Meeting documents

For the Committee to receive an annual update about elective home educated children within Buckinghamshire and about potential changes to national legislation

Contributors:

Mrs Anita Cranmer – Cabinet Member for Education & Skills

Ms Paulette Thompson-Omenka – Acting Service Director Education

Mrs Vivian Trundell - Education Entitlement Manager

Mr Hussain delivered an overview of the report to the Committee. He emphasised that any parent can choose to home educate their child and that local authorities could request that the child is returned to an educational placement if they don’t think their home education is sufficient. If parents were to refuse and the authority had real concerns about a child then this had often ended up in court. He welcomed Mr Morgan, Head of Early Help, as the operational lead and they both invited questioning from Members.

A PGR asked about how the service area had collected data to track the reasons behind parent’s deciding to home-educate their children. Mr Morgan told the Committee that reasoning had been sought but finding commonality of reasons had been difficult. There had been no clear correlation, as the cohorts had been so different.

A Member questioned why the data stopped being collected when a child had reached year 11, as children had been required by law to stay in education until they reached 18 years old. Mr Morgan said that home education monitoring only went up to year 11. Older children fell into the Not in Education, Employment or Training category (NEET). NEET tracking is undertaken as part of the new early help structure within Buckinghamshire. Post 16 education and training activity is monitored and reported on monthly.

A Member noticed that there had been a peak in children being removed from their school placements by parents, during the primary to secondary transition years, during 11+ testing and GCSE examinations. Mr Morgan stated that reasons for this had been varied; some had been dissatisfied with the placement offered, some had experienced too much pressure in high performance schools, some hadn’t felt that they had the right EHCP support. About 64% of home-educated children had been from the secondary cohort.

Mr Morgan told the Committee that there had been no common causality identified nationally and that figures for home-educated children had a 20% year on year increase. Parents had become more aware that home education was an option for their child which had contributed to increased figures. The council would continue to check and challenge parents about the progress which their children had made, in comparison to a school setting, as the reality of providing home education to a child had often been different to what parents had expected.

A PGR questioned whether the parental ability to provide home education had been monitored by BCC. Mr Morgan said that all parents were able to select elective home education for their child and currently the Council visits all parents who had made this choice. The DfE is currently consulting on proposed changes to EHE which will if implemented would increase the Councils responsibilities in this area.

Ms Thompson-Omenka said that there had been concerns with the rise in home-educated children nationally and, anecdotally, with the increased risk of safeguarding issues this could bring. Ms Thompson-Omenka didn’t think it was wrong for parents to home school their children, as long as the quality of their education had been of a good standard, and that the decision hadn’t been taken because of the failings of a previous school placement. The council would work hard to ensure all 679 home-educated children were safe and were getting a good education.

A PGR asked about the terminology of Children in Need (CIN) and was informed that this referred to children who had an open safeguarding case with Children’s Social Care and who were being visited by social workers to monitor any concerns. Approximately 4% of home educated children had been within this category.

The Chairman thanked all contributors and closed the item.