Post publication update:
Following the raising of concerns by HE families about the wording of this call for evidence, on 6 March, the Chair of the Children, Young People and Education Committee emailed the team behind the Facebook group, Home Ed Cymru, to explain “that home educated children are not, and have never been, a focus of this Committee inquiry.” She added that “committee officials have amended the text to make this more explicit.” The first paragraph quoted below now reads:
“…it has been reported that specific groups thought to be at risk of being ‘criminalised’ include care experienced children, unaccompanied asylum seeker-children, some groups of children who are experiencing challenges within the education system, and black and minority ethnic children and young people.
Initially the offending phrase in the second quotation below remained unchanged, but at the time of posting, that has also been amended from “children not enrolled in mainstream education,” to “some groups of children who are experiencing challenges within the education system.”
This clarification is very much appreciated.
The Senedd’s Children, Young People and Education Committee is tasked with looking at policy and legislation that affects children and young people specifically in the areas of education, health, care services and social care.
The committee has recently launched an inquiry into “Children and Young People on the Margins” which it categorises as relating to “missing children and those vulnerable to criminal exploitation.” As part of the inquiry, interested parties are invited to contribute to a ‘consultation.’
The closing date is 28 March 2024.
This inquiry follows an earlier CYPEC report about care experienced children. Evidence received apparently indicated that such children “make up almost 40% of children who go missing in Wales.”
From then on, the composition of specific groups thought to be at risk of being ‘criminalised’ becomes more speculative, but home educating parents will be both distressed and insulted to see their children potentially classified as being at such risk:
“…it has been reported that specific groups thought to be at risk of being ‘criminalised’ include care experienced children, unaccompanied asylum seeker-children and young people educated otherwise than at school, black and minority ethnic children and young people.”
This could of course be simply an ambiguous reference to children who are EOTAS (i.e. receiving Education Otherwise Than At School fully funded by the Local Authority because they are unable to attend school,) but subsequent phrasing would certainly include electively home educated children:
“At risk groups: including care experience, children experiencing trauma in the home and children not enrolled in mainstream education.”
Respondents are also offered the opportunity to identify other groups of children they may consider to be “on the margins”, notably those “in circumstances that require a specific response from children’s services or other statutory providers and for which there are concerns about the current policy or practice.”
Given their previous experience of negative stereotyping and unnecessary suspicion, home educating parents will be very concerned to see such unevidenced conflation of EHE and safeguarding issues on the Senedd’s website. Open-ended offers for participants to include home educated children with groups requiring specific attention from children’s services only reinforce feelings of unmerited bias and discrimination.
Home educated children are at no more risk of being criminalised or sexually exploited than any other child, and that it should be implied by a Senedd Committee that they are in need of additional attention without substantive evidence being produced for the statement is an insult.
The issue raised by the speech & language therapist in the supporting documents about children not in mainstream provision having limited access to health and education services is really the outworking of healthcare being tied to state-provided education.
This false conflation of home education with being “on the margins” and “at risk” must not be allowed to pass unchallenged. Fortunately, it is possible to use the consultation form to register your views.
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