Why are schools monitored?

As a home educator you do not have to inform the council if you never register at a school, education is a parental responsibility even when delegated to the state. 

Home education is exactly equal in law to school education. 

Schools are registered and monitored because they are paid out of the public purse to educate other people's children. 

Parents of home educated children are not spending taxpayers money hence no oversight. 

Home educated children are subject to the same child protection laws that all children are.

So you are telling me that daily they get to discuss their beliefs with others and challenge their upbringing?

That is so not what happens in schools. In many schools children who tried to do that would be bullied. But yes, not every day maybe except with their parents and why would that be necessary. But yes they do - if they want to - we are interested in our child's education we are not brain washers we have no home ed curriculum that every child must follow.

Suitable Education

There is no definition of suitable, not the detailed chronological achievement linked definition that those who think all parents are unsafe to do the best for their kids would like. They don't dare because again it would apply to schools also, many of which are self evidently not providing a suitable education to many children and certainly not one suitable "(a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and
(b) to any special educational needs he may have" It would be very difficult for an LA bod to judge and they actually have no power to do so. They do not know the aptitude or needs of the child. And the norm is a prejudice towards education that looks like school and most home education doesn't and is all the more successful for it.

If they had a proactive duty to ensure they could be sued  by all the children and parents they let down. It would be difficult to do so because education is a parental duty and parents who send their child to unsuitable schools are breaking the law. Odd that there is no call to prosecute them though as they are by definition likely to be in far greater number.   

At primary level perhaps this does not matter so much because it is believed that children at this level are not able to master the material at such complex levels as, say, secondary children are

Well this is where school is wrong for so many children, children like mine are very able to but they are not able to write it down till secondary level, or not sufficiently to demonstrate the sophistication of their understanding. They have problems transposing numbers so make mistakes in simple maths but later go on to understand complex proofs and logic with relative ease. Primary school especially is abusive as performance is all that matters, performance and stats. School tells these children that they are unintelligent and a failure and how many never learn different, I had no idea of how very wrong they were about me until well into my 50s. Home ed lets the child learn and teach through conversation, hard to imagine how school could match it. Perhaps if it became a resource to help children answer their many questions rather that shut up sit down keep still stop talking. Due to my own dire and abusive education where I was blamed and shamed for having a different brain not a plodding sequential one but a leaps and spurts and make odd connections one I have protected my children from the damage schools do to people like us. We are the wrong shape for mass teaching, but I have learnt a lot about learning and child psychology and development in the process. Good luck with your Phd, it would be wonderful if a change that protected neurodiverse kids from plodding repetitive curricula and being profoundly misunderstood could could be instigated but you must know that government usually go in exactly the opposite direction of what quality research suggests would be efficacious.

Thing is children who are home educated can play through the primary years and pick up everything that is taught so laboriously to the children trapped in the classroom for so many hours, so many years, as a bi product of play and curiosity.

And answers to questions and challenges - I rather think promoting "hate of a minority group" is a bit pejorative and a tad on the hysterical side."

 No it's not, not at all, have you noticed how much is in the news right now about a child let down by social services many years ago. A child about whom there is no SCR, a child whose parents have not been prosecuted. 

It is duplicitous, the child was not hidden, he was let down an neglected by the state. The parents were not prosecuted so it is not obvious that it was abuse, it is sad and perhaps support could have made a difference but the social work dept did not know the law around their own job. They failed a child that had been reported to them, they had every power to insist on seeing the child but they didn't bother. Nothing to do with education but everything to do with poor quality badly trained social workers. 

It is manipulation to distract from authority failings, many many

And they want to meddle in home education rather than improve the poor services that failed him. Doing so would fail him again and all children who die because of incompetent and poorly trained child protection agencies. 

It is a con to make them look like they are doing something but that something wouldn't touch on the actual problem, it would remove attention and funding from it. If you were a home educator you would know that these unwarranted attacks are constant and always with no actual evidence. 

 It is immoral and promoting wasting money direly needed by LAs like Pembrokshire to properly train their social workers or recruit people capable of learning. It is politically motivated, and promoted by agencies like the NSPCC who have been trying to get control of us for years using lies and manipulation seeing a rent seeking and mission creep reward.

All these SCRs in 2016 and the NSPCC push for registration and monitoring because of 7 over 6 years involving home education where every single one was a known child let down by government agencies just as this child was.

And they know this because they have published them all. 

Starting to put some of my comments made on media discussing registration of home educators here, this is for those who have swallowed The Badman Report whole.

Graham Badman's report was thoroughly debunked by far sharper minds than his including Graham Stuart in the select committee inquiry into the report.

 Q13 Mr. Stuart: In any case in which a child is known to be on a child protection plan, will it, by necessity, mean that that child is known to the local authorities?

Graham Badman: Yes.

 Q14 Mr. Stuart: So, if the numbers that were formally known about were approximately double your best estimate, it would take us back to almost precisely where we started, at the average of the population as a whole.

Graham Badman: I'm sorry, I don't understand the question.

 "Q15 Mr. Stuart: Well, if there are twice as many children in home education than are formally known about, which by definition includes all those for whom there is a child protection plan, it would suggest that, roughly speaking, you were back to 0.2% of the home-educated population having a child protection plan, which would put them in line with the national average.

Graham Badman: I think that it propels the figures the other way. It would actually make the proportion higher, because they are already included in the overall population and in the subset of the population, which would mean that the percentage will be fractionally higher. It works the other way."

Worrying that he was a maths teacher in a previous life.

"AFTER the report had been issued and roundly criticized by home educators, Badman conducted a third survey of LEAs to try to get a larger sample size.  Badman claimed that this third sample was representative, but Stafford argues that it in fact was biased toward urban areas.  Stafford here pulls out all the stops, for his concern is not so much about what all this means for home education but that government policy is being made on such flimsy grounds."

I could produce many many other links, the report was trying to produce policy based evidence and used quotes in a very misleading and dishonest way.

This is the submission by the church of england.

"24 Our submission was, naturally, designed to be read as a whole, but following the publication of Graham Badman's report, officers in the Education Division were disappointed with the impression left by the selective use of our submission.

25 We are concerned that the quotation from our submission used in the report appeared to have been selected to support the terms of reference of the review, which, whilst acknowledging that parents have a well-established right to educate their children at home and indicating that the Government had no plans to change that position, appeared overly concerned with the possibility of home educating being a cover for abuse, barriers to safeguarding responsibilities and possible changes to the regime of monitoring and support of LAs.

26 In fact, we specifically stated that in making prevention of abuse under the cover of home education the main reason for the Review has the effect of tarnishing the reputation of the many parents who choose to home education their children from the best of motives."

Even the police are not allowed to force a child to see them alone, social workers are only allowed to with evidence of harm.  To allow council workers with no training in either home education or child welfare to have the same power would be very dangerous and open to abuse. 

There is nothing in the law around home education that stops social services doing their job, a register would not help when social services already know that the child exists and have been warned about it and do not act on the information.

Urgent: Safeguarding consultation in Wales ends 25 October 2013. Threat to Home Education

There is yet another potential attack on home educators in Wales only months after Leighton Andrews scrapped his ill thought out plans for registration and monitoring.

Dog with a bone comes to mind, I wonder who is determined to get this through, does Wales have its very own Ed Balls? 

The consultation is here and I urge everyone to complete it. Make it onerous for them to keep trying this on, they have had their answer but don't seem to like it so ignore it introducing the proposals through the back door of a safeguarding consultation hoping we will not notice the threat to us hidden in there.

This is very similar to the situation in England leading up to the Badman Review where there were multiple consultations held any of which could have damaged the freedom to meet children's individual needs.

You can sign a petition against the muddying of education and welfare in Wales.

Below Jayne Palmer outlines some of the concerns for home educators in Wales and gives guidance on filling in the consultation.

"Points you could include in your consultation response

2.7

Responsibility for safeguarding children who are educated at home by their parents or carers, or who are employed, is not solely an education issue. These matters are best dealt with by a multi-agency approach and should be addressed in locally agreed procedures in accordance with the principles set out in Safeguarding Children: Working Together Under the Children Act 2004

The Childrens Act 2004 refers to children missing education not Electively home Educated children. It further refers to vulnerable groups to which EHE children don’t belong. Parents retain responsibility for children and should not suffer interference unless they fail in their responsibilities.

2.12

Makes the same error as 2.7 and fails to acknowledge parents are the primary care takers of children under the 2004 act.

3.121

never enter the education system because they fail to start appropriate 

provision at the start of compulsory school age (there is no requirement for 

parents to inform local authorities of the fact that they intend to educate at 

home if the child has never attended school); 

are withdrawn by their parents who elect to educate at home and both 

parents and the school fail to notify the local authority; 

EHE children are fully engaged in education and parents take up their responsibility to educate children from the age of five as required in law, hence no failure to start education occurs just because a child is not in school. Where children are withdrawn to EHE it is the schools responsibility to inform the LEA and no requirement exists in law that applies to home educated children.

Evidence collected in 2012 from Welsh Local authorities shows that EHE children are less likely to be at risk than school children are. 

3.124

The purpose of the duty is to make sure that children and young people 

who are not registered pupils are identified and that effective monitoring systems are put in place to ensure that those children or young people are provided with ‘suitable education’

This give the impression that there is a duty to monitor EHE families and no such duty is in existence

3.149

ensure ongoing monitoring and tracking of vulnerable groups including those who have been excluded from school; Looked After Children and those registered as receiving education otherwise than at school; 

This needs to be explained clearly many LEA’s’ do not understand the difference between EOTAS and EHE."