The local authorities already have all the powers they need; they just don't use them

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Many of those campaigning against the provisions of the new Children, Schools and Families Bill use the above argument when speaking to MPs and others who they feel might be sympathetic. It is, on the face of it, pretty convincing. After all, a local authority which suspects that a home educated child is not being educated properly can take the parents to court. They hardly ever do so though; such cases are as rare as rocking horse shit. Why should this be so?

When a child is withdrawn from a maintained school in this country, the school generally contacts the local authority and notifies them of the fact. Most local authorities will then get in touch with the family and ask for some sort of evidence that the child is receiving a full time education suitable to his age and ability. Not all local authorities bother to do this; the London Borough of Enfield, for example, does not usually do so. However, most do. Parents then write back explaining what they are doing with their child and either accepting or declining a visit according to how bloody minded they are feeling. Often, the stuff they send to the local authority is exceedingly vague and waffly. Instead of being specific about what their child is doing in mathematics or English, they trot out a load of guff about how little Johnny is fulfilling his capabilities in a variety of ways and that they are offering him learning opportunities in many settings. This sort of thing has often been cut and pasted from some Internet site, Home Education UK being a popular source. This can by the way afford a good deal of innocent amusement for those who are monitoring elective home education. Sometimes, two or three educational philosophies are word for word identical apart from the child's name!

Most of these children are probably receiving some sort of education, even if it isn't precisely the kind of thing that the officers of the local authority would like to see. Some are definitely not receiving even the most rudimentary education. How do you identify these children and either make their parents educate them or get them back into school? This is not easy. Sometimes, the local authority has an idea from speaking to the school which parents are likely to be making at least some attempt to educate their child. If they feel that certain parents are not doing so, then they can serve a notice requiring them to satisfy the authority that they are doing so. Some parents give in at this point and return the child to school. Others send in more paperwork. Sometimes this is a curriculum accompanied by typed work, supposedly completed by the child in question. Of course without actually speaking to the child, it is impossible to know whether or not this is actually his work. I certainly know of more than one case where a parent has put together documents like this which are wholly fraudulent and misleading. What happens if the local authority is still not satisfied?

The next step is to apply to the courts for a School Attendance Order. This is very chancy and quite expensive for the local authority. Because the definition of a suitable education is so vague, it is not hard for parents to persuade magistrates that their children are receiving a "suitable" education. here is part of the definition from Bevan v Shears 1911;

"In the absence of anything in the bye-laws providing that a child of a given age shall receive instruction in given subjects, in my view it cannot be said that there is a standard of education by which the child must be taught. The court has to decide whether in their opinion the child is being taught efficiently so far as that particular child is concerned."

This is not particularly helpful. What about this, from a case in 1985;

"Primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he is a member, rather than the way of life in the country as a whole."

It is all but impossible for a local authority to make a case against a parent based upon such concepts. The result is of course that few bother to do so. Why drag the Borough Solicitor away from his desk and get him to spend the morning in court for this sort of thing? It's waste of his time and everybody else's.

The case would be very different if there were a definition of a suitable education which included a rough guide of what children should be achieving at various ages. Perhaps that a child should be reading fluently by the age of twelve, always assuming that there are no special educational needs. Or maybe that a child of ten should be thoroughly familiar with the four basic arithmetical operations, or perhaps that he was able to write. Without clear benchmarks of this sort, of course local authorities will not and cannot exercise the power to force parents to educate their children. To claim that they already possess the powers to do so is simply not true. Unless there is a way of establishing whether or not a child is receiving an education, then there is no way of finding out the opposite; that he is not receiving an education.

As I said above, most of these children are probably receiving some sort of education, but mixed in with them are certainly children who are not. How are the officers of the local authority to distinguish between these two cases? From reading an educational philosophy which has been downloaded from the Internet, how are they too know which of these children have parents who actually intend to educate their children at home and which parents have withdrawn their children and have no intention at all of educating them? This is a genuine conundrum, the answer to which is presumably known to home educating parents but not by the local authorities! Of course, a home visit and quiet chat with the child in question would go some way to helping resolve this problem, but many parents are bitterly opposed to both these moves. All suggestions for ways of resolving this dilemma would be viewed with great interest.