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Freedom for Children to Grow |
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The Law Relating to
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The Law and the Local AuthorityDCSF Home Education Guidelines 2007Sections 437 to 443 of the Education Act 1996 place a duty upon local education authorities to take certain actions if it appears that a child is not being properly educated.
If it appears to a local education authority that a child of compulsory school age in their area is not receiving suitable education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise, they shall serve a notice in writing on the parent requiring him to satisfy them within the period specified in the notice that the child is receiving such education. (s 437 (1))The local authority’s legal duty is concerned solely with children who appear not to be receiving suitable education. Beyond this, nothing in the Act requires a local authority to carry out regular monitoring of provision where a child is receiving education otherwise than at school. However, case law (Phillips v Brown, Divisional Court [20 June 1980, unreported]) has established that a local authority may initially ask parents who are educating their children at home for information in order to assess whether it appears to the local authority that no suitable education is being provided. You can find more information about the Phillips vs Brown judgement here. In Phillips v Brown, Lord Donaldson said: Of course such a request is not the same as a notice under s 37 (1) of the Education Act 1944 [now s 437 (1) of the Education Act 1996] and the parents will be under no duty to comply. However it would be sensible for them to do so. If parents give no information or adopt the course … of merely stating that they are discharging their duty without giving any details of how they are doing so, the LEA will have to consider and decide whether it ‘appears’ to it that the parents are in breach of s 36 [now s 7 of the Education Act 1996].If a local authority chooses to approach a family and informally ask for information, parents may establish that a child is receiving an efficient and suitable education in a number of ways. Parents might for example prefer one of the following, all of which have been accepted as valid by different Local Authorities in England: a written report,LAs have no automatic right of access to parents' homes. This is has been supported in case law: “an education authority should not, as a matter of policy, insist on inspection in the homes as the only method of satisfying themselves that children were receiving efficient full time education”and further: "the Act of 1944 (replaced by the 1996 Education Act) does not provide for or contemplate an intrusion of a parent’s privacy by inspectors coming into the home and that it is quite wrong for a Local Authority to insist on such inspection.” However, many aspects of law relating to children and young people have been affected by the 2004 Children Act, particularly the 5 Outcomes of Every Child Matters: Be Safe; Be Healthy; Make a Positive Contribution; Enjoy and Achieve; Achieve Economic Wellbeing. The Information Sharing Index (Section 12 of the 2004 Children Act) allows for up to half a million professional and voluntary sector workers to access to information about our children, both within the Local Authority and also feeding into the National Database. In addition the Children Missing Education Policy under Section 4 of the Education and Inspection Act 2006 puts a proactive duty on the Local Authority to categorise the place of education of each child in the area. This is the Statutoruy Guidance published by the DfES in February 2007. We predict that there will be transition times, primary and secondary entrance points, where the Admissions Teams at the Local Authority will increasingly be pressing for more details of where the child is to be educated.
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