No other choice: The fracturing of reflexivity in families' pathways into (non‐)elective home education in England

Abstract

In England, education is compulsory, but schooling is not: it is legal for families to home educate their children. This form of education is officially termed by the Department for Education as ‘Elective Home Education’. As this designation implies, many families home educate as a positive and preferential ‘choice’. For others, however, home education is not their desired first option. Drawing on a longitudinal research study that has explored the unfolding educational trajectories of home‐educating families, this paper focuses on parents who feel they have no other choice but to home educate to resolve broader issues their children are experiencing in secondary school. Margaret Archer's concept of ‘fractured’ reflexivity provides a novel lens for unpacking the understudied processes through which such families move involuntarily into home education. It supports understanding of the considerable distress families can endure within the school system, and how this makes it increasingly difficult for parents to construct a pathway out of the situations they find their families in. Positioning the parents in this study as both courageous subjects and the ‘casualties’ of the modern education system's imperative to act reflexively highlights how their educational decision‐making is conditioned structurally and frequently feels anything but free. Overall, the limited agency they experience when they de‐register their children from school provides an important sociological challenge to the government's language of home education as ‘elective’.