Currently, any opinions and comments (from us and elsewhere) are speculative about what might happen.

Yesterday (17th July), the King delivered his speech to Parliament. While it lacked detailed information, it hinted at future developments.

“My Ministers will seek to raise educational standards and break down barriers to opportunity. Action will be taken to get people back in employment following the impact of the pandemic. A Bill will be introduced to raise standards in education and promote children’s wellbeing [Children’s Wellbeing Bill]. Measures will be brought forward to remove the exemption from Value Added Tax for private school fees, which will enable the funding of six and a half thousand new teachers. My Government will establish Skills England which will have a new partnership with employers at its heart [Skills England Bill], and my Ministers will reform the apprenticeship levy.”

Children’s Wellbeing Bill – taken from the Kings speech briefing document.

Pages 63 and 64

• The Bill will improve the education system and make it more consistent and safer for every child by: creating a duty on local authorities to have and maintain Children Not in School registers, and provide support to home-educating parents. These measures will ensure fewer children slip under the radar when they are not in school and more children reach their full potential through suitable education.
• With 92,000 children recorded as being in home education as of October 2023, more children than ever are not in school (a 14 per cent increase since October 2022). Currently, no mandatory system of registration exists for these children. These registers are needed for local authorities to better identify these children so that they do not fall through the gaps, particularly when moving between different types of education or across local authority boundaries. The UK is a clear outlier in comparison to Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in relation to the lack of oversight of electively home educated children.

So what does this mean?

It means the register that the Tories initiated is likely to be actioned, the register had cross party support. Despite a unique identifier number for all children being in the Labour manifesto it appears this has vanished from their plans, and instead they are focusing on the Not In School register. If the same contents are being reused then it means already known home educators may be required to provide more regular information to their LA, and those who are not contacted very often are likely to hear from their LA. Without a change to the actual law (which isn’t going to happen) there is no way the LA can gain access to your home without your consent, our advice will be to continue using our report writing guide and keep communication in writing.

DO NOT LET YOUR LA TELL YOU THE RULES/LAWS HAVE CHANGED UNTIL THEY ACTUALLY HAVE CHANGED (many try it on before things are even fully actioned).

For those home educating families who are currently unknown, it would appear you will have to make yourself known, or face consequences that could include a fine (and court action if you fail to pay it). However, from previous wording it would seem that if you are unknown and the LA becomes aware of you, they would contact you, you would confirm you home educate and you are now treated as a known family. If you refuse to say you home educate you face the fine. BUT at present if you are unknown and the LA hear about you, and make contact, it’s advisable at that point to say you home educate to avoid being classed as CME (child missing education), so it isn’t actually going to be much different except the consequences of refusing to say you home educate could be a fine and an SAO.

Home educators who are currently unknown include children who never went to school, children who left primary but didn’t sign up to secondary, if the family moved LA areas, and children who the LA have lost the data for (incompetence is rife and we know many families who the LA have lost despite the school informing them of deregistration), and a few are unknown because the school did not inform the LA of deregistration.

It is important to realise that unknown home educators are not hiding at home, they’re still at groups, seeing family, going to the shops and library, they’re still using the GP and dentist etc. There is no evidence to suggest being unknown to the LA is a cause for concern, there is no evidence or reason to believe the education is not suitable.

The concerns around a register are more about making us sound like criminals having to register, data protection, and LAs feeling more empowered to harass home educators. We already know the worst LAs treat families appallingly, and the ‘better’ LAs aren’t that great with currently not a single LA acting fully within the law.

We expect new EHE guidance to be released to coincide with the register, there was a consultation earlier in the year, it was awful, we won’t sugar coat it, it was illegal in places and clearly showed a disrespect and lack of knowledge. We do not know what stage the DfE was at with reading the consultation responses, or redrafting the guidance, and we are not sure what the Labour government will do with it. We expect more emphasis on LAs being satisfied that the provision is suitable rather than sticking to their legal duty of identifying children missing from education.

If the government want to bring our rules more inline with other countries, we could expect things like needing permission/having to apply to home educate, more regular check ins, more specified information being required, but this could come with funding. However, we do not believe any amount of money is worth an erosion of our freedom and rights.

We would suggest the government considers why they think those systems would work here in England, there is no evidence they ensure better or even different outcomes to our current system. Our community is different to any other, and we believe the current home education legislative framework works well when Local Authorities use it appropriately. In some European countries it is illegal to home educate, we do not envisage this happening in England, but if the government feel a ban should happen we would question how they believe this is in the best interests of 100,000+ home educated children. Please don’t read this and panic, as mentioned at the beginning, this is speculation and considering all angles.

Will the changes bring more support?

We really doubt it, most LAs do not have enough staff or funding for the current known home educators, our data collection shows around 100k known children, this could be more when the unknown children are ‘registered’. Unless the changes come with considerable increases in funding, there will be no support. However, we think if hundreds of home educators in each LA suddenly start demanding this ‘support’ it will cause the LA to realise they can’t cope and possibly mean they start leaving families alone who they know are well aware of their duty and happily plodding along.

‘Reaching their full potential’ could be problematic if specific rules are brought in, such as testing, or specific curriculum requirements be met, this is where keeping communication in writing now is SUPER IMPORTANT, start laying the ground work for how the education is suitable to your child, especially if they have SEN.

If funding is given, we hope it will be access to exams, though we know this will come with hoops, which could mean formal testing before exams are agreed to be funded.

Remember, ‘support’ could literally mean being given an email address to the EHE person, who is not likely to fully understand home education or its many philosophies and styles. If you ever need support or advice we recommend reaching out to the home education community.

Will the changes actually identify children not in education?

No, we don’t think it will. An abuser, a neglectful parent and someone purposely staying off radar of all services is not going to volunteer their information on a register. These children are NOT EHE they are CME and powers already exist to support them, but LAs fail to use them appropriately. Powers to find these children will be no different. Therefore the children this register are meant to find will in fact be hidden further. At absolute best it will mean a few home educators who thought they were alone may find out there’s a lot of us and be able to make contact with us and other home educators.

What can you do right now?

Start writing to your MP, ask them to meet you (don’t just pop along to a surgery), invite them to do a talk at home ed group about their job (ask the group before sending an invite) or invite them to your not back to school picnic.

If the MP agrees to have a chat or you write to them, let them see what home education is like. REMEMBER NEVER REFER TO IT AS HOME SCHOOLING AND POLITELY CORRECT THE MP IF THEY GET IT WRONG. Share your home education story, explain how your days go, talk about how LAs struggle to stay within the current rules, how they cause more harm than good, that they offer no real support etc. We think it would be helpful to explain how the title of the bill is concerning, it implies home educated children are at risk, which there is no evidence of at all. You can even suggest your MP reaches out to us for more information.

You can keep a close eye on our website and social media for updates and suggested actions.

And finally you can fill in this survey, and share it in your home education groups. It is a mix of questions as we are trying to gather information to cover various issues, please try to fill it all in.