Children missing education
Coram Children's Legal Centre
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Growing concern over the number of "children missing education" has prompted calls for more support and oversight for home educators.
The Children's Commissioner for England's recent report Skipping School: Invisible Children looks at the growing number of children who are being educated at home, concluding that, while many parents who make a decision to home educate their children provide them with a high-quality education, many other families are home educating for other reasons and are struggling to cope. The children's commissioner has called for a compulsory home education register; stronger measures to tackle "off-rolling"; more support for families who home educate; and a greater oversight of home schooled children.
Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 places a duty on parents to ensure that their child of compulsory school age receives a suitable education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise. This can be fulfilled by the child being home educated. A child can be taught at home on a full- or part-time basis at any time, as long as they are not subject to a school attendance order. The agreement of the school or local authority is not needed in order for a child to be home educated, although if they are attending a special school under a statement of special educational needs (SEN) or education health and care plan (EHCP), the local authority must be informed before removing the child from the school roll.
Department for Education definition
Children missing education (CME) are defined by the Department for Education as "children of compulsory school age who are not registered pupils at a school and are not receiving suitable education otherwise that at a school". A child may become CME for a number of reasons, such as moving into a different area where no schools place is available, or being withdrawn from school because their needs were not being met. A child may have been unofficially excluded from school or taken off the school roll after a long period of unexplained absence.
Some groups are particularly at risk of missing education, including Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children, children with SEN, young carers and young offenders. The number of children missing education is not systematically recorded, and available evidence is unreliable in the absence of national monitoring, but data showed that nearly 50,000 children were reported as missing education at some point in 2016/17. Findings from a 2018 survey by the Association of Directors of Children's Services suggested that around 58,000 children were being home educated across England.
Identification
Local authorities have a duty under section 436A of the Education Act 1996 to make arrangements to identify, as far as it is possible to do so, children missing education. According to statutory guidance, schools must notify the local authority when a pupil's name is to be removed from the admission register, and local authorities should record this information.
Where a pupil does not attend school for 20 consecutive days of unauthorised absence, the school and local authority should jointly make "reasonable enquiries" to establish the child's whereabouts before taking the child off the roll. However, local authorities do not have any statutory duties to routinely monitor the quality of home education. Case law has held that local authorities cannot insist on inspecting parents and children in their home or elsewhere. If a parent refuses to let the local authority enter the home or speak to the child, this cannot constitute, on its own, a ground for concern about the education provision. Local authorities can make informal enquiries but cannot insist on evidence from the parents in any prescribed form.
In recent years, concerns have also been raised about the practice of "off-rolling", defined by Ofsted as "the practice of removing a pupil from the school roll without a formal, permanent exclusion or by encouraging a parent to remove either child… when removal is primarily in the interests of the school rather than in the best interests of the pupil". Ofsted has been working to tackle this through revisions to its new inspection framework.
Legal Update is produced in association with experts at Coram Children's Legal Centre www.childrenslegalcentre.com