FAQs
Who are you?
We are a group of parents whose children attend DfE accredited online schools. Our children need this type of education because mainstream school did not work for them. Many of our kids have special educational needs or mental health needs that required support within mainstream school that was not available, despite schools and Local Authorities being legally obliged to support them.
What are you trying to do?
We want the government to change its guidance and policies regarding access to online education to make it easier for schools and Local Authorities to make it available to children unable to attend school in person.
We believe that many thousands of children have experiences like ours in
mainstream school. Many families are battling schools and Local Authorities trying to get effective support for their children. The impact on the children affected can be devastating, leading to years of mental health struggles and missed education. It also puts families under enormous stress, disrupting work, impacting family finances, putting strain on relationships as well as physical and mental health.
We have found that learning at an accredited online school has transformed our children’s experiences of education, improving their mental health and future prospects too. We believe that it can do the same for the many other children in the same position.
All families who have children with additional needs know how hard it is to get the right support. We get locked in a battle with schools and Local Authorities, stuck on waiting lists for reports and EHCPs. Months and years go by without support, while our children miss out on their education and their wellbeing plummets.
Online learning won’t be suitable in all cases, but it could help many children currently locked out of education. For some, it could be a temporary solution, allowing them to recover their mental health or giving their mainstream school time to put reasonable adjustments in place to support them. For others, it could be a full-time solution, giving them the chance to gain qualifications and move on to further education, higher education or employment, when those opportunities would
otherwise be lost.
What are you asking people to do?
You can support our campaign by:
- Signing & sharing our petition asking the Department for Education for change
- Sharing your stories on our change.org petition page
- Writing to your MP using our template letter (and please let us know which constituency you’re in using this form)
How do I write to my MP?
You can find the contact details for your MP by searching here:
https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP - Emailing us if you’d be happy to speak to the press about your personal story:
voiceforlearners@gmail.com - Sharing your stories directly with the BBC here: Your Voice, Your BBC News:
Tell us what issues matter to you – BBC News
My child is struggling to attend school, can you help me?
Unfortunately, we cannot give advice to individual families. We have all been there, however, and have found the charity IPSEA and our local SENDIASS services to be useful sources of information and advice.
How do I find out more about accredited online schools?
The DfE introduced an accreditation scheme for online education providers in March.
The purpose of the scheme is to reassure children, parents and local
authorities of the quality of education and safeguarding arrangements offered by these providers. Ofsted acts as the quality assurance body for the online education accreditation scheme (OEAS). The list of accredited online schools is available on the ‘get information about schools’ gov.uk website when you filter ‘establishment’ type’ by ‘online provider’.