I was wondering recently what effect the change in the age of compulsory education will have upon home educating families. From 2015 young people will have to stay in education until the age of eighteen, rather than sixteen. Of course many parents are still claiming Child Benefit from the age of sixteen to eighteen on the grounds that they are still educating their child and that this education does not stop once he reaches sixteen. One wonders whether this will get a little harder in 2015, with proper evidence needed to back up the claim. Of course this increased school leaving age is not due to come into force for a few years yet. It will happen in stages, with the age rising to seventeen in 2013 and then eighteen in 2015. Still, we all know how time flies and this will be upon us before we notice it coming.
The major difference that I can foresee is that we may start to acquire some solid information about the academic attainment of home educated children in this country. At the moment, the results of any GCSEs or IGCSEs taken in the Summer of the academic year that a child turns sixteen, don't become available until August. Since official involvement with home educated children ends on the last Friday in June, the local authority seldom gets to hear these results. Sometimes a home educating parent might take the trouble to contact the EHE Department of the local authority in September, just to let them know how things went, but I have a suspicion that most don't bother! I certainly didn't.
There seems to be a perception among many professionals in the field of education that home educated children take and pass fewer formal examinations than the average child at school. I have no idea at all whether this is true or not, although I would not be at all surprised to find that it was. Of course, as others have pointed out here before, GCSEs are not the be all and end all of education; far from it. Still, it would be interesting to see how home educated children matched up against those at school in this this respect. Mind you, unless the funding to take these qualifications for free, like all other children, is forthcoming, we would have to adjust the statistics accordingly, to take into account the fact that many parents might wish their children to sit GCSEs but are simply unable to afford it. It currently costs around £120/£150 to sit each GCSE in an independent school. In order to take the ten or twelve which are common in schools, a parent might therefore have to shell out getting on for £2000! This is hardly fair, when they have been paying exactly the same taxes as everybody else.
Another difficulty with the school leaving age might be occur if regulations for the monitoring of home education became a little stricter. It is tricky enough as it is for some parents to maintain the, I won't say illusion, perhaps appearance would be a better word, of education as the child grows older. If it is hard to do this with an uncooperative sixteen year old, just imagine trying to get some great eighteen year old to go along with the game and say the necessary things to a local authority officer! For some parents, it hardly bears thinking about.
Simon says If it is hard to do this with an uncooperative sixteen year old, just imagine trying to get some great eighteen year old to go along with the game and say the necessary things to a local authority officer!
ReplyDeleteIt wont happen! you really think an LEA officer will frighten a 17 year old boy? he tell him to f off!
Simon says Of course many parents are still claiming Child Benefit from the age of sixteen to eighteen on the grounds that they are still educating their child and that this education does not stop once he reaches sixteen. One wonders whether this will get a little harder in 2015,
have you been told child benfit will stop for all children over the age of 16 unless they see an LEA officer? where is that in law? what case law is it?
LEA have just not got the time to go running around after home educated children
I think that this is another of the great unknowns; it really depends on whether the LAs themselves do get lumbered with the responsibility of checking up on whether the post 16's are in full time education - I can't imagine they will want that job. Were we get to get some extra regulation anyway with all of home ed, I suppose this could be tied in, but giving the political situation - who knows?
ReplyDeleteI do wonder though how many HErs there are in full time home ed; my own daughter took an extra year before she was ready for full time college and in that year at home did one AS and a few extra IGCSES, but we were always heading towards college. There are some home ed families doing serious A level taking for uni entry around, but most of my daughters friends did go straight on to college after GCSES and I expect this is the norm; so if the numbers are few it may be not even worth whatever govt we do get worrying about it (even if they actually notice there are post 16 home educators around).
I'm not sure why you expect it to be more difficult when the age changes. At the moment it's easier to get Child Benefit before they are 16, because it's automatic, no questions asked. When the age changes we have no reason to believe that the same will not be true but it will just become automatic up to 18. We will just have to prove continuing home education between 18 and 20 in much the way as we do now between 16 and 20.
ReplyDelete"We will just have to prove continuing home education between 18 and 20 in much the way as we do now between 16 and 20."
ReplyDeleteAnd when I say prove, I mean just writing on a form that we are continuing to HE and mentioning what they are studying as we do now. Why should it involve additional steps just because the age has changed?
"In order to take the ten or twelve which are common in schools, a parent might therefore have to shell out getting on for £2000! This is hardly fair, when they have been paying exactly the same taxes as everybody else."
ReplyDeleteSo are parents of children in private schools and people without children. Should they also have exam fees paid for them or a refund on their taxes if they choose not to have children?
From the BBC website:
ReplyDeletehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_lords/newsid_8607000/8607708.stm
"The government has dropped several of the key measures from the bill owing to opposition demands, including: guarantees of one to one tuition for children who fall behind, mandatory sex education for those over 15 and a new registration system for home-educated children."
A bit off topic but I thought you'd like to know!
Are you moderating comments, Simon? Just wondered because one I posted earlier hasn't appeared.
ReplyDeleteOf course I'm not moderating comments, Erica! There's one other by you above this one, but that's all I've seen. How many have you actually posted?
ReplyDelete"If it is hard to do this with an uncooperative sixteen year old, just imagine trying to get some great eighteen year old to go along with the game and say the necessary things to a local authority officer! For some parents, it hardly bears thinking about. "
ReplyDeleteFor some teachers in schools, it will hardly bear thinking about either.