Home education review, what can we do now?

Lord Lucas asks

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, as required by the Code of Practice on Consultation, they have published an impact assessment to accompany the “Registration and Monitoring Proposals” consultation following Mr Badman’s report on Elective Home Education; and, if so, whether they will place a copy in the Library of the House.

Baroness Morgan responds

An impact assessment is not required for the consultation at this stage as the proposals are still at an early stage of development. We do not expect them to place any significant additional burdens on local authorities as most already monitor home education, and our proposals will provide additional powers that will assist local authorities in dealing more efficiently with the small number of cases where home education does not come up to scratch. If we decide to proceed with legislation we will publish an impact assessment and will place a copy in the Library of the House.

Given this gem on the Draft Legislative Programme yesterday

FAIR CHANCES FOR ALL: BUILDING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PUBLIC SERVICES

Improving schools and safeguarding children Bill

which is to include

improving monitoring arrangements for children educated at home;

they appear to have decided to proceed with legislation, and therefore we should expect the impact assessment forthwith. (I didn’t know what an impact assessment is, but if Lord Lucas is asking about it, I assumed it was something I needed to know about, and looked it up.)

You can comment on the exchange between Lord Lucas and Baroness Morgan on the link above, and give your thoughts on the Draft Legislative Programme as follows:

Do you think the Draft Legislative Programme reflects the right priorities for the United Kingdom and, if not, what other issues do you think the Government should be addressing?

To comment:

Please email dlp@commonsleader.x.gsi.gov.uk

Or send responses to:

Freepost RSCA-KKCU-ELTJ

Legislation Committee Secretariat

70 Whitehall

London

SW1A 2AS

And Lord Lucas can be reached through his blog which he is using to garner opinion on a number of issues.

Another avenue of complaint is the Better Regulation Executive who say

The five principles of good regulation

A cornerstone of the better regulation strategy and implementation, and key to BRE’s work, is the five principles of good regulation. The principles state that any regulation should be:

• transparent
• accountable
• proportionate
• consistent
• targeted – only at cases where action is needed

Do you have an idea on how to improve regulation? Visit our better regulation website and tell us how we can make a difference.

I think we are mainly agreed that the Badman recommendations are none of the above and the consultation about them certainly hasn’t been transparent.

Get those letters/emails written. And if you haven’t heard from your MP it may be time to consider a follow up. I’m giving mine two weeks, then printing out the email I’ve already sent him and posting it. It annoys me though that I’ve got to kill trees to get answers. Just one more minor irritation in the grand scheme of things though!

If you are a bit lost about all of this, I suggest you might want to pop back to my first post on what to do and start there. You are probably also wondering why I’m not pushing you to fill in the consultation. My reason there is quite simple, I don’t think it’s time yet. I don’t think we need to tip our hand to the government by filling in their consultation, which is increasingly looking like form filling which will be ignored anyway, as many of the submissions to the review were. I think it’s time to do other things, as above.

You could sign the petition if you wanted though.