Part 5, and hopefully the last part. I quite concede that it would have been quicker for you to read it through yourself last weekend, but we’re here now.
HERE
is the link to the document I am reading through.
HERE is the link to Part 1.
“Chapter 6: Recommendations for National Government
It is vital that, nationally, we have a system of oversight to ensure that all children receive their entitlement to a formal, full-time education.”
A reminder, children are not entitled to a formal, full-time education.
Paragraph 110 from 2009/10 Children, Schools and Families Committee – Second Report:The Review of Elective Home Education - Children, Schools and Families Committee (HERE) states:
“As outlined, under section 7 of the Education Act 1996, parents have a duty to provide their child with a "full-time", "efficient" and "suitable" education. As the Department's home education guidelines state, there is no legal definition of "full-time". They add: "Children normally attend school for between 22 and 25 hours a week for 38 weeks of the year, but this measurement of "contact time" is not relevant to elective home education where there is often almost continuous one-to-one contact and education may take place outside normal "school hours"". The guidelines also cite the following case law descriptions: an "efficient" education described as one that "achieves that which it sets out to achieve"; a "suitable" education described as one that "primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he is a member, rather than the way of life in the country as a whole, as long as it does not foreclose the child's options in later years to adopt some other form of life if he wishes to do so".”(The case mentioned being Justice Woolf in R v Secetary of State for Education and Science, ex parte Talmud Torah Machzikei Hadass School Trust. 1985.)
Back to this report...
“As an outcome from this research, we would therefore recommend that the Department for Education considers the following actions, that would support local government to discharge their duties in respect of ensuring all children are able to access a formal full-time education more comprehensively:
Raise the profile of children missing formal full-time education
Our research has shown that the current statutory definition of children missing education does not capture many of the children who are missing out on a suitable education. … We would therefore recommend that the Government adopts a broader definition of children who are missing out on formal, fulltime education, collects and publishes data on the numbers of children who meet the definition and tracks the long-term destinations and outcomes for children missing formal full-time education.”
This is ridiculous, it is quite unbelievable that a professional research company has written it.
They have chosen their own definition of CME that goes against guidance, law and case law. Then say that loads of home educators are not providing an education and that nobody knows the outcomes of children educated in that way, and don’t even think to contact any Home Education organisations who may be willing to share such information! As you saw from the response to the email I said, they still don’t think they did anything wrong by not contacting nor collaborating with home educators.
“Resource local authorities adequately to fulfil their responsibilities in relation to ensuring all children receive a suitable education
The evidence gathered through this research suggests that the lack of capacity and resources within local authorities is one of the key barriers to ensuring that all children receive a suitable formal, full-time education. ... In the current financial climate, few local authorities have the resources needed for the true scale of that task.”
So why exactly are you trying to expand the definition of CME to include many more children who are receiving a suitable, efficient and full-time education, thereby stretching resources even further? It’s a crazy suggestion!
“Create a learning environment in which more children can succeed”
This suggestion is aimed at schools.
“Strengthen the legislative framework around electively home educated children
In April 2019 the Government consulted on changes to primary legislation that would strengthen the oversight and mechanisms for reassurance around electively home educated children. It proposed a new duty on local authorities to maintain a register of children of compulsory school age who are not at a state funded or registered independent school and a new duty on parents to provide information if their child is not attending a mainstream school. The purpose of these changes would be to enable better registration and visibility of those educated other than at school. The evidence collected through this research suggests that both changes would be beneficial in strengthening the oversight afforded to vulnerable children within this cohort and we therefore recommend that the necessary legislative changes are made at the first opportunity.”
The evidence collected suggests it would be beneficial only because you have limited your “research” to those who want a register. You did not attempt to contact the people who would be affected by such a change, ie Home Educators and HE organisations, nor ask whether this proposal would actually achieve what it sets out to? (Using the definition of “efficient” previously given, a register would certainly not be efficient.)
“Epilogue”
“It has become apparent very quickly that schools do not only provide education, essential as that is. Schools are also the eyes and ears of a society that cares about the welfare and safety of children. The first essential line of defence for that very small minority of children who are at risk from their families or the communities in which they live. It is also clear that schools provide advice and support within communities and an eco-system of social interactions that bring families who live in a local area together.”
Rose-tinted glasses! (I won’t say what my first though was on reading this.)
“Appendix A”
Children on a school roll but not attending full-time, may include flexischoolers who have permission from their headteacher to only be in school at certain times, and they should not be grouped with truants, school refusers or any other children in this category who may be missing education.
“Elective Home Education: as shown in Part 1, a parent opting to electively home educate their child can be a route into a child missing formal education. This does not mean, however, that all children who are home educated are missing education. What has been striking in recent years is the rapid increase in the numbers of children being electively home educated and, of those, the high proportion who are vulnerable in some way. Therefore, we have used the 2014/15 EHE figure taken at census (23,000)46 as our baseline for ‘children who are EHE and receiving adequate education’. The uplift from the 2014/15 deadline to 2018/19 is 31,656. Given this high growth, we have made the assumption that 75% of that uplift accounts for ‘children who are EHE but not receiving adequate education’. We have assumed the remaining 25% growth might be accounted for by other factors, including population growth. Therefore, we estimate the number of children who are being EHE but are not receiving adequate education to be 24,000.”
So, between 2014/15 and 2018/19 there was an increase in numbers of home educated children of over 30,000. From these numbers only (I haven’t looked at the original source) this could be an increase of 7,500 children per year; which in turn, spread over 150 LAs (I know there are more than this, I am just keeping the maths simple) that mean each LA has had an increase of 50 children home educated per year. Given the number of schooled children and how accessible information about Home Education and the support on offer from peers and HE organisations, this doesn’t actually sound like an excessive number.
Continuing with their analysis, “we have made the assumption that 75% of that uplift accounts for ‘children who are EHE but not receiving adequate education’”.
Where does this 75% assumption come from?
I thought it incredible, and looked like it had been plucked out of thin air earlier in this report, but was holding out until Appendix A to find out the rationale behind it. It turns out there is none. They literally pulled it out of thin air, made it up on the spot, and have absolutely zilch to back this figure up. At the very least, I would have hoped there was a slither of analysis – perhaps they contacted LAs and asked them for the number of EHErs and the number of s437 notices issued or SAOs or anything to give a glimmer of a number comparing how many EHE children there are, to how many whose education is unsatisfactory. Or perhaps an indication of the increase in s437s issued in 2014/15 to 2018/19, and applied this number across the 32,000 children who are “newly” home educated? But no, it is totally senseless. Not least because suppose someone took their child out of school in 2015, it seems very odd that you would still consider them “new” in 2019, when a child in Y3 of primary or Y10 of secondary schools, would hardly be considered “new” to school.
So that’s the end of the document and my updates. Sorry it has gone on so long. For a 58 page document, this is page 32 of my rebuttal, and undoubtedly I could have said a lot more.
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