Quality assurance of evidence for CSF select committee

Dear Dr Shone,

Thank you for your recent email. A reply will be sent to you as soon as
possible (where a response is required). For information, the
departmental standard for correspondence received is that responses
should be sent within 15 working days or 20 working days if you are
requesting information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Your correspondence has been allocated the reference number 2009/0089372

Thank you.

Central Allocation Team

Public Communications Team

Tel: 0870 0002288
www.dcsf.gov.uk

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Dear Dr Shone,
Your Ref: 2009/0089372
Thank you for your request for information. I should like to apologise for the delay in replying to your email of 22
October. The Department is aware that it has missed the statutory deadline for reply and is in breach of its
obligations under the Act. While I appreciate that it is in no way a justification I should like to explain that the
Department makes every effort to meet deadlines, but the delay in responding in this case has been due to the unusual
volume of requests the Department has received in recent months resulting from the review into home education.

You requested the following -

In a letter giving revised statistical evidence for the review of elective home education, dated October 9th, to Mr
Barry Sheerman, Chairman of the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee, Graham Badman has stated that "The
figures used in this paper have been quality assured by a DCSF Statistician.

Please provide the report of the DCSF Statistician mentioned by Mr Badman, together with any other assumptions and
workings. In particular, I wish to see the work supporting Mr Badman's statement that "the number of children known to
children's social care in some local authorities is disproportionately high relative to the size of the home education
population."

Mr Badman goes on to say that "The basis for this statement is
sound..."; please include the assumptions and workings to support
this.

I have dealt with your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 ("the Act").

I attach a copy of the correspondence sent by the DCSF Statistician confirming the analysis of the data was
informative and clear. Information has been redacted where the Department considers that the absolute exemption at
section 40 of the Act is engaged because some of information requested constitutes personal data, disclosure of which
would contravene the data protection principles.

On the basis of local authority evidence and case studies presented, including evidence from serious case reviews,
from LAs about home educating children known to them, Graham Badman made the statement `the number of children known
to children's social care in some local authorities is disproportionately high' in his Report on the Review of
Elective Home Education. The variation between the local authorities was acknowledged.

I attach a graph in relation to your request, showing the spread of results from different local authorities on the
proportion of children known to social care. This graph supports Mr Badman's statement that `the number of children
known to children's social care in some local authorities is disproportionately high relative to the size of the home
education population'.

The information supplied to you is protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Any documents produced by
government officials will be covered by Crown Copyright. You are free to use the information for your own purposes,
including any non-commercial research you are doing and for the purposes of news reporting. Any other reuse, for
example commercial publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder and is regulated by the Reuse of
Public Sector Information Regulations 2005. You can find details on the arrangements for re-using Crown Copyright at:

Office of Public Sector Information
Information Policy Team
Kew
Richmond
Surrey
TW9 4DU

Email: [1][email address]

You have requested any assumptions and workings in support of `the basis for this statement is sound'. The Department
considers that section 21 of the Act is engaged. This is because the information that can be released to you is
already reasonably accessible via the Department's websites at
[2]http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/foischeme/subPage...
and [3]http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters.... Mr Badman's
letter to Barry Sheerman provides a statistical analysis of the data received from the supplementary questionnaire
together with frequency distribution histograms to assist users in understanding the range of data provided by
different local authorities.

If you have any queries about this letter, please contact me. Please remember to quote the reference number above in
any future communications.

If you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you should make a complaint to the Department by
writing to me within two calendar months of the date of this letter. Your complaint will be considered by an
independent review panel, who were not involved in the original consideration of your request.

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint to the Department, you may then contact the Information
Commissioner's Office.
Yours sincerely,

Lisa White
[4]www.dcsf.gov.uk

Your correspondence has been allocated the reference number 2009/0089372.

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References

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2. http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/foischeme/subPage...
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