Freedom for Children to Grow

Where to Start

One way to do this is by going through your local council website with a fine toothcomb. Another way is to put different combinations of phrases into a UK pages search engine (the internal search engines for the councils are pretty rubbish; you generally need to know what you are looking for!)

The main thing to bear in mind is that Home Education is a very small piece of the equation. There may not be anything on your council website specifically about their Elective Home Education Policy; indeed they may not really have a policy.

Try phrases such as: "Children and Young People"; "Every Child Matters"; "Personalised Learning"; "School Improvement Services"; "Access and Inclusion"; "Hospital Education Service" plus the name of your area. For example I might go to Google UK (pages from the UK) and put in "every child matters Sheffield".

So you need to find out who to talk to or where to send a letter/email. You need to work back down from the head of children's services. Get as close to the top as you can and make every effort to get the top person on board. For example in Sheffield this person is "Head of Local Delivery" who is responsible for implementing the Every Child Matters agenda.

This person may well be quite new to the job or the area. There has been a big shake-up following the Children Act 2004 which brought a statutory requirement for Local Authorities to do away with the old "Local Education Authority" or "LEA" and bring in something like "Children and Young People's Services" or "Children and Young People's Directorate".

Background Reading:

Further Research

Put "Scrutiny Board" plus the name of your area into a UK pages search engine and see what you can find for Children and Young People. There may be regular meetings which members of the public can attend, as members of Sheffield Home Educators' Network did recently to raise the issue of Truancy Sweep Protocol.

Try also putting "Scrutiny Board" and "Children" into the search facility of your local council website as well.

It is worth investigating what is happening with Joint Area Reviews in your local area because home educating parents are stakeholders and partners and should be consulted about matters affecting their interests. Put "JAR" "joint area review" plus the name of your area into a UK pages search engine to find out what is happening.

OFSTED site explains Joint Area Reviews.
OFSTED site timetable for rolling out Joint Area Reviews

These JARs are of considerable significance to home educators because it is likely that Local Authority Documentation on Elective Home Education will be one of the many items to be considered and anyone who wishes to get their LA to change their written policy on Elective Home Education may well find themselves stalled by reference to "what happens in the JAR".

Next Steps

It is wise not to assume that there will be any inter-departmental sharing of information, so you will probably need to make contact with a number of different departments at the Local Authority.

In terms of getting the Local Authority to understand the perspectives of the home education community I have suggested starting at the top and working down. This is because Home Education Advisors (they sometimes style themselves "Inspectors" or even EWOs although strictly speaking this last role should be purely welfare and not to do with assessing educational provision) do not have much power to make executive level decisions. Time is of the essence and therefore it is more important at this stage to establish and maintain contact with the key decision makers and opinion shapers at the Authority.