HED0016
Written evidence submitted by [a member of the public]
[Note: This evidence has been redacted by the Committee. Text in square brackets has been inserted where text has been redacted.]
Response by [name] to the Call For Evidence for the Inquiry into Home Education.
About Me
I am an Electively Home Educating Mum of two (though my elder daughter has now chosen to go to school) and believe it important to have a say and provide evidence for this inquiry.
Summary
• The Local Authority has no such duty to assure the quality of home education, and already has satisfactory processes for ensuring the welfare of all children.
• Having a statutory register of home educated children is not required, because it will not achieve anything positive, for either local authorities nor home educating families.
• There are a multitude of advantages of Home Education.
• There is no financial support available for Home Educating Families, and a postcode-lottery depending which Local Authority you fall under, as to the support for SEN, mental health needs, and other issues.
• Attending an Unregistered School is not Home Education.
• Being Formally Excluded from School is not Home Education.
• Off-rolling should be covered in regulations for Schools, not those for Home Education.
• There have been Zero improvements since ‘Support for Home Education’ was published in 2012
• The main two impacts of COVID-19 are concerning exams and groups/meets.
1) The duties of local authorities with regards to home education, including safeguarding and assuring the quality of home education;
The Local Authority has no such duty to assure the quality of home education. Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act states the responsibility of PARENTS as follows:
Duty of parents to secure education of children of compulsory school age.
The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable —
(a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and
(b) to any special educational needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.
It is the parents responsibility to ensure that the quality of education being provided to their children, whether at school or otherwise, is suitable and efficient. However, if there is genuine concern that the child is not being given an appropriate education, the Local Authority can make informal enquiries, and if these are not satisfied, then there are further steps that can be taken.
In fact, the recent Guidance for Parents specifically states:
5.1 Your local authority has no formal powers or duty to monitor the provision of education at home.
Regarding Safeguarding, Section 7.3 of the Guidance for LAs explicitly states "There is no proven correlation between home education and safeguarding risk". Indeed, Graham Stuart, MP and previous Chair of the Education Select Committee, stated that home educated children are "peculiarly visible". Wendy Charles-Warner conducted a review of all the Serious Case Reviews (SCRs) in the country in 2015 (Home Education and the Safeguarding Myth, published on http://www.home-education.org.uk/), and there has never been a case where home education has been a causative factor. Just because a child is home educated, does not mean they are locked under the stairs, rather they are out and about in society, and very noticeable due to the relative lack of other children who are hidden away in schools...
Local Authorities do have a duty of care regarding the safeguarding of ALL children - and if there are any concerns, then they should get Social Services involved, using the processes and powers that they already have.
2) whether a statutory register of home-educated children is required;
Having a statutory register of home educated children is not required, because it will not achieve anything positive, for either local authorities nor home educating families.
The government already has a list of all births, deaths and a list of the children who are registered in schools. It would be easy to calculate the remaining, should the government need to know the number of home educated children.
Parents, not Local Authorities, are responsible for the quality of their children’s education, whether at school or otherwise. If Local Authorities, or the government, were to remove that responsibility from parents, they should be prepared for the parents of schooled children to sue them in cases where the children has left school without adequate education or examination results.
I have already said in my response to Section (1) that no SCRs were the result of Home Education. Having a listed of Home Educated children will not prevent bad things happening, just like the many schooled children who are abused, neglected, trafficked or radicalised.
If there is a list, despite it not achieving anything, it will need to be maintained. Given that some schools don’t inform the Local Authority in a timely manner when a child deregisters from school (which enables them to claim funding for someone who is no longer a pupil), it will fall to either the Local Authority to make regular contact, which can easily morph into monitoring of the education itself – which Local Authorities have no duty to do.
3) the benefits children gain from home education, and the potential disadvantages they may face;
There are many benefits of Home Education. Just off the top of my head: freedom to learn, freedom to live, freedom to choose friends who share interests, rather than sharing age. Being part of society, rather than apart from society. Following your own interests in as much depth as you want, without being bound by arbitrary bells, signalling the end of a lesson, or arbitrary syllabi stating that it is out of scope of the exam. Learning life skills, not just cooking and cleaning, but how society works - seeing parents making appointments with the doctor, dentist, optician; going to banks and post offices; paying bills, learning about taxes, learning about budgets and meal planning and shopping accordingly, growing plants from seeds that you care for and can eventually eat the fruits of the harvest. Discovering your passion in an unusual area, doing your own research to find out what skills and qualifications are required to pursue that career. Realising that learning is fun and learning is life. Knowing deep in your soul that learning does not stop at 18years old, and there is no such thing as "too late". Understanding that if you don't have a passion for a specific career at a young age, it's ok, because you have your whole life ahead of you and you can always go to college or university later in life.
The only potential disadvantage I can think of is "computer says no". I can honestly imagine the situation where a Home Educated child with a passion for maths, for example, skips GCSEs and maybe A-Levels too, studies a maths degree with the Open University, then goes to a brick university for Masters or PhD in a maths discipline, decides academia isn't for them, so wants to be get a job somewhere, and despite being the world expert in their particular field, because they don't have maths GCSEs, they can't "tick the box" on an online recruitment form, and so are denied a myriad of jobs that they would be brilliant at.
4) the quality and accessibility of support (including financial support) available for home educators and their children, including those with special educational needs, disabilities, mental health issues, or caring responsibilities, and those making the transition to further and higher education;
When parents opt to home educate their children, they opt to take on all financial responsibility for their children's education - much like when a parent opts to use a private or independent school. As such, there is no financial support available for the majority of Home Educators.
Other than the obvious impact if a parent decides to stop working in order to facilitate Home Education, the main financial concern comes surrounding exams. Parents need to find an exam board, pay for the exam, find a centre to sit the exam, and pay the centre for the privilege of sitting the exam, at the minimum. For example, if it is impossible to find a local exam centre that accepts external candidates, the cost of transport and accommodation, food and other sundries, needs to be taken into account for every exam.
Some Home Education parents want the government to provide free exams (usually GCSEs) for Home Educated kids, whilst other Home Education parents are rightly concerned about what "strings" will be attached for such an arrangement. If such an arrangement were possible, I would want it optional, and parents still be able to choose to arrange exams without governmental control. My preference, rather, is that all Higher Education colleges must accept external candidates, without charge for using the premises, if they are already sitting an exam on that date. So, the exam itself could still cost money, but everyone will be able to find somewhere local to them in order to sit the exam. In the rare case where the college cannot accommodate an external student, they have to be able to justify it. (For example, I have heard some smaller colleges do not accept external candidates for summer exams, because they are full to capacity, but do accept them in November and January because fewer of their students are doing resits.)
Care and support for people with SEN - legally there should be no difference whether the child is at school or otherwise. However, anecdotally, this is not always the case. Many people pursuing EHCPs for their children get told that this can only be done in a school environment (untrue) or conversely that because their child has an EHCP that they cannot Home Educate (also untrue). The same is often true for people looking for official diagnosis of autism or ADD, GPs will tell parents that they have to go through the school for referral (untrue). Referral to CAMHS, TAMHS and other children's mental health support, can also be difficult when Home Educating, not least because parents try to mitigate any factors automatically as part of their parenting, so the children may appear to have milder symptoms compared to others at school, when they do indeed need high levels of support.
Though not SEN related, there are other disparities between care for schooled and home-educated children, eg use of a school nurse (who legal is responsibly for the care of all school-aged children) or getting vaccinations and being told by doctor's receptionists that Home Educated kids cannot book into the surgery because they will be done at school!
5) whether the current regulatory framework is sufficient to ensure that the wellbeing and academic achievement of home educated children is safeguarded, including where they may attend unregistered schools, have been formally excluded from school, or have been subject to ‘off-rolling’;
Parents, not Local Authorities, are responsible for the quality of their children’s education, whether at school or otherwise. If Local Authorities, or the government, were to remove that responsibility from parents, they should be prepared for the parents of schooled children to sue them in cases where the children has left school without adequate education or examination results.
How do Local Authorities currently ensure the academic achievement of schooled children is safe guarded, when too many children come out of school without reaching the government's "minimum standards"?
Attending unregistered schools isn't home education.
An analogy: Most people use banks or building societies for their money; however some people prefer to save up in piggy banks at home. This question is the equivalent of asking whether the current frame work is sufficient for people who save at home, including those who invest in dodgy deals?! If you are investing in dodgy deals, you are not saving at home. If your child is attending an unregistered school, then you are not educating at home!
Similarly, being formally excluded from school is not the same as home education. Because it's the parent's choice to register their child in school, if their child is excluded, then it is the Local Authorities responsibility for finding another school place or ensuring the child is educated.
Off-rolling Prevention should be an LA/Ofsted joint initiative, and though the parents/child have been forced to home educate, really this situation should not have anything to do with Home Education regs or guidance, but all within the monitoring of the behaviour of schools.
6) the role that inspection should play in future regulation of home education;
Define "inspection".
The Local Authority has no such duty to assure the quality of home education. Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act states the responsibility of PARENTS as follows:
Duty of parents to secure education of children of compulsory school age.
The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable —
(a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and
(b) to any special educational needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.
It is the parents responsibility to ensure that the quality of education being provided to their children, whether at school or otherwise, is suitable and efficient. However, if there is genuine concern that the child is not being given an appropriate education, the Local Authority can make informal enquiries, and if these are not satisfied, then there are further steps that can be taken.
In fact, the recent Guidance for Parents specifically states:
5.1 Your local authority has no formal powers or duty to monitor the provision of education at home.
The government does not inspect the kitchens of all parents to ensure they are feeding their children a balanced or government approved diet; they only go in to inspect when there is cause for concern. The same should be for home education.
In fact, the time of year when most child abuse instances occur is over the summer holidays, and the government does not routinely inspect parents homes whose kids are out of school, yet there is statistical proof that these children are the most at risk.
7) what improvements have been made to support home educators since the 2010-15 Education Committee published their report on ‘Support for Home Education’ in 2012;
There have been Zero improvements since ‘Support for Home Education’ was published in 2012.
Many Local Authorities still act outside the law, demand to visit homes, meet the children and see examples of work - all of which are unnecessary according to the Guidance for Local Authorities (2019) and the Guidance for Parents (2019). Some Local Authorities refuse to even give new Home Educators information about local peer support, such as groups on Facebook.
Local Authorities still do not have adequate training of their EHEOs. Many are still ex-teachers (so expect to see school-at-home), or have no knowledge of Home Education, education, pedagogy or any relevant qualifications. Attempts for Home Educators to educate and work alongside their LA have mixed results. Locally in [town], we have been going through a cycle of getting to an agreement, and then the EHEOs find new jobs, so we have to start again; and worse, we've been told, verbally, "yes" and the right sounds, only for nothing to actually change in reality. And there is still the overlap (ie the literal same people) being EHEOs and EWOs. Paragraph 28 of the aforementioned document states "The team within which local authority home education officers sit can give out an important message about that authority’s view of home education. For example, it is inappropriate for such officers to be located with those working on attendance, children in care or safeguarding" - this hasn't changed at all.
Paragraph 34 on funding available for HE kids: "However, where funding is available, central Government needs to explain better how this can be obtained and utilised."; and from Paragraph 33 "Alison Sauer, who has conducted audits of local authorities, wrote that “many have decided that they will not be offering this funding”; [towns] were cited as having adopted this policy". I do not know if [town] LA has officially changed its stance on this matter, but in my years of home educating here, I have not heard of any funding being available.
Paragraph 43 on access to exam centres: I know Home Educators who are still having to travel across the country in order to access and sit various examinations.
Paragraph 47 on access to college: "We congratulate the Government on giving further education colleges the power to admit 14 to 15-year-olds directly, and welcome this policy move, which we hope might benefit home educators as well as others."
Whilst admittance of pre-16s to college is a good thing, some colleges have determined that it is too much of a hassle, some will only allow Home Educated students to study specific subjects, or a narrow range of qualifications within that subject. Some also will not allow all 14yos to study there, citing that the child "must be in years 10 or 11", meaning that kids who turn 14 at the start of September, have to wait a whole year before being allowed to enroll in a course. In fact, in [town], there was a case of a boy who was allowed to enroll in New College for Pre-16s aged [age] a few years ago. He was top of his classes for a month, before being told he no longer had a place, because he wasn’t officially in [academic year]. This boy is [personal information], and as you can imagine, this had a devastating effect on his education, through no fault of his own nor his family’s.
Paragraph 52 on local support: "Local authorities should be expected to produce a ‘local offer of support’ for home educators, stating what services are available, how these differ from those for parents of schooled children, and enabling home educators to compare with practice elsewhere. Critically, local offers must be developed in consultation with home educators and their families. We recommend that the Department for Education support pilots for such a scheme, and play a role in monitoring the quality of local offers and the adherence applied to them by local authorities." - I haven't seen any evidence of this happening at all.
8) the impact COVID-19 has had on home educated children, and what additional measures might need to be taken in order to mitigate any negative impacts.
The main two impacts of COVID-19 are about exams and groups/meets.
There are many HE students who were due to take exams over the summer that were cancelled due to Covid. The parents had already paid for the examinations, and have received no refund. And because the candidates were home educated, they could not be examined based on continuous assessment, because (somewhat understandably) so have been left with no grades.
Whilst some lucky students have been accepted on courses without their grades (see Section (3) above for potential problems facing people without grades), and some have been allowed to "resit" the exams in the November exam period, others have been left floundering with nothing, and no way to change it.
Similarly, there is still uncertainty about 2021 exams due to covid, and some parents are not entering their children in to exams for fear of having the same issues as this year's cohort.
Groups and meets are the other main issue due to covid. Larger meets generally haven't had any problems, especially those provided by local businesses, because they have large enough premises to be socially distant, are fully insured, and are large enough that they have enough business to keep running in these unprecedented times. Smaller meets, that are run for free in each others homes, are the ones that have had to stop. Due to the Rule of 6, only smaller families can meet socially with one another. It's not all loss - thankfully due to advances in technology, zoom, discord etc, kids can still access various online groups, they can still FaceTime each other, spend time with friends etc, but this has had an impact on HE families.
October 2020