This subject was sparked by the tragic case of Sara Sharif, who was removed from state education and state protection by her father, and which ultimately led to her abuse and subsequent death.

2 startling pieces of information – there were more than 150K children in Elective Home Education in England at some time during the 2023/24 academic year; and until very recently there was no official register of EHE children and no legal requirement of councils to keep a record. Rather, the policy was that it was the parents’ responsibility to oversee their children’s education. Sara Sharif’s death has tightened the focus on this rather lax policy.

The main reasons for parents choosing EHE include: a dissatisfaction of the available local schools; ideological, philosophical or religious reasons; an inability to cope with main stream schooling through physical or mental issues (including bullying) and disabilities of either a physical or mental nature which require specialist teaching. In the latter case, often the schools simply don’t have the necessary resources or funds to cater for a child’s specific needs.

There are many benefits to be gained from EHE: an educational programme can be tailored to an individual child; 1:1 teaching is clearly more focussed; there is a flexibility of timetabling; resources are easy to obtain, plus there are many groups of EHE children and parents who share visits and activities. The disadvantages, apart from the deliberate and nefarious withdrawal from the state’s supervision as in Sara’s case, include a restriction of experiencing a wider social community with its diverse ideas and approaches; missing activities requiring specialist equipment (eg scientific or sport programmes) and a lack of experience or suitability on the side of the tutors.
Home tutoring may impede a development of societal tolerance and/or understanding. Though some of these factors can equally be directed at private/independent/religious establishments.

The large increase in the percentage of EHE children led to a widening of our discussion of the present educational system in England. The continuing emphasis on academic achievement, the (cynical) requirement to feed and maintain our consumer-led economy squeezes out our ideology of an ‘all- round’ education with individual opportunities. Even though the ‘one-size-fits-all’ model has been largely discredited as outdated, cumbersome and often stifling of inventiveness and creativity, it still persists – like the implementation of social care, or reform of the NHS, it’s regarded as too large an area to tackle and too expensive to contemplate, so stumbles on with the occasional political sticking plaster, producing a homogenous majority, stirred by moments of ingenuity or hand-wringing at the growing discontent fuelled by societal platitudes and social media influences. And on that cheery and optimistic note, we veered towards lighter issues like Trumpian shenanigans and partook of refreshments.

Report of Enquiring Minds meeting 25th March