Rt. Hon. Sir Alan Beith MP

Home education petition from 42 constituents laid before Parliament by Alan Beith

Sir Alan Beith has added his voice to calls for the Government to look again at the findings of the Badman report before rushing through legislation which will affect people who choose to educate their children at home. Sir Alan presented a petition to Parliament on behalf of 42 constituents on Thursday 8 December.

The Badman Report makes a number of recommendations and the proposed legislation would require parents to apply to the local authority annually for permission to home educate. Parents would also have to submit detailed plans for their teaching which would need to be approved by the local authority. Local authority officers would also have the right to interview children without their parents present. Sir Alan has previously backed a House of Commons Motion criticising the Badman Review of home education.

Rothbury resident Jo Coulter, who educates her child at home, said

"I am absolutely horrified at the thought that in the name of child protection, thousands of children in my country would be subjected to this degree of exposure to strangers, within their own homes. Such treatment I thought was reserved for those suspected of committing a crime.

"Indeed, why stop at home educating families? Why not extend these measures throughout the land to cover all homes? After all, if school children only spend around seven hours a day in school, this leaves them out of 'school protection' for nearly seventeen hours a day, on week days, forty-eight hours at the weekend and many more over holidays. Indeed it is questionable if children are at all safe anywhere, even when they are in school. Bullying is a well established school problem.

"Many existing officers do not seem to be at all capable of appreciating the breadth of successful educational scenarios, so the thought of such people being in charge of approving the right to home educate is also of great concern.

"It is deeply offensive that families like mine should be subjected to this degrading treatment. I have not yet met anyone within my constituency who finds it acceptable."

Sir Alan said

"The Badman Report proposals look like an over-bureaucratic approach when proper use of existing powers by local authorities may be all that is needed. It is important to safe-guard the rights of parents to home-educate their children."

The petition was formally presented to Parliament on Tuesday evening.

The Public Petition has been drafted with help from Graham Stuart, MP for Beverly and Holderness. A petition is a formal written request from one or more people to the Sovereign, the Government or to Parliament. The right of the subject to petition the Monarch for redress of personal grievances has probably been exercised since Saxon times. It was recognised in Magna Carta and more explicitly in an Act of 1406. The Bill of Rights of 1688 restated that right in unambiguous terms, "... it is the right of the subjects to petition the King, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal". There has been an increase in the number of petitions to the House of Commons in recent years. This shows that the ancient practice does still have value to petitioners. It can be used as a means to mobilise opinion, and to create publicity locally, or indeed nationally, for an issue. Members of Parliament can use it as a way of informing the government about an issue on which their constituents hold strong views, and thus it remains a valuable tool whereby Members can hold the executive to account. (Parliamentary Factsheet, Public Petitions, available online at http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/p07.pdf.)

The text of the Public Petition reads: "The petition or persons resident in the Berwick upon Tweed parliamentary constituency

"Declares that they are concerned about the recommendations of the Badman Report, which suggests closer monitoring of home educators, including a compulsory annual registration scheme and right of access to people's homes for local authority officials; further declares that the petitioners believe the recommendations are based on a review that was extremely rushed, failed to give due consideration to the evidence, failed to ensure that the data it collected were sufficiently robust, and failed to take proper account of the existing legislative framework.

"The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families either not to bring forward, or to withdraw, proposed legislative measures providing for tighter registration and monitoring of children educated at home in the absence of a thorough independent inquiry into the condition and future of elective home education in England; but instead to take the steps necessary to ensure that the existing Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities are properly implemented, learning from current best practice, in all local authorities in England.

"And the Petitioners remain, etc."

Nearly 400 MPs have delivered the Public Petition from signed by their constituents.

Around 150 families in Northumberland home educate.

Sir Alan has backed EDM 1784 Home Education which states:

That this House recognises that an estimated 45,000 to 150,000 children are educated at home; believes that parents should be allowed and supported to home educate; notes with concern the proposals put forward in the recent Badman Review; expresses particular concern at the lack of consultation involved in conducting the review; considers it unacceptable that local authorities are able to circumvent their responsibilities to pupils who are being home educated; accepts the need for a system of support to ensure that home educated children receive a good quality of education without creating an excessive and damaging degree of bureaucracy; and calls on the Government to strike the right balance between allowing parents the freedom to give their children the widest possible educational opportunities and ensuring that all children receive a well-rounded education.