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• 24 Feb 2025

• Yes

  Complex

  Yes. As explained by the court in Goodred v Portsmouth CC [2021] EWHC 3057 (Admin) #65 an LA has powers to check whether parents who are electively home educating are “causing their child to receive efficient full-time education suitable to (a) his age, ability and aptitude and (b) to any special educational needs … he may have” (from EA1996 s7). If the LA is not satisfied of that, then it can serve a School Attendance Order (SAO) which specifies a particular school to which the parent should send the child or risk criminal prosecution. For a child who would have an EHCP if they were to attend a school that, in practice, would require the LA to assess the child and produce an EHCP as the route to naming a particular school (even if the parent refused to co-operate with that process). Importantly in all of those things, the LA’s assessment of whether the parent is providing suitable education should not be based on comparison with what the child would receive in school let alone via an EHCP at school: it is a freestanding question. (Be aware though that the Children’s Wellbeing Bill 2025 is (at the time of drafting) proposing changes which, in some instances, would require an LA to serve an SAO and prosecute even where it agreed that the elective home education was suitable, but on the basis that it thought school attendance was nonetheless in the child’s ‘best interests’. If enacted that would be a significant change to one of the fundamental’s of education law for over 150 years, namely that it is enough for a child to be provided with ‘suitable education’, even if the state might think other education would be preferable.)

  

  Noddy No-nonsense Guide
  Authors: David Wolfe KC, Leon Glenister

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