Welcome to our Flexi-Schooling page
We firmly believe and fully support a parent’s right to choose to Electively Home-Educate (EHE) their child or children.
Electing to Home Educate is a bold step for any family, it is a decision not taken lightly or without good cause. The families who choose to move to the Flexi-Schooling model do so for a huge variety of reasons.
Flexi- schooling is not a part-time education, it is recognised as being a form of full-time education delivered in a hybrid format of both school attendance and Elective Home Education.
If you decide to come to our school looking for a Flexi-schooling place, then you can be safe in the knowledge that you are with nationally recognised experts in this field. If you want to know more, please get in touch.
UN CRC Article 12
The United Kingdom has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Article 12 of the UNCRC requires states to provide a right for children to express their views and for due weight to be given to those views, in accordance with the age and maturity of the child. This does not give children authority over parents, and a decision to educate a child at home is a matter for you as parents.
The quote below underpins our belief in Flexi-Schooling;
“The respect of parent’s freedom to educate their children according to their vision of what education should be has been part of international human rights standards since their very emergence.”
‘The Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights – 8th April 1999
Our Ideas, Approach and Policy
Here at Hollinsclough, we have, over the years, had many conversations with parents, other schools, Local Authorities, the DfE, and others and all of this has helped us to develop our Flexi-schooling offering. We are now happy to share our experiences and knowledge with other schools who seek to develop a similar offering. To see which other schools have expressed interest in developing their own offering of Flexi-Schooling, please take a look at the List of Flexi-Schools.
The best opportunities for Flexi- schooling exist with small rural schools where the challenge of unpredictable numbers is a concern; Flexi-schooling is one of the ways to keep a school viable whilst meeting the needs of families who wish to educate in this way.
At Hollinsclough CE Academy, we fully support a parents right to determine the route their child or children’s education should take, in line with the Education Act 1996. This is further reinforced in Article 2 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights that states;
“No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.”
Parents have a right to educate their children at home. Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 provides that:
“The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable;
(a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and
(b) to any special educational needs, he may have,
either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.”
The responsibility for a child’s education rests with his or her parents.
An “efficient” and “suitable” education is not defined in the Education Act 1996, but “efficient” has been broadly described in case law* as an education that “achieves that which it sets out to achieve”, and a “suitable” education is one that “primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he is a member, rather than the way of life in the country as a whole, as long as it does not foreclose the child’s options in later years to adopt some other form of life if he wishes to do so”.
* Mr Justice Woolf in the case of R v Secretary of State for Education and Science, ex parte Talmud Torah Machzikei
Hadass School Trust (12 April 1985)
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The Legal Basis of Flexi-schooling
(also see table of DfE Documents at the base of this page)
p34
10.7 Although most children educated at home have all the provision made at home, or alternatively partly at home and partly in other ways such as attendance at privately-run part-time tuition settings, it is not essential that this be so. Some children who are educated at home most of the time are also registered at school and attend school for part of the week – perhaps one day a week. The purpose of this is usually to ensure the provision in specific subjects is satisfactory, although it can also help in other ways such as socialisation. If a child is of compulsory school age he or she must, overall, be receiving full-time education even if components of it are part-time.
p35
10.8 Schools are not obliged to accept such arrangements if requested by parents. If they do, then time spent by children being educated at home should be authorised as absence in the usual way and marked in attendance registers accordingly. It is not appropriate to mark this time as ‘approved off-site activity’ as the school has no supervisory role in the child’s education at such times and also has no responsibility for the welfare of the child while he or she is at home. The department does not propose to institute a new attendance code specific to flexi-schooling. Some schools have expressed concern that such absence may have a detrimental effect for the purpose of Ofsted inspection, but this is not the case; some schools with significant flexi-schooling numbers have had good outcomes from Ofsted inspections. Schools which haveflexi-schooled pupils should be ready to discuss with Ofsted inspectors the arrangements they have in place to deal with the requirements caused by such pupils. Schools are held to account through inspection for the performance of pupils, and that will include any who attend the school as part of a programme of flexi-schooling.10.9 Another form of provision available to home educated children aged 14-16 is parttime attendance at further education colleges, sixth form colleges and 16-19 academies or free schools. Again, this is normally to help with specific subjects and/or socialisation. When children who are educated at home attend such college settings part-time then the provision made should be taken into account by the local authority in deciding whether the education provided as a whole for the child meets the s.7 requirement.
Secretary of State for Education
Rt Hon Justine Greening MP (Sept 2017) – Statement
The Department for Education and the Secretary of State for Education (Justine Greening) have applied the their opinion to how they view Flexi-schooling and parental responsibility;
‘……..Flexi-schooling is a term used for an arrangement whereby a child is partly educated at school and partly home educated. ‘The Department’s view is if parents choose not to have their child educated by full-time attendance at school, they are responsible for the whole of their child’s education, not schools ………..
There is no legal requirement on a school to agree to a Flexi-schooling arrangement. In agreeing to such an arrangement, the school is accepting that the child will sometimes miss school……..’
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Our Safeguards
At present children who are using the Flexi-Schooled approach at our academy, are required to attend for what we call the three ‘Core Days’ of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The three core day option is the minimum requirement with most attending at least one other non-core day by choice.
We have in place a Memorandum of Understanding that clearly sets out our expectations of stakeholders.
Our Flexi-School parents mostly come from well outside our normal catchment area, distances of 20 to 40 miles are not uncommon and from this it is clear the level of dedication these parents have to their child(ren)’s educational development in this way.
In our Flexi-schooling offering journey, we developed close links with a number of local authorities, along with the Elective Home Education facilitator Education Otherwise. Additional information is also available from Home Education UK especially their legal section which helps to clarify the 1996 Education Act for parents who are considering the Elective Home Education choice.
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‘Flexi-swimming’
The National Curriculum states that by the end of Key Stage 2, pupils should be taught to:
- swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres
- use a range of strokes effectively, for example, front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke
- perform a safe self-rescue in different water-based situations
We offer all pupils access to what we term ‘Flexi-Swimming’ where we provide funding for each child for 1 term (12 weeks) to have a place in group lessons at their local pool with an accredited Swim England provider, outside of core day school hours.
This approach allows us to meet and exceed DfE expectations by the end of Year 6 and also releases time in the curriculum otherwise used for swimming and its associated travel arrangements for other subjects, thereby easing pressure on teaching.
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