Home Education: Standards

(asked on 2nd September 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if his Department will take steps to help ensure that local authorities are consistent when making decisions on whether a home-educated child is receiving an adequate education.


Answered by
Jonathan Gullis Portrait
Jonathan Gullis
This question was answered on 30th September 2022

Local authorities already have the ability to determine whether a home educated child is receiving a suitable education. The measures in the Schools Bill do not provide local authorities with additional powers to monitor or assess education.

The Government is committed to establishing a local authority registration system for children not in school, as well as a duty for local authorities to provide support to home-educating families. Current guidance already provides local authorities with a framework to determine whether the provision was suitable. Local authorities should have the in-house expertise to make these decisions, but if they do not then they can, and should, consider undertaking additional training.

As part of the Children Not in School proposals, the Department also intends to create new statutory guidance for local authorities on how they should be implementing their duties in relation to the registers, and will also review and update existing guidance as part of this. This guidance, in addition to the measures themselves, will help toward ensuring a more consistent approach across local authorities.

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