Glasgow officials target home educators

 

The current home schooling laws have created a "hidden population" of children which is impossible to monitor officials in Glasgow have warned. Under the current law, parents are not required to register their children for home schooling. They say the current law means it is almost impossible to monitor what standard of education home schooled children are receiving.

I would suggest that it has become almost impossible to monitor children`s progress in Scotland via Curriculum for Excellence. There is little reference to subject matter in the curriculum, textbooks, or report cards that indicate how children are doing; only vague ideas about experiences and outcomes which are supposed to shape values, attitudes and behaviour. None of this seems to bother the officials from Glasgow who wish to monitor parents. But monitoring should go both ways.

There is not a great deal of research into home education but what research there is shows that children do well.

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00002197.htm

According to the Scottish Government, parents choose to home educate their children for many different reasons. The list is not exhaustive but includes:

The wish to follow a particular educational or ideological philosophy. 
 Religious or cultural beliefs.  
 Dissatisfaction with the system.
 A child`s reluctance to go to school. A child`s problems when at school, e.g. bullying.  
 Geographical - due to remoteness, or mobility for work or cultural reasons. 
 The wish to deal with a child`s additional support needs in a particular way. 
 As a short term intervention for a particular reason.

http://www.gov.scot/resource/doc/207380/0055026.pdf

So there are many good reasons why parents might wish to home educate their children and this is all the better if one values choice and diversity. Since the introduction of Curriculum for Excellence, dissatisfaction with the system itself is bound to become a major factor for discerning parents.

Then we have this from the officials in Glasgow: 

Education leaders have also raised concern about the impact of the proposed named person scheme on children who are home schooled.

This is what the present alarm is really about. Home educators are far too independent but no group should be allowed to escape the data mining clutches of the named person scheme. 

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/concern-over-home-schooling-201783n.121804354