Home educator in Dorset says new legislation will prejudice poorer families
Labour wants to bring in a compulsory Children Not in School register and give local authorities the power to require school attendance
A home school educator in Dorset claims new legislation around home-schooling has been written up at “haste” and not properly thought out.
The proposed bill includes giving local authorities power to intervene and send children back to school if the home environment is assessed as “unsuitable”.
It will also see parents no longer having an automatic right to take their children out of school for home education if the young person is under a child protection plan (CPP) - meaning the child is suspected of being at risk of significant harm.
But there are fears the bill is too open to interpretation and likely lead to the prejudice of the person visiting.
Heather, a home educator from Portland, told us: “Under the new proposed bill a mere referral could be taken as a home educator being guilty.
"The wording of the bill is likely to be very classist and potentially even racist. It will mean situations like overcrowding or alternative housing - such as vans, caravans, boats - will very likely be prejudiced against.
“We propose that this wording should be changed from 'unsuitable' to 'unsafe' with clear guidance on exactly what unsafe means.”
However, Heather does accept that parents of children on CPPs should have to ask permission in order to home educate as they are more vulnerable.
But she, and other home educators, are concerned about the fact local education authority officers will have the right to doorstop parents and judge their education based on what they find that day.
In 2024, there were 153,300 children being home educated nationally. Of these, 1,700 were given a school attendance order so that amounts to just over 1% of home education was seen as inadequate.
Meanwhile, there are 24,454 state schools across the country and 10% of these were found to be inadequate.
Heather said: “We feel the bill does nothing to support home educating families that has been drawn up at haste without thinking about real life practicalities of how the Bill will be implemented.”
According to research, most home educators do not home educate through choice with 53% reporting the main reason for home educating as their child's SEN needs not being made at school.
Yet many feel the bill does nothing to address why so many families are home educators are home educating such as the lack of SEN support, large class sizes and absence of teacher support.