HED0141
Written evidence submitted by Brady
To the Committee responsible for the Call for Evidence on Home Education.
In response to your “call for evidence” it is your duty to consider the following.
The call for evidence has manipulated current circumstances caused by the Covid-19 lockdown to make an unreasonable request in a completely atypical situation.
It is not in the public interest to attempt to manipulate the education guidance, which is not a legal statute, to attempt to enforce a public register of home educated children.
There is no equivalent register available for all state school attendees and the sharing of this information would constitute a breach of GDPR and child protection law.
The education act of 1996 section 436a does not apply to home educated children and there is no legal basis or definition for regular monitoring. If there is no legal requirement for this why has guidance been issued to the contrary?
Home education is not a safeguarding issue. The quality of the home education is the duty of the parent, not the local authority. The state school system has already failed to maintain the quality of education required for most children and there have been many reports of child abuse by state school staff.
Regarding section 576 of the education act 1996, guidance clearly states that the upbringing, medical treatment and education of any child falls under parental responsibility, therefore it is not a concern of local education authorities how a child is educated at home.
No statutory register of home educated children is required, especially at further cost to the state following the level of national debt incurred to support Covid related “initiatives”.
The advantages of home education are limitless because home education is not bound by state targets and curriculum. For any government that can justify billions of pounds of debt to support people who have been kicked out of work, but not feed children from families in financial difficulty during half-term, to then attempt to sneak in this enquiry by stealth falls under the realm of governmental malpractice.
There is no financial support for home educators from the state. Home educators have no interest in financial support from the state as it will inevitably come with regulations, commitments and obligations.
Tax-paying home educators are an enormous benefit to the state for the following reasons:
The current regulatory frameworks for off-rolling, unregistered schools and exclusions are failing functions of the state schools and government and are not relevant to home education.
Inspections of state facilities for education have failed in safeguarding children. The state cannot manage this with the existing education system. It therefore has no right to intrude on family privacy and safety. Safeguarding is not an educational issue, it is a duty of care issue and shouldn’t be portrayed otherwise.
No improvements have been made since the 2010-15 committee report. The only improvement that can be made is for home educators to stop being harassed by government enquiries at the expense of the taxpayer.
With regards to the content of the 2010-15 committee report, the local authorities are responsible for the quality of the state provided facilities for education. State education is failing. Why would home educators need the provision of services from a failing system?
The state failed this year to provide suitable examination facilities in accordance with the Covid-19 restrictions to accommodate all children of examinable age.
Children were therefore given predicted grades where they were school registered, the state provided no certification for children who could have attended private examination centres outside of school. The home educated students were yet again let down by the state.
There was no impact from Covid-19 on any home educated children. They were able to continue with their normal education practices uninterrupted by the loss of state facilities. This was far healthier for those children than the utter chaos of the state-enforced school closures, where there have been reports of schools abandoning their duties of both education and care.
The staff proposed for inspection of home education have no qualifications, experience or knowledge of education, especially in the home. Even state-appointed educators are not in a position to assess the quality of home education as they can only work according to the state provided curriculum and cannot asses the merits of home education outside of that context.
In conclusion, with the current national financial difficulties, this can only be seen as yet another misappropriation of state spending to gain the right to victimise home educators and bring the general public under state control. All this to divert attention from the failure of the state to provide even the bare minimum of education facilities during the alleged Covid-19 “outbreak”.
October 2020