Member

On the issue of time estimates, government Amendments 136, 137, 142, 143 and 147 will make it possible for parents to give estimates of time spent in education for the registers, rather than exact times. It is essential for local authorities to have high-level information on the child’s time spent being educated and who is providing the education during that time, but we recognise that providing exact information on the time spent in home education is not simple in practice. Arrangements can be fluid, varying week by week or changing at short notice, and these amendments will enable parents to give estimates that may account for these types of situations and therefore could greatly reduce the number of updates that some parents would otherwise need to provide to local authorities. Amendment 147 will ensure that regulations can be used to describe how time estimates are to be calculated.