Home Schooling UK government inspection, Heres how it went....

My meeting left me feeling a bit weird here's why

Preparation

I had set up everything as i said i had done in the past visits and collected some of the evidence from this year.  

We had dehydrated fruit and onions, all thier exercise books that we had gone through, Mavis Beacon typing tutor, a stop start animation camera and program, meccano, both their boxes with all their work they had done and my diary as you can see on top of the pink and blue boxes and books we had been reading.

The house was cleaned and a pot of coffee put on, nothing says your welcome like a coffee when you visit.

I had the children in the front room getting on with, a nice little project to find out why we all get a brain freeze and that was something from the steemit community I had read the other night.  

What we talked about

When the lady came round she was very pleasant and smiled and said hello to everyone and i made a coffee.

We started to talk about what i had been doing for the last year/visit and began going through some of the items that i had no proof of at the table, such as visits to museums (other than a couple of brochures), helping with the camper van on little jobs that were safe, buying everyone bikes and regularly cycling into town, who they visited and their interactions on a social scale, clubs and hobbies.

So far so good, and then we got into their academic books of which i made sure were dated and backed up with corresponding dates to my diary talking about what and why we went through things.  She noticed that my daughter who had a bad learning experience from school, constantly back classed and then bullied was doing the same year as her younger brother and asked,

"Why is Lucy not doing key stage 3 yet?"  obviously i gave her the honest answer which was that she is 2 years behind in her understanding and therefore works well with her younger brother at the same stage. Of which then came the question of were they being taught together and i said yes and that they worked well.

I also then had a whole raft of questions relating to Lucy and special needs tutors etc. which were not helping at her previous schools and there was no funding to help her in the end.  I felt uncomfortable between the prospect of having to send her to school to get specialist teaching or imposing regular visits at the house and does she think Lucy needs another, and what are her intentions on this line of questioning.  Was glad when she moved on with that subject.

She asked if i was into the self sustainability lifestyle and that was covered by saying i was a gamekeeper and my wife was brought up on a farm so nature was just part of who we were.  I could see her looking at the other books on the shelves and making notes when we spoke and she challenged me about my written feedback (or suggested not enough of it) of which she found in their books and on their work.  Bearing in mind this is evidence i don't have to provide for her or have a legal requirement to show the childrens work, but i do it for these types of situations.  She found lots more feedback on everything mostly and had to scrap her comment from the form.   The other gripe that she had was that the work in the childrens personal work boxes needed to be more organised so she can look at the work and had i thought about chronological order.  Then she noticed all the dates on the sheets.

At this point when she had done enough digging with me she then turned to the children and started asking them if they are looking forward to Christmas, if they had the choice to do anything after they had finished their school work today where would they like to go, unfortunately both children clammed up and we had to prompt them.

She said she was happy with the work i had been doing and gave me a date for another year so that was good but i did feel different this time around.   On this occassion i felt as though i had somehow been profiled to some degree that i had not had before.

Our previous visit was really good with a very informal and relaxed pace to the point where you were not particularly worried when you see them again.  So this one felt harder to get through, more of dodging bullets than tea and cake.  Perhaps some of you have had something a little similar recently, i would definitely like to hear some feedback on anyone elses experience.

Conclusion

I stand by my previous post regarding the preparation i usually do and it does work, the education part is covered (other than the filing issue, smirk) I was asked more this time about proving their work had been done and more interest in the curriculum even though i personally had gone way beyond legal requirements to cover my back they now appeared to be expecting it?

My view after this experience is that if i had not spent all year collecting every scrap of evidence to meet her criteria then there could have been an issue.  My experience may not have any relevance on anyones elses visit or experience just how i saw this one for my family.

Thanks for reading and look forward to any input.