HomeSchooler.org.uk

Exactly a year ago the Department for Children Schools and Families launched the Badman Review of Home Education. Last October we wrote that home educators had been subject to nine months of policy based evidence making. The tide began to turn with the publication of the Select Committee Report, which reprimanded the Department for relying on unsound evidence and for rushing to legislate on home education without publishing feedback from the recent public consultation.
Two months after the Secretary of State reassured parliament that right of access to the home and private interviews with children would be both voluntary and optional, the Department finally published feedback from the consultation which set out the real position.

"We have decided that local authorities should visit the place where education is taking place, which will usually be the family home, as part of their monitoring work. If families choose not to cooperate, and as a result are not on the register, local authorities will be able to use a school attendance order to require the home educated child or children to attend school."
MPs and Lords are being asked at every stage to accept without evidence that there is no alternative and also to accept that most questions about the future will remain unanswered since the Department has either not yet had time to make any decisions or chooses not to share any information before the Bill becomes law. A simple indication of how much the legal skeleton will be fleshed out later may be seen in the extensive regulation-making powers in six new sections of the 1996 Education Act, namely 19A, 19B, 19C, 19F, I9G and 19H.
The memorandum to the Children Schools and Families Bill notes dispassionately that all of the regulation-making powers will be subject to the negative resolution procedure which is apparently appropriate "as the registration scheme will be too detailed to be on the face of the legislation and will contain extensive administrative provision."

In the month following the publication of the Children Schools and Families Bill, the Department quietly produced a Research Paper which stated:

"The cost and benefit estimates for home education are the largest of any measure in the Bill. The size of the ranges reflects the state of knowledge about the number of home educated children. A range of 20,000 to 80,000 is used for the costs. Unit costs are assumed to be lower for the 20,000 pupils already known to local authorities as they are thought to need less ongoing monitoring. The benefits range quoted in the Impact Assessment’s summary and in the table above uses the ‘most likely’ range of 20,000 to 40,000 home educated children. The detailed analysis puts the estimated benefits for 80,000 home educated pupils at £1.6 billion"
The Select Committee challenged the figures from the Department and a revised Impact Assessment was promised to arrive "prior to the Bill Committee stage". [Addendum: After this news item was published we learnt that the revised impact assessment was signed off yesterday and made available online today. It can be downloaded here.]
At 5.15 today the Public Bill Committee will take evidence on the home education clause of the Bill from a panel which includes Graham Badman, author of the Badman Review and Fiona Nicholson, Trustee of Education Otherwise.

The National Autistic Society which will also be giving evidence on the Bill today has published an announcement this morning.

The Committee stage of the Bill will be concluded by February 4th and the Bill will then move swiftly to the Report stage and to the Third Reading in the Commons before going to the Lords.

Documents for the Bill may be found here.

From time to time the Department also indicates that there are plans to conduct an Independent Government Review on the same lines as the Badman Review over what constitutes suitable education at home. This Review has always been shrouded in secrecy which the Select Committee noted had "fuelled the anguish" of home educators.