I The law on home (elective) education
Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 places the responsibility of children’s education squarely on their parents’ shoulders. Parents are required to ensure that their children are receiving efficient, full-time education suitable to their ages, abilities and aptitudes, including those with special educational needs, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise. This means that they determine where to arrange for their children to be educated – at school/academy or at home – up to the school-leaving age.
Government guidance on elective (home) education, published in 2007, states a parent may choose home education for one or more of the following reasons.
- Distance or access to a local school
- Religious or cultural beliefs
- Philosophical or ideological views
- Dissatisfaction with the system
- Bullying
- As a short-term intervention for a particular reason
- A child’s unwillingness or inability to go to school
- Special educational needs
- The parent’s/parents’ desire for a closer relationship with the child.
Where parents decide to withdraw their child from school/academy and educate her/him at home, they are required to notify the school/academy. The school/academy must, in turn, notify the local authority (LA). Parents don’t need to notify the LA unless their child has an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). Similarly, parents of a child who has never attended school are not required to inform the LA if they decide to home educate their child.
The rise in suspect practices – leading either to radicalisation and/or depriving children of their right to receive an education to develop all their talents and help them to live full, happy, healthy and productive lives – has alarmed many. Accordingly, Lord Soley, a former prison officer and current Labour peer, has sponsored a Bill that will introduce greater monitoring for home-schooling (elective education). Home-schoolers are not happy bunnies – stating that the Bill will be an “unmitigated disaster” and could “cost lives”.
