being expelled) or missing education (I’m assuming
truancy) is different and will have different impacts on the child,
compared to one who has been removed from school in order to be
EHE.
“This is echoed by significant research into the
importance of social interaction and the negative impacts (both short
and long-term) of a child that is not socialising sufficiently early
or consistently. Key impacts of a lack of social interaction include:
low confidence and self-esteem, in particular the lack of belief in a
child’s ability to manage stressful situations; anxiety; social
withdrawal; and a lack of ability to make friends and therefore, form
supportive social networks throughout their lives.”
I wonder if any research has been done on the negative impacts (both short and long term) of a child that is being forced to socialise against their will, and consistent negative interactions, such as bullying?
“The impact that social isolation can have on a child’s life are comprehensively examined in ‘Social isolation in childhood and adult inflammation’ (August 2014) by Lacey et al. The study uses data from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) which looked at babies born in 1958 and examined them at age intervals until they were 50 years old.”
That report is: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453014003126 and says about its limitations: “There was no formal measure of childhood social isolation available, however our measure comprises a question relating to peer withdrawal (isolation) and a question relating to peer rejection (bullying) which likely represent different aspects of social isolation. When we looked separately at each of these questions, the associations we saw were largely driven by the bullying item although the other item about preferring to be alone was still associated with raised CRP without considering the bullying item (results not shown).”
Given that Home education was less common in 1958, surely it can be assumed that the participants of this study were schooled children, and as such it cannot be assumed to be correct when discussion home educated children?
“Therefore, their definition of social isolation is not identical to the social isolated experienced by children missing education. Nonetheless, it seems reasonable that similar issues might also be experienced by children who are regularly missing out on exposure to peers and a variety of people.”
No, I don’t consider that to be reasonable, at all. (Again, not to mention that EHE kids are rarely socially isolated.)
I do feel like I’m repeating myself a lot, so apologies for that, though I think it does bear repeating.
“Safeguarding
Throughout our research a key message that has come out of the evidence gathered is that schools and educational settings are a “protective factor” in society…”
Instead, I’d wager that schools (and in turn various authorities) consider that schools and educational settings are a protective factor, rather than there being actual evidence to indicate this. In the highly publicised SCRs, EHE has never been a contributing factor, and all the children were already known to the relevant authorities (not limited to the LAs or Social Services).
“Crime and exploitation”
This whole section is mainly linking exclusions to crime.
“On families and society Local authorities that we engaged in our research were keen to express the broader impact children missing education had on families and society as a whole. From our discussions, the following themes emerged:
1. Family breakdown
2. Worklessness and poverty
3. Reinforcing stereotypes”
It would be interesting to see if there has been any research done relating to these themes and home education? Many people report to having grown closer as a family, through home education, because they see their children (and in turn, the children see their siblings) all the time, not just when they are tired and hungry after a long school day, when they return home feeling overwhelmed and all the anguish and frustration gets released in an explosion. As this happens day after day, family relationships do not have the time to repair as for large sections of the day, they are either asleep or separated at school.
“Family breakdown”
“Having a child at home for extended periods of time can put strain on parents who are not necessarily trained in home education. With parents unable to leave a child alone, some mentioned how they had lost friendships and/or opportunities to socialise themselves. For some parents, they stated how high stress and home education had contributed to bouts of anxiety and depression.”
Firstly there is no training required to Home Educate your own children. The EHE Departmental Guidance states that parents are not required to have reached a specific academic level in order to HE. Whilst in recent years, you can now get diplomas in HE, they are actually totally unnecessary. Home Education is all about facilitating the education, not that you have to be highly qualified and have to teach from your own knowledge, what it is the child wants to learn. And regarding the impact of HE on a parent’s mental health, I would counter and say (anecdotally, as I have not done the research on this) that forcing a parent to offer a formal structured education to their children is likely to do more harm, whereas a child who is allowed to follow their own interests and learn autonomously is more likely to have mentally healthy parents. (Please note the emphasis on forcing. I’m a strong believer that they style of home education that suits the child and the family is by its very nature the best for that family, whether that be structured, unstructured, eclectic or anything else.)
“Worklessness and poverty
Both from our parent survey and through discussions with local authority officers, many voiced concerns around the financial implications that a child missing education can have. This was particularly the case if a parent had to quit their job to look after or educate their child at home. But it was also problematic when families had to pay for resources for home education or for specialist treatments, advocates or professional reports if trying to support the child’s special educational needs.”
When a family decides to electively home educate a child, they do take full financial responsibility for the education, whether that be outsourcing specific groups/activities, buying equipment and books, paying for exams etc. It is important that a parent realises this before they decide to HE, and yet another reason why Off-rolling is so bad.
However, it is possible to HE and work at the same time, whether that be part-time or full-time, in the home or outside it. It is even possible to HE as a single parent on benefits. Yes, there may be lifestyle adaptations needed, but just because the family may no longer be bringing in the big bucks, does not mean that HE should be inaccessible or inadvisable.
“Reinforcing stereotypes”
Other than this report reinforcing stereotypes about HE, this paragraph doesn’t apply to us.
“Chapter 5: What Councils and local partners can and are doing
Area 1: Early identification and support
Area 2: Preventative and restorative action”
“...there was not a single right approach to managing managed moves, fair access and the return of pupils who had been electively home educated;” point of information: not all pupils who were HE have been to school before, and additionally, they may not need active extra support for the transition to school.
“One way in which the principles of fairness and collective responsibility have been put into effect in Telford and Wrekin relates to their approach to children who are Electively Home Educated. In Telford and Wrekin, the Council and school leaders have agreed that the fairest approach to elective home education is that where possible any pupil returning from being electively home educated returns to their previous mainstream school. This has been agreed as an important means of ensuring that elective home education is not used as a way of removing a child from a school where it is not in the child’s best interests …”
I can see this being good to prevent off-rolling. However, life isn’t always that straightforward. What about the case where a child is being incredibly bullied and so the parents remove them from the school roll to electively home educate them; after some time (years), the child’s confidence has built back up again, and they want to try school. Will they be forced back into the same school with the bullies?
“As in many areas the rising numbers of children being electively home educated has been a concern in Warwickshire.”
Why? That is a deeply biased and discriminatory response by Warwickshire council.
“The Children Missing education team have agreed with schools and parents that they will implement a two week ‘cooling off period’ for every new request for elective home education during which they will work with the school and the family to explore the issues and try and find a resolution.”
It depends what this ‘cooling off period’ is specifically for. When a parent decides to EHE and deregisters their child, the school must remove that child’s name immediately. There are no ifs, buts nor exceptions to this that I am aware of. However, if the school comes to an agreement with the LA to not fill that child’s place immediately, but wait two weeks, that does not seem as harmful to HE to me. Yes, there is a risk of scope creep, but there is with all this stuff.
“Area 3: Re-engaging pupils who have been out of education
Area 4: Monitoring and tracking”
This is the area most of concern to HErs, not lease because in the EHE Departmental Guidance it states the LA has no duty to monitor the education.
“Lastly, local authorities underscored the importance of having well-established processes for tracking children who are not in formal, full-time education or at risk of missing out.”
Tracking children who are missing education is a priority. EHE is not CME.
“It also requires that the system has the capacity to follow-up cases where it is not known whether a child is in formal, full-time education, or the reasons why a child is not attending school full-time are not known, or in some cases to confirm that a child is actually receiving education where they are reported to be being educated.”
And informal enquiries are absolutely fine. Immediately issuing a s347 notice to new HErs or long-term HErs who have been told their report is satisfactory, is not fine. <cough>Swindon<cough>
“In response to rising numbers of children being electively home educated, and a greater proportion of these children having a history of exclusions, child protection concern or historic non-attendance, Portsmouth and its schools have developed the most recent collective protocol. Now all headteachers have agreed that they will not take a child off a school roll until there has been a meeting between the school, the local authority and the parent or carer. Schools have also agreed that any child who has been electively home educated for less than six months will automatically return to the original school roll if returning to mainstream education. In the interests of openness and transparency the local authority has also committed to reflecting numbers of electively home educated children back to schools. In the year that the new protocol has been in operation numbers of electively home educated children have begun to fall, whereas previously they were rising rapidly.”
It was my understanding that schools must remove a child’s name immediately, and similarly (except for special schools and specific circumstances) the LA do not have to agree to the child being EHE. Any meeting requested by the school or LA at this stage is optional (are the parents told that?) and the parents do not have to attend. I have also heard that some schools are automatically reporting parents who want to deregister their child directly to Social Services. These heavy handed tactics, and people’s general fear of SS, is more likely to have an effect.
I will continue my, hopefully final, part 5 on Friday, if I can’t squeeze it in tomorrow evening.
For now, my brain is fried!
Link to Part 5: HERE
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