I'm back here cos of that dumbarse consultation on the dumbarse draught guidance. I'm doing a text dump in the Q7 text box so I thought I'd dump it here too, why not?
If you haven't seen the proposed guidance, that's nice for you!
The guidance conveys the idea that home education is a parental right, rather than a responsibility. This sets a baseline expectation that school is the default, while a right is granted to opt out. In fact, the reverse is true, parents have a responsibility to provide an education, at school or otherwise, and if they believe that school is not safe or suitable, for whatever reason, their responsibility requires them to follow the ‘otherwise’ path. The weight of the responsibility is the same, whether one provides an education oneself or by delegation to schools.
The view of when and whether home education works well is condescending towards parents and irrelevant. For many, it is a last resort and still works well. For many, school does *not* work well, despite having been a ‘positive, informed and dedicated choice and decision.’ The tone of the document appears to be calculated to instil doubt of parents’ abilities in local authority staff, through the use of phrases like ‘While this increase is not a concern [sic] in of itself,’ and by setting an expectation that parents who have established that they are providing an education will need, at some point, to repeat this despite no evidence appearing that they have become neglectful in their duties.
The stated aim of developing mutually respectful relationships would be best met by reverting to the 2007 guidelines, and reaffirming that the duty to identify children not in receipt of an education is met once it is established that a parent is providing elective home education.
As there is currently no funding for local authorities in respect of home education, it seems that the Government is placing an impossible burden on local authorities, to provide support and resources from thin air, as well as increasing expected assignments from contact to repeated enquiries into provision, with no legal basis for this de facto monitoring. This guidance should not assume that laws have already been passed, when they are yet to be presented to Parliament.
Section 1 of the Guidance lays heavy emphasis on the use of tutors, online schools and other ‘out of school’ settings (as well as including non-factual, emotive language about what home education is, which is different for every family.) It is not a guarantee that the education is suitable, nor is a lack of these evidence of unsuitability. This shows a bias towards school-based and school-like provision. The guidance is not clear that LAs have no involvement in any provision at further education colleges, as this funded centrally and the arrangement is between the parents and the college directly.
Flexischooling is not elective home education and is therefore not relevant, as the child is a registered pupil.
Chapter 2 discusses the reasons why parents may choose not to delegate their responsibility to schools but places assumptions on the quality of provision when home education is a last resort. When parents make such a choice, the provision will undoubtedly be better than the child was receiving at school! Parents need support from other parents, and not from the systems and organisations that have already failed them. The suggestion to encourage discussion with LA, school and healthcare staff might be appropriate if all parties saw school and home education as equal choices, we know they do not, and such efforts frequently become exercises in browbeating the parent into keeping a child on roll inappropriately.
The terminology used here is not consistent with previous publications from the DfE, in particular the term ‘homeschooling’, which was defined by the DfE in September 2020 as school provision at home due to closures or inabilty to attend due to illness. This has been mentioned in this guidance as ‘remote schooling’, which is a good term for it, but nothing to do with elective home education. ‘Homeschooling’ is the international umbrella term for home education, and in the UK home educators traditionally refer to school-like timetabling and sit-down lessons etc as ‘school at home.’
Chapter 3 appears to urge local authorities to involve themselves in the parental responsibility of providing an education beyond the scope of their legal duties. Given that there is no increase in LA budgets along with this guidance, it seems that this will only serve to reduce the capability of local authorities to meet their statutory obligations. Also, assertions are made that a school-like provision is more likely to demonstrate that a given education is suitable. This is false, as shown by the increasing number of children for whom school provision is emphatically not suitable. A family’s values, and understanding of their child’s social needs, are far more likely to make their provision suitable for their child than adherence to current social norms and the government of the day’s stated values. The emphasis on progress being made does not take into account that learning does not always happen in a linear fashion, or that because the parents are with their children for most of their waking hours, they will assess progress naturally and organically.
Chapter 4’s title is, in itself, doubtful of parents’ provision, it plants the suggestion that children only appear to be receiving an education at home. The suggested expectation that contact should be at least annual is fine but why does the guidance encourage local authorities to assume that an education is not being provided, even when it has previously been assessed as suitable and no other causes for concern exist? There is no basis in law for such monitoring of provision. The assertion that a compulsory register of children who aren’t registered with a school will benefit those children is laughable, there is no evidence to support it, and if it is not to benefit the children in question, what is the point of it?
Elective home education officers might perhaps be more useful to parents in their areas if they were part of a lifelong learning department rather than one concerned with attendance and safeguarding. The senior officer might find it more useful to be aware of and involved in libraries, arts, museums, outdoor education and any local STEM offerings than with unregistered schools and vulnerable children.
Chapter 5 does not serve to foster good relations between local authorities and home-educating families. The repeated assertion of s.436A to apply to known home-educated children whose provision has not been assessed is contrary to the original intent of the clause, as well documented in Hansard and noted on many home-education websites and blogs in the past. That the Department continues to use this particular sledgehammer to crack the infinitesimal nut of parents who do not use schools demonstrates the cultural mistrust of all parents. Local authorities are not police forces, and home education is an equal choice and should not, in any way, be assumed to be inferior. Your own statistics have demonstrated that while proportionally more home-educating families are known to social services than school-using ones, far fewer are considered to be at risk. There is no justification for the continued suspicion on us.
Points 5.5 to 5.7 do not appear to follow the law in respect of deregistration from school, and conflate the rules between mainstream and Special Schools. Parents instruct schools to deregister, schools tell the LA, their report requires the basic reason for deregistration, ie changing schools, leaving the area or home-education. If a child is deregistered because they’ve ceased attending and the school can’t make contact with the family, that is a separate matter to elective home education. This section is unclear.
How does data protection legislation deal with the sharing of data of children who are not at risk, since home-education is not, in and of itself, a safeguarding matter?
All informal enquiries should be cases where the local authority does not yet know how a child is being educated, as there is no legal footing for repeated informal enquiries without cause for concern. Parents are the ones with the duty to ensure their provision remains suitable, for their own children, not the local authority. Should legislation change this, the LA would then become liable for failures of provision, I doubt that any Department for Education would want that.
Section 6.3 contains an assertion that viewing a home-educated child can be a good way to judge if their education is suitable. This is a ridiculous notion, because what does a child *not* in receipt of a suitable education look like?! For many, that means a clean, happy-looking child in school uniform, because they’re presented well for the day and are accustomed to masking their needs. Furthermore, this makes a strong suggestion to local authorities that seeing the child in person is necessary, but it is their parents’ provision that is being assessed, not the child themselves. A local authority that had a policy of expecting to see the child as part of their informal enquiries could be committing a gross breach of the right to a private family life. So many children become home-educated due to school failures and trauma, it is not remotely in their interests to be subject to personal inspection in this way.
The learning environment of the home-educated child is the whole world. It is literally every place they go. If a local authority officer cannot grasp this, they have no place assessing the suitability of home education provision.
