Amendments to the Children, Schools and Families Bill

As far as I can gather, those home educators opposed to the above piece of legislation have two hopes; two possible courses of events which they believe might prevent the provisions relating to home education ever reaching the Statute Book.

The first of these possibilities is that the bill will simply run out of time. That is to say that things will drag on until the election in May and that the Government will be forced to abandon some of the legislation which was announced in the Queen's speech in November. It is possible that this will happen, but rather unlikely. For one thing, this bill is about education and so very popular with many people, including the electorate. It was designed to be that way. All the talk of increased power for parents and the licensing of teachers has gone down very well with a lot of parents. Educational standards are still plummeting and somebody must be to blame. Hey, it must be the schools and teachers! Hurray, the Government is going to give more power to us to call schools to account. I simply cannot see this bill being abandoned and it is currently moving very quickly through the system.

The other hope is that some amendments will be made to the clauses which specifically relate to home education. There is another problem here. This is a very long bill and most of the amendments concern all sorts of other things that have nothing at all to do with home education. Since the Government will be in a hurry during the run up to the election, they are liable to grow increasingly impatient with delays. The Equalities Bill, currently with the Lords, had over two hundred amendments scheduled. Discussion of all these was allocated just one day. I doubt if the amendments relating to home education will even be discussed in the end. It is true that some MPs are determined to draw attention to the new regulations, but they may not get a chance. It is entirely possible that the Government will impose a guillotine on the business. This means that there will be a certain fixed time for the amendments and then the talking ends and the bill goes to the Lords. If the House have not reached the amendments relating to home education by that time; that's just too bad.

It is true that it then needs to clear the Lords, but with the quickening pace over the next few months, that will perhaps not delay it for long. All the MPs who are ringing their hands and telling home educators that they share their pain at these iniquitous proposals know all this very well. They know that the Tory whips are already getting together with the Labour whips and working out a deal about what will go through in the wash up and what will not. People like Barry Sheerman will emerge looking like heroic strugglers for the rights of home educators, a man who did his best but was ultimately defeated by the faceless men in grey suits who did a deal behind his back. I'm sure that he'll still pick up a few votes as a result, as well as gaining a reputation as the champion of civil rights.

My own feeling is that this bill will almost certainly go through and that home educating parents should be aiming at a rather different target. The Children, Schools and Families Bill is essentially an enabling act. It is a bare framework which says very roughly what will be happening. It does not say in any detail how these things will happen. These details will be fleshed out later in a series of Statutory Instruments. In other words, a statement of educational provision is mentioned in the bill, but nobody has the least idea of what is meant by this. Most of the provisions are similarly vague. Here is where there is scope for parents to work together with local authorities to thrash out a deal which both sides could live with. Before the DCSF starts handing out Statutory Instruments to define this aspect or that, perhaps such things as what constitutes a "suitable education", they will consult with the local authorities. If the local authorities then announced that they had reached an amicable agreement with home educators as to what both sides could live with, then the Government of the day would be delighted; it would mean one less area of conflict.

I am no longer a home educator, but if I were I should be thinking very seriously about starting a dialogue with local authorities now and working alongside them to present a programme to central government which all parties agreed on. If this is not done, then the local authorities and the DCSF will simply sit down together and work out what is best for home educated children and parents will have no say in it at all.