NEWS RELEASE
June 17th, 2010
Ofsted Home Education Report Seriously Flawed Says Graham Stuart MP
Graham Stuart MP, who last week was elected to take the Chair of the
Commons Education Select Committee, today condemned Ofsted’s report on
home education, “Local Authorities and Home Education” as “an
unpleasant hangover of the last government: a manifesto for more state
power at the expense of dedicated home educators and their children”.
Mr Stuart went on, “It is astonishing that the Chief Inspector of
Schools should stray onto home education and get it so wrong. In
Ofsted’s official press release she says that “it is extremely
challenging for local authorities to meet their statutory duty to
ensure children have a suitable education”, when they have no such
duty. Parents, not the state, have the statutory duty to ensure that
their children have a suitable education.
“I find it deeply concerning that, after months of work, the Chief
Inspector should make such a basic mistake and so utterly confuse the
duties of local authorities and parents. Parents who home educate
deserve our respect and awe at their dedication and achievements, not
the relentless suspicion of an over mighty state.”
Under section 436A of the Education Act 1996, inserted by the
Education and Inspections Act 2006, local authorities have a duty to
identify children who are not receiving a suitable education in their
area, so far as it is practical to do so. As the 2007 Elective Home
Education Guidelines for Local Authorities make clear, however, ‘local
authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the
quality of home education on a routine basis’ and are only required to
intervene if it appears that parents are not providing a suitable
education.
Mr Stuart went on, “As local authorities do not have the power to
demand access to home educated children and cannot insist on parents
registering with them, the obvious and correct answer is for local
authorities to improve their support for families so that more
families make contact with them voluntarily. If they did this and made
sure that they employed sympathetic staff who built good reputations,
then the number of “unknown” children would be reduced. Such a
positive approach would respect the primacy of parents in determining
the education of their children and put the onus on local authorities
to serve and support, rather than catalogue and monitor, families who
home educate.
“Ofsted’s report has little to say about improving local authority
support for home educated children and says only that the Department
of Education should “consider” funding an entitlement for
home-educated children to take public examinations. Ofsted’s report is
seriously flawed and damaging to the confidence of home educating
parents who had hoped that the relentless disinformation and bullying
of the previous regime was over.”
