home ed – Home Education Scotland

29Oct 2021 by Home Education Scotland No Comments

HES AGM

NOTICE OF AGM: Home Education Scotland’s 2021 Annual General Meeting will take place online, on the Zoho platform, at 7pm on Wednesday 10th November. All members are invited to attend. Please email us at contact@homeeducationscotland.org.uk (using ‘AGM’ in the subject field) to let us know that you wish to attend so that a link to the meeting and an agenda can be sent to you. We have had a good response to our call for new trustees to join our board and elections of new trustees shall take place at the AGM.

01Oct 2021 by Home Education Scotland No Comments

HES seeks new trustees

Home Education Scotland is looking for enthusiastic members to add to our board of trustees. No previous experience in supporting or working for a charity is required, just a desire to work on behalf of HES’s membership and the wider home education community in Scotland, to further our aim of improving the environment for home education in Scotland. Trustees are expected to act in support of our aims, and to support our principles of inclusivity and support for all home educators in Scotland, recognising the full diversity of our community and the learning approaches to be found within it. We work proactively with the Scottish Government, local authorities, other public bodies and the third sector to improve policy and practice, and to inform professionals and the wider public about home…

23Apr 2021 by Home Education Scotland No Comments

Photo contest open to home educated young people

Home educators have been invited to take part in the 2021 My Place Photography Competition delivered by the Scottish Civic Trust, which this year has the theme 'Climate Change'. The competition is a Scotland-wide built environment contest for young people aged 4-18, and it aims to inspire them to explore their local buildings by taking photographs. All entries will be included in a public exhibition and the winners featured in a promotional leaflet. Entries should be made through the My Place website by a home educating parent or carer on behalf of their child/children by registering here. Once membership is approved, photos can be uploaded to the website. The deadline for entries is August 29. Entrants can find further information and photographic tips on the My Place competition guidance page.

29Oct 2020 by Home Education Scotland No Comments

LAs’ data protection policies come under the spotlight

We have published new research in collaboration with The Scottish Home Education Forum examining local authorities’ data protection policies and practices in relation to the withdrawal of children from school for elective home education. Taking Local Authorities to Task was undertaken to expand on one of 16 recommendations in a previous report, Home Truths, which we published jointly in March 2020. That report highlighted intrusive and unnecessary data collection and sharing by councils when parents elect to withdraw their children from state schools in order to home educate. You can read the latest full report here: Taking Local Authorities to Task: An investigation and critique of Local Authorities’ data protection policies and practices in relation to the withdrawal of children from school for elective home education in Scotland

05Aug 2020 by Home Education Scotland No Comments

Factchecking official home ed sites

In the first of an irregular series of posts entitled "When official websites get home education wrong", vice-convener Mark Nixon highlights legal inaccuracies on mygov.scot, Scotland's online public services portal. This website has been wrong for a long time, and despite repeated requests from home educators and home education organisations to correct the errors, they have failed to do so. In just seven substantive sentences, we can find a litany of errors, misinformation, and incorrect terminology. 1. “You have a right to teach your child at home rather than sending them to school.” PARTIALLY CORRECT You have a right to educate your child at home. Teaching is not mentioned in the law and guidance relating to home education. That’s what they do in schools. 2. “If you choose to do…

03Aug 2020 by Home Education Scotland No Comments

HES corrects misleading council info

Our attention was drawn to a newspaper report on July 24 in which the Falkirk Herald newspaper repeated inaccurate and misleading information provided to parents by David Mackay, Head of Education at Falkirk Council. HES Deputy Convenor Mark Nixon wrote to the Herald’s editor, offering a corrective.The report has now been removed from the Falkirk Herald’s website.We would like to encourage HES members and supporters to let us know about any inaccurate reporting on home education matters in Scotland’s press and broadcast media, so that we can submit corrections where necessary in order to help Scottish media outlets improve their coverage of home education and offer clear and accurate advice to their readers.The full text of Mark’s letter: Dear madam/sirIt is a shame that the Herald did not consult with…

10May 2020 by Home Education Scotland No Comments

Boys help with LA website

Two of the boys working with a graphic artist. Three home educated sons of one of our trustees were invited by their local authority to visit its graphics department to help create and produce a home education resource webpage for their local council area. This turned out to be an interesting and fun experience. The boys enjoyed learning how individual computer screens could be connected to give double on-screen workspace for one document. Helping with punctuation and flow, they seemed in their element. The graphics staff were patient when the boys were comparing and choosing colours for icons. Keen that none of the resources they had gathered for the site were missed out, the boys reminded their mum and the education officer that one had been forgotten.The boys said it…

06May 2020 by Home Education Scotland No Comments

Home ed has changed too

Millie enjoying drawing. By convener Ally MacDonald ‘Home educators aren’t affected by lockdown,’ and ‘you do this already, you’ll be fine.’ I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard these statements in the past few weeks. The answer is, as I explained on Radio Scotland last week, we are all in this together. Home education, as people regularly need reminded, does not look like hours spent at home ‘at the kitchen table’. The only thing that makes this easier for us is that we are used to spending the majority of our time with our children, and many of us don’t need childcare, though many home educators work, fitting it in while children are at activities, or using grandparents, both of which are now largely unavailable. So how…

05May 2020 by Home Education Scotland No Comments

HES presents at adoption conference

By vice-convener Mark Nixon In December 2019, Ally MacDonald (HES convener) and I attended Adoption UK in Scotland’s annual conference, which had the theme of ‘Thinking Differently About Education’. We were there at the invitation of AUK in Scotland to deliver a workshop for delegates – including adoption and fostering professionals, education professionals, and parents – on home education. There was a great deal of interest in home education among the delegates, many of whom admitted that they knew very little about its practice or the law around home education in Scotland. Many told us that they see home education as a viable option for their children or the children that they work with but wouldn’t even know where to start or how to advise adopting or fostering parents.It is…