Home education guidance

Following the chaos regarding access to exams for private candidates, my son spent this last academic year in school doing Highers. He didn't want to go to school but we could see no other way of gaining qualifications at the time. Flexi-schooling allowed him to continue with his other education groups, gave him continuity with his friendship group and made his survival in school possible. The school was very supportive of his decision to attend part-time.
Flexi-schooling does have a legal basis - s 28 1980 Education Act as well as the ECHR set out that the state has a duty to provide education in accordance with the parents' wishes. There is no financial cost to the state in allowing children to flexischool. In practice, many pupils are successfully flexischooled, particularly in Fife. Also many other intentionally full time school pupils are in flexischool arrangements as a way of coping with their health issues. In the interests of children, flexischooling should remain an option and become more widely accepted as beneficial both to children's education and wellbeing.

If there is a clear mechanism available to school pupils to inform the LA of their preferences regarding school or home education, or the effectiveness of their school, then this system could be widely publicised to enable home educated children to take part.
The LA has no legal right of access to children being home educated. This does not prevent home educated children contacting the LA if they wished to do so.
The major issue, however, is clear here in the section where we have no comment (Q1). The legal framework is portrayed in a misleading way with undue prominence given to UNCRC and even that is misrepresented, giving the impression that government can and should assume a parental role in directing a child's education. s30 giving primary responsibility for education to parents is consistent with both UNCRC and general human rights.
In particular, 2.5 is inaccurate. There is no balance to be struck between the views of the parent and the child and the state should not assume a role in this regard. Case law is clear: Lord Bingham in the Ali case (Ali v Lord Grey School [2006] UKHL 14) outlines the 'fourfold foundation' regarding responsibility for education:
"This fourfold foundation has endured over a long period because it has, I think, certain inherent strengths. First, it recognises that the party with the keenest personal interest in securing the best available education for a child ordinarily is, or ought to be, the parent of the child...It is plainly intended that every child of compulsory school age should receive appropriate education in one way if not another, and that responsibility rests in the last resort with the LEA."
2.9 is also inaccurate. Home education is not a right conditional upon anything. This is why consent is not required as is correctly stated.

Over the last 17 years, I have successfully educated 2 children outside the school system. I have engaged positively with a number of LAs both in England and in Scotland but this has been as a 'stakeholder' or local advocate rather than as a parent. The interactions have been inspired by the need to educate LA staff regarding both the legal framework and alternative education in practice with a view to improving relationships between LAs and families. I have not felt any need for support from my LA as the support and advice available from the home educating community is truly excellent. Some LAs have positive relationships with home educators but many are still sadly hostile. This postcode lottery is not satisfactory.
In reference to the draft guidance of this section:
The LA has no duty to monitor the quality of education being provided. There is therefore no duty to regularly contact home educating families or ask for information regarding their provision. The vast majority of parents care about their children and consequently provide excellent education without oversight or the threat of intervention. Contrary to the biased assumptions of this document, interaction with the LA does not necessarily improve a child’s education. All too often it is detrimental to the child’s and wider family’s mental health and wellbeing. The contact is most usually not experienced as supportive or collaborative, rather as unnecessary interference and far too often bullying intimidation.

Currently families choosing to home educate suffer from huge inconsistencies in approach from their LA. It would be helpful if all LAs would treat all home education families with respect as well as to have a mediation/appeal/complaints process independent of LA control.

Home education allows parents to provide a unique educational experience specific to each child. This is far beyond the type of education that schools are capable of and any attempt to suggest school based norms, categories or subject matter should be avoided.
Education is the parent’s duty. They know their child best and will be best able to decide what form their education should take. Since many children are now educated outside the school system because the education provided there did not suit them or meet their needs, it makes sense that what the parents will provide will not resemble conventional/school based learning. Many other models of education are possible. Additionally, in many cases of withdrawal from school, the children need time to recover from their traumatic experiences of or at school before they are in a fit state to start learning again.
The LA should only intervene if there is evidence to suggest that a suitable education is not being provided. In the absence of any evidence of problems, families should be allowed to live without interference.

Since parents have primary responsibility for the education of their children, they should be allowed to remove their children from school without any time delay. It makes sense for the LA to hold the school place open for a period of 6 weeks as this allows for the possibility that the family changes its mind and the child could rejoin the same school rather than have further disruption to their educational life.
If a child is withdrawn it is usually because the education on offer is not suitable for the child. There is no reason to extend this inadequate situation. If the child is a victim of bullying or has serious mental health problems, 6 weeks is a very long time to live with uncertainty and any delay is likely to exacerbate the problems rather than help the child.
The only substantive reasons for declining home education are child protection concerns and these should be known. If the school is unaware of any protection issues, either there are none or school attendance is failing to protect the child anyway.

Positive relationships between LA staff and home educators are generally only possible when the LA is aware of the limitations of its powers and does not force itself into the lives of law abiding families. Far too often LA staff mislead and coerce people into an ongoing monitoring relationship. This is not experienced as supportive by the families concerned. LA behaviour can be bullying and intimidating. This is not respectful of human rights and is not in the best interests of the child.
Regarding the points in this section of the draft:
4.1 is correct in stating there is no duty to monitor education provision.
4.3 tells LA staff to monitor provision! This implies that the LA presumes itself to have primary responsibility for the child’s education. It does not.
4.5 Like 4.3 this assumes annual contact which has no legal basis. This is unnecessary. There should however be a complaints/mediation process if there are disagreements over the suitability or quality of the education being provided by parents. This would be preferable to cases needing to be taken to court following AOs.
4.7 ‘There is no statutory basis for a local authority to seek access to a child as part of the annual contact with a home educator, however contact with the child would be made as a matter of good practice.’
There is no duty to have annual contact and no right of access to the child so why would this be considered ‘good practice’? In practice, this assumption pressurises LA staff into misleading families in order to comply with the requirements of ‘good practice’. It involves LA staff misinforming and harassing innocent people so this expectation is actually bad practice and does not foster positive relationships.

Why do they want/need this data?
LAs have no resources to offer and no role in routine monitoring of education provision, therefore they do not need any data.

LAs seem oblivious to the harm they do when interacting with families, creating unnecessary stress, and imposing their ideas of education when they do not know the child as well as the parents do.
A register would only encourage more interference and attempts to monitor and prescribe provision. This would not help home educating families or be in the best interests of the children. It would also encourage the removal of human rights from home educators such as privacy and freedom of association, as well as limiting parents in their right to educate their children in line with their own religious/philosophical beliefs.
Many children are home educated because the school system has failed to provide them with a suitable education eg special education needs have not been met, or school has failed to provide a safe space - they are bullied or sexually assaulted or suffer anxiety or depression. Government appears to be concerned by rising numbers of home educated children and seems to believe that they should be increasingly and more invasively monitored. A more positive response would be to address the many failures within the state provision of school based education. (The most positive and effective model is currently the Finnish system.) Government resources should be spent on improving services not micro-managing people who have already been failed by the services on offer.

Home educators benefit from having a much wider range of formal qualifications to choose from but access to exam centres and financial constraints can be significant hurdles for some families.
Having more choices can both liberating and overwhelming for families but there are national networks of home ed families providing information and support as well as lobbying for political action to make this process easier.

As previously mentioned, the pandemic disrupted the exam access of private candidates so my son was not able to sit the GCSE courses he was working towards. This was very upsetting but home educated children were completely overlooked.
Many Scottish children have to take the English exams as the SQA system of coursework makes them impractical for home educated candidates. This problem needs to be addressed.
Access to exam centres is an area where LAs could be useful in encouraging schools to work in partnership with home educating families. My son was able to sit his National 5 in Environmental Science last year because of a special arrangement negotiated by one of his home education groups with a local school.
It could also be argued that exams could be funded by the LA but it’s important to note that home educators do not all value exams in the way that the school system does and some prefer their children to gain the minimum number of qualifications required for their chosen career path, rather than doing as many as the child is capable of. This should not be viewed as a failure but a difference in philosophical approach.