Agenda item

Report from the Strategic Director of Children and Young People’s Services.

Recommendations:

That Cabinet:

1.    Approves the revised Elective Home Education Policy at Appendix 2.

2.    Delegates authority to the Strategic Director of Children and Young People Services to update the Policy if any minorchanges are required as a result of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill (currently passing through Parliament).

Consideration was given to the report which presented the Revised Elective Home Education Policy for approval. Rotherham’s Elective Home Education Policy was last agreed in 2021, and a review was initiated to ensure that it was easy to navigate and understand and reflected accurately the current way in which the Elective Home Education Team worked with home educators. Home educators and partners were key to this process with a period of public consultation taking place following informal stakeholder events.

The number of children who were electively home educated was rising both locally and nationally. Paragraph 2.3 of the report detailed the reasons why parents and carers chose to home educate. These included ideological views, religious beliefs, bullying, dissatisfaction with the school system and health reasons. A lack of, or perceived lack of suitable special educational need support was also cited.

Views of elective home educators in Rotherham were invited through informal stakeholder engagement prior to the commencement of the formal review. Two drop in sessions on 21st and 27th January, 2025, were offered in the Riverside Café with an invite sent to all home educators known to the Council by e-mail. Three parents attended events in person with a further 5 providing feedback by email. Additionally, the views of parents, carers and young people were also sought on an ongoing basis through visits and contacts undertaken by members of the Elective Home Education (EHE) team. Members of the Improving Lives Select Commission were invited to an engagement session held on 28th February, 2025, to share information and views ahead of the formal consultation taking place. Paragraph 2.8 of the report detailed the stakeholder event held on 27th January, 2025.

Following these events, a proposed Policy was drafted, taking into account all feedback and comments received. The key changes proposed in the Policy were detailed in paragraph 2.9 of the report and included: guidelines for indicators the Council was looking for when making judgements about the provision of suitable education; simplification and removal of some of the process information detailing Council internal actions and systems; clearly stating the responsibilities of all parties involved in the process and providing clarity about the actions of the Council where it could not be satisfied that suitable education was being received by a child. Specific information about Flexi Schooling, which was an arrangement between parents and a school whereby a child who was educated at home most of the time was also registered at school and attended school for part of the week, was also included.

A period of formal consultation was agreed by an Officer Delegated Decision on 15th April, 2025, and was hosted on the Council’s consultation webpages between 16th April and 17th June, 2025. There were 11 responses received to the formal consultation. These were summarised at Appendix 1. Following the consultation, no changes were made to the proposed Policy. Scrutiny was given to the proposed Policy by Improving Lives Select Commission on 22nd July, 2025, and no changes proposed.

Although legislative changes were proposed through the Children’s Wellbeing

and Schools Bill, these had not yet been enacted and were, therefore, not reflected within the proposed Policy. A decision was made to review the Policy at this point given that there was no defined timeline for proposed legislative changes to come into force. The report recommended that Cabinet approve any further update of Rotherham’s Elective Home Education Policy via an Officer Delegated Decision to reflect any such changes as they were made.

Resolved:

That Cabinet:

1.      Approve the revised Elective Home Education Policy at Appendix 2.

2.      Delegate authority to the Strategic Director of Children and Young People Services to update the Policy if any minor changes are required as a result of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill (currently passing through Parliament).