The Home Ed Daily

25/09/2025

👇💚 Do sign and share the 'Withdraw the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill' petition. Remember that your children, other family, friends, neighbours - everyone can sign. As long as it's a different email address each time, and you make sure to verify the email after signing.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722377

We call on the Government to withdraw the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill. We believe it downgrades education for all children, and undermines educators and parents. If it is not withdrawn, we believe it may cause more harm to children and their educational opportunities than it helps

25/09/2025

This Bill is likely to impact your life if any of the below are relevant to your life.
Get to know it, and speak out against the bits that will make things more difficult for your family.
Social Care
You have children
Your family use schools or you work in a school
You are a LAC
You are a kinship carer
You Home Educate
You use independent providers or work in one
You use out of school settings, or you volunteer or work in them
You are a home educating family
You have members of your household that fit under SEND umbrella

23/09/2025

There’s been a popular photo being shared on Facebook about how ADHD isn’t really a disorder - it’s a different kind of wiring. A set of traits that once helped humans survive, especially in fast-paced, unpredictable environments. And for many home-educating families like ours, this idea makes a lot of sense.

It’s backed by research too. A study in Nature Genetics found that ADHD traits are more common in nomadic populations than in settled ones. In other words, our hunter-gatherer ancestors likely passed these traits down for a reason: they were useful. Imagine what it took to survive in the wild. You’d need to be alert to the tiniest movements or sounds. Quick to act. Always scanning your surroundings. Drawn to novelty and driven to explore. Sound familiar? These are the very traits modern psychiatry often labels as symptoms of a disorder. But in a natural environment, those same traits would have been superpowers.

The problem? Today’s world is anything but natural. Instead of open landscapes and roaming tribes, we have classrooms with fluorescent lights and 30 children squeezed into four walls. Instead of movement, novelty and connection, we expect hours of stillness, compliance and repetition. ADHD becomes a “problem” because the environment no longer fits the brain. That doesn’t mean ADHD is all strengths. Living in a world that isn’t designed for your brain can be incredibly hard, for both children and their parents. There are struggles with regulation, time blindness, executive functioning, and often big emotions. It can feel like you’re always behind, always missing something, always trying to catch up.

But here’s the shift: what if the traits aren’t the problem, what if the setting is? That’s what home ed gives us: the chance to build an environment around our children, rather than trying to force them to fit into one that doesn't make sense. We can adapt to the pace. Create a structure that works for them. Focus on strengths. Allow movement, choice, and freedom. We can ditch the classwork and let their curiosity lead the way. When you take away the artificial pressure and allow a child to be who they truly are, something remarkable happens: they learn. Not because they’ve finally conformed, but because they’re finally seen.

It took helping my son to finally see myself clearly. When I was growing up, ADHD wasn’t even on the radar. But as I supported him, I began to recognise the same patterns in me. The missed signs, the constant overwhelm, the deep sensitivity under the surface. It wasn’t laziness or lack of effort - it was an invisible difference I’d been masking for years. I’ve had to unlearn the idea that my brain is wrong. It’s not broken, just different. And in choosing to home educate, I’m finally creating a life that honours that difference, instead of fighting it.

Maybe ADHD isn’t a disorder. Maybe it’s an echo - a survival brain in a system that forgot what it really means to thrive.

23/09/2025

💚👇 In response to Trump's scaremongering nonsense.

Just quickly popping in to say that President Trump said today that taking paracetamol in pregnancy and vaccines cause autism.

This is misinformation. There are studies of millions of births which show that this is not the case.

Yes, there has a been a huge rise in autism diagnoses over the last 45 years. That's because the diagnostic criteria have radically changed. It used to be a rare diagnosis only given to children with severe learning disabilities, it's now quite a common diagnosis given to many people with and without learning disabilities. The people who are being diagnosed with autism today would, for the most part, not have met diagnostic criteria in the 1980s.

Autism is a umbrella term which includes a very wide range of people. Scientists agree that there will never be a single cause identified because autistic people are so different to each other.

It's fear-mongering to start blaming paracetamol and vaccines.

22/09/2025

https://www.thehomeeddaily.co.uk/article/2025/03/03/home-educating-and-beyond

Home Educating – and beyond! By Ross Mountney I sometimes think the government would like to devise an injection for all kids at birth that would make them all grow exactly the same! It would make it

19/09/2025

I wrote about this back at the beginning of the year, and it's well worth repeating. The aftermath of this tragedy has seen the government continue to exploit Sara’s story to unfairly target the home ed community, perpetuating harmful misconceptions while neglecting the true systemic failures that led to her untimely death.

Hi, it's me again.

So the Government have responded to a recent petition calling for the removal of the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (based on the damage it will cause 100,000s of children and millions going forward).

They say that the Bill is a good Bill.

- But experts, parents and children say it is harmful.

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They say it will support home educators.

- Yet it will give them an onerous admin load, require excessive information, shift the focus of responsibility from parent to the local authority.

And news flash - it does NOT support home educators. So the Government lied.

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They say the Bill follows years of extensive engagement and consultation.

- But for years and years and years, similar Bills and plans have been rejected as overreach or unsafe (re data collection).

AND they have not undertaken any meaningful consultation with the home education sector (chatting to one charity and doing one online form is not meaningful).

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They claim the department has also conducted and published a Child Rights Impact Assessment.

- As an expert, I know home visits to a child with school trauma or in autistic burnout will result in potential injury to the child. I also know that if the LA deem them not getting a suitable education (which will happen), that a School Attendance Order will lead to children dying.

Funnily, I didn't read this in any of their impact assessments.

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The Government (and my local MP), believe that the tragic life and death of Sara Sharif would have been stopped by the home education measures in the Bill.

So for the millionth time:

- SHE WAS ON A HOME EDUCATION REGISTER
- She was not hidden
- She was on the radar of social services (they failed her).
- Her father was known as an abuser from before she was born.

And finally.

She died in the summer holidays.

Wherever she was educated, she would have died.

Unless of course, the Government had listened to the Victoria Climbie Foundation and invested heavily in reform childrens/social services.

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I am awaiting a reply from my MP.

Once I have it, I will be talking more on this, because I have told him all of this again and again.

He works for me.

Ignorance is not acceptable.

Your MP works for you - their ignorance is not acceptable.

If they spin you excuses and reasons for their decision-making - seek clarity, ask for evidence, don't be disheartened.

Because when the education system gets worse, when mental health declines further, when more and more children take their own lives - they will have that on their consciences, and we will be the "better person". We won't goad or say "I told you so", because there is no victory when a child is harmed.

No.

We will be here to tell them how to fix it.

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If you are questioning the Government in any form, please sign the petition, if we get it to 100,000 they have to "consider" to discuss it.

Yeh, thats as good as it gets folks. Consideration.

But I will take that. (Link in comments)

19/09/2025

Day 62 - 70 of

Life has a way of shifting priorities, and lately there's been family issues that have needed my full attention at home. That means less time for social media shenanigans (like posting every day), but as every home educator knows, learning is always happening in the background. Here’s a collage of some of our ‘home edventures’.

19/09/2025

This wonderful quote is by Magda Ge**er, a world-renowned child therapist and infant specialist who was a leader in the field of early childhood education. It beautifully encapsulates the home-ed philosophy.

15/09/2025

💚

I’ve just been working on the proofs for my latest book. It’s a book for teenagers about what to do if you don’t go to school. It’s to help them reconnect with their inner motivation and to find the spark – and to see that there is a world beyond school.

I wanted to write it because I meet so many young people who think that if they don’t go to school, their life is over, and that’s a terrible place to be. I talked to seventeen teenagers who didn’t go to school and who learnt any way and they told me about all the different amazing things that they did. I hope it will spread the word that school really isn’t the only way to learn. There is life after school.

(the book will be illustrated by Eliza Fricker Missing The Mark and this is one of her pictures).