Minutes:
Councillor Emily Smith addressed the Committee in relation to Agenda Item 7 (Elective Home Education). She referred to her motion passed at Council which had asked for more local authority powers to identify and check on children classified as Home Educated. As a result of the motion being passed, she had received media coverage and had a lot of feedback from home educators and schools staff about the current situation and wanted pass some of these on to this committee in the hope that it would inform your discussion under agenda item 7 on Election Home Education, and possibly 8 on SEND.
1. Gaps in our data
- Children leaving school and becoming EHE – many we do not know why. Why don’t we have this information. Did schools have it but not sharing it? Do we rely on parents for this info? What other ways can we find out?
- The way EHE children all fall under one category was unhelpful. Was it possible to break down the data so that we could target support to different groups? If a child was being educated successfully at home, was registered, getting a decent level of support and education could we put them in one group, then maybe a group for those with SEND waiting for a special school place or just under EHCP threshold, then those with history of exclusion or persistent absence, etc.
- Post 16 we record children as Participation in Learning, Not participating in Learning, and unknown. Perhaps we need an Unknown category for pre-16s so we can target resource to this group?
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2. Reducing support for vulnerable children in school
- concern about the increasing number of vulnerable students being pushed out of mainstream schools.
- School funding cuts, along-side cuts to universal youth provision, long waiting lists of CAHMS support, league tables, were all making it harder for children to access the individualised support needed to thrive in the mainstream system. Could this committee look at the cuts this county had made to children’s services over the past 10 years and how that was impacting on the off-rolling figures? And exclusion and attendance rates?
- Were there links to some of the issues raised in the SEND inspection. There were families who had been waiting months and years for special school places – who have considered EHE as their only option – despite not feeling qualified to home educate and having to give up work to do so.
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3. Support for current EHE community.
- Until there was compulsory registration, how were we encouraging Home educators to register voluntarily. Particularly as many of them would have had negative experiences of ‘the system?
- Some asked why bother registering if we don’t get anything out of it? So, what do we currently offer and what could be offered to encourage more vulnerable families to register?
- Specific things individuals said they would find useful were:
a. Safeguarding training,
b. physical space to store resources – perhaps some space in the central library or some of the Children and Family Centres,
c. Help with entering for exams (schools used to do this but don’t now)
d. For councillors to understand home education better and to make contact with the home educating community
- Lastly she comment that is she were a member of the committee here questions would be – do we have enough staff resources to meet with and offer support to this growing number of families? And given as the LA were seen as part of the system, would working in partnership with an external organisation to reach out to non -registered families work better to engage them?