The Isle of Wight has a large, well-supported home school network, so it was not surprising to hear at last week’s full council meeting a question relating to the educational attainment of those children being posed.
Cllr Roger Whitby-Smith (Ryde East) asked whether the Executive member responsible for Children’s Services, Cllr Chris Whitehouse, has had time to compare the “relative standards of the attainment” of the home educated children against their peers in the school system.
Cllr Whitehouse explained that it was “very difficult to assess the educational attainment of the home educated children”, but added that he’d had the discussion with officers, the Isle of Wight Conservative MP, Andrew Turner, as well as various individual head teachers.
Whitehouse: Good schools = less incentive to home educate
Cllr Whitehouse went on to say it was his belief that if the Isle of Wight schools get better, there is less of an incentive for parents to want to home educate their children.
Cllr Whitby-Smith expressed his view about “the importance for home schooled children to take jobs and go up the progression ladder”, adding that the difference between home schooling and “our standard schools” should “not be great, if possible at all, it should be very similar”.
Whitehouse: “Second rate will not do”
Cllr Whitehouse agreed, saying the “same performance standards, same levels of outcome” are expected from home educated children. He added,
“Second rate will not do for me. I want all our children to have the best possible opportunity to achieve their individual highest potential.”
Accurate data not held
The Isle of Wight council say 272 children on the Island are registered with the council as being home educated. However, children who’ve never been to school don’t have to be registered and so there may be additional families the council do not know about, although it was said that some do register voluntarily.
In terms of collating the attainment data, the council told OnTheWight that families are asked for updates at the end of Year 11, but not all reply, so they don’t have accurate data on qualifications achieved.
Related links:
Isle of Wight GCSE Results | A-Level Results
