DCSF Review - LA accountability (Rec. 13, 14, 15 & 16)

Recommendation 13
This comes in section 5, "The Current and Future Role of Local Authorities and Children’s Trusts," after 5.9

That local authority provision in regard to elective home education is brought into the scope of Ofsted’s assessment of children’s services within the Comprehensive Area Assessment through information included in the National Indicator Set (Recommendation 25), the annual LSCB report (Recommendation 21) and any other relevant information available to inspectors.

If the LAs are supposed to be providing services, then yes, they need to be held accountable for it, like every other service they are supposed to provide.

(See my post on Recommendations 21 & 25)

Recommendation 14
This comes in section 6, "The Number of Electively Home Educated Children," after 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3, in which he says "Our own data concurred with the DfES (2007) report, that there are around 20,000 children and young people currently registered with local authorities. We know that to be an underestimate and agree it is likely to be double that figure, if not more, possibly up to 80,000 children."

That the DCSF require all local authorities to make an annual return to the Children’s Trust Board regarding the number of electively home educated children and young people and the number of School Attendance Orders and Education Supervision Orders as defined in the 1996 Education Act, issued to home educated children and young people.

I'd have thought that at least one year's worth of this data - preferably more - would be necessary to conduct this review in the first place. I assume School Attendance Orders are recorded and the reason for issuing them is part of the data somewhere. Why isn't this already in the report? Surely the change between pre-registration-and-support and post-registration-and-support by the state is what's important? Unless the goal is to show how abusive and useless home education is, rather than how valuable the state's assistance is and how much better things are with local authority services?

Recommendation 15
This comes after 6.4

That the DCSF take such action as necessary to prevent schools or local authorities advising parents to consider home education to prevent permanent exclusion or using such a mechanism to deal with educational or behavioural issues.

Well, quite. "We can't cope, so you'll have to home educate" is a bit... handwashy. And it didn't oughter be allowed. Good.

Recommendation 16
This comes after 6.5

That the DCSF bring forward proposals to give local authorities power of direction with regard to school places for children and young people returning to school from home education above planned admission limits in circumstances where it is quite clear that the needs of the child or young person could not be met without this direction.

If a child needs a school place they ought to get one, regardless of what parental error led to the need being inconvenient for the authorities. Good. Though some schools are already more overcrowded than others, so this might be a real hardship in some places.