When undersubscribed Huxley Primary School introduced flexischooling to boost enrolment, little did it know this would take it from four pupils to almost full capacity within three years.
It was a move that firmly placed the ‘tiny’ one-form-entry primary school in the rural village of Huxley, Cheshire on the map for providing a holistic approach to education that meets the unique needs of its children.
With six pupils attending full-time, and the remaining 87 per cent being flexischooled for three days a week, Huxley Primary School is one of a growing number of schools across the country to offer a legal, but widely unknown, flexible approach to formal education (see Case study).
WHAT IS FLEXISCHOOLING?
Flexischooling has been around since the 1980s. It is an arrangement where a child of compulsory school age is registered at school full-time but the head teacher has agreed they can be educated at home for part of the week.
The Department for Education (DfE) makes reference to it in its guidance on elective home education (see More information), which is one of the reasons it flies ‘largely under the radar of school leaders’, explains Sarah Sudea, founder of Finding the Flex, which seeks to promote and enable flexible educational solutions to support children’s wellbeing.
‘In a nutshell, head teachers have the discretion to allow children to attend school, usually for a minimum of three days a week, and receive a “suitable education” at home on the other days. Schools retain full funding for each child and have safeguarding responsibility on school days only. The onus is on families to approach the school with a plan, seeking support and agreement,’ she states.
According to Sudea, the beauty of flexischooling is that it is an arrangement ‘for the indefinite’, unlike a part-time reduced timetable, which is always a temporary measure with a view to ‘getting children back in full-time’.
On flexi days, parents and carers can choose to take their child on an outing, bake a cake, attend Forest School or pursue an interest that lies outside the curriculum. Parents of children with special educational needs (SEN) value flexi days as essential downtime for their children.
At Stroud Green Primary School in north London (see Case study, page 38), flexible Fridays allow one family to take their son to the London Welsh School, providing him with a weekly link to his culture by learning and socialising with other children within a bilingual setting.
Head teacher Lucy Walker-Collins says, ‘Each application for flexischooling is considered on its own merits, balancing out the needs of the child emotionally, socially and educationally.’
The school’s flexischooling policy states that while there is ‘no statutory curriculum’ for the home education part of a flexischooling arrangement, parents and carers ‘must be mindful’ of the impact on the child’s access to the national curriculum or the EYFS curriculum and the ‘possible fragmentation of the child’s learning experience’.
WHAT FAMILIES DOES IT ATTRACT?
Former primary school teacher and flexischooling parent Juliette Beveridge, who runs the Flexischooling Families UK Facebook group, says there is an ‘enormous appetite’ for flexischooling from parents and carers for a diverse range of reasons.
‘We have over 21,000 members, 8,000 of which have joined in the past year. I estimate that there’s roughly a 50/50 split between parents whose children are not coping in school, perhaps due to special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or emotionally based school non-attendance (EBSNA), and parents who are interested in flexischooling for philosophical reasons,’ she explains.
Beveridge sees many parents with children as young as four years old, all the way up to secondary-school age, who are facing EBSNA and are ‘desperately searching for an alternative education model’ to meet their child’s needs, having exhausted all other avenues.
But despite being on the increase in the UK, particularly in Scotland*, flexischooling ‘remains rare’, with pupil numbers ‘likely to be in the low thousands’, according to John Paxman’s 2022 review of flexischooling children with SEND.
Low incidence in part is linked to parents’ ‘lack of legal right to insist on a flexischooling arrangement, unlike their legal right to home-educate’, the review states. It may also link to ‘confusion around the circumstances’ of flexischooling.
FLEXISCHOOLING DAYS
According to the interactive map on the Flexischooling Families UK Facebook group, there are more than 500 schools offering flexischooling: 452 primary schools, 25 secondary schools and 29 private schools, although Beveridge says that these figures are likely to ‘under-represent’ the number of schools that actually offer it.
Some head teachers fear ‘opening the floodgates’ if word gets out that their school offers flexischooling, Sudea says. ‘But in my experience, this doesn’t happen, as when children are thriving at school, most parents are happy for them to be there full-time. Also, it’s often a USP for the school, especially an undersubscribed one.’
Beveridge says many members in the group are unsuccessful in requesting flexischooling. ‘They voice a willingness to commute greater distances, or even relocate to find a school willing to agree to a flexischooling arrangement for their child,’ she adds. ‘Others might move to full-time home education.’
Concerns around the impact on attendance records and test results, safeguarding and the complexity of the arrangement are also cited by head teachers as barriers.
But the DfE’s guidance for elective home education for local authoritiesissued in April 2019 allays concernsaround absences when it comes to Ofsted inspections. It states, ‘This is not the case; some schools with significant flexischooling numbers have had good outcomes from Ofsted inspections.’
Sudea says that while school is ‘absolutely the right place’ for the majority of children, there are some children who will forever struggle to cope with full-time school.
She adds, ‘For these families, it’s a lifeline. So it makes sense to be aware of flexischooling as an available option that allows an individual child a better balance in their life.’
Case study: Huxley C.E. Primary School, Chester
Huxley Primary School has been running flexischooling as a whole-school approach for three years. It was initially set up to attract more families to the school in rural Chester after falling rolls threatened closure in 2021.
Head teacher Rachel Gourley says that the approach has taken the school from four pupils to 47 this September, which is only two less than full capacity.
‘We currently have six full-time pupils and the remaining 87 per cent of the school are flexischooled and attend for three days a week, from Tuesday to Thursday. All children in Reception are currently flexischooled,’ she says.
‘Children come to us from as far away as Wales, with parents committing to up to four hours a day in travel. We have the home education groups that come to us because they want some balance and school input, and the children with SEND whose needs haven’t been metin mainstream education. Five days is too much for them and there’s a risk of EBSNA [emotionally based school non-attendance]. We also have a lot of autistic children, but you wouldn’tknow it if you walked around the school because their needs are being met.
‘We’re a nurturing school that is trauma-informed and attachment-aware. Some children don’t wear uniform because of their sensory needs, and many have noise sensitivity so we’ve changed the way we approach the day to accommodate their needs.
‘The changes since introducing flexischooling have been dramatic. In the first term, I sat in cars with children coaxing them in just for an hour because they were broken. We had children sat under tables covering their ears because they couldn’t cope. Now, it’s like any average school. If at the start of the day they feel unbalanced, they might be given a job to do, such as collecting eggs from the hens, which moves them to a different mindset. Or they may start school a little earlier or later if they are overwhelmed with lots of people at the front gate.
‘The key is relationship-building with the children and their parents and carers. If you don’t get the social emotional support in place, you’ll never get them learning.
‘The impact of the approach is beginning to show. Flexi children are making good progress and have passed their SATS, so we know it works. One child, who came to us in Year 4, was a Reception reader and a Year 1 writer. She’s just done her SATs and she got expected in reading.’
Although three days are compulsory at Huxley Primary School, flexischooling children have the option to sign up for sessions on Mondays and Fridays, such as Forest Fridays, a popular session with parents.
Gourley adds, ‘I devised a rotation curriculum across the whole year, which means no week runs the same and all flexi children access every subject area with face-to-face content taught by our teachers. Our full-time pupils access a full curriculum as they would in any other school, it’s just taught on a rotation. On flexischooling days, parents upload pictures onto an online platform to show evidence of how they are supporting their child’s learning. We also work with parents, many of whom have experienced trauma themselves.
‘Flexischooling is absolutely vital and, in my belief, every local authority should offer it and it should be an option for all Reception children. It catches those who aren’t quite special-school children but five days’ mainstream isn’t working for them. But it also captures the children whose parents want to have more input in their education.’
Case study: Stroud Green Primary School, north London
Situated in the London borough of Haringey, Stroud Green Primary School is an inner-city London school with pupils representing around 70 ethnicities and speaking 30 different languages. There are currently 449 children on role in the two-form entry school, 15 of whom are being flexischooled and ten of whom are in Reception.
‘Our flexischool offer, which takes place on Fridays, is popular in the younger years when children start school or when families are on parental leave with another sibling. It was introduced by the previous head teacher when the school was losing children, and it was a really good draw, and still is,’ explains head teacher Lucy Walker-Collins.
‘One family drives in from South London each day and although their child no longer flexischools, they love the ethos of the school. We find that even if flexischooling is not the right thing for some families, it gives a powerful message to parents that we trust them and want to work with them.
‘One child in Year 4 was flexischooled for six weeks when his parents were going through a separation. His parents requested it because he needed some time to come to terms with it, as well as move into a new house and spend time with each of his parents. As a school leader, I am well aware of the impact such a situation could have on a child and how it can take longer to resolve, or be more costly for the school if, for example, we needed to use our school counselling slot if the child was vulnerable. The boy came back after six weeks and went back into full-time schooling.
‘Some parents put their children into a different provision on a Friday, such as Forest School. We have children who attend dyslexic school and a child who attends Welsh school. For SEND children, it’s useful for them to have a day of their sensory needs being met, usually in the family home. And some children further up the school take time out to prep for entrance exams.
‘Our flexischooling policy clearly sets out our principles. We meet with families every six weeks to review the child’s attainment and we monitor attendance. While we don’t necessarily take away the option of flexischooling to an individual family, we might direct a parent/carer to provide specific support in certain elements of their learning, if needed. For children that remain at school on a Friday, particularly those working below age-related expectations, they benefit from smaller class sizes and more support.
‘Our educational outcomes are above London, above Harringay and above the national average. We’ve got no reason to think this is having anything other than a positive effect on our pupils. Even if families never use it, I think it’s reassuring for them to know that flexischooling is an option.’
MORE INFORMATION
- *Different rules apply in Scotland; consult the current Scottish home education law and guidance.
- ‘Understanding parent and school experience of flexi-schooling’: relationshipsfoundation.org
- Elective home education (2019) andElective home education: Guide for parents (2024): publishing.service.gov.uk
- ‘Flexischooling’: personalisededucationnow.org.uk
STATISTICS
According to Findingtheflex.com:
- Head teachers have the discretion to allow children to be educated in school part-time and at home or elsewhere part time.
- 22% of UK school children were persistently absent in 2022/23.
- All Ofsted comments on flexischooling arrangements have been positive.
- Schools retain full funding for children who are flexischooled.
- Flexischooling allows schools and families to work together to better meet children’s needs.
