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Identifier:
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1872
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Respondent Information
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Title
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Ms
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First Name
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Christine
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Last name
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Gilbert
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Email
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Address
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Alexandra House
33 Kingsway
London
WC2B 6SE
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Organisation
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Ofsted
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Campaign
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Confidential Response
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No
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Future Contact
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No
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Acknowledge Response
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No
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Inform when published
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No
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Respondent Information
Questions
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Please specify in what capacity you are
responding to this questionnaire
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Answer/Comments:
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Office for Standards in
Education, Children's Services and Skills
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Consultation Questions
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1 Do you think
the current system for safeguarding children who are educated at home is
adequate? Please let us know why you think that.
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Answer/Comments:
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Our experience from
inspections of children’s services and evaluations of serious case reviews is
that there is variation across the country in how proactively local
safeguarding children boards ensure these children are safeguarded. Some
local child protection procedures address this robustly while others do
not. Current DCSF guidelines for local authorities on elective home
education place insufficient emphasis on safeguarding the welfare of
children. In a small number of cases, our evaluation of serious case
reviews has identified that a lack of oversight of children receiving home
education contributed to a serious incident or the death of a child.
Schools have an important responsibility to monitor children’s safety and
welfare but this safety net is missing for children educated at home. In
addition, children who are educated at home may have less access to trusted
adults who they can turn to if they are concerned about their home
circumstances. Ofsted recently conducted a small survey into the
effectiveness of local authority policies to manage the risks to children
who are not attending school nor receiving education elsewhere. In this
survey, some authorities expressed the view that securing adequate
safeguarding would be easier if they had a clear right of access to family
homes in the course of monitoring the suitability of home education. Some
authorities reported that national organisations for home education were
advising parents to deny access to officers from children's services who
were attempting to establish the suitability of the provision. Ofsted is
concerned that this advice may increase the risk of harm to some children.
Children who are educated at home but are not known to the local authority
may be more likely to be at risk. Local authorities are notified when
children are removed from local authority school rolls. However, during the
survey referred to above, five local authorities expressed concern that
some independent schools in their area did not notify them when pupils were
taken off roll.
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2 a) Be
healthy
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Answer/Comments:
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Ofsted has no evidence
in this area.
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2 b) Stay
safe
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Answer/Comments:
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Ofsted has no evidence
in this area.
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2 c) Enjoy
and achieve
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Answer/Comments:
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Ofsted has no evidence
in this area.
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2 d) Make a
positive contribution.
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Answer/Comments:
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Ofsted has no evidence
in this area.
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2 e)
achieve economic well-being
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Answer/Comments:
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Ofsted has no evidence
in this area.
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3 Do you think
that Government and local authorities have an obligation to ensure that all
children in this country are able to achieve the five outcomes? If
you answered yes, how do you think Government should ensure this?.
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4 Do you think
there should be any changes made to the current system for supporting
home educating families? If you answered yes, what should they be? If
you answered no, why do you think that?
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Answer/Comments:
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School nursing services have
an important contribution to health promotion for children and young
people. This service is not usually available for home educating families.
It would be helpful if PCTs were required, and
resourced, to offer school nursing service to all such families.
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5 Do you think
there should be any changes made to the current system for monitoring home
educating families? If you answered yes, what should they be? If you
answered no, why do you think that?
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Answer/Comments:
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The previously mentioned
survey report recommends that: • it should be a requirement for all schools,
not just local authority maintained schools, to share pupil roll
information with the local authority and, in particular, to notify the
local authority promptly when and for what reason a pupil is removed from
roll. • that there should be a clear entitlement
for local authority staff to gain access to a family home when discharging
their statutory duty to assess the suitability of elective home education.
We also believe it would be helpful if parents had a duty to inform the
local authority of their intention to educate their child at home. This
would be a similar duty to that imposed on parents to inform the local
authority of any long term arrangements for their child to be looked after
outside of their immediate family (as in private fostering for example).
The statutory responsibilities of local authorities to assess and monitor
the suitability of arrangements to educate children at home should be
clarified and should include a requirement that local authorities are
satisfied that the child’s welfare is safeguarded, including seeing the
child. The good practice and robust procedures for safeguarding children
educated at home demonstrated by some local safeguarding children boards
should be adopted in all areas.
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6 Some people
have expressed concern that home education could be used as a cover for
child abuse, forced marriage, domestic servitude or other forms of child
neglect. What do you think
Government should do to ensure this does not happen?
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Answer/Comments:
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Ofsted does not have a view
on this.
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