Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

This was put down as a placeholder in case we got to the point where anything crept in from the Government’s side on the subject of home education. However, I think that it has its own value. In the next Session we shall doubtless consider home education in detail so I do not want to trespass on that now, but there is a history in this country of a lack of contact and comprehension between Government and home educators. This is not the case in Scotland, where there is a settled arrangement whereby an intermediary body has developed which allows the home education community to communicate satisfactorily with the Scottish Government, and by and large things there proceed pretty well. Here when the Government announced their Badman review, I think that more than 2,000 home educators sent in individual views, and being home educators they were individual views and not copied out of some round robin. The Government must have found it impossible to deal with that variety, depth and passion of view. As a result, the home education community feels, probably quite rightly, that its views were ignored, although I do not blame the Government because I cannot see how a civil servant can ever be expected to get their mind around such an extraordinary variety of opinions and produce a coherent briefing for a Minister. What is needed is some form of intermediary body. I do not at all hold to the particular plan that I put down here; that was a case of working something out on paper to see what reaction I had to it. There has been a good deal of hostility to it from the home education community, as I expect there would be to any plan. Nevertheless, I hope that the Government will express themselves open to an initiative in this area and say that they would welcome such an intermediary body if it could be created, or something that would enable the home education community to speak effectively to Government, and then perhaps if there is a known willingness something will happen. I beg to move.