DfE confirms plans for elective home education register
Fiona Simpson
Thursday, February 3, 2022
The government has confirmed the introduction of an elective home education (EHE) register.
The Department for Education will seek to pass legislation at the “earliest opportunity” which will see local authorities legally obliged to maintain a register of children of compulsory school age who are not registered at specified categories of schools such as state schools, registered independent schools and non-maintained special schools.
The announcement comes following a public consultation on the introduction of a compulsory EHE register that garnered more than 4,500 responses from local authorities, schools, charities, parents and young people.
Of 145 local authorities in England who replied to the consultation, 96 per cent backed plans for an EHE register on the grounds it would improve safeguarding and the standard of education for children not in school.
However, of 3,514 parents and young people who responded, just 18 per cent backed the plans.
In its response to the consultation, DfE said: “As supported by responses to this proposal, establishing a system of registration will help safeguard some EHE children who require support, but who are currently not visible to those services that are there to keep children safe and supported.”
Local authorities would be open to inspections by Ofsted on their maintenance of an EHE register and required to supply data to DfE, the consultation response adds.
Plans announced by DfE following the consultation also include a legal duty on parents to register children who are home educated with their local authority.
Some 96 per cent of local authorities also backed this addition to planned legislation while 85 per cent of parents and young people disagreed.
The main reason parents and young people had for objecting to the proposal was that such rules were seen as an “invasive and intrusive attack on parents’ rights”.
The majority of school leaders and teachers also backed the proposal alongside 54 per cent of charities.
In its response DfE said that “while it is, in theory, possible to legislate for a register with a duty on local authorities, without imposing any parallel duty on parents to supply information” this “would significantly diminish the effectiveness of the register”.
“We therefore agree with the proposal that parents should be under a legal duty to provide information to a register when their child is not in mainstream education,” the report states, adding that details on what data should be provided will be outlined in legislation, together with information on “clear consequences” for parents who fail to provide such information when asked to do so by councils.
Owners of “specified settings providing a substantial amount of education to EHE children'' will also be legally bound to supply information to the register, if legislation is passed, in a bid to tackle illegally operating schools or unregistered settings, DfE said.
“The exact requirements of which settings fall in and out of scope are to be worked up,” the consultation response states, adding that it will be narrower than originally suggested in the consultation and will “only include those settings which are in effect operating as illegal schools, by offering provision to the same children for a significant proportion of the school day and offering provision to children without their parents' supervision”.
Children’s commissioner for England Dame Rachel de Souza said the creation of the register “is vital in making sure that we are able to keep children safe and engaged, wherever they are learning”.
The announcement comes alongside the launch of a separate consultation on behaviour in schools.
The consultation poses questions on changes to the government’s guidance for schools on behaviour, suspensions and exclusions.
Proposals for changes include the creation of a new national minimum expectation of behaviour, changes to support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) around the use of so-called removal rooms and advice to schools on how to “reduce the likelihood of suspension and permanent exclusion” through early intervention strategies.
The consultation closes on 31 March.
