Agenda item

Dan Kennedy (Director - Housing, Environment, Education, Performance, Health & Wellbeing), provided the Committee with a report relating to Elective Home Education.

A parent’s right to choose Home Education for their child, and the Council’s responsibilities to those children, were set out as per the report. At the time of publication of the report, 240 children were being educated at home. Reasons for parents electing to home educate their children were many, and included a lack of places at their preferred school, issues with teaching staff, or issues with pupils at their last school.

Generally, pupils were split evenly between male and female, though a higher percentage of home schooled students were in the older age brackets. Often, children would be home schooled for a short period of time, as they would return to school once whatever issue they had experienced was resolved.

As of October 2019, Hillingdon Council had introduced a new procedure, aligned with the recent recommendations from the Children’s Commissioner’s report ‘Skipping School’, which now required all schools to provide the Borough’s Elective Home Education Officer with detailed information on pupils now being home schooled, including the reasons for the decision.

Among the actions taken by Hillingdon set out in the report, Hillingdon had contributed to recent DfE consultations, and it was hoped that in the future the DfE would grant local authorities additional powers, including the right to require parents to register their child with their local authority as being home schooled. Currently, parents were not obligated to provide such detail to their local authority.

Members asked a number of questions, including:

How was the Council working to support parents who had chosen to home school their children?

The Council signposted parents to a number of available resources, including learning materials and resource packs that were available through the website, as well as local support groups.

How did the Council work to resolve issues that had resulted in elective home schooling?

The Council would endeavour to understand the reasons for the parent’s choice to home school, though often these reasons were not forthcoming. Where possible, officers would work to overcome the issue(s) through working with parents and schools, e.g. by instigating behaviour management processes to overcome issues of bullying, etc.

Were there any geographical trends to elective home schooling?

Children being home schooled did not appear to be localised within particular areas. However, this picture would change year on year, and within each year. The number of children being home schooled in Hillingdon was not dissimilar to numbers seen nationally or across London.

How did the Council resolve children missing from school? Was any kind of risk assessment in place?

The Council relied on schools notifying the local authority when children were off rolled. It would be incumbent on the original school to then pass the child’s details to their new school. Missing children would be reviewed via a national database, which detailed their off rolling and enrolling at various schools, as well as through contact with other local authorities. If the child was not found through these means, the Council had powers to escalate the matter to other services.

How did the Council work to support child carers, some of whom could be missing education due to their carer responsibilities?

School were very good at identifying child carers and notifying the Council accordingly. The Council would then provide additional support to those young people to ensure that they did not miss out on education. There were also excellent carer support groups available to young carers.

Councillor Sweeting raised the issue of Traveller children regularly moving in and out of school, and referred to a previous Traveller Education Officer post that was no longer active within the Council. In addition, Councillor Sweeting referred to SEND children who were waiting for a school place at their required school. It was agreed that Councillor Sweeting would discuss these matters with officers outside of the meeting.

RESOLVED:  That the report be noted.