Section from the EHE document

[jo70mo]

7. Cross Border Issues:

The EHE officer will notify the Children Missing Education team and request liaison with other LAs when they become aware that a child who is educated otherwise than in school has moved to live within the area of another authority. Where it is appropriate and they have been involved the CME team or the Pupil Attendance Support Team will share information with their respective colleagues in the new LA.

[elizm]

A child who is home educated should not be presumed to be a Child Missing Education just because the family has moved out of the area. There is no obligation for parents to register with their new authority. Moving house does not mean stopping education.

If a school going family move house and the children don't turn up at another school then the Council are reasonable in suspecting that the children might be Missing from Education.

A Home Ed family should be presumed to be continuing to carry out their duty under section 7 of the Education act unless there is evidence to the contrary, since access to education does not rely on attendance at school for their children.

Given that the rest of the difficulties with this document Home Ed families would need to be coerced and bullied into engaging with Lancashire LA as the procedures suggested are not in-line with the primary law and do not presume that parents will carry out their duty to educate their children without monitoring from the LA.

[elizm]

Oh of course that school going family might have decided to HE and move house, oops prejudice slipping in there. Plenty of school using families to take the parental duty to ensure a suitable education seriously.

[fran]

I don't really understand what you are saying here. If someone de-registers their child from a school because they are moving house - do they have to tell the school they are de-registering from the details of a new school. I can understand if the new school is in the same County but what about if it is in another county or even another country? Remember when the Badman review revealed that a family who were abusing the children were deported - all of them, the children too. Are the County really going to check if the children have moved out of their area? It smacks of some sort of vendetta this, to me. For all their spouting about the plurality of education in Lancashire (who uses words like that !?!) the whole tone of this document shows distain and condescension for Home Educators; an incredible lack of trust and respect for us and what we are doing for our children and the age old habit of protecting their jobs above what the real point should be which is what is best for the children.

[elizm]

Sorry If I end up explaining what you already understand and miss the point but here goes:

If you de register because you move house, they do indeed expect you to let them know which school you are going to even if it's in another country, this is on the off-chance that kids do end up CME and so that the schools can communicate re Nat Curriculum levels and specific needs etc. My sister recently moved to Geneva. If I were using a school I'd want my old one to communicate with the new one for consistency. Yes the intention is that they will check if children disappear from education. There are good reasons for this it's really not about HE but they don't mind that we get stuck in the system.

I do agree that the tone of the document shows lack of trust and presumes that because we don't use school that we are therefore likely to be committing the crime of failing to provide an education. Those who've written it seem not to understand the seriousness of the accusation and the refusal to presume innocence.

The fact that Lancs have few SAOs, even though they claim they have many people not providing a suitable education, indicates that either:

1. they don't take the failure to provide a suitable education sufficiently seriously to take the obviously appropriate action.

2, they don't issue SAOs because the LA is not in fact able to provide these particular children with a suitable education (this I suspect is the real secret). Yet there may be risks for such children who's parents would not choose to HE if there was a genuinely suitable school place for their child. This is probably further complicated that such children may be school refusers. This failure of the LA to provide a suitable education for some children may be due to lack of funding, lack of special educational needs expertise or failing of the wider provision e.g CAMHS or other support services. So they would find it difficult to force a child who is not receiving the appropriate support from home or the LA to engage fully with an education.

3. they prefer to monitor everyone at a low level to cover their backs rather than do the more difficult job of using the lawful powers they do have in cases where there are real concerns.

[tricia]

Does anyone know whether the LA has a duty to notify another LA if they are aware of that an EHE child has moved to their area ?

It isn't the same as a child who is not HEed as there may be concerns about whether or not that child is receiving a suitable ed. Are there specific regs covering known HE children where there are no concerns and when there is no requirement to be registered with any LA?

If there isn't any duty, and there are no safeguarding concerns, isn't the LA ignoring the child's right to privacy/confidentiality issues ?

[fionan]

Hi Tricia

I'm not aware of a specific duty. This is what the CME Guidance says (The answer to the S2S system will probably be no btw because it is/was famously rubbish and crashes all the time)

Effective Pupil Tracking Systems
Does the local authority have systems in place to keep children engaged in the education that is suitable for them?
Does the local authority keep a record of children who have left educational providers (school, custody and alternative provision) without a known destination?
Does the local authority keep a record of children whose parents or carers, fathers as well as mothers, it considers are not providing them with a suitable education and a note of action it has taken to address these concerns?
Does the local authority follow up children at regular intervals until they are registered with a new provider?
Does the local authority have an agreed system with schools concerning children leaving provision that maximises the contribution schools can make to preventing children not receiving a suitable education?
Does the local authority have in place arrangements to share information with other local authorities concerning children who move between areas?
Does the local authority support and encourage schools to transfer files via s2s?
Does the local authority have an identified officer as database administrator for s2s with responsibility for the Lost Pupil Database?
Does the local authority upload to and download from the searchable area of the s2s website known as the Lost Pupil Database?
p.8
edyourself.org/articles/CMEguidance09.doc

[tricia]

Thanks Fiona

So they don't have a duty and data sharing guidance is very clear that they should only ignore a child's right to privacy if they have genuine reason to believe the child is at risk.

I've been re-reading what they've written "Where it is appropriate and they have been involved the CME team...". So they aren't going to do it in all cases but don't say when it is appropriate. Previous involvement with the CME team is not sufficient reason imo.

(P.S. Sorry, I posted elsewhere before spotting your reply)

[fionan]

I must admit I've dozed off a couple of times while reading the Cross Border Issues section of the draft policy.

I have a suspicion that the Council has misunderstood the CME Guidance.

Local authorities are meant to keep track of children who are educated otherwise in the sense of being placed with alternative providers. They are also meant to keep track of excluded pupils. Most Councils are still really slack about doing this. I think that's what the CME Guidance is talking about. Not elective home education.

"25. It is often lack of consistency across local authority boundaries that allow a child to get “lost” when moving from one area to the other, or between agencies/services. Vulnerable children are often already identified and monitored by other teams and agencies within the authority, and those receiving a suitable education are monitored by schools and other teams when being educated otherwise than at school."
"26. If a pupil in alternative provision moves to another local authority’s area, the information passport should be sent to the new local authority, so that they can use it to help them decide on appropriate provision for the pupil, and pass it on in turn to the new provider or school."

But this is a bit of a hobby-horse of mine. I think the anti-home education brigade did a lot of harm for children genuinely missing education when they hyperfocused on home education. The whole area of alternative provision is astonishingly unregulated.

This is from a report in 2008 (ie between the first and second CME guidance)

"The interviews with local authority coordinators of alternative provision made plain that each local
authority approaches the organisation of alternative provision in a somewhat different manner. Some
LAs were very decentralised in their approach, and simply could not tell us how many students were
being referred by mainstreams schools: ‘I couldn’t say, there are 16 or 17 schools, I really, really
couldn’t say. Each school has its own format [for referrals].’ When asked how many referrals by
mainstream schools take place in their LA, another coordinator told us: ‘We do try to find that out
but it’s quite a struggle to get schools to pass on that information. We spent a lot of time trying to
find that out.’ In another LA, of the 80 students being educated full-time in independent projects and
colleges of further education, 37 were referred directly by mainstream schools. Another borough told
us that all CFE/IAP placements were organised by the schools, and that this amounted to ‘at least 400
students as a conservative guesstimate’. In some local authorities there was a high level of confusion
over which officer in the LA was in fact responsible for alternative provision. Given this confusion, it is
perhaps less surprising that so many children are missing from school rolls."

www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/NewSecretGarden.pdf

[jo70mo]

When a home educating family about whom there are no outstanding concerns move home the child is not leaving one educational establishment for another. The education provider is moving their bricks and mortar base and the child is moving with them. just as if a school found new premises. there is no leaving the education provider and worrying if they will start at another. Perhaps if an SAO was going through it may be different.
But where the LA had no reason to believe an ed wasn't taking place there should be no reason to believe that education has stopped just because they move house into another LA area

[argentarose]

Now is this another place where the LA would be in breach of the data protection act if they pass on your details to another LA without your consent?


Education provider has not changed.
LA has no concerns that a suitable education is not being provided.
Child is not missing education.
No legal duty for Home Educator to register or inform another LA.
As far as I can tell from Fiona's list, nothing in CME stat guidelines . . .

?

Rosemary

[argentarose]

replying to self:

have raised my question about breaching the data protection act on the HE-UK list, and been set straight . . . it doesn't seem like a workable avenue to pursue

oh, well.

Rosemary