Dr Rebecca English, Senior Lecturer Faculty of CI, Education & Social Justice, QUT. Work in the home education field is principally concerned with choice. It explores who chooses to home educate and why. Much of this work is qualitative (cf English, 2016; 2019; 2021a; 2021b), and much of it is concerned with participants’ accounts for […]
Full report link Following on from publication of our preliminary report on trends in home education, this report examines continuing trends in parental choice to home educate their children and how Covid 19 arrangements have affected those choices. Home educating families tell us that narratives around home education have shown signs of increasing positivity during […]
At Education Otherwise we know that home educated children are highly visible and engaged within their communities. The following key findings from a dissertation submitted to the University of Derby in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a degree of Master of Arts in Education by Jennifer Alburey in January 2021, confirm this. These findings […]
Relationships between Portsmouth City Council and home educating families broke down in 2020 to the point that a Judicial review was brought by a home educating parent. This report examines relationships between those parents and the Council, finding that home educating families considered their relationships with the council to be founded on fear and intimidation. […]
Despite home educated children being at no greater safeguarding risk than other children, this research finds that media rhetoric is fueling calls for strict monitoring of those children, whilst self-perpetuating concerns in respect of their safeguarding. This in turn leads to unwarranted pressure on children’s social services resources and on home educating families, who face […]
Reports often describes home educated children as “invisible and isolated”, leading to safeguarding risks. This research finds home educated children to be disproportionately scrutinised, being approximately twice as likely to be referred to Social Services than school children and children under 5 years old. Despite this higher referral rate, this scrutiny is significantly less likely […]