My wife, who is a social worker, was laughing recently when I told her of the idea of giving home educating parents the Age Weighted Pupil Unit. She pointed out that a number of the clients with whom she works hate having to get up in the mornings to take their children to school. Their only incentive for doing so is that they can get shot of the kids for the day. If they were to be told that not only did their children not actually have to attend school, but that they would also be entitled to a couple of thousand pounds a year for keeping them at home, then there would be an explosion of 'home education' in some areas.
I am bound to say that this is a good point. I myself work with families for whom fiddling the social and making dubious claims is a way of life. If they thought that it was possible to claim money for not sending their children to school, quite a few of them would be queuing up to deregister their children. Actually, many parents still have the idea that they are obliged by law to send their children to school. In many cases, this is a wholesome, if mistaken, thing for them to believe. I for one would not like it to become common knowledge that they could if they wished simply stop sending their kids to school. For a lot of the children whom I meet, school is the only little bit of order and sanity in their otherwise chaotic and disordered lives. Many of them would be worse off if they were to lose this.
I am not, I hasten to add, suggesting that all the families with whom my wife and I work are greedy and mercenary wretches. I just feel that my wife is right and that the lure of an extra few thousand pound might prompt them to embark upon yet another scam to the detriment of their children. That's the great advantage of being married to a social worker; you get a fresh, if cynical perspective on these matters!
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I think that giving the AWPU to the actual family has a lot more implications other than the whole possibility of scams.
ReplyDeleteOne of the main reasons that "anti -LA" opponents give for not letting the LA monitor the education of their children is that they claim that by choosing to HE, the LA don't have any "rights or responibilities" for the education. This was one of the main arguments used in the consultation before last - that if the LA had more rights, they would also be more directly legally responsible for the education provided by the parent -and so could be subject to the " my parents didn't HE properly but you did nothing about it so I want to sue you the LA" type of cases (increasingly seen in schools with failed SN cases.)
So if the LA were paying the parents, surely that would be responsible for what the parents did and not only indeed to monitor but also act when they saw " failures" This is counter to what most HE want , which is why most of them (unless they are called Peter) won't accept a panny.
Despite all this , I do think there are a few low cost and low profile things that could be done by LAs (such as funding exams) which wouldn't shift the balance of power or need the AWPU handed to the parents directly.
I will also add that we receive a (pathetically small) amount of "direct payments" to pay for a carer for our profoundly disabled son. However the whole thing is tedious to manage and only pays for a tiny % of what we actually pay, and I often feel it isn't worth the hassle. I imagine it costs HCC more to adminster than they actually pay to us, and I wonder whether it is actually worth the bother!
My wife, who is a social worker, was laughing recently when I told her of the idea of giving home educating parents the Age Weighted Pupil Unit. She pointed out that a number of the clients with whom she works hate having to get up in the mornings to take their children to school. Their only incentive for doing so is that they can get shot of the kids for the day. If they were to be told that not only did their children not actually have to attend school, but that they would also be entitled to a couple of thousand pounds a year for keeping them at home, then there would be an explosion of 'home education' in some areas.
ReplyDeleteSo because of a few bad family who are not home educating the loads of caring home educating familys can not have this money?
That money woul;d help some home educating parents and the child to book extra books private tutors and much more! those that dont want the money dont have it!
some home educating parents wants this money now you may not like it but we do and we want it to help our children get a good education
if you know of a family that is fiddling the social you have a duty to report them at once why dont you?
The reason that I don't report families who are fiddling the social is that often this is the only way that some people can survive. The benefits rates are very low and without extra money, some of these parents would not even be able to pay the gas bill or buy their kids a new pair of shoes. Most of them have other things going in addition to benefits; I do not know a single family who are wholly reliant upon state benefits. Some are running mail order catalogue scams, some deal in small quanities of dope, a few of the women are on the game part-time. None of this is my business and as long as what is happening does not harm the kids and prevents them living in an impoverished environment, I am not likely to say anything. The idea that we should all run round reporting our friends and neighbours to the police because their tax disc is out of date or they have no TV licence or whatever is not something which appeals to me.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree with you Julie about local authorities paying for examinations and so on. I can't see that this would harm anybody or make the authority any more liable for a sub-standard home education. There have been cases of children suing their LA becuase they were bullied at school as well. I think this is a realistic fear on the part of local authorities; that a few years down the line, some home educated person will claim that they did not receive a suitable education and that the locla authority should have done something about it.
ReplyDeleteWe want that 5 grand Julie from HCC Peter will write 2morro to HCC to complain that they have not sent this money to him!
ReplyDeleteDon't you think that Peter's time would be better spent improving some other aspect of English langauage other than letter writing? With all his past practice he should have mastered that part by now!
ReplyDeleteJulie said...
ReplyDeleteDon't you think that Peter's time would be better spent improving some other aspect of English langauage other than letter writing? With all his past practice he should have mastered that part by now!
no letter been sent asking for that money!
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