School-centric rules exclude low-income home educating families

Funding to help people pay for food, heating, warm clothing and shelter during the winter is part of a new £100m support package.

With winter approaching, some of Scotland’s most at-risk communities are facing rising costs for food, fuel and other essentials.

Key elements of the plan were said to include:

£22m for low income families including £16m to give the low income families of an estimated 156,000 children in receipt of free school meals a one-off £100 payment by Christmas

Free school meals (FSM) are, of course, only available to children who are educated at school. but home educators hoped that, in the spirit of inclusion, hardship payments would be extended to those of them who met the ‘low income’ eligibility criteria by other means, including being in receipt of the qualifying benefits used to determine FSM entitlement. Like Covid, hunger is no respecter of the demarcation between home and school, and our government claims to want to Get It Right For Every Child and uphold the UNCRC.

An initial discussion of this issue on our forum drew hundreds of comments, which revealed that some families had received payments on the basis of ‘low income’, while others had been told they were ineligible. Having been policy victims time and time again, we know only too well that home educators do not register in government ‘thinking’ unless it is to make our lives more difficult – although we should say that there are some green shoots of inclusion emerging within the Learning Directorate, if nowhere else.

On 10 December, a screenshot of the mygov.scot page ‘Covid winter hardship payment (£100 per child)’ appeared to confirm that ‘home schooled’ <sic> children were ineligible for the winter support payment.

A page update has since corrected the mis-terminology (small mercies after years of pleading with them to do so!) but reiterated the ineligibility of home educated children, despite many families being on otherwise qualifying benefits. 

We do, however, tend to doubt the accuracy of the mygov.scot site’s content as they also omit to mention that home educated young people from low income families in Scotland are eligible for the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), despite this being made crystal clear in the home education guidance.

It became apparent from ongoing forum exchanges that parents were receiving inconsistent information about the winter support payments, with some having received the money and others being told ‘home schooled’ children were ineligible for what had been pitched as a supplementary hardship payment for those on low incomes and in receipt of specific benefits.

Having listened to government spin, parents had good reason to believe that the FSM criterion was not the sole access route but simply one trigger for the payment, whereas those not on FSM but in receipt of other benefits would have the option of applying for the payment directly. One parent thought it should have been added to the payment of child tax credits as one of her qualifying benefits. 

However, home educators soon discovered that the playing field was anything but level and it was reported that a ‘code’ was required by some local authorities, which could not be obtained without specifying a school.

Specific concerns were raised on behalf of those who were home educating of necessity, exacerbated by Covid withdrawals since August, those with children under school age and those with both school-going and home educated children. Was it only the schooled child in the family who was deemed worthy of feeding? Surely it was FSM eligibility that should count, not FSM take-up, especially as some children have special dietary or sensory needs that already necessitated parent-supplied lunches and snacks?

Amid the confusion and mixed messaging, some parents who had received a payment were worried about it being clawed back after claiming it in good faith and double-checking eligibility with their councils.  We soon surmised that those who had most recently withdrawn their children from school (since August) may have still been on the FSM system with the payment being auto-triggered, whereas others had found it impossible to navigate the school-centric application process.

Comparisons were also drawn with lack of consideration for home educated children on the supply of laptops and other ‘holiday’ payments to compensate for loss of schooling during lockdown and/or school-supplied breakfasts and dinners. It is, after all, not just school pupils going hungry in the midst of Covid when many more are at home due to health concerns or self-isolation. So much for inclusion, GIRFEC and the UNCRC.

After some councils had simply said no to parents, insult was added to injury when elected members and officials declared home education to be ‘unnecessary’ when it had, for many families, become the only way to meet children’s additional support needs. Parents argued it should be a means-tested hardship payment and not a school-based payment, and to withhold it from those out of school due to disability or chronic illness was discriminatory.

One parent shared the ‘schoolsplaining’ response she received from the government’s ‘Social Justice Strategy Unit’, which ended by curtly signposting her to the CAB and hardship helplines:

Since home educators’ voices have once again fallen on deaf ‘social justice’ ears, we thought we should platform just a few of them here:

I’m bitterly disappointed, we are left out in the cold once again.

[We] have been on furlough since March and really anything that we could get would be amazing but I realised that our children and our way of educating isn’t supported or rewarded by any help at all.

What legislation binds them to discriminate by attaching a poverty payment to the means of education?

I can understand not being granted a clothing grant or free school meal payments but the winter children’s payment is for low income families. I believe we should be entitled! It’s outrageous, we are being discriminated against.

This new grant has been couched in terms of tackling poverty and inequality. This is not a benefit related to the school environment, therefore the criteria should be consistently inclusive for all children who meet the criteria for free school meals, whether they are actually receiving them or not.

Why on earth they can’t make this grant available to all children who either do qualify for free school meals as a result of circumstances as well as those who would qualify if they were still attending a school. Setting the criteria in this way does not tackle the issue of child poverty, it simply highlights yet another disparity between school children and home educated children. Given that the legislation gives equal status to both school and home education, it is lazy and downright insulting to exclude our children. I’m fairly new to home educating and I’m absolutely appalled at the bias against us. Utterly disgraceful.

Special thanks to Mark Nixon, vice-convener of HES, for allowing us share his letter to the Social Justice Strategy Unit, which powerfully relays the strength of feeling on this issue from across the home educating community, regardless of families’ financial circumstances.