Why alternative educators should help shape education policy: lived experience matters

Policy made without listening to home educators will always miss the point. The real expertise is with them, not Whitehall.

Here’s a simple idea that shouldn’t be radical at all, but is…

The DfE needs more than data. It needs the people who know children best.

If the government wants to understand elective home education, it makes sense to involve the people who actually do it. Home educators should have a place inside the Department for Education (and in EHE Local Authority departments). Not as a token voice, but as advisers who help shape guidance, train local authorities and influence policy that reflects real life.

Right now, decisions about home education are often made by people who’ve never supported a child through GCSEs outside school, never planned a flexible week, never balanced SEND needs with wellbeing, and never seen learning unfold in a natural way. It shows.

It’s a bit like asking someone who’s never ridden a bike to write the cycling safety manual. Or expecting a penguin to explain tree climbing.

There is huge expertise within the home ed community. Families who understand how children learn when they’re trusted. Parents who’ve supported young people with anxiety, dyslexia, autism, giftedness, late blooming interests and everything in between. People who’ve built rich learning lives with little support and a lot of dedication.

If policy is truly about supporting children, the next step is clear. Invite home educators to the table and treat them as partners. It would build trust, improve decisions and create guidance that respects the wide range of learning paths children take.

If home educators helped design the system meant to oversee them, we’d see a shift in tone and purpose. Guidance would move away from suspicion and towards understanding. Local authorities would receive training shaped by people who know what flexible learning really looks like. Oversight would focus on support instead of tick-box compliance. It would also rebuild trust, because families would finally see their experience reflected in policy.

When policy is written without lived experience, the gap shows. Children with SEND get squeezed into frameworks that don’t fit. Interest-led learning is misunderstood. Anxiety is mistaken for defiance. Parents are treated as problems to manage instead of partners to work with. Without the voices of real families, decisions become detached from the day to day reality of how children learn, grow and thrive outside school.

Way too radical huh? I can dream...