Safeguarding, home education and online learning

This is part of our safeguarding insights section.  Our aim is to provide you with a broader understanding of a specific topic through a researched and referenced article that contributes towards your professional development and ensures that you can support your staff accordingly.

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DSLs and Safeguarding Teams

Supporting the move to Home Education

If a student and their family are looking to move to home education it is vital that there is a discussion about this with the school and that your local authority is fully informed of the situation.

The DSL should make sure they are satisfied there is a positive reason for a move to home education with an open and supportive dialogue with the student and parents about the move.  Parents have the right to choose to home educate their children but it is important that schools pass on any concerns that they might have about the move to home education.

Local authorities typically have a home education officer or team, although with only an average of 2.3 FTE staff for an average of almost 500 children per local authority these services are stretched. Schools have a legal duty to inform the council when a student goes off-roll. If there is already a safeguarding file and external agency involvement then the team around that child should be thinking together how best to support them from the outset.

It is therefore even more important to raise concerns if that student does not have external support.  Students like this have the potential to drop off the radar once they have left school.  In reality there is often a small team overseeing a very large number of home educated children in each area so it is very important that even potential concerns are raised and the school push to ensure there is a plan in place so that there is more likely to be a regular check-in with the family.

Where there are safeguarding concerns the school or college should consider the local threshold tool and to form an ‘early help’ plan with local agencies or, if necessary make a separate referral to children’s social care. There is more guidance on effective referral writing in an earlier Safeguarding Insight.

Safeguarding & home education

There are significant structural gaps in the regulatory framework: there is no requirement on parents to register, no duty on local authorities to visit and no powers for local authorities to gatekeep the safety of these young people. Local authorities are under a duty to ensure young people in their area are accessing education, there are the general powers to support children in need and the specific duty to investigate if there is reason to suspect a child is at risk of significant harm.

In some serious cases of neglect or abuse in recent years, the child concerned has been home educated but that has not usually been a causative factor and the child has normally been known anyway to the relevant local authority. However, a child being educated at home is not necessarily being seen on a regular basis by professionals such as teachers and this logically increases the chances that any parents who set out to use home education to avoid independent oversight may be more successful by doing so. Several recent Serious Case Reviews have illustrated this.

(Elective Home Education: Departmental Guidance for Local Authorities 2019)

A Welsh government review in February 2021 reiterated stark concerns about the lack of regulation regarding home education at the moment starting that ‘the Welsh Government has not complied with its legal duties pursuant to the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011. The Government is required, by Article 4 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to “undertake all appropriate legislative, administrative, and other measures for the implementation of the rights recognized in the present Convention” and I do not find that this has been the case’ in a large part based on the tragic death of Dylan Seabridge who died of scurvy having been home educated and not seen by an external agency for seven years – clearly highlight the great dangers of a child coming out of the mainstream education system.

In a review in 2014 the NSPCC stressed “Home-educating parents or carers are not more likely than others to abuse or neglect their children. There is, however, a risk that home-educated children can become invisible to the authorities”. There has been criticism of the legislation that leaves children so isolated and schools & colleges should make their best endeavours to ensure this is not the case for families you have been working with. Consider the needs of the child (including their health needs), the potential issues and difficulties and work with the family to ensure access to local services where possible. Draw up with the family, local agencies and where possible the local authority plans to ensure the range of the child’s needs are supported.

In some instances schools and colleges have been insufficiently challenging in the face of well-informed, articulate or dominant parents or carers. Keeping the focus on the child is crucial in these instances and advice should be sought where staff are feeling defensive or criticised. Moving to home education, where not in the child’s best interest, may be part of an attempt to withdraw from or avoid services that are challenging of parenting (Cascade, 2017). As with all safeguarding work staff should be encouraged to reflect on their intuitive as well as analytic judgements, utilise reflective supervision with the DSL and be supported to be confident in their interactions with such challenges.

Elective Home Education advice

If you have a family in your school looking to move to home education in England you should be aware of the following two documents and it would be wise for the family to have a look at the ‘advice for parents’ document.

Elective Home Education: advice for parents (April 2019)

Elective home education: Departmental guidance for local authorities (April 2019)

The DSL will want to consider the following factors:

1. Home Schooling must be a Positive Choice It is important to balance concerns about a child being withdrawn from mainstream schooling and the fact that government advice is clear that ‘Educating children at home works well when it is a positive choice and carried out with a proper regard for the needs of the child.’
2. There is less secure safeguarding outside schools. It is worth stressing to parents that there is currently no requirement for tutors or online schools to be regulated ‘so there is no external assurance that they comply with basic standards, such as proper vetting of staff and safeguarding children.’
3. Some parents might want a mix of school and home-school. Given the rapid growth of online possibilities it is possible that increasing numbers of parents might ask to get some of their education in school even if they choose to home education. This is allowed under government guidance and could be a question that is asked of school’s more regularly:

Although children being home educated are not normally registered at any school or college, you may choose to make arrangements for a child to receive part of his or her total education at a school (‘flexi-schooling’)…The purpose of this will often be to provide education in specific subjects more easily than is possible at home. Schools and colleges are under no obligation to agree to such arrangements, but some are happy to do so.

4. Sometimes dialogue is needed before withdrawing a student. The DfE advice suggests a number of different reasons why home education might be requested by parents. It is interesting to see that a number of them are issues which it would be hoped could always be resolve in partnership between school and parents.  In particular:

• Dissatisfaction with the school system.
• Bullying
• The child’s unwillingness or inability to go to school
• Special educational needs not being met within the school system

While parents have the right to home educate for any reason schools should, of course, always look to address any of these issues to see if withdrawal can be avoided.  If parents are determined then it is very important for the DSL to make it very clear to the local council about the reasons for withdrawing from school given by the family, particularly if it is for one of these negative reasons.

It is worth reiterating to parents that the DfE advice specifies:

if you are considering home education because the school system is not currently working well for your child…you should consider what other steps you could take to secure a more satisfactory education. If you are considering home education for your child due to a disagreement with the school or a teacher, talk to the teacher concerned, or to the head teacher if appropriate, before you make your decision.

This article in Schoolsweek explains the growing issue of families choosing to home educate for negative reasons, with a worrying increase in parents moving their children out of mainstream school to avoid disciplinary issues or to get away from concerns about poor attendance.  Again concerns about this should always be forwarded to the local council and as with any safeguarding issue the matter pursued until you can be assured the child or young person is safe.

5. Off-rolling should not happen. It is clear that schools must never put families under pressure to remove a child to home education because of issues such as behaviour, attendance or academic/SEND concerns. Parents are rightly told that ‘if pressure of this sort is put on you by any state-funded school you should inform the local authority.’  To prevent any accusations of off-rolling schools would be well-advised to keep a log of student withdrawals from school that happen before they would normally be finishing school.  Ofsted and local authorities are both entitled to ask about numbers of early-student departures and information about why they happened and the guidance highlights the significantly increased risks of mental health issues, exploitation, abuse and loss of educational potential in such circumstances.
6. Legal duties of parents. Parents do not have to inform a school that their child is being withdrawn for home education although they are encouraged to do this. Schools and colleges are obliged to inform the local authority if a child is removed from the admission register and to specify that it is home schooling if the reason has been given.  The exceptions for this are if the child has a school attendance order and for special schools where the permission of the local authority is needed for a child to be removed from the admissions register.

Parents are advised but not obliged to seek DBS certificates from private tutors that they might use with home schooling, and some local authorities help parents by undertaking DBS checks of tutors free of charge.

Online schools and safeguarding

The growing sophistication of online education and communication software has led to a growth in the number of fully online schools that can offer a complete home-learning package.  They range from the free Oak National Academy set up by the government to support schools during covid through to InterHigh and Harrow School Online, both online school systems set up for national and international students costing as much as a full independent school fee.

These online schools do have safeguarding policies but it is important to note that there is currently no legal requirement for there to be a safeguarding policy to be in place. A consultation on this area agreed that a ‘voluntary online education accreditation scheme’ should be set up alongside ‘non-statutory standards for online education provision’ but there has been a delay in implementation to 2022, doubtless due to the disruption caused by covid. Section 4 of this document makes clear that the government plans that ‘providers have plans in place to safeguard pupils online and ensure that their safety and well-being is promoted…providers will have to make to ensure that staff, supply staff and proprietors or members of proprietor bodies are suitable for the posts they occupy…and have clear policies on how staff will look for signs of abuse and neglect in children and how they should report such concerns’. Ofsted have now been appointed as the quality assurance body for a new Online Education Accreditation Scheme (OEAS) and a pilot is underway with plans for implementation in 2022.

What can schools & colleges do?

• Support families to make the right choices in the best interests of their children
• Reflect on whether your setting could do more to minimise the need for a move – resolving concerns, addressing bullying or SEND issues and similar
• Consider the safety and support needs for the child and draw together an interagency support plan
• Assess whether there are any safeguarding concerns that should be referred to children’s services. If this is the case your setting remains under a duty to refer and escalate the matter until the child is safe, whether or not on roll.
• Liaise with the local authority to ensure they are aware of the needs and plans for the young person