Response to the Department for Children, Schools and Families consultation on Home Education – registration and monitoring proposals
Family Education Trust is a registered charity dedicated to promoting stable family life and the welfare of children. Parents frequently contact the Trust for advice on the options available to them with regard to the education of their children, both within the school system and ‘otherwise’. The Trust actively participated in the process leading up to the publication of the home education guidelines towards the end of 2007, and both met and corresponded with departmental officials at that time. The Trust has played an active role in relation to Graham Badman’s home education review. In addition to making a detailed submission, it also corresponded with departmental officials with regard to the terms of reference of the review and the review questions, and met with Mr Badman on 24 March 2009.
1. Do you agree that these proposals strike the right balance between the rights of parents to home educate and the rights of children to receive a suitable education?
Disagree.
The current law is framed in terms of duties and responsibilities, not rights. Under section 7 of the Education Act 1996, it is parents and not central or local government, who have the responsibility for making sure their children receive ‘efficient full-time education’ suitable to their age, ability and aptitude and any special needs they may have. Parents may fulfil this responsibility, either by ensuring that their children attend school regularly, or by making alternative arrangements.
This law has served both parents and children well for decades. It allows parents the freedom to determine how their children will be educated, while enabling local authorities to take appropriate action where it appears to them that a child of compulsory school age in their area is not receiving suitable education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise (Education Act 1996, s437).
In legal terms, parents do not have a right either to home educate or to send their children to school. Rather, they have a responsibility to ensure their children receive a full-time and efficient education. Whether they fulfil that responsibility by sending their children to school or by making alternative provision is a matter for parents to choose.
There is no more need for legislation that ‘strikes a balance between the rights of parents to home educate and the rights of children to receive a suitable education’ than there is a need for legislation that ‘strikes a balance between the rights of parents to send their children to school and the rights of children to receive a suitable education’.
In his Report to the Secretary of State on the Review of Elective Home Education in England, Graham Badman attempts to give the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) precedence over statute, and adopts an extreme interpretation of the Convention in so doing. He argues that Article 12 of the UNCRC requires that local authorities be given a right of access to home educated children in order to ascertain their views on home education. However, if Mr Badman’s reasoning were to be pursued to its logical conclusion, it would also demand that local authority personnel be granted a right of access to children registered at a school in order to ascertain their views about the education they are receiving. And why stop at education? The logic of Mr Badman’s position would see the state taking the role of the self-appointed advocate for children in every area of their lives, completely undermining the authority of parents.
The Badman Report and the government’s response appear to have lost sight of the fundamental nature of the family. The family is not a group of autonomous individuals who happen to live under the same roof. Rather it is the basic unit of society, forged by bonds of love and committed to the welfare of all its members. The vast majority of parents are concerned to promote the best interests of their children and will seek to educate them with that goal in view. It is therefore inappropriate to think in terms of balancing the ‘rights of parents’ and ‘rights of children’ as if there were a conflict between them. Since parents have responsibilities for their children that are shared by no one else, it is important that their authority is recognised and that the state does not attempt to undermine it by intruding in an area where it has no responsibility.
2. Do you agree that a register should be kept
Disagree.
To require home educating parents to register on an annual basis is effectively to require them to apply for a licence to do something as natural as teaching their own children.
The whole notion of requiring home educators to apply for an annual licence undermines the legal duty that all parents have to ensure that their children receive a full-time and efficient education. It turns home education into a special privilege that may be granted or withheld by the local authority, rather than a choice that may be freely exercised with a view to fulfilling a legal duty.
The Badman Report does not supply any evidence to support its recommendation that home educating parents should be required to register in order to home educate and that registration should be renewable on an annual basis. Under education law, parents are responsible for ensuring that their children receive a full-time efficient education, whether they send them to school or satisfy their legal duty ‘otherwise’. Education is one among many responsibilities that parents bear towards their children, along with feeding them, clothing them, caring for them, protecting them, seeing to their health needs etc. Parents should no more have to register with the state to educate their children than they should be required to apply for a licence to feed and clothe their children, and provide for their other needs.
The position of home educating parents is comparable to that of full-time parents of a pre-school-aged child: if parents choose to place their child in some form of child care or day nursery, they go through a registration process, but no form of registration or monitoring is required for them to care for their own child at home. We see no compelling reason why that should change at the beginning of the term after a child reaches the age of five. Since it is parents who bear the legal responsibility to ensure their children receive a full-time and efficient education, home education should similarly be viewed as the default position, requiring no registration with the state.
The purpose of the proposed registration scheme is unclear. In her oral evidence to the Children, Schools and Families select committee, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools stated: ‘The reason why local authorities need to have a number to know how many children are being home educated in their local authority area is so that they can plan services and make resources available.’ However, such an objective does not provide a justification for a compulsory registration with non-registration being deemed a criminal offence. If the objective were simply to provide access to services, a voluntary registration scheme would suffice. Home educators receive advice and support from a range of sources and do not always feel that the local authority is suitably equipped or best placed to provide the support they need, so not all would make use of its services. Under a voluntary registration scheme, those parents who wanted access to local authority resources could register, while those who did not require local authority support would be free not to register.
In his oral evidence to the select committee, Graham Badman suggested that the reasons for a compulsory registration scheme were more ideological. Quoting with approval from an article published in the Family Law Quarterly, he asserted that compulsory registration was ‘logical, legitimate and compelling’ because, ‘Parents who home educate are not simply performing a private duty, but also a public function.’
However, when parents educate their children at home, they are no more performing a public function than when they feed them, clothe them, nurse them back to health, and care for them in an infinite number of other ways. It is important to remember that the family is a private institution, not an arm of the state. Parents should not be required to register in order to perform any of the responsibilities they bear towards their children – whether it be feeding them, clothing them or educating them.
3. Do you agree with the information to be provided for registration?
Disagree.
We do not agree that a register should be kept.
The government’s proposal that parents should be required to state ‘the location where education is conducted if not the home’ indicates a failure to understand the character of home education. Most home educating families do not see education as an activity confined to a particular location, but rather view it as a way of life.
According to the consultation document, regulations will specify that parents must provide ‘a statement of approach to education’. However, the document does not define what this would mean in practice, nor by what criteria it would be judged. One of the advantages of home education is that provision can be tailored to the developing needs of an individual child and delivered in the context of a close parent-child relationship. The requirement to provide a statement of educational approach introduces an unnecessary element of bureaucracy.
Most home educating parents view the education they give their children as an aspect of parenting. They should therefore no more be required to provide ‘a statement of approach to education’ than any other parent should be required to submit a statement of approach to parenting. Home educating families typically do not draw a distinction between education and family life – the two are very much intertwined. It is for this reason that many are so uncomfortable about compulsory registration and monitoring. They would feel that their family life were being monitored and their children surveilled to a degree not experienced by children attending school. In effect, the proposals are calling for the registration and monitoring of what is for many families, an aspect of normal family life
4. Do you agree that home educating parents should be required to keep the register up to date?
Disagree.
We do not agree that a register should be kept (see answer to Question 2) and are concerned that the government is increasingly gathering data for which it has no compelling need.
5. Do you agree that it should be a criminal offence to fail to register or to provide inadequate or false information?
Disagree.
Under the current law, an offence is committed where a parent fails to cause his or her child to receive a full-time efficient education suitable to the child’s age, ability, aptitude and any special needs. We see no reason to lay any additional legal duty on parents in relation to the education of their children.
If failure to register as a home educating parent were to be made a criminal offence, it would give rise to situations where parents who were fulfilling the requirements of the law in terms of the education they were giving their children would be prosecuted simply because they were not registered. Such an outcome would not be in the interests of children, parents or the authorities and would involve misappropriation of public funds.
In making this proposal, the government appears to be losing its focus on the education of children and creating a layer of bureaucracy that is unrelated to the end in view. Since the registration process is completely unrelated to the statutory duty of parents to provide a full-time and efficient education, a failure to register should not be a criminal offence.
In common with all the proposals for the registration and monitoring of home education, this proposal is disproportionate and displays a serious suspicion and mistrust of parents.
6 a) Do you agree that home educated children should stay on the roll of their former school for 20 days after parents notify that they intend to home educate?
Disagree.
It is parents who bear the legal responsibility for the education of their children and they may discharge their duty either by ensuring the regular attendance of their children at school or ‘otherwise’. If a parent decides to withdraw his or her child from school, that decision must be respected. The child should be deregistered on the date specified by the parent.
Combined with the recommendation that home educators should be visited within a month of initial registration, this proposal seems calculated to ensure that a school place remains available for the child until the local authority has effectively approved the home education provision. This undermines the principle, enshrined in law, that parents should be free to determine the means by which they provide a full-time and efficient education for their children. We are concerned that this proposal is introducing the idea that parents need local authority approval before a child is removed from the school roll, and some local authority personnel would use this provision to place pressure on parents to return their child to school.
6 b) Do you agree that the school should provide the local authority with achievement and future attainment data?
Disagree.
It is parents who are responsible for the education of their children, not the local authority. The data should therefore be given to the child’s parents. This proposal seems to be assuming that the local authority has a responsibility for the education of an individual child that it does not possess in law.
The school should not supply achievement or future attainment data on individual children to any third party without the consent of the child’s parents.
We can foresee situations where the local authority may use the school’s estimate of a child’s future potential to try to compel the child’s parents to pursue a route they do not wish to follow. Equally, it could lead to parents being called to account for the failure of their child to achieve in a given area when, in fact, the school may have misjudged the child’s abilities. The proposal has the potential to undermine parental responsibility and choice and to place undue pressure on home educating families.
7. Do you agree that DCSF should take powers to issue statutory guidance in relation to the registration and monitoring of home education?
Disagree.
There is no need for intrusive registration and monitoring measures. The Badman Report has not provided any compelling reason why children who continue to experience family life during normal ‘school hours’ should be deemed in need of additional safeguarding or monitoring any more than families where children are out of the house between 9.00am and 3.00pm during term-time.
If the government were to propose routine welfare checks on all children during school holidays and at weekends, there would be an outcry. Such an intrusion would rightly be regarded as a breach of family privacy, and many home educating families regard routine monitoring in the same way. Local authorities do not conduct routine safeguarding checks on pre-school aged children who are cared for by a parent at home and we see no reason why that should change once a child reaches the age of five.
Given the questions that remain regarding the accuracy and validity of Graham Badman’s statistics, there is no firm basis on which to treat home education as a risk factor in child abuse. It is, however, well-established that child abuse is disproportionately found in families where children are not brought up by their two natural parents, and particularly where the child’s natural mother is cohabiting with a partner who is not related to the child (e.g. Robert Whelan, Broken Homes and Battered Children, Oxford: Family Education Trust 1994). Nevertheless, it would be regarded as unacceptable and highly discriminatory to routinely monitor or introduce safeguarding measures for all children not living with their two natural parents.
If it is unacceptable to introduce special safeguarding measures where there is an established link between child abuse and family structure, it should be even more unacceptable to contemplate routinely monitoring home educating families where there is no established link.
Where a local authority has ‘reasonable cause to suspect that a child who lives, or is found, in their area is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm’, it is empowered to ‘make, or cause to be made, such enquiries as they consider necessary to enable them to decide whether they should take any action to safeguard or promote the child’s welfare’ (Children Act 1989, s47).
Recent high profile cases of child abuse have highlighted a failure on the part of the authorities to employ the powers that they already have. There is no evidence that additional powers are required.
To impose a system of routine monitoring of home educating families would represent a breach of their right to a private and family life and constitute a waste of public resources. It should be borne in mind that schoolchildren spend far less time in school than away from school.
The current non-statutory guidance, issued in November 2007, is adequate. It was produced following extensive consultation and sets out the legal position clearly. Where the guidelines are properly understood and rightly applied, they work well. The current guidelines should be given more time to bed in, with support and training given to local authority personnel in order to ensure that they have a clear understanding of the scope of their role and responsibilities with regard to elective home education under the current legal framework.
8. Do you agree that children about whom there are substantial safeguarding concerns should not be home educated?
Disagree.
The question does not define what it means by ‘substantial safeguarding concerns’. We note that the consultation document omits the word ‘substantial’ and merely states that:
‘[L]ocal authorities should have a discretion to refuse registration where there are safeguarding concerns. In addition, if safeguarding concerns are identified after home education has begun, the LA would have powers to revoke registration.’
Likewise, both the Badman Report and the government’s response state that local authorities should have the power to refuse or revoke registration where there are ‘safeguarding concerns’, without the use of the word ‘substantial’. In the absence of a clear definition, under the government’s proposals it would be open to local authorities to arbitrarily refuse or revoke registration as home educators on safeguarding grounds.
Registration at school merely raises the expectation that the child will be out of the home from 9.00am to 3.00pm on weekdays for 39 weeks of the year. Registered pupils at school spend far more time in the care of their parents than they do at school. If it is safe for them to be at home in the evenings, at weekends and during the school holidays, it is difficult to see why the situation should be any different during normal school hours.
Either it is safe for a child to be with his or her parents, or it is not. If parents can be trusted to feed, clothe and otherwise care for their children, then they can be trusted to educate them. The existing child protection system within current legislation is adequately equipped to address cases where children are suffering, or at risk of suffering, significant harm.
9. Do you agree that the local authority should visit the premises where home education is taking place provided 2 weeks notice is given?
Disagree.
This proposal represents a serious breach of family privacy. No other section of society is subject to routine visits to ensure that children are being properly looked after or educated. Local authority officers should not have any statutory right of entry to the home unless they have grounds for believing that some form of abuse or neglect is occurring.
The proposal to grant the local authority a statutory right of access to the homes of home educated children is in effect reversing the presumption of innocence in British law and treating parents with suspicion until they have proven themselves innocent. Advocates of routine monitoring sometimes reason that parents who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear and express surprise that conscientious home educating parents should have any objection to home visits. However, if such advocates were to be asked whether they would welcome an annual visit from local authority officials to their own homes, in order to inspect their kitchen facilities, monitor their dietary plans and assess their culinary skills, we suspect that they might consider such monitoring an unwarranted and disproportionate intrusion.
The reason for their objection would not be because they had something to hide, but because they had something to protect – the privacy of their family lives.
The privacy of the family home has been at the foundation of British law for generations and is very important principle to preserve in a free society. As William Pitt the Elder expressed it almost 250 years ago:
‘The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail – its roof may shake – the wind may blow through it – the storm may enter – the rain may enter – but the King of England cannot enter.’
It is frankly an insult to home educating parents to violate the privacy of their homes in the way proposed and to suggest that the only possible reason for any objection is because they have something to hide.
If ‘home education’ is understood in more general terms as the impartation of knowledge and instruction to a child, then it takes place in every home in the land, to a greater or lesser degree. It is therefore unclear on what basis the government is proposing to single out children who are not at school for six hours a day, five days a week, 39 weeks a year for home visits.
The reference to ‘the premises where home education is taking place’ again demonstrates a lack of understanding of home education. For the home educator, education is not restricted to any ‘premises’: education takes place anywhere and everywhere. In a very real sense, for the home educated child, the world is his or her classroom. This being the case, to charge the local authority with the task of ensuring that home educated children are being educated in a ‘suitable environment which is safe and conducive to learning’ is totally unrealistic.
In supporting the Badman Report’s recommendation that local authorities should have a right of access to the family home, the government is treating the homes of home educators in a way that it would never dream of treating the homes of any other section of the population. The family home is just that: it is a family home; it is not an extension of the state school system. If the government wishes to take it upon itself to ensure that all children are learning in a suitable environment that is safe and conducive to learning, to be consistent it would need to visit almost every home in the country because it is not only home educated children who learn at home. All children learn from their parents at home and children registered at school frequently do their homework at home. It is simply not proportionate to single out home educating families for routine home visits.
Almost three years ago, we were assured by a government official that the government would never be able to legislate for a statutory right of access to the home because of privacy and human rights legislation. It is not clear what has changed since then that makes the government think that such intrusion is now legitimate.
10. Do you agree that the local authority should have the power to interview the child, alone if this is judged appropriate, or if not in the presence of a trusted person who is not the parent/carer?
Disagree.
If there is evidence to suggest that a home educated child is at risk, social services should investigate, following their usual procedures. There is no justification for singling home educated children out for any different treatment.
The question does not define when it might be ‘judged appropriate’ for such an interview to take place. There is the potential for local authority officials to gain access to children alone for quite arbitrary reasons. Children would be very vulnerable in this position and it would be possible for a local authority officer who had little understanding of or sympathy for home education to manipulate the situation.
Many parents are rightly very uncomfortable about allowing their child to be interviewed by a stranger alone and find it difficult to believe that the government is seriously proposing such an intrusive measure in relation to home educated children. It runs contrary to the protective instincts of almost every parent. Many children would also find it a frightening and intimidating experience to be questioned alone about aspects of their family life.
The proposal to grant local authority officers a statutory right to interview home educated children, whether alone or not, suggests that home educating parents are being treated with a degree of suspicion like no other group of parents. The recommendation rests on the false assumption that children who are not in school are not ‘seen’. In reality, however, home educated children are part of the wider community and are seen on a daily basis by neighbours, friends, shopkeepers and librarians etc. They are also members of home education groups, sports clubs, orchestras, churches, and gyms etc, and engage in any number of activities outside the home. If there were such a person as an ‘unseen’ child, it is extremely unlikely that the parents would register as home educators and so the proposal to impose intrusive monitoring arrangements on all home educating families would not offer any protection.
11. Do you agree that the local authority should visit the premises and interview the child within four weeks of home education starting, after 6 months has elapsed, at the anniversary of home education starting, and thereafter at least on an annual basis? This would not preclude more frequent monitoring if the local authority thought that was necessary.
Disagree.
For reasons given in response to questions 9 and 10, the local authority should not have statutory powers to routinely visit the home of every home educated child or powers to interview the child.
The measures proposed demonstrate a considerable degree of suspicion and distrust towards parents.
Education is one of many responsibilities that parents bear towards their children. Parents are not routinely monitored for how they feed their children, clothe them, or generally care for them. They are trusted to carry out their responsibilities in a conscientious way, unless anything gives rise to concerns, in which case those concerns are investigated. There is no basis for considering home education a cause for concern. Parents should therefore be trusted to make provision for the education of their children unless and until there is a cause for concern.
The intrusive measures proposed represent a misuse of scarce public resources. They would involve local authority personnel visiting homes which neither wanted nor needed monitoring, diverting resources away from vulnerable children in need of support and protection.
Appendix: Some general observations on the Badman Review and the current legal framework
The recent review of home education conducted by Graham Badman was based on an inaccurate understanding of home education and of the duties of local authorities within the current legal framework. The resulting report is strong on assertion but weak on supporting evidence and does not provide a robust basis for the far-reaching and intrusive measures proposed.
The fact that Graham Badman requested further statistics from local authorities in mid-September reinforces the view that the statistical basis for the review’s recommendations is weak. The figures released on 9 October were sparse and raise more questions than they answer. It is regrettable that they were released so close to the end of the consultation period, thus denying respondents the opportunity of subjecting them to the close scrutiny required. Certainly what has been released so far does not provide a sufficient basis for legislation.
Terms of reference of the review
The terms of reference for the review incorrectly assumed that there are barriers to local authorities and other public agencies in carrying out their responsibilities for safeguarding home educated children. The review rested on the false premise that local authorities have a responsibility to ‘ensure’ that the five Every Child Matters outcomes are being met. In fact, the words ‘ensure’ or ‘ensuring’ featured three times in the four bullet points in the terms of reference. In reality, while local authorities are responsible for ‘safeguarding and promoting’ the welfare of children,[1] they have no duty to ‘ensure’ it and, even if they did, it would be completely outside their power to do so.
The local authority personnel who felt that they were ‘not able to ensure that all home educated children are able to [achieve the five ECM outcomes]’ [2] were therefore demonstrating a failure to understand the law and the limitations of their role. This failure to appreciate the fundamental difference between ‘promoting’ and ‘ensuring’ ran throughout the review.
Section 175(1) of the Education Act 2002 places local authorities under a duty to ‘safeguard and promote’ the welfare of children, and Section 10 of the Children Act 2004 requires local authorities to promote co-operation with partners and other appropriate agencies with a view to improving the well-being of children in their area in relation to:
(a) physical and mental health and emotional well-being;
(b) protection from harm and neglect;
(c) education, training and recreation;
(d) the contribution made by them to society;
(e) social and economic well-being.
There is a clear difference between ‘safeguarding and promoting’ children’s welfare and aiming to improve their well-being on one hand, and ‘ensuring that all children are able to achieve the five outcomes’ on the other. It is simply not within the power of central or local government to ‘ensure’ that all children are healthy, safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and achieve economic well-being.
The Badman Report is therefore mistaken when it asserts that: ‘being denied access to the place of education and the opportunity to speak with the child prevents [local authorities] from fulfilling their current statutory duties’ (para 5.1). Not only does this claim confirm the fundamental misunderstanding of the current legal framework referred to above, but it also betrays a failure to appreciate that for most home educated children there is no single ‘place of education’. Mr Badman was also mistaken when, in his oral evidence to the select committee, he suggested that all children are ‘in the care of’ their local authority. They are not; they are in the care of their parents
If the government or local authorities were to be placed under a legal obligation to ‘ensure’ that all children achieve the five Every Child Matters outcomes, they would be opening themselves up to litigation from parents and children who considered that they had failed to achieve one or more of the outcomes.
The purpose of the five Every Child Matters outcomes is to help local authorities establish priorities in terms of policy development, not to set targets for individual children. The five outcomes cover very broad areas and are capable of subjective interpretation, making them unsuitable as measurements of the achievement of individual children. We note that two of the outcomes relate to ‘emotional well-being’ and ‘social and economic well-being’, yet there is no agreement as to the meaning of the term well-being.
A recent DCSF research report concluded that there was, ‘significant ambiguity around the definition, usage and function of the word “wellbeing”, not only within DCSF but in the public policy realm, and in the wider world’. It added that ‘the meaning and function of a term like “wellbeing” not only changes through time, but is open to both overt and subtle dispute and contest’ and recommended that the DCSF adopt a ‘low key but deliberate strategy to manage [its] position within this ambiguity and instability’.[3] We would therefore suggest that it would be a hazardous exercise for local authorities to make judgments about the ‘emotional’ or ‘social and economic well-being’ of individual children in their area.
The terms of reference further referred to home educated children as though they were a particularly vulnerable and ‘at risk’ group, when in reality they are simply children whose parents are exercising their right under Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 to educate them ‘otherwise’ than at school. The fact that the terms of reference referred to ‘the extent to which claims of home education could be used as a ‘cover’ for child abuse’ indicates that an assumption had already been made that home education was being used as a ‘cover’.
The current guidelines
Beyond stating its agreement with local authorities that the Elective Home Education Guidelines are ‘unworkable in that they are contradictory and confer responsibility without power’, the Badman Report makes little reference to the current guidelines. It does not even attempt to explain the basis for the criticism made, nor does it reveal precisely how many local authorities shared this view.
As shown above, the current legal framework is widely misunderstood by local authority personnel and this confusion was reflected in the terms of reference for the review and in Graham Badman’s letter of 19 January 2009 to Directors of Children’s Services.
The guidelines are very clear that:
‘Local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis. However, under Section 437(1) of the Education Act 1996, local authorities shall intervene if it appears that parents are not providing a suitable education’ (para 2.7, emphasis in original).
In a reference to the duty of local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children under Section 175(1) of the Education Act 2002, the guidelines state:
‘Section 175(1) does not extend local authorities’ functions. It does not, for example, give local authorities powers to enter the homes of, or otherwise see, children for the purposes of monitoring the provision of elective home education’ (para 2.12).
However, where there are grounds for concern about the welfare of a home educated child, the local authority is empowered to act:
‘[L]ocal authorities have general duties to make arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children (section 175 Education Act 2002 in relation to their functions as a local authority and for other functions in sections 10 and 11 of the Children Act 2004). These powers allow local authorities to insist on seeing children in order to enquire about their welfare where there are grounds for concern (sections 17 and 47 of the Children Act 1989). However, such powers do not bestow on local authorities the ability to see and question children subject to elective home education in order to establish whether they are receiving a suitable education’ (para 2.15).
The current guidelines present a consistent view throughout and do not confer any responsibilities upon local authorities that they do not possess the power to fulfil. The guidelines offer protection for children while respecting the private and family life of home educating families. Rather than introduce a system of routine monitoring, local authority staff should receive training so that they are thoroughly familiar with the guidelines and the legal framework on which they rest and so that they are equipped to consistently apply the guidelines in the course of their daily work.
Conclusion
It is important to uphold the legal tradition whereby citizens of a free country are presumed innocent until found guilty. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, itshould be assumed that parents are fulfilling their legal responsibilities with regard to the care and education of their children. If such a presumption were more widespread, it would help to resolve many of the conflicts that have arisen between local authorities and home educating parents. Agents of the state do not routinely enter the private homes of citizens to ascertain that they do not possess any stolen goods, have not downloaded any illegal material onto the hard drives of their computers, or that they have not committed any other criminal offence. And there is no reason why home educating parents should be made the exceptions to this general rule.
The current legal framework for home education is consistent with British legal traditions and with international human rights instruments, and pays due regard to parental responsibilities and family privacy. We are opposed to the introduction of legislation that would in any way undermine parents and suggest a lack of trust. If local authorities were to be given the statutory duty to monitor the education provision of every child in its area not registered at a school, they would be liable to legal action if they were deemed to have failed in their duties.
We are not sure that the strengths and benefits of the present framework are always appreciated:
• it permits flexibility – where support is needed and requested it can be given;
• where parents are fulfilling their responsibilities and do not require support or intervention, the local authority has no obligation towards them;
• scarce resources are therefore not wasted on monitoring families who neither need nor want local authority involvement;
• Local authority resources are freed up to address situations where ‘it appears to them’ that a child is not receiving suitable education.
October 2009
References
1. Children Act 2004, s11.
2. Graham Badman, letter to Directors of Children’s Services and Lead Members for Children and Young People, 19 January 2009.
3. DCSF, What do we mean by ‘wellbeing’? And why might it matter? October 2008.