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Freedom for Children to Grow

Overview of Education Otherwise Response to
Consultation on Home Education Guidelines

Foreword

Education Otherwise welcomed the long-awaited public consultation on Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities. We endorsed the production and dissemination of new guidelines as the best way forward.

Education Otherwise gives support and information to members who wish to establish a positive working partnership with their local authority.

Education Otherwise is the largest and longest-established organisation representing the interests of families undertaking home-based education. Our organisation and membership are major stakeholders in this process. We met with the Department during the consultation, and look forward to further opportunities for consultation during the next stage of the process.

We consulted widely with our membership via local, regional and national internet support lists run by Education Otherwise. We also canvassed the views of members via the Education Otherwise newsletter, which is sent to 5,000 member families. In addition we have run eight regional workshops for home educators as part of the process of drafting our response.

We retained a barrister with expertise in Elective Home Education and experience in the area of training for local authorities, who assisted in the preparation of our consultation response and the drafting of proposed revised Guidelines.

Home-Based Education: The Way Forward

The Department talks of relationships between the local authority and home educators. We are pleased to report that an increasing number of authorities are now willing to put the relationship on a different footing.

During the past 6 months Education Otherwise has travelled across the country to hear our members' views and to set out the implications of the new legislative framework. We have run a series of 8 regional workshops for home educators in the Midlands, the South West, the North East, the North West, London, the West Midlands, the South East and East Anglia.

The Department is already aware of the new positive working partnership between the local authority and home educators in Sheffield. During the 12-week consultation period the Department met twice with local representatives from Education Otherwise and the Sheffield Children and Young People's Directorate.

Local Authority Pilot Projects

Education Otherwise recommends that the Department consider a number of innovative pilot projects aimed at promoting positive working partnerships across a range of urban, suburban, rural and metropolitan borough areas. The authority's role in these pilot schemes will evolve from a one-to-one inspection and monitoring role, which is neither cost-effective nor equitable, and move towards an advisory, information, and resource-based support role.

Local authority duties could better be interpreted as providing an advice and support service, for example:

a fulltime Telephone Helpline service;
establishment of informative council website pages on Elective Home Education resources;
liaising and mediating where appropriate with other children's service departments, the extended curriculum team and extended schools provision for the wider community;
fostering links between the home education community and the Further Education sector;
ensuring that the home education community is included in circulars on wider community provision for children and young people

Education Otherwise believes that it is only through engagement with the local community that the authorities will discover the most cost-effective way to meet their responsibilities.

Local authorities already have a duty to consult stakeholders. We outline here a number of cases where the authorities have welcomed an initial approach from the local home education community to engage on a collective basis and at a policy level.

Sheffield: An Example Of A Positive Working Partnership Between The Local Home Education Community And The Local Authority

Sheffield Home Educators' Network and Education Otherwise Positive Working Partnership with the Children and Young People's Directorate

Sheffield local authority has responded very positively to approaches from the local home education community. During June 2006 the local home education community participated in city-wide focus groups on Every Child Matters. At a meeting with the Director of Local Delivery, Sheffield Home Educators' Network offered to produce a trifold leaflet on home education in Sheffield for the authority's Home Education Advisor to hand out to new families.
Education Otherwise representatives applied to present an agenda item at the December Children and Young People's Scrutiny Board concerning truancy sweep protocols. Several managers from the Access and Inclusion Department attended the Scrutiny Board meeting in order to make appointments to discuss issues with the home education community.
A series of positive meetings has now taken place between the authority and Education Otherwise during the first half of 2007. These meetings are scheduled every half term and generally last for two hours with two managers from Access and Inclusion and three home educating parents plus a home educated young person.
The first area to be covered was the correct protocol for Truancy Sweeps. The Service Managers invited two police officers to the meeting to discuss the issues and to determine the procedure for the sweeps. The police had been taking their lead from the Education Welfare Officers but sometimes used Community Police Officers who had not been trained in the correct procedure with respect to Elective Home Education. The Service Managers undertook to train the Education Welfare Officers and the police then briefed their own officers who would be working in this area.
Subsequent meetings covered:

discussion of funding for college places for 14-16s;
the earlier proposed Departmental consultation into changing the regulatory framework;
the new consultation on draft Guidelines for local authorities;
ContactPoint operation (in Sheffield called SafetyNet);
SEN funding;
the responsibilities of the authority and the home educating families;
improving the initial written information sent to new families;
ill-advised council media statements on education and schools
Education Otherwise and the CYPD made submissions to the February Scrutiny Board stating their joint commitment to dialogue and engagement in working towards a common understanding and interpretation, between Children And Young People's Services and home educators, of the legal responsibilities of the Children and Young People's Directorate in relation to Safeguarding.
Following the February meeting, the Cabinet Member for Children's Services wrote to the Secretary of State for Education in April to ask when the revised Guidelines for Local Authorities would be issued, since the Board felt that clarification of duties and responsibilities would be most helpful. The consultation on draft guidelines for local authorities was announced in early May.
Education Otherwise returned to the June Scrutiny Board to inform councillors that the Department was now consulting on the draft Guidelines. Education Otherwise further reported that the DfES was shortly travelling to Sheffield to discuss matters arising from the consultation and to hear more about the positive working partnership between the Directorate and the local home education community.

DfES Meetings With Education Otherwise and Sheffield Local Authority
The DfES meetings to discuss the Sheffield Model took place in June and early July with representatives from the Policy and Performance Division in London and from the Elective Home Education Department within the DfES at Darlington.

Focus Group Joint Participation
A further example of co-operative partnership occurred in February when Education Otherwise and the Service Manager for Local Delivery participated jointly in the NFER Focus Group into Support for Home Educating Families which took place in York in February 2006. The NFER Report was published in July 2007.
Home Educated Young People Set A Positive Example
Home educated young people in Sheffield sat on the city-wide funding panel for the pilot project YOF and YOP funding and liaised with members of the Youth Service in Sheffield. Home educated teens also submitted successful bids for funding for activities which promoted the 5 outcomes of Every Child Matters for the local group.
The DfES made a visit to Sheffield to review the progress of the scheme and further commended Sheffield as a model of good practice.

Examples Of Dialogue Between The Local Authority And The Local Home Education Community

The Department may also wish to consider the recent initiatives being undertaken by members of Education Otherwise and local home education support groups.

Sheffield (positive working partnership between the local authority and Education Otherwise and Sheffield Home Educators' Network)
Staffordshire (positive website. clear transparent policies and procedures)
Worcestershire (Parent Partnership engaging with local home education group. pupil self evaluation forms. feedback questionnaire on how local home educators found the service from Parent Partnership)
Milton Keynes council website information on Elective Home Education. Joint contribution to Guidelines consultation
Kent: LA meetings with representatives from home education support groups.
Bexley: Training on Truancy Sweep procedures for Bexley local authority Education Welfare officers and the police
Brighton: LA meeting with local home education group, looking at changing written information on home education from the LA
Doncaster: with respect to policy making, positive meeting with Change Manager in DMBC, discussing policy and LA literature on home education
Westminster: positive meeting EO and local home educators with Senior EWO and home education policy maker. Looking at Guidelines consultation together
Leicester: meeting with LA EHE team to discuss Guidelines and Safeguarding issues
Gloucester: meeting with GCYPS to discuss Guidelines and Safeguarding issues and Serious Case Review foster carer Eunice Spry
Midlands Regional LA conference (c. 20 authorities) invited EO Local Authority Bridge Builder to participate in conference and discussion of Local Authority issues with respect to Guidelines
South West Regional Conference invited EO Trustee to participate in conference (c. 20 authorities) and discussion of LA issues in home education. Request from Conference Convenor to work with EO on briefing for EHE and SEN.
North Yorkshire. Meeting between LA and local home education group

Home-Based Education : New Laws Relating To Children And Young People

In recent years there have been several important new laws and initiatives:

Every Child Matters
Children Act 2004
Education and Inspections Act 2006

Local education authorities have disappeared, to be replaced by large multi-agency departments. It is very helpful in the light of these changes for the Department to reissue guidelines to local authorities clarifying their duties and responsibilities.

Introduction of new guidelines will go some way to addressing the current situation. However, lack of funding to local authorities continues to be a major impediment to the proper implementation of the law.

Home-Based Education: The Lead Professional

We concur with the Department's view that there is a need to establish a lead professional for Elective Home Education in each local authority. Moreover, the role of the lead professional needs to be embedded in the Children's Service Department with a clear remit and a structured programme of professional development. This will facilitate a better understanding at a local level between the authority and the home education community.

The current legislative framework is sufficient but poorly understood, and too often custom and practice does not reflect legislation.

Home-Based Education: The Parents' Responsibilities

The duty in law to ensure that a child is receiving an education lies with the parents, whether the child attends school or is educated at home. European and British human rights legislation provides that parents have the right to choose an education for their children which is in accordance with their religious and philosophical convictions. European jurisprudence makes it clear that States parties have the positive obligation to promote this parental right.

Any move to make a child's education the responsibility of parties other than the parent's strikes at the very heart of the legislative framework for education in England and would expose those other parties to formal legal responsibility enforceable and actionable in the courts.

Personalised Education

The requirement to provide an education suitable to the age, ability, aptitude and special educational needs of the child is the cornerstone of the current legislation. It defines the responsibilities of the parent in relation to their individual child and from this parents can deliver a truly personalised education, which is such an important characteristic of home-based education.

Lack Of Awareness Among Professionals And Wider Community

It is our experience that some of the people employed to work in this area are openly hostile to the fact that home-based education is allowed in law. Some see their task as "getting the child into school".

There is a lack of awareness of home-based education amongst national and local politicians and councillors, policy makers and national and local authority officials. As a result, our community is often adversely affected by legislation and initiatives not designed to impact on them and frequently forgotten or excluded from initiatives, funding streams and proposals that would assist them.

This position has arisen following the re-organisation brought about by the Children Act 2004 and we are aware of home educated children, especially those who have special educational needs, being placed on 'at risk' registers or having care proceedings initiated which centre on a misunderstanding of the nature and practice of home education.

Every Home Educated Child Matters

The government's statement that "Every Child Matters" has a very hollow ring in our community. Across the country home educators themselves fund the home-based education (including all educational resources and examination costs), the local family support networks and the national organisations such as Education Otherwise.

If home educated children entered the maintained sector, this would cost the Exchequer two hundred million pounds, representing £5,000 average per capita school child funding for 40,000 children and young people, with additional costs for SEN provision.

The relationship between the local authority and the home education community is not without its problems. Too often it seems that professionals are slow to recognise that inappropriate intervention causes untold distress. It is our experience that many local authorities have an expectation of annual intrusive visits to the home where they insist on interrogating the family and on imposing the officer's own school-based model of education.

Furthermore, some authorities routinely use the threat of a School Attendance Order to get parents to comply with local authority practices and some practitioners have a rigid inflexible attitude and insist on questioning the child. Many families are coerced into reluctant cooperation. Many families find these visits stressful and they rarely bring any benefit to the family.

Home-Based Education And Special Educational Needs

In the consultation response and revised draft Guidelines, Education Otherwise has paid particular attention to the Elective Home Education of children and young people with Special Educational Needs. This is an area which is poorly understood by many professionals who would attempt to import a school-based model of SEN provision into Elective Home Education. Education Otherwise Disability Group assisted in the drafting of our Guidelines on SEN. The members of the Disability Group bring many years of experience to this task.

Discrimination

Home-based education and school are afforded equal status in law. Families exercising their right to home educate deserve to have their decision respected and must be treated equally under the law. Letters from the Department frequently contain an assertion that the best place for a child is in school. This is an impediment to positive channels of communication and undermines trust. We feel that this devalues the sacrifices made by families who undertake Elective Home Education. Families experience prejudice and discrimination on the following grounds: class, race, housing, single parenthood, SEN, disability and de-registration following bullying. Negative stereotyping and prejudice are detrimental to children's security and well-being.