Freedom for Children to Grow

Report Of DCSF/DIUS Raising Expectations Consultation Event May 2008

The slogan here is "demand-led" education and training, prompted by the 2004-2006 Leitch Review.

Probably the most immediately striking change for 14-19s in England is that the participation age is being raised to 18 by 2015. This will come into force via the Education and Skills Bill, which has just passed through the Commons and moved to the Lords for debate as can be seen here. The Education and Skills Bill is a hybrid piece of legislation, covering raising the leaving age and adult skills and further regulation of the independent sector. The Bill applies specifically to England and my report deals with the implications for England. Some restricted parts of the Bill apply to Wales, though raising the participation age does not apply to Wales, as can be seen here. Broadly speaking the Bill does not apply to Scotland or Northern Ireland, although there are several points at which Westminster will be consulting with the devolved administrations.

In 2007, campaigning home educators in England ensured that "or otherwise" was added to the section of the Education and Skills Bill which has just moved to the Lords. ( The initial Government proposals did not include a provision for "education otherwise") The EO response to the 2007 consultation may be found here.

Sections 1-4 of the current Education and Skills Bill set out the requirement that young people in England participate in "appropriate full-time education or training" until the age of 18, which is defined as "suitable for the person, having regard- (a) to the person's age, ability and aptitude, and (b) to any learning difficulty which the person may have, and is provided at a school, at a college of further education, at an institution within the higher education sector or otherwise." Young people in employment will be further required to participate in approved training/education for the equivalent of one day a week during term time.

The second major part of the Government's strategy is to dismantle the Learning and Skills Council which operates at a national level, and move the power and responsibility down to local authority level. It is envisaged that this transition will happen during the next couple of years. If all goes according to plan, it will be in place at least 2 years before the participation age is raised to 17 and 3 years before it is raised to 18. More information about this can be found in the consultation documents here.

The cost/benefit analysis of both sets of proposals are being jumbled together in a very messy way as can be seen by the Impact Assessment here.

So, what does all this mean for home educators in England? Well, the local authority will be responsible for overseeing, commissioning and funding educational provision from 0-19. Local authorities will fund college places and local authorities will monitor the young people and chase them up if they are not complying with their duty to "participate". Local authorities have not sought this power; it has been imposed on them by central Government. If you combine this with the national children's database (to be rolled out in Spring 2009, using information from Child Benefit records) and Children Missing Education (effective from November 2006, but not able to be fully implemented till the database is in place) then we can predict that an increasing number of home educators may be likely to come into contact with the authority over this extended period. (Incidentally, the current plan is for the young person to be able to leave compulsory "participation" after the 18th birthday, rather than at the end of the summer term.)

The consultation event was one of 9 throughout the regions in England. The first and most obvious fact from the consultation event was that the FE colleges are not happy with the splitting of the DfES between DCSF and DIUS. Colleges now have to deal with BOTH departments. In addition, they are not happy with the abolition of the LSC, since they are not at all clear where the funding will come from and how this system will work. In particular, if the funding and management goes down to local authority level, will it be the authority where the student LIVES or the authority where the student STUDIES. The FE colleges think that the school 6th forms are better placed to take advantage of the system because they already have a relationship with the local authorities. The schools on the other hand, think that the students will travel outside the area to college to study at 16. And nobody really understands what is going to happen with "adult skills" or post 19 education and training which is going to be involve local authorities working with DIUS and with the Department of Work and Pensions as well as with JobCentrePlus and local business at the local level.

From the local authorities' point of view, they will have to incorporate the relevant knowledge and expertise from the LSC and currently there is no clear mechanism for doing this. The authorities feel that this is being presented as devolving power to the regions, but in fact it is a top-down plan since the regions and the local authorities have no choice once the Government has decided to go ahead. The authorities are also wondering about performance targets and again, whether this will apply to where where students LIVE or where they STUDY. The Directors of Children's Services are apparently planning to get together on a regional basis to discuss how to manage the transition. The local authorities will not receive extra funding for administration. It appears to be envisaged that there will be a shadow LSC which will operate while the local authorities are beginning to take over responsibility for commissioning and funding provision from colleges and other learning and training providers.

There have been 9 regional events with the same DCSF/DIUS team making a presentation and facilitating round table discussion at each event. We were told in Yorkshire that this was the only event where home educators were represented. Annette took the microphone and made an impassioned plea for more support for home educators in terms of access to exam centres. This was further noted in the summing-up. A number of delegates including Education Otherwise expressed grave reservations about the impact of this Bill on young people with disabilities and special educational needs. I also used the opportunity of round-table discussions to ask about the "I" for Innovations in the Department of Innovations, Universities and Skills. I said that the current measures discriminated against entrepreneurial creative dynamic young people who would find their hands tied by these proposed measures, particularly the requirement to be in "appropriate education or training" until 18 even if the young person is at work. This point has already been made several times by Education Otherwise in previous consultation responses to DCSF and DIUS. Delegates at the consultation event were also critical of the way Government sees young people as passive recipients of programmes of "appropriate education and training". Education Otherwise will be responding to the DCSF consultations and monitoring further developments.

Fiona Nicholson
Education Otherwise Government Policy Group
Education Otherwise Disability Group

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