Info on education duty for children out of school / educ otherwise

[Agnesdipesto]

New duty came in on 1 Sept. This is from Dept of Education website:

"In the 2010 schools White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, the Government announced its commitment to ensuring that all pupils in alternative provision should receive suitable full-time education. At the time the White Paper was published, only pupils who had been excluded from school were guaranteed full-time provision, although many local authorities arranged full-time education for all pupils for whom it was suitable.

Section 3 of the Children, Schools and Families Act 2010 extends the duty in section 19 of the Education Act 1996 ("the 1996 Act"), so that local authorities are under a duty to arrange full-time education for all children who, for reasons which relate to illness, exclusion or otherwise, would not receive suitable education unless arrangements are made for them. Currently, the obligation to arrange full-time education only extends to children who have been permanently excluded.

At the time of the White Paper, the provisions in section 3 had not been commenced. The Department has now made a Commencement Order (SI 2011, No 1100) which will bring this duty into force with effect from 1 September 2011. From this date, local authorities must ensure that all children who fall within the scope of section 19 of the 1996 Act receive suitable full-time education unless reasons that relate to their medical condition mean that this would not be in their best interests."

Forgot to say 'otherwise' could include persistent school refusers

Very interesting, thanks Agnes !!
Can't wait to mention this!!!

Just wondering where this stands with the home tuition service which by law states a child must receive 1 hour 15 mins 4 days per week, which isn't exactly full time??

Thanks for the info Agnes! Wonder how that will work for a child who is part time only due to not coping and school still get full days funding maybe they could have a tutor at home in the afternoon?

devientenigma - there is no such law. What you may be refereing to is the bastardisation of the "Access to Education for children and young people
with Medical needs" DfES 0732/2001.

Para 1.15 of that Statutory Guidance says that " 1.15 Pupils who are unable to attend school because of medical needs should be able to access suitable and flexible education appropriate to their needs. The nature of the provision must be responsive to the demands of what can be a changing medical status." The box over the page states that;

LEAs? responsibilities towards pupils who are unable to attend school because of their medical needs should ensure that:

? Pupils are not at home without access to education for more than 15 working days.
? Pupils who have an illness/diagnosis which indicates prolonged or recurring periods of absence from school, whether at home or in hospital, have access to education, so far as possible, from day one.
? Pupils receive an education of similar quality to that available in school, including a broad and balanced curriculum.
? Pupils educated at home receive a minimum entitlement of 5 hours teaching per week. This is a minimum and should be increased where that is necessary to enable a pupil to keep up with their studies. This is particularly important when a pupil is approaching public examinations.

Whether the child or young person is able to access this entitlement will depend on medical advice, and perhaps more importantly, when they feel able to cope with it. The right balance must be struck between encouraging pupils to study and recognising when they are not well enough to benefit from teaching. This must be kept under regular review.

Bullet 4 is the key issue namely that the child should receive at least 5 hrs a week support. Most LAs read that as the maxium. No LA can have a policy giving that 5 hrs as a chidls entitlement as that is a "fettering" decision.

Hope this is helpful.

I think what it means is that the starting point is fulltime and Councils have to show why anything less is 'sufficient' - where its in the child's interests for it to be part-time eg medical reason then thats likely to be ok (as parents are in agreement). Where its limited to 5 hours for budget reasons the Council will be on dodgier ground and will need to say why they have assessed 5 hours as suitable under s.19 and will need to keep this under review.

I see you could argue this is relevant to a school refuser (who refuses on SN grounds) or someone with home tuition / internet schooling. Docs below related to excluded children - so isn't it saying the rules which applied to excluded pupils now apply to children out of school for other reasons. It must be the intention that as many children as poss get as close to FT as poss. Surely its now for councils to argue the opposite?

this see page 25-26 for excluded pupils defined fulltime as 21-25 hours depending on school age.

this says you can mix providers - para 12

Of course you have to be careful as if you ask for FT the LA are likely to try and push you back into the school system. However I think it means that you can take 5 hours as a minimum and 20-25 as whats expected and use that to bargain the LA up.

Thats it Nigel thanks.

I asked my ds home tutor today about this and what it could mean for my ds......apparently he hadn't heard anything. So he would still get less than the stated minimum of 5 hours!!

Thanks anyway Agnes and Nigel