Should children be educated at home? Considering the difficulties posed by the current pandemic, it’s perhaps never been more important to know where we stand on this question.
Calls for vulnerable young people to be in school have taken on a new urgency. Yet following lockdown, the number of families deciding to educate their children at home has risen dramatically. In September, two-thirds of local authorities recorded an increase in elective home education (EHE).
Even before Covid-19 hit, homeschooling was on the rise, with nearly 60,000 children home educated in 2018 - almost four times as many as in 2011.
EHE is surprisingly easy to initiate. If I wanted to withdraw my children from school tomorrow without notifying my local authority, I could do so. Legally, I would be acting within my rights. The UK actually has one of the lowest thresholds for the regulation and monitoring of home educators in Europe.
Despite the rise in homeschooling, it is often misunderstood and attracts a good deal of criticism. In France, the government has banned EHE altogether. Here in the UK, concerns have been raised about children being placed at risk of extremism by being educated at home, following the Trojan Horse controversy of 2014. And the 2009 Badman review highlighted the safeguarding risks of an unmonitored system, citing the death of a seven-year-old girl whose mother was able to deny social workers access to her home by claiming she was home educating.
But stories such as these distort discussion, as do the stereotypes of home educators. They are assumed to be one of two things: middle-class parents who’ve made a lifestyle choice or troubled families hiding from the system. Both assumptions are too simplistic.
Rather than reacting to media-fuelled “moral panics”, policy should strengthen knowledge and educational opportunities, based on evidence. Indeed, much of the research tells us that most parents who decide to home educate do so for similar reasons.
For instance, ethnic minority families describe racism and bullying of their child in schools as a significant factor (Pattison 2019, Myers 2018), while families from lower socioeconomic backgrounds say they often feel let down by school. Bhopal and Myers (2018) report that home educators are simply parents who actively make choices based on meeting the needs of their child. This resonates with recent stories of young people who struggle with anxiety or special educational needs and disability reporting a positive experience of remote learning.
Badman and Ofsted have recommended a national register for EHE, greater monitoring and defined roles for local authorities.
Of course, steps have to be taken to avoid children missing in education and to reduce hidden off-rolling. But local authorities need additional resources to help families make informed decisions and to avoid short-term removals from school that will disrupt children’s education with potentially long-term consequences. We also need more research into what is driving the rise in EHE.
Most importantly, schools must respond in ways that reduce risk rather than just being driven by fear. Surely effective inclusion is the long-term solution here? We know quality teaching makes the greatest difference in outcomes. Our goal must therefore be to meet children’s needs in school while treating the decision to home educate with respect.
Margaret Mulholland is the special educational needs and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders
This article originally appeared in the 20 November 2020 issue
