They really do need to tighten up on home education, and bring in a system of compulsory registration and education / welfare checks.
Time and again we have seen cases where children are removed from school under the guise of home education to avoid the signs of abuse and neglect being identified. In this case Sara went to school with visible injuries, claimed to have fallen off her bike and was removed from school the next day.
Home educators often say that local authorities have the same rights and responsibilities towards HE and schooled children, but the reality is that parents can refuse any interaction with education services and if no outside adult is seeing the child, there's no one to raise safeguarding concerns, and so there's nothing the police or SS can do, as happened in the Dylan Seabridge case
I do wonder that if the parents hadn't called an ambulance but had simply buried him on the smallholding and carried on as before - would anyone have noticed? No one in authority had seen him for many years.
Home education was also cited as being a key issue for Khyra Ishaq who starved to death
Khyra's home education 'helped conceal abuse'
Then there are the less famous, non-fatal but equally horrific cases like this girl who was never allowed to leave the house and was repeatedly raped by her own father while the family claimed to be home educating. The only reason anyone ever knew was that the parents split up and the mother went to the police.
Couple kept daughter locked away and subjected her to years of rapes and abuse
There are a lot of very vocal middle class parents who are doing HE for the right reasons, keeping their children safe and providing an acceptable or good level of education. There are also some equally vocal, well meaning middle class parents who keep their kids safe but don't provide an adequate education.
Most of them, and there's one upthread, seem to think that because the home education circles they are moving in are full of parents doing their best, that everyone claiming to home educate is like the people they know. Clearly that isn't the case.
Then there are the children who are removed, or never sent to school, because their parents wish to hide the signs of abuse and neglect. They would benefit greatly from registrations and inspections, because then the abuse and neglect would stand a good chance of being identified.
There are the travellers families who claim to home educate after 11 but actually provide zero education in reality, with the parents often having low levels of literacy. Their options for the future are being severely curtailed by home education being used as a smokescreen for no education. They would also benefit greatly from inspections and being returned to school if the education is deemed inadequate.
There are the SEN children who end up home educated because the schools don't have suitable provision for them - a different kettle of fish, and I'm sure they'd be only too happy to make use of a suitable school place, which ought to be provided.
We cannot know which group each family falls into without a system of registration and regular inspections.
It's not the home educated kids who go to Brownies, take guitar lessons, learn about maths by baking cakes and do lessons with InterHigh that I'm worried about - but it's their parents who are vocal in opposing any form of registration or inspection, despite the clear benefits it would have for other children. Their opposition really is incredibly selfish.
Here is an example of a website by and for home educators in which they recommend against allowing visits, tell you that if you decide to allow visits the inspector doesn't need to see or speak to the children, or see their work, and that at no point should the inspector be left alone with the child in case they ask they child if they want to attend school (why are they so afraid of that question being asked?)
Home Education UK
In the UK if you want to do something as mundane as baking birthday cakes and selling them from your home, there is compulsory registration and inspection by the local authority, and you are held to damn near the same standards as a full scale restaurant. They will then publish a rating of how clean and otherwise compliant your kitchen is for all the world to see. Refusing to register or be inspected is a criminal offence. Why is it that in the UK we care more about cake hygiene than the welfare of children?
The system of welfare and education checks on home educated children is utterly toothless, and if we were as concerned about children as we are about cake hygiene then perhaps Sara, Khyra and Dylan would still be alive.
