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What is Home Education?

For most, home education is far more like university than school. It's about curiosity. Formulating a question or thought and researching it. The parents roll is not to formally teach but to facilitate that journey.

It doesn't really matter too much what the child is curios about, the trick is to develop and facilitate curiosity, kindle it like a precious flame, and ultimately develop those critical thinking skills necessary to formulate new ideas for so it becomes a raging inferno.

That sounds complicated perhaps, but it's really not. It's what all parents do for their children especially when they're small. Every time a child asks a question you start a journey of discovery.

If parents see themselves not as teachers but as facilitators in this way, they will see progress they didn't imagine possible. It's exciting and fun but it can also be scary.

Scary because as a parent you've been led to believe children need to be steered along a certain path, that there's a set of knowledge all children should have. But if that's not the child's path, or if it's a part of a journey your child has not yet encountered, you're effectively imposing ideas on the child and run the risk, along side millions of other children, of alienating your child from the learning process, suppressing their own intrinsic curiosity for the imposed ideas of others.

How often has a child asked "what's the point in this?" Far too many I suspect. Spark a child's curiosity, facilitate their journey of discovery, put the child behind the wheel and they will take responsibility for their own course and progress, because they will be intrinsically motivated to satisfy their curiosity.

For the overwhelming majority of parents, this is the beauty of home education. By answering questions they themselves pose, they retain what they learn because it's part of their own journey. Something they questioned themselves.

Home Education - Responce to the Education Select Committee hearing on home education (2020)

This letter was sent on 17 December 2020 to the Chair of the Education Select Committee Mr Robert Halfon MP, to the Clerk, to the Children’s Commissioner and to the Local Government Association and signed by the parties below.

Covid-19 Home Schooling Support

We have created a new support section entirely for those caught up in the covid crisis.

We also have a FB Forum just for you. Experienced home educators are on hand to welcome you and help with issues relating to your child's education at home.

We can't promise to answer every question, but many of the issues you will face will already have been dealt with by home educators who are the experts in educating in the home. The group is the Home Education UK School Closure Support Forum. now with over five thousand members

The Supremacy of the Family - & Why.

“The totalitarian state tries to separate the child from her family and mould her to its own design. Families in all their subversive variety are the breeding ground of diversity and individuality.

Hence the family is given special protection in all the modern human rights… The child is not the mere creature of the State.”

Baroness Hale, President of the Supreme Court

InterHigh - Inform LA's about HE families on registration

I have been informed by InterHigh that they continue to routinely pass families private information to Local Authorities, regardless of their acceptance that home education does not constitute a safeguarding concern. Their statement says:

“we will proactively contact Local Authorities during the registration of a new pupil to ensure the safety of pupils” and we “will ensure that the Local Authority is aware that a pupil is being home educated.”

The InterHigh statement then goes on to say

"we know that there is no correlation between home education and safeguarding risk."

Any family considering using InterHigh services should consider the implications of this statement very carefully.

LG Ombudsman rules against routine visits

The Local Government Ombudsman ruled that councils must be clear with parents of home educated children whether a home visit is routine or triggered by concerns following Leicester City's attempt to initiate actions based on anticipating, future government proposals currently being considered

Universal Basic Income UBI

Many home educators have to navigate a complicated benefits system which assumes that children are in school. Despite many families deciding to home educate due to their child's vulnerability, which remains unacknowledged either by state education or the benefits system.
A universal benefits system would help with this problem. boosting families ability to manage while they take the whole burden of educating their children. The cost of paying UBI to home educators would be balanced by the enormous savings to tax payers of not paying for the school places taken up by home educated children.
If you are in favour of UBI, Please take a few minutes to fill in this questionnaire Thank you.

Flexischooling Petition

We have set up a petition allowing parents to flexischool their children for one day a week for the coming (2020-2021) school year to allow children, where they need it, space to deal with a return to school flexibly. See more here.

Educational Heretics Press

EHP publishes books and kindles on many topics related to home education and learning systems that are alternative or complimentary to state schooling. Including books on how and why home educators home educate.

A great introduction to alternative education.

Many EHP books are available as Kindles, at low prices and you don't need a kindle to read them, there are app's for all brands of smart phone and tablet. Build your own library of 'read anywhere

Home Education - a Human Right

"The respect of parent's freedom to educate their children according to their vision of what education should be has been part of international human rights standards since their very emergence."

(The Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights 8th April 1999)

Parents are responsible for the education of their offspring regardless of whether they are in school or out of it. In law the right to an education is an obligatory right, it may neither be denied to, nor refused by, a child.

Thus since children may not refuse education and there is no academic consensus on what constitutes an effective education, we believe that the state must be flexible in defining what a 'suitable' education is.

While the law expresses the right to home educate as a parental right, it is my belief that, in the same way that young people have the right to decide upon medical procedures, a specific education should not be imposed upon them. This is not only right in principle but in practice, since intrinsically motivated learning will most readily "achieve that which it sets out to achieve". Learning cannot be imposed.

Download a Free Poster Many parents remain unaware that home education is legal, or if they are aware, where to find support. This poster could be put up anywhere parents and children might benefit.
	Download a poster today, print it, pin it. Help other children learn freely