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The Home Education Campaign - Latest News

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Lord Lucas (Conservative)

"To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will withdraw and reissue their home-educated children with special educational needs (SEN) guidance letter of February 2010 with (a) appropriate annotations to the reference to powers which will come into being if the current Children, Schools and Families Bill is enacted; (b) provision being made for inter-agency consultation on the best interests of the child before a school attendance order is sought; and (c) spelling and grammatical errors and malapropisms corrected."

Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Children, Young People and Families), Department for Children, Schools and Families; Labour)

"The letter will not be withdrawn. Its purpose was to set out local authorities' existing duties for children with special educational needs (SEN) who are educated at home, taking account of the Lamb inquiry report into parental confidence in the SEN system. Following correspondence received from the Education Otherwise Disability Group the department will be sending out a clarification of paragraph 12 of the letter to local authorities.

A copy will be placed in the House Library and on the department's website."

"the suggestion in paragraph 12 that an LA should seek a school attendance order only applies in cases where an LA considers it is unable to assess suitability because it has been denied access to a child and is unable to see the child, and there are no other means of establishing suitability. There is a range of ways in which an authority can make an assessment of suitability which do not involve being able to see the child or having access to the home.

We apologise for any concern that paragraph 12 has caused the parents of home-educated children."

In response to enquiries and requests, we have revised a number of web pages on this site to bring the latest summary of the current political situation.

Main page on the Children Schools and Families Bill
Writing to your MP
Contacting members of the House of Lords (updated)

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Sunday 14 March

Conservative spokesperson in Lords puts amendments to remove home education proposals

Shortly after Second Reading of the Children Schools and Families Bill, Baroness Verma, the Conservative spokesperson in the House of Lords put down several amendments objecting to the home education clauses and Schedule 1 remaining in the Bill.

The Bill will probably not reach Committee stage, as we reported on Tuesday, so the Conservative amendments mainly serve to indicate the Opposition's stance for the wash-up. The amendments can be read here and here. Look out for clause 26, clause 27 and Schedule 1.

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