Children not in school consultation guide

Jun 4, 2019 by

from Evangelical Alliance:

The government are consulting on new regulations for education outside of school settings.

In April 2019 the Government published a consultation entitled Children not in School. It proposes new legislation around home education and out-of-school education settings.

Some years ago, when the Government was consulting on registering and inspecting out-of-school settings via Ofsted, the Alliance, alongside MPs, other faith and civil society groups raised objections to these proposals. These proposals could have regulated Sunday schools and church services, on vaguely-defined grounds such as ​undesirable teaching”. We considered these proposals disproportionate, and unable to add significantly to the existing powers of statutory agencies. The Government pledged last year not to proceed with these proposals.

However, this consultation appears to re-introduce certain aspects of the proposals in a new form. It proposes to create a legal obligation upon proprietors’ of ​settings’ to take, maintain and store registers of attendance at a ​setting’ for state inspection upon request, with potential legal sanctions for failure to do so.

This obligation on ​settings;’ is very broad. It could lead to the requirement for ​settings’ to keep and maintain registers, on the grounds that home-educated children may attend them, which could have a major impact on churches, faith-based organisations, families and wider civil society.

To make sure that the Government’s proposals are proportionate, we encourage you to respond to section 3 (questions 43 – 53) of this consultation, which covers obligations on such settings. If you are involved in home-education, you may also want to respond to other parts of this consultation. The consultation closes on Monday, 24 June 2019. Please use your own words and relevant examples from your own experience.

Read here

 

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