Home education | What is a Suitable Education?

Hafod Holmes is a retired legal professional, published independent academic researcher and educator with a specialist interest in the field of home education. This interest is based on her view that all children should be provided with an education which enables them to attain their full potential.

I have worked in this field of research for 12 years and involved with home education practice and assessment overall, for approaching 40 years. In the last 12 years this has included advising individuals, local authorities, NGOs and governments in respect of home education.  In 2021 I gave oral evidence to the Education Select Committee on home education. I am co-chair of Education Otherwise and a member of the Government Covid 19 expert witness panel in respect of home education.

Despite being retired from legal practice, I provide pro bono advice to home educating families, which not infrequently requires referral to education psychologists. It is my experience that when contacting education psychologists to ask their experience of home education they will inevitably state that they have such experience. However, when seeking further clarification it often becomes apparent that they are not aware that home education is not education provided by the local authority, often in the home (EOTAS) and that was where their experience lay.

Educational Psychologists are competent experts who could be giving evidence in court in respect of home education so it is essential that there is an understanding of what home education is and why families choose to home educate. It is my view that there is a wider social misunderstanding of what home education is and often more crucially, is not.

Home education: what is a suitable education?

All societies have cultural norms developed over time to become what is acceptable within that society. In the UK, society accepts school attendance as being synonymous with ‘education’, resulting in a public perception of other education choices made for children as somehow lacking credibility or even deviant. This is the situation in respect of Elective Home Education (EHE), which has become Cohen’s modern ‘folk devil’. As with any folk devil, the moral panic that is the reaction to the ‘deviance’ of EHE is out of proportion to the ‘act’, in this case facts of the issue. The facts in this case relate to ‘what is a suitable education?’

In order to answer the question of what constitutes suitable education, we firstly need to define what we mean by ‘education’, a task which has yet to be agreed upon despite centuries of consideration of the question. For some it is school, or school-based education, a position simplistically propounded by Michael Gove [1] when education minister, with rather more eloquence than judgement:

‘(Parents) know that ordered classrooms with strict discipline are a precondition for effective teaching and a sanctuary from the dangers of the street. They know that respect for teachers as guardians of knowledge and figures of authority is the beginning of wisdom.’

This approach relates education to an end product: the ability to acquire skills that the child previously lacked, most usually in order to attain adult employment. The narrowness of this stance cannot be overlooked, an approach which seeks to instil the same information into each child from a set curriculum, regardless of the individual needs of the child. Legislation [2] recognises that education must be suited to the child’s individual ability, aptitude and needs must be taken into account:

 ‘The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable—

(a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and

(b) to any special educational needs (in the case of a child who is in the area of a local authority in England) or additional learning needs (in the case of a child who is in the area of a local authority in Wales)] he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.’

For some children, school will meet their individual needs, but for others it will not do so. Provided that the parent chooses the child’s education to meet each child’s individual needs, legislation recognises that the choices are equal in status.

There is no clear definition of what constitutes a suitable education in legislation or Government guidance, but precedent[3] tells us that education is suitable if it:

‘Equip a child for life within the community of which he is a member rather than the way of life in the country as a whole, as long as it does not foreclose the child's option in later years to adopt some other form of life if he wishes to do so.’

This definition guides decisions about suitability of EHE, allowing for difference from other parents’ choices, social norms and most crucially, difference to school-based learning.

This brings us to the question of what a suitable education looks like, a question about which education psychologists are often asked to give recommendations. For parents who EHE this can raise its own issues, as often testing used by psychologists is centred around assessment of school children and learning through the school system. This is not to say that accurate assessment of EHE children is impossible, simply that it requires an open-minded approach to what education actually is.

An EHE child may appear to be ‘behind’ their school-based peers and yet be considerably ahead of them in other aspects of their education. They may be learning through a hands-on approach, primarily through observation and discussion, or producing no ‘work’ at all, in the sense that ‘work’ is understood within schools. For EHE parents, there are often no age related ‘targets’ to meet and the child may attain numeracy or literacy much later than their school-based peers without this being cause for concern[4].

‘Rather than home educators feeling that they must explain their children's deviance from the standard trajectory or have that trajectory imposed on them, the evidence from children educated at home demands the rethinking of normalised courses to account for much higher degrees of variability and idiosyncrasy than has been the case up until now.’

A great many home educating families take a project-based approach to education in which the whole learning centres around and is taken from one subject. For the psychologist more used to education divided by subject matter (maths, science, history and English for example) this can lead to confusion over whether or not the child is actually receiving a suitable education. For the EHE child with an individual aptitude, ability, or need that suits this approach, it can however, be highly suitable.

To take an example of this, a child can pick up a single ‘Lego’ brick and ask the simple question: “What is it made from?” Parents may reply to say that the brick is made of plastic, but to the committed EHE parent this is an invitation to learn everything that the brick prompts. ‘Lego learning’ is an outline indication of this approach (Fig 1).

Lego learning

Suitable education can be through school based provision for a child whose individual ability, aptitude and needs are met by such provision, equally, it can be through alternative forms of education, including EHE. For the child with Special Educational Needs (SEN) it can be particularly advantageous, given recent reports of children’s SEN needs not being met in school[5]^,[6]. Children experiencing trauma form another group for whom a period of EHE can be a protective factor, as it provides the child with the stability of a main carer providing for their needs consistently, rather than the inherent changes that school education can bring. Children also can (and do) move between EHE and school depending upon their circumstances at any given point and this is usually indicative of a child feeling the need to experience school for themselves after a period in EHE. Regardless of the form it takes, it is the child, as an individual, who must be at the centre of the question. 

To return to the question of what constitutes a suitable education, 'suitable' must not just be looked at in terms of a programme of study, it has to also be considered in relation to the social and emotional state of the child; education may be rendered unsuitable for example, if a child is subject to bullying despite being in receipt of what appears to be a suitable curriculum from some aspects.

What constitutes a suitable education can be answered by stating: It is the educational choice which is right for that child at that point in the child’s life.’

[1] Gove, M. (2011) ‘Michael Gove to Cambridge University’. [Online] Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/michael-gove-to-cambridge-university

[2] Education Act 1996 s7

[3] R v The Secretary of State for Education and Science ex parte Talmud Torah Machzikei Hadass School Trust QBD. The Times 12 April 1985, CO/422/84

[4] Pattison, H. (2013)  ‘Rethinking Learning to Read:  The Challenge From Children Educated at Home’. P.127. Doctoral dissertation. Birmingham University. [Online] Available from: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/af0e/11130cb5f61244596c170746ef15afd2d48a.pdf

[5] Meredith, R. (2021) ‘Children with special educational needs 'failed' by Education Authority.’ BBC [Online] Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-56188875

[6] Independent (2020) ‘Government ‘failed’ children with special educational needs in pandemic, inquiry by MPs finds’. [Online] Available from: https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/uk-news/children-special-educational-needs-disabilities-coronavirus-b1821842.html