The meetings of home educators with the Scottish Executive January 2003

EO found the two informal meetings held last week in Edinburgh and Inverness between the Scottish Executive officers and the home education groups very productive.

Home educators were well represented by members of EO, HEAS, Schoolhouse and the newer regional Highland Home Educators.

At both meetings the highly skilled Executive Team facilitated very open discussions and the Home Educators participated seamlessly, backing each other up with examples, picking up points and expanding them, each bringing something of the case for home education, for compliant useful guidance and for best practice.

The Executive began by thanking the Home education community for its responses. They had all been read and it was acknowledged that while the organisational responses generally carried more weight all the individual responses counted and their impact depended on the quality of the points made. They also apologised for the delays in this consultation and asked us all to join them in looking forward rather than back.

The Executive verbally summarised the results of the consultation and in brief :

• the home educators voice was pretty much of a one on all the issues.
• the local authorities were split from issue to issue with no one clear position and a lot of contradictory views.
• the voluntary sector varied but largely concurred with the home educators.

Clearly there was harmony among the home educating voices. This was echoed in both of the meetings as well and was expressly acknowledged by everyone at the end of the Inverness meeting. Informally that is the feedback we have had from most of the participants at Edinburgh too.

Most people at the meetings expressed afterwards that they felt heard and that the home education key points were understood. Some participants remained sceptical that we have “been here before”. But, the difference is that since last time we have put in many written responses and lobbied hard against the present draft guidance for a year.

The main areas covered included:

• The consent issue ( The present anomalous requirement under s35 for local authority consent to withdraw a child from school in order to home educate)
• Satisfaction with provision and efficient education.
• Welfare.
• Childrens rights and the possibility of an education child helpline being set up.
• Best practice: examples were given and ideas were aired and some examples of bad practice described.
• Tracking: a voluntary notification scheme ( by home educating families themselves to their local authorities) was discussed but the point was made that until relationships were improved with local authorities there was not likely to be much uptake.

Discussions were, as you would expect if you had read any of the main organisations’ responses, of the positions familiar to all home educators. These were made clear and expanded.

The point was made repeatedly that Home education is given equal weight in statute with school education and parents choosing to home educate their children should be assumed to be acting reasonably and responsibly.

The Executive told us they would be meeting for similar discussions with local authorities shortly and we are hopeful that some progress in bridging the gaps will be made at these meetings.

The published consultation report will be issued soon and we expect a further draft guidance will drawn up in the near future.

On the basis of the quality of discussion, the harmony and the reason at these meetings we are hopeful that the next draft will be a document which complies with statute and is acceptable to home educators.

EO has written to the local authorities encouraging them also to participate in a positive manner.

If, as we hope, acceptable guidance is achieved, the benefit will be felt not just by home educators but by all young people through better relationships between families and local authorities.

Ann Samuel Till

On behalf of the EO Response Team