Freedom for Children to Grow

Government Proposals to Change the Law on Home Education in England

Children Schools and Families Bill, November 2009

In November 2009, clause 26 in the new Children Schools and Families Bill revealed the extent of the Government's plans for licensing and policing home educating families in England. MP Graham Stuart described it as putting home educators in a headlock.

• More support to home educating families. Select Committee agreed.
• Compulsory registration. Select Committee disagreed.
• Requirement to submit statement of approach and educational plan at time of registration. Select Committee disagreed.
• Right of access to the home. Select Committee disagreed.
• Right to speak to the child alone. Select Committee disagreed.
• Local authority to refuse permission to home educate if there are "safeguarding concerns." Select Committee disagreed.

Badman Review Blasted by MPs' Inquiry;
Select committee criticises plans to monitor home-educating families as 'too aggressive';
House of Commons Report Concludes that Flawed Govnt. Proposals on Home Education Must Be Rectified.

Although the Bill will not receive its Second Reading in the Commons until January 11th, the home education proposals in the Bill have already been discussed in the Commons and the Lords.

If the present Government were to succeed in driving through this legislation before the General Election, the proposals would take effect from April 2011.

Education Otherwise has prepared a Briefing Paper on the new legislative proposals which may be found here. The Briefing Paper includes an analysis of the Government's Impact Assessment.

Wales

At present the proposals in the new Bill apply only to England but Clause 27 of the Bill provides framework powers for the legislation to be extended to Wales. Members of Parliament in Wales will also vote on the proposals which affect England.

Summary of Proposals in the New Bill

• There will be a licensing scheme where home educators have to apply annually for permission to home educate
• There will be mandatory interviews with all home educated children. Between 10,000 and 40,000 children will also have an additional interview
• Children on the autistic spectrum are going to be particularly affected by the proposals for compulsory interviews, yet the Impact Assessment indicates that children with special needs will be targeted for extra interviews on top of the beginning of year and end of year interviews
• Interviews will be in "the place where education is provided to the child." The place where education is provided is expected to be widely interpreted as the home, but the Government has avoided using the word "home" as this would be emotive and might sway someone in Parliament to speak out against the proposals. The precedent of changing the law explicitly to compel entry to private homes might also provoke a backlash from the civil liberties movement
• Home educators will be required to meet with teachers in schools to draw up education plans for the year. The plans will then have to be approved by the local authority. If the family deviates from the education plan, the authority can revoke permission to home educate. At the end of the year there will be a compulsory annual inspection interview to assess whether education is suitable and whether it has conformed with the approved statement lodged during the application for registration

The Government is seeking to prescribe the form and content of home education both by means of school assessments of children and also by a Government review in the New Year of what is meant by "suitable education."

The schedule for the proposals has been hugely accelerated by the present Government’s desire to introduce as many enabling powers as possible into the new Bill, thereby opening the door to extensive regulation out of public view.

Children and Families

In these proposals, the child seems to be viewed both as a witness against the parent and also as evidence for the efficacy or otherwise of the parent's educational provision. A third view of the child is as potential abuse victim in all cases until proved otherwise. This is an extraordinary way to segregate and objectify children while allegedly promoting the child's right to be heard. Meanwhile parents are viewed with suspicion and mistrust, being characterised as likely to mislead or deceive the authorities or as being the last people who might know what their child actually needs.

"If enacted, the Government's proposals will, for the first time in our history, tear away from parents and give to the state the responsibility for a child's education." Graham Stuart MP December 2009

Lord Lucas on the Government's Proposals

"In this country, we have long had a duty as parents to educate our children and a right to decide how they should be educated. Many of us choose to entrust the state with their education-but that is us entrusting the state with our duty and us exercising our right to choose. The Bill turns that on his head. The arrangement here is that you cannot home educate unless you get the prior permission of the local authority, which has wide grounds for refusing. It can object in any way to your plans to educate your child. It can object and refuse you permission to home educate if you do not allow someone from the local education authority four hours of unaccompanied access to your child every year. Would we contemplate allowing that for our children under any circumstances? What right have these people to do that to home-educated children when there is no real cause for concern?

We are considering a section of the Bill which will cost £20 million per annum, which is about £1,000 per home-educated child. These children receive no money to help pay the costs of examinations; no money to buy textbooks; no money to buy materials; no money and no tuition to help them over difficulties in education. Now the Government can find £1,000 for each of these children-and will spend it on auditing them. Not one penny will go to help the children; it will all go on auditing them. What have these people done to deserve that?"

The Badman Review

On January 19th 2009 Independent Government Advisor Graham Badman was asked to review home education. The Report had to be finished by May. Online questionnaires were hastily sent to local authorities asking whether personnel had "concerns" about home educating families. The deadline for completion was February 6th which gave Children's Services fourteen working days to turn round the questionnaire.

The returns on the fourteen day questionnaire formed the evidence base for the review. The questionnaire was also a way for Graham Badman and his assistant to identify local authorities who would be available for a meeting in March. A second questionnaire - with a slightly longer completion time of twenty four working days - was also made available to the general public.

Graham Badman and his assistant allocated several days during the course of the Review to meet with home educators, local authority personnel and other interested parties.

Education Otherwise met twice with Graham Badman during the course of the Review (February) and May) and also submitted a Prospectus for Improving Support to Home Educating Families.

Checks and balances were intended to be provided by an Expert Reference Group yet the final membership of the Group was not confirmed until April 13th, twelve weeks after the start of the Review. Notes of the three Group meetings have never been released but Professor James Conroy, a member of the Group who was unable to attend, subsequently told the Select Committee that he had "rarely encountered a process, the entirety of which was so slap dash, panic driven, and nakedly and naively populist."

Publication of Badman Report June 2009

The Badman Report was submitted to the Secretary of State at the end of May and the Report was published on June 11th. The Secretary of State gave qualified acceptance to the recommendations, saying that implementation would be subject to identifying funding and workable delivery arrangements.

When the Report was published in June, home educators were greatly surprised to hear new anecdotal evidence being presented by Graham Badman to the media. It transpired that there had been a third supplementary Badman questionnaire which was not published with the Badman Report.

In a widely criticised move, Graham Badman made a fourth call for evidence in September 2009 to provide further data to back up the recommendations made at the end of May. The Education Otherwise article on Policy Based Evidence Making may be read here.

Two short articles giving a further critique of the Government's flawed statistics and projected outcomes may be found here and here.

Consultation on Registration and Monitoring

On the same day as the Badman Report was published, the Government launched a public consultation seeking views on a registration and monitoring scheme for home educators. The Government's proposals have been widely described as a licensing scheme. The consultation ran to October 2009 consultation and received over five thousand submissions. The Education Otherwise response may be found here.

At the time of writing in December the Government has not published the required analysis and response to the public consultation, though this was scheduled for the end of November.

Select Committee Inquiry

In response to widespread concerns about the conduct of the Badman Review, the Select Committee began an Inquiry into the Badman Review process in July 2009 and published its Report on December 16th.

In October 2009 Graham Badman and Minister Diana Johnson were required to give evidence to the Committee. The Minister assured the Select Committee that all the submissions to the public consultation would be read and would be taken into account.

• Graham Badman and Minister Diana Johnson October 12th
  
• Home education organisations and others
  
• Written submissions

Home Educators take Political Action

Since the Spring, hundreds of home educators have been speaking to their MP about home education. A list of constituencies may be found here.

Several Early Day Motions (see here and here) were tabled by MPs against the Badman Review and MP Mark Field presented a debate on home education in Westminster Hall.

Voice of Young People

In July the Home Educated Youth Council was set up to give a voice to young people who had been ignored during the Badman Review. HEYC has now had several meetings with the Department for Children Schools and Families. Read more here.

Not Back to School Picnics

September saw a programme of nationwide Not Back To School Picnics co-ordinated by home educating families. The picnics attracted a considerable amount of positive press coverage.

Mass Lobby of MPs

Between the two Select Committee sessions in October, over four hundred home educators took part in a mass lobby of their MPs at Westminster to raise awareness of the Government's draconian proposals for home education.

Education Otherwise Parliamentary Event

In October Education Otherwise held its first Parliamentary Event, "Seen and Heard". The idea behind the event was to bring home educators and MPs together in order to raise awareness of home education and to give people the chance to talk informally to home educators from many parts of the country to give a flavour of the diversity of home education practice and policy in different regions. Young home educated children got a chance to express their views and to talk about how home education actually worked for them.

Early Findings from Two New Surveys October 2009

See What do Home Educated Children Think and Not Hidden But Home Educated.

All Party Parliamentary Group on Home Education

The All Party Parliamentary Group for Home Education was set up at the beginning of November with Graham Stuart Conservative MP for Beverley and Holderness elected Chair and Lord Lucas as Deputy Chair. Tim Farron Liberal Democrat MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale was elected Secretary and David Drew Labour MP for Stroud was elected Treasurer.

Downing Street Petitions

A petition to Downing Street urging the Prime Minister not to act on the recommendations of the Badman Review closed in October with 4,894 signatures. The Government response may be found here.

There is a live petition against the Government's legislative proposals for home education which currently has over two and a half thousand signatories.

Petition to Parliament

At the end of 2009 Graham Stuart MP and home educators broke the parliamentary record for the largest number of petitions on a single issue.

More than 70 MPs chose to take part in a mass presentation of these petitions to the House on 8th December 2009. The meetings with MPs attracted a considerable amount of positive coverage in the local press and a number of MPs chose to feature the event on their website or blog.

At the time of writing in December 2009, around 160 petitions have been presented formally or informally to Parliament. The organisers of the petition are aware of petition papers from 319 constituencies. Some of these petitions will be handed directly to the Secretary of State but others are yet to be presented in Parliament before Christmas and in the New Year.

What Will Happen in the New Year?

The All Party Parliamentary Group on Home Education will meet in the House of Commons from 4-5pm on January 6th.

The Second Reading of the Children Schools and Families Bill in the House of Commons is scheduled for January 11th Here is an explanation of what happens at the Second Reading of a Bill. It is likely that a number of members of the Select Committee will wish to speak on the home education proposals in the Bill. To track the progress of the Bill, please click here.

Also think about going to visit your MP. This is a chance to raise awareness of home education and to dispel prejudices and stereotypes. Your MP will also be much more motivated to speak in Parliament on behalf of home educators if he or she has actually met a home educating family. Read more here.

The current Parliament was first summoned on Wednesday 11 May 2005, so will cease to exist at midnight on Monday 10 May 2010. A general election to elect the new Parliament must be held by no later than Thursday 3 June 2010.

All legislation which has not completed the necessary parliamentary stages by Easter will be bartered between the main political parties in a process which is known as "the wash-up".

The Government has also said that it will appoint an Independent Government Advisor in the New Year to determine what sort of education is suitable for home educated children.

What About Support for Home Educators?

The Bill is not about support for home educated children. The Government does not need to change the law on home education in order to guarantee funding for home education support. The only guaranteed money to local authorities under "new burdens" arrangements is for inspection and enforcement.

Support for home educated children is not to be made a statutory requirement and the inspection criteria for Ofsted with respect to Children's Services refer exclusively to safeguarding, not to support.

The Minister has already clearly stated that the local authority is able to draw down funding for college places and for special needs. This came as a great surprise to many people and the news has still not cascaded down. The bureaucratic requirements have not yet been specified.

The Minister has also stated that from January 2011 local authorities will be able to draw down funding to support home educated young people taking GCSEs. The Badman Review revealed a mechanism whereby funding could be drawn down. In this respect, the Badman Report was "about support" but the Bill currently before Parliament is not about support, it is about policing.

The Badman Review asked home educators whether they believed the current system for support should be changed. Just under a third of respondents felt there should be general help with books and resources. One in five respondents thought there should be help with access to exam centres. At the same time, half the respondents said that support with strings was not wanted and that Government should try to understand more about home education.

It has been widely believed that there is no funding for home education. The Government has consistently tried to portray the Badman Review and the legislative changes as being about finding more ways to support home educators.

Many home educators would echo Lord Lucas when he said: "Now the Government can find £1,000 for each of these children-and will spend it on auditing them. Not one penny will go to help the children; it will all go on auditing them. What have these people done to deserve that?"

One of the problems is that "support" means different things to different people. It could mean assistance including financial assistance with places for under 16s at college; it could mean help with access to services to children with special needs; it could mean more generally removing barriers to accessing services; it could mean a non-judgemental respectful attitude to parents and families; it could mean assistance with finding a place to sit GCSEs; it could mean information about alternative provision and flexi-schooling.

There is a pervading scepticism and mistrust among some home educators about the very notion of "support", since the Government has consistently cast suspicion on home educators, has not taken time to understand the theory and practice of home education and does not listen to what home educators want which is to be treated with consideration and respect and not pre-judged as guilty until proved innocent.

Sometimes when the Government speaks of "support", it means "compulsory intervention", for example when the Minister says that Children's Services with bad Ofsted ratings will receive "support".

Education Otherwise YouTube Channel

Education Otherwise has uploaded short clips about various aspects of home education, including interviews with Lord Lucas and also with Dr Alan Thomas explaining informal or autonomous learning. The clips may be seen here. The main feature, School is Not Compulsory has been viewed over seven thousand times.

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