MPs call for halt to home schooling registration scheme

The Schools Select Committee of the House of Commons has backed petitioners’ calls to halt a compulsory registration scheme and plans to give councils new powers to enter premises of families who educate their children at home.

The announcement follows the presentation of petitions from over 120 constituencies opposing the new scheme. The response arose from a review into home education carried out by Graham Badman reported in June, which suggested that children who are home educated were at greater risk from harm than those who went to school.

Under the proposals, councils would be given the right to refuse registration on safeguarding grounds, meaning parents could be banned from home educating their children if there were fears of safety or the quality of education provided.

According to the Commons schools select committee, local authority registration for home educators, which were planned as compulsory, should be voluntary.

While the cross-party committee of MPs backed plans for registration, it told the BBC any such scheme should be "light touch".  MPs have supported the requirement that parents should at least provide a statement of their "intended approach" to their child's education.

The MPs have expressed concern that in some instances local authority officers and home educators had told them parents were being encouraged to de-register their child from school.

"Where local authorities and schools encourage parents to de-register their child from school it is typically as a result of the child's poor school attendance, poor behaviour, and/or poor attainment,” the report stated. "That schools are held accountable on all three is no doubt part of the explanation for this practice."

Chairman of the committee Barry Sheerman said local authorities must cooperate with home educating families in order to strike a balance between parental rights and guaranteeing that all children have access to a good education.

"It should be the local authorities' responsibility to know who is in school, who is home educated and who is missing,” he said.

One of the petitioning MPs, Graham Stuart the Conservative MP for Beverley and Holderness, said the recommendations are based on a review that was extremely rushed, failed to give due consideration to the evidence, failed to ensure that the data it collected were sufficiently robust, and failed to take proper account of the existing legislative framework.

“On the basis of a rushed study and flimsy evidence, the government is proposing to spend tens of millions of pounds going into the homes of home-educating families and subjecting them to inspections and a licensing regime," Mr Stuart said.