Do not impose any new requirements on parents who are home educating

The Education Committee has recently recommended introducing a statutory home educated register, and greater assessment of home educated children. These recommendations are in contrast to the views of many parents who home educate.

Ministers have said they are committed to a registration system for children who are not in school, despite not having published responses to a 2019 consultation on children not in school. We believe there is no evidential basis for increased requirements for home education, for registration, assessment or testing. If introduced, these recommendations could stigmatise and even destroy the very essence of home education: it is not school. We, the undersigned, call upon the Government not to introduce any such measures.

The Education Select Committee is a Parliamentary Committee, independent of Government and its recommendations are not Government policy. Government acknowledges the recently published House of Commons Education Committee report on ‘Strengthening Home Education’ (published on 26 July) and is currently considering its response to the Committee’s recommendations, which we will provide to the Committee in due course. The Department will always consider the views of stakeholders alongside a broad range of evidence when developing elective home education policy.

We fully support the right of parents to educate their children at home and most who do so educate their children very well, sometimes in challenging circumstances. However, while many home educated children will be receiving a very good education by dedicated parents, who deserve support, there will be others who are deemed to be ‘home educated’ but, in reality, most or entirely all of their education is through attendance at unsuitable settings, such as illegal unregistered independent schools. There is also likely to be a number of children for whom the education being provided is unsuitable, because their parents cannot educate them effectively at home or the child is simply not being educated.

With the interests of these vulnerable children in mind, we therefore in April 2019 launched a consultation on proposals to introduce local authority registers of children not attending registered independent or state-funded schools, and support for home-educating families (should they want it). This closed on 24 June 2019.