CME guidance vs EHE guidance

It has been pointed out to me that CME guidance is statutory, and refers to the EHE guidance.  As I have not read the former before, I figured it would be sensible to do so.

For those who don't know, CME stands for Children Missing Education, and is meant to exclude EHE children, ie Electively Home Educated children, so we'll see...  Again, to try and clarify that which I'm referring to, I will colour the quotes - purple for CME and I'll stick to red for EHE.  Some of the quotes have subscript numbers/letters that have copied across - I'm not going to copy across the notes, if you are interested, please read the guidance itself.

CME guidance starts:

This statutory guidance sets out key principles to enable local authorities in England to implement their legal duty under section 436A of the Education Act 1996 to make arrangements to identify, as far as it is possible to do so, children missing education (CME).

Whereas EHE starts:

This is departmental guidance from the Department for Education. It is non-statutory, and has been produced to help local authorities understand their role in relation to elective home education.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, Statutory means "decided or controlled by law", and Statute Law means "a system of laws that have been decided and approved by a parliament", which basically means if something is statutory, you MUST do it, else it is illegal; whereas non-statutory means it's more of a preference or a process, rather than a law that you must obey.

I'm only interested in the parts of the CME guidance that are relevant to HE, but the whole document is linked to above, so if you are interested, you can read it through.

CME says:

All schools (including academies and independent schools) must notify their local authority when they are about to remove a pupil’s name from the school admission register under any of the fifteen grounds listed in the regulations1 (Annex A)...Schools must make reasonable enquiries to establish the whereabouts of the child jointly with the local authority, before deleting the pupil’s name from the register if the deletion is under regulation 8(1), sub-paragraphs (f)(iii) and (h)(iii) (see Annex A).

This confirms that it is the School's Duty to inform the LA that a child has been deregistered to be home educated.  As parents, if you wish to deregister your child (assuming it is not a special school), you simply need to inform the HT of your decision and that you wish your child's name to be deleted.  You do NOT have to inform the LA yourself, that is entirely the school's legal responsibility.

I'll include Annex A when I get to it, at the end of the document.

Section 2 of CME guidance says:

Children missing education are children of compulsory school age who are not registered pupils at a school and are not receiving suitable education otherwise than at a school.

So from the outset, it recognises the fact that children can be receiving a suitable education otherwise than at a school.

Again, Section 4 says:

Local authorities have a duty under section 436A of the Education Act 1996 to make arrangements to establish the identities of children in their area who are not registered pupils at a school and are not receiving suitable education otherwise. This duty only relates to children of compulsory school age2

So, the LA has a duty to identify those children in their area who are not receiving a suitable education, NOT (as some LAs will have you believe) identify all children, without consideration.

Interestingly, the Statutory CME guidance, acknowledges a separation between Education and Welfare of the child, as show in Section 11:

Where there is concern for a child’s welfare, this should be referred to local authority children’s social care. If there is reason to suspect a crime has been committed, the police should also be involved. Where there is a concern that a child’s safety or well-being is at risk, it is essential to take action without delay.

Whereas Sections 7.1 and 7.2 of the EHE guidance says:

7.1 A situation in which a child is not receiving a suitable full-time education requires action by a local authority under education law, as described above. But it is important to bear in mind that unsuitable or inadequate education can also impair a child’s intellectual, emotional, social or behavioural development, and may therefore bring child protection duties into play. This will depend on the facts of the case, but local authorities should consider whether they ought to take action under safeguarding law, especially where the steps described above have not been, or seem unlikely to be, sufficient to address a risk to a child’s welfare
7.2 Sections 10 and 11 of the Children Act 2004 give local authorities general duties for promoting the well-being and (in relation to their non-education functions) safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in their areas. This includes children educated at home as well as those attending school. Section 175 of the Education Act 2002 requires authorities to make arrangements for ensuring that their education functions are exercised with a view to safeguarding and promoting children’s welfare. Therefore the general duties of local authorities in relation to safeguarding are the same for all children, however they are educated. Social services teams in local authorities and those dealing with home education should take steps to ensure that relevant information on individual children is shared.

In fact, Section 7 of the EHE guidance is titled "Safeguarding: the interface with home education" and there are 15 subsections.

Sections 13, 14 and 15 deal with Parental Responsibilities:

13.Parents have a duty11 to ensure that their children of compulsory school age are receiving suitable full-time education. Some parents may elect to educate their children at home12 and may withdraw them from school at any time to do so, unless they are subject to a School Attendance Order.
14.Where a parent notifies the school in writing that they are home educating, the school must delete the child’s name from the admission register and inform the local authority. However, where parents orally indicate that they intend to withdraw their child to be home educated, the school should consider notifying the local authority at the earliest opportunity.
15.Children with Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans or statements of special educational needs (SEN) can be home educated13. Where the EHC plan or statement sets out SEN provision that the child should receive at home, the local authority is under a duty to arrange that provision. Where the EHC plan or statement names a school or type of school as the place where the child should receive his or her education but the parent chooses to home educate their child, the local authority must assure itself that the provision being made by the parent is suitable. In such cases, the local authority must review the plan or statement annually to assure itself that the provision set out in it continues to be appropriate and that the child’s SEN continue to be met.

 Section 36 says:

.If there is evidence to suggest the child has moved to a different local authority area, contact should be made with the named person in the new authority using secure communication methods. The local authority should maintain a record of the child’s details until they are located or attain school leaving age.

This fits with section 4.8 of the EHE guidance which says:

As set out in the statutory guidance on Children Missing Education referenced above, local authorities should also be working with each other to identify children, and share data about those who have left a school in one local authority area but have moved to another.

Section 52 lists children at risk of missing education, subsection f says:

Children who cease to attend a school – there are many reasons why a child stops attending a school. It could be because the parent chooses to home educate their child. However, where the reason for a child who has stopped attending a school is not known, the local authority should investigate the case and satisfy itself that the child is receiving suitable education.

So the important point for parents to note is that when you write your deregistration letter, make sure that you state that you will Home Educate your child, rather than just ask for their name to be removed from the school roll.

And there is a link to the EHE guidance in their "Additional departmental advice and guidelines".

Highlights from Annex A: Grounds for deleting a pupil from the school admission register:

4 8(1)(d) - in a case not falling within sub-paragraph (a) of this paragraph, that he has ceased to attend the school and the proprietor has received written notification from the parent that the pupil is receiving education otherwise than at school.

So, getting to the end of the document, the Statutory CME Guidance doesn't seem to contradict the Non-statutory EHE guidance (in my limited understanding).


The CME guidance also linked to 2 further documents that may be relevant to home educators Keeping Children Safe in Education and Working Together to Safeguard Children.  These documents are 112 pages and 111 pages, so I'm not going to read these in detail, but use the CtrlF search function to see if either mentions home education at all.

From the Keeping Children Safe document, there are 74 instances of the word (or partial word) "home", 2 cases of "ehe" as partial words and 143 times "education" is used - and NONE of them reference Home Education.  Similarly, the Working together documents has 61 instances of the word "home",  4 cases of "ehe" as partial words, and 58 times "education" is used - again, none are talking about Home Education.


In Summary, the main points of interest for me are:

• The LA has a duty to identify those children who are not receiving a suitable education (which implies that they do NOT have a duty to identify all children).
• And CME seems to keep the distinction between Welfare and Education, where the former should be referred to SS asap.