North unitary identifies low level mental health issues as reason for rise in pupils being home schooled
Attendance issues caused by mental health problems are behind the rise in home education numbers, say education bosses
By Sarah Ward
The local education authority in the North of the county has identified an issue of children with low level mental health problems leading to poor attendance, as the biggest single driving of the ever increasing number of children being home educated.
Last month the number of children being taught at home in the North of the county reached 1,132. In 2021 the figure stood at 650.
The issue was declared as one of the major concerns of the education authority’s boss Charisse Monero, when she took up her post in the autumn.
Now after some investigation, her team have found that children with low level mental health problems, whose conditions are not severe enough to warrant specialist support, are being taken out of school to be home educated after their attendance levels become a problem. There is a particular issue with ten schools in the county, which are now being spoken to by the local authority to understand what support can be given. The ten schools have not been named.
Speaking at a recent executive advisory panel meeting, education officer Kevin O'Brien said that while issues such as philosophical choices of parents and bullying issues played a part in the rise, he said mental health was the ‘biggest single factor.
He said:
“So what we’ve tried to do is begin to look systematically at what’s causing that.
“When I was talking to a school they talked about how pupils may have sort of very low level mental health needs. Schools these days have quite a lot of interventions for that, you know CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) counselling, all sorts of different interventions that they offer, but that can’t necessarily meet all those needs and those pupils probably don’t have a mental health need acute enough to meet threshold for service, like the hospital outreach education service.”
He said what tends to happen is that there would not be enough medical evidence to explain non school attendance, and then attendance becomes an issue for the family.
He said:
“Once it becomes an issue, parents might then choose to electively home educate their children, rather than have to deal with what is an attendance issue. I think we are beginning to realise it's part of that group [that is driving the increase].”
He said the education team at the authority was now starting to devise a strategy and to look at ways that intervention could be put in place to help the school better support the child.
He said some parents had asked whether schools could provide online education to their child, as had happened in lockdown, but that is not on offer from schools.
When a parent wants to take their child out of mainstream education and teach them at home, the LEA is notified but Kevin O'Brien said the authority had ‘fairly limited duties in the sense of assuring ourselves that sufficient and suitable education is being provided’. He said the LEA could not be ‘too prescriptive about the curriculum’ and the statutory obligation of the authority was to do a review of a child’s home education once every twelve months.
Asked if the rise was plateauing he said there had been three waves since 2021, but the numbers were still rising and had not flattened off.
Mental health services for children in Northants have long wait lists. The situation has improved since October 2023, when children were on average having to wait longer than a year for an appointment to see a mental health professional. In November last year mental health provider NHFT reported to a West Northants unitary council meeting that there was an average 30 week wait.
Surly it would be possible to set up a internet link to help these children to keep up with the important lessons they need.
I have watched 3 or 4 children who have parent training one 12 year old clearly was bored and said he was not going to school and his younger brother said if he does not go so am I. Another child who is current under send has problems is very highly strung and was born with a blind anus. One parent who could not get in the school is home schooling.