In the decade before the first Covid-19 lockdown, the numbers of children deregistered from school to begin home education increased annually (ADCS, 2021). Concomitantly – as noted by Ofsted (2019) – certain schools were encouraging parents of children with so-termed ‘special’ or ‘additional’ needs to deregister in order to avoid permanent exclusion and/or fines for non-attendance, either because the school considered that home education would better suit the child or young person, or while waiting for a specialist placement.
Before these stories broke in the media, as a specialist teacher for students with specific learning differences (SpLDs), I was approached by parents striving to meet their children’s needs at home, when schools appeared to have failed them. Motivated by these encounters and subsequent work with the children, my research aims to understand the circumstances informing families’ transitions to and within home education (Gillie, 2022). Data were gathered through a series of interviews with four families including seven children, three parent-only interviews, and the responses of 92 parents and one young person to open questions in an online survey. One survey respondent participated in a family interview.
UK home education research is not new; academics and home educators themselves have long explored aspects of the practice and those undertaking it. Half a century has passed since celebrity gardener Dick Kitto coined the term ‘compensators’ to describe families turning to home education following negative experiences at school (Blacker, 1981, cited in Rothermel, 2002, p. 41). More recent is the growth in school deregistration, particularly of children with identified or suspected learning differences. My research found that families – who may have found themselves excluded from school and related social activities – are viewed as operating outside society’s norms while not yet belonging to wider home education networks. This was accentuated last year when I shared my research findings at the Home Educating Families’ Festival and a speaker referred to such families as ‘refugees’ from the school system.
