Here is the press release which Graham Stuart MP has just published on the OFSTED report on Home Education:-
“ Ofsted Home Education Report Seriously Flawed Says Graham Stuart MP
“Graham Stuart MP, who last week was elected to take the Chair of the Commons Education Select Committee, today condemned Ofsted’s report on home education, “Local Authorities and Home Education” as “an unpleasant hangover of the last government: a manifesto for more state power at the expense of dedicated home educators and their children”.
“Mr Stuart went on, “It is astonishing that the Chief Inspector of Schools should stray onto home education and get it so wrong. In Ofsted’s official press release she says that “it is extremely challenging for local authorities to meet their statutory duty to ensure children have a suitable education”, when they have no such duty. Parents, not the state, have the statutory duty to ensure that their children have a suitable education.
““I find it deeply concerning that, after months of work, the Chief Inspector should make such a basic mistake and so utterly confuse the duties of local authorities and parents. Parents who home educate deserve our respect and awe at their dedication and achievements, not the relentless suspicion of an over mighty state.”
“Under section 436A of the Education Act 1996, inserted by the Education and Inspections Act 2006, local authorities have a duty to identify children who are not receiving a suitable education in their area, so far as it is practical to do so. As the 2007 Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities make clear, however, ‘local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis’ and are only required to intervene if it appears that parents are not providing a suitable education.
“Mr Stuart went on, “As local authorities do not have the power to demand access to home educated children and cannot insist on parents registering with them, the obvious and correct answer is for local authorities to improve their support for families so that more families make contact with them voluntarily. If they did this and made sure that they employed sympathetic staff who built good reputations, then the number of “unknown” children would be reduced. Such a positive approach would respect the primacy of parents in determining the education of their children and put the onus on local authorities to serve and support, rather than catalogue and monitor, families who home educate.
““Ofsted’s report has little to say about improving local authority support for home educated children and says only that the Department of Education should “consider” funding an entitlement for home-educated children to take public examinations. Ofsted’s report is seriously flawed and damaging to the confidence of home educating parents who had hoped that the relentless disinformation and bullying of the previous regime was over.””
Graham Stuart was last week elected Chairman of the Education Select Committee.
Filed under: Home education, OFSTED
The official Education Special Interest Group of the Conservative Party
Thank you Mr Stuart.
Thank you for saying what so many of us were thinking. On reading the Ofsted comment this morning, I felt like I had returned to the nightmarish nanny-state thinking of the old government. I am thankful that the Conservative government have responded to this so quickly.
Indeed, thank you. So depressing to see the Badman Review rise from the dead, nice to see that Graham Stewart has his garlic and stake to hand.
Does anyone else think that Ofsted is desperately trying to give the impression that it is needed before it finds itself under the quango cutting knife? Half of schools suddenly not good enough? Home educators need to be inspected? Sounds like the panicked cry of rent seekers in peril.
Thank you Graham Stuart for this fix for part of our broken society. it was a last ditch attempt from the spin culture left at ‘policy by propaganda’ not seen in Europe since the Vismare republic 1937. Well done sir for your clarity and expediency.
I still worry about how many LEA’s will willingly swallow the propaganda pill then choose to interpret it as guidelines to implement and how much difficulty some Home Educators are going to get as a result.
Mr Stuart, Thankyou for your response, I truly hope LAs will take your words to heart and act accordingly.
traditionally many, perhaps most home educators in the past have been strong supporters of the labour party.
over the last two years however that support has gradually melted away as the labour party’s obsession of control has delved ever deeper into what has always been and should remain to be, the private concerns of families.
Home educators, as a movement, have never asked the government for anything other than being allowed to continue to educate their children in accordance with the ECHR. The Labour party however could not resist interfering and have as a consequence lost the support and respect of some 80 thousand families in the UK along with their supporters.
I think what I am trying to say is that the UK home education movement was never charicterised as was the US movement, as being right of centre, the Labour party has however managed to drive us away and created an implacable foe.
We are so glad that unlike Ofsted and the former Labour Government Mr Stuart understands home education.
Unlike Badman, Balls and Ofsted he did his research, examined the issues and acknowledges that the experts on home education are the families who have done it or are doing it – both adults and children.
We would dearly love to be left in peace to get on with caring for our children, with out having to expend vast amounts of time and energy defending parents’ ability to take full responsibility for their children’s education and care, and make decisions based on their child and circumstances rather than out of fear of state officials.
Thank you once again Mr Stuart for your valued support to home educating families. I am so pleased to see a sane and decent response to this unfortunate relic of a bygone era.
In our area we are beginning to build new bridges with the local authority in relation to home education and reports such as this are unhelpful and irrelevant.
I absolutely agree that the best way forward is to create a positive partnership between local authorities and home educating families, with home educators perceiving clear benefits to being ‘known’ to the local authority.
I certainly believe that fostering a positive partnership between home educating families and the local authority is a far more beneficial approach than any of the heavy-handed registration and regulation proposed by the last government. We have already found our local authority to be very willing to both listen to us and respond helpfully to our concerns.
Having made the decision to have children, parents are responsible for their upbrining and education. How many times do we hear that parents are not teaching their children manners, respect and decency?
Parents ‘teach’ their children from the moment they are born, and it is our responsibility to continue to do so until they are able to make their own way in the world when, if we have done our job well, they will be rounded, caring, interested individuals, ready to fully contribute to society.
Teachers do a job. Parents carry out their duty. Millions of parents across the country are doing a great, often challenging, job and deserve respect and congratulation, not criticism and suspicion.
Children in schools are as at risk of receiving a poor education as those who are home educated. As a teacher, I would suggest more so.
Congratulations to those who look after their children (THEIR children – not the State’s) well, whether at home or otherwise. And thank goodness for the sense of Graham Stuart.
Thank you again Mr Stuart for defending not only the rights of home educators, but at a more fundemental level, the rights of the individual to determine their destiny. OFSTED is known to be left in its sympathies and naturally hostile to independent thought in education, so the words of the chief inspector do not come as a total surprise. Nonetheless it is depressing to awake to another radio report in which home education is linked to what was in fact yet another dismal failure on the part of social services to protect a child (Ishaq).
Home educators are just people who take a particularly involved role in their children’s education and they are all rather different. But yesterday, when I took my children to their annual home ed sports day, I couldn’t help wondering why so much energy goes into denouncing us. The children at sports day were just a big group of totally ordinary individuals, having lots of fun, playing, chatting….moaning when they didn’t get 1st place! What a waste of time and resources goes into persecuting us.
However, I am sure OFSTED will take exactly the same approach with the Free Schools. And for the same political reasons.
Dear Graham Stuart,
As a HE parent I am very thankful for your involvement over recent months in protecting the rights and responsibilities of every parent, not just HE ones, in regard to the education of their children.
You rightly highlight how Ofsted, in common with other “Children’s Professionals”, believe the State is all responsible and all powerful in this respect. As Maggie Atkinson infamously asserted in a speech whilst she was Head of CS in Gateshead, all the children and all the families in her area were hers!
I hope that the new government will take steps to ensure that the ambiguity which has arisen in Local Authority departments through the various acts passed under Labour cannot continue. Ofsted’s report was built upon such ambiguity and you have rightly kicked it from under them. Please press Michael Gove and his team to get rid of the misleading legislation.
Thanks again for your on-going support.
I concur with all these comments. Bravo Graham Stuart!
Personally, I think Ofsted should come under scrutiny. I know of instances where schools have been very deficient in certain areas but have received glowing reports from Ofsted – particularly in those areas! Of course, this may be partly due to the fact that schools can prepare themselves very thoroughly since they have plenty of warning of the inspection – another factor that shows how misleading these reports can be. If they are to continue they should be unannounced visits or visits at very short notice (e.g. the day before).
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[...] quickly spoke out to condemn OFSTED’s spin. On the blog of the Conservative Education Society (here) he blasted OFSTED for not knowing the facts: It is astonishing that the Chief Inspector of Schools [...]
Bravo Mr Stuart, long may you hold your position and I wish you success, as you are supporting that of my child with this stance, we thank you.
Thank you and well said. This is long time coming and very much appreciated by us and may others.
maybe now your in power, people may start understanding the real values of home education and not the rubbish labour has in printed into the general public over home education.
Hopefully ewo department will stop, harassing us, intimadatin us and when that false to force our children back to school they make false referrals to social services, not because there is a welfare concern but only because we home educate and they don’t like it.
Thank you and well said. This is long time coming and very much appreciated by us and may others.
maybe now your in power, people may start understanding the real values of home education and not the rubbish labour has in printed into the general public over home education.
Hopefully ewo department will stop, harassing us, intimidating us and when they fail to force us to force our children back to school despite if the school failed our children educationally or failed to keep them safe from bullying at school they go on to make false referrals to social services, not because there is a welfare concern but only because we home educate and they don’t like it.
i maybe dyslexic but it does not affect my child’s education so much so she was starting gcse maths by age of 12 she is 13 and now doing a Microsoft course that most wouldn’t do until they were 18yrs amongst many other subjects, also when she was in school she was doing yr 5 work in year 4 in English and Maths,
Hear, hear. Hit the nail on the head there, Mr Stuart. You make me glad I voted Tory. Genuine thanks.
no Brian Gould the ewo for Plymouth is now stalking us, using the magic word safegarding to Illegally seek data, for personal gain after we moved over 200 miles away and after 18 months after our arrange move finally went a head,
guess what Suzy Dix Ali Sim Paul Mazzie and Iain Watson also played their part coruption, ignored the facts no safegarding issues exsisted and she still Illegally shared data, amongst other coruption with the Oxford education team
even threatened a SAO based on wantin me to comform my address just so they can give itto the ewo who is stalking harrassing us and has intimdated us in th past
when they stop lying about me only then will I stop telling the truth about them
if they don’t like it then they best stop acting Illegally and being so corupt, then i can not expose them.