Catch-all guidance from the Department for Education seeks to extend state supervision to every aspect of children’s activities, all in the name of safeguarding.
What’s been said?
Two important new guidance documents were published by the DfE on 29 May. One is accompanied by a Call for Evidence.
The first is Guidance for English local authorities about “Unregistered independent schools and out-of-school settings.” This holding page summarises Its purpose thus:
This guidance is for local authorities. It explains what unregistered independent schools and out-of-school settings are, and outlines steps you can take to:
• safeguard children in out-of-school settings
• identify settings of concern
• intervene when you have concerns
It also explains how your duties and powers are relevant to this work.
The full guidance is available on a web page entitled “Unregistered independent schools and out-of-school settings: guidance for local authorities.” Readers will note that it is built on an increasingly common assertion, which we comment on below, that local authorities:
“have a duty to safeguard all children in your local area. This applies regardless of the education or activity setting they attend.”
The third publication is Safeguarding Guidance for Providers in Out-of-school settings [OOSS]. This is headlined as: “Safeguarding guidance, e-learning and resources for providers of after-school clubs, activities and tuition, and other out-of-school settings.” This page links to the full 56 page, PDF Guidance document along with a leaflet for providers, a summary leaflet for providers and posters for your setting.
This Guidance is non-statutory. It includes information on the policies and procedures which providers should have in place for health and safety; safeguarding and child protection; safe and suitable people; governance. It purports to cover “best practices” and “make clear legal requirements,” all with reference to the familiar mantra that “Safeguarding, and promoting the welfare of children, is everyone’s responsibility.”
Details of the vast range of providers likely to be affected by this guidance are included on the holding page (see below) and there is an accompanying Call for Evidence “to help shape future safeguarding policy for the Out-of-School Settings (OOSS) sector.” This runs from 29 May to 21 August.
The consultation document is available as a PDF (38 pages), and participants are told that their input will “help inform reforms to improve safeguarding in OOSS, help ensure that children attend safe and trusted settings, and give parents and carers confidence that they are choosing safe settings for their children.” An on-line portal is provided for responses to this consultation, but all the questions are laid out in the PDF.
Why does it matter?
The most important thing to note at this stage is the vast range of settings that are included in the OOSS category. It appears no out-of-school activity lies outside the scope of this guidance, as the consultation document explains:
This diverse sector includes providers such as tuition centres, sports and arts clubs, youth groups (e.g. Scouts and Brownies), holiday camps/activity centres, and faith-based education settings.
All parents therefore need to be aware of the implications of this for them and their children.
And just to ensure that nothing is overlooked, the Guidance for LAs is careful to point out that although “OOSS typically operate outside normal school hours, some settings operate during the day, for example to support elective home education.”
In addition to their scope, initial reactions to a first look at both these sets of guidance could be summed up with two words – timing and tone.
These documents were published a long time before Peers had any expectation of reaching the clauses on Independent Educational Institutions [IEIs] in the House of Lords Committee stage for the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill [CWS Bill]. In fact it now looks as though the Committee will not reach clauses 36 to 43 until the autumn, several weeks after the consultation closes.
So what might the DfE have in mind by publishing their Guidance for LAs when it did? Ostensibly it is presented as an attempt to achieve better coordination in a sector regulated not by one set of statutory guidance or legislation, but by several, depending on the context. It is common for more than one department, agency or safeguarding partner to have responsibilities in any particular setting. But of course the issue of where regulation becomes a hindrance or unnecessary intrusion into self-help activities which are working perfectly well within their own parameters is not mentioned at all.
The message hammered home to local authorities is that they have a duty to proactively safeguard all children in their local area, and as noted above this is said to apply “regardless of the education or activity setting they attend.”
Parents should take careful note of the working definition of OOSS: “Out-of-school settings (OOSS) are organisations or individuals that provide tuition, training, instruction, or activities to children in England without their parents’ or carers’ supervision.”
This is important for all home educators to appreciate, because the Children Not in School [CNiS] registers detailed in the CWS Bill as it stands will require parents to provide information on every educational setting their child attends.
LAs are encouraged to remind parents that they need to assure themselves of the safety of an activity before enrolling their child in it. Justifying the production of this guidance under the guise of clarifying areas of responsibility is not really credible, given the tone of the document. It reads rather too much like a KGB manual, and the assumptions about parents’ capabilities (or lack thereof) are so very patronising – parents are mentioned several times, but frequently as the passive recipients of information which LAs are to hand down to them – that one is forced to see it for what it is, a further initiative to advance the march of state oversight, and ultimately control.
Given that the law currently in operation remains unchanged and will do until the CWS Bill is enacted, the publication of Guidance for LAs at this juncture feels very much like a departmental attempt to jump the starting gun, and establish the narrative for future oversight of all children so as to pre-empt any unnecessary delay once the Bill’s provisions for IEI’s come into force.
This is a very unhelpful approach, as illustrated in a different but related area by the experiences of home educating parents in some local authorities, who report instances where their LAs are already acting on other matters as though the CWS Bill was ‘legal tender.’ Why not wait for the final text of the Bill before issuing guidance to LAs, rather than sowing seeds now in their minds of approaches they might take?
But as readers will probably have noted in other spheres touching on the boundaries of parental-state interaction, here too we observe that a high level of state surveillance is regarded as both necessary and desirable, and this most certainly affects the tone of both the OOSS Providers’ Guidance and the way the consultation questions are framed.
Though it still remains to be seen what Peers will make of the IEI clauses in the Bill – increased standardisation or centralisation on other fronts have not been well received by some of them so far. From the lack of amendments around IEIs however, it would appear that the majority will go along with the government’s recommendations because they are already well steeped in the prevailing narrative that “the state knows best.”
The OOSS providers’ guidance opens with the statement that “This is non-statutory guidance for organisations or individuals who provide community activities, tuition or after-school clubs for children.”
When considering the tone of the final tranche of consultation questions about potential levels of OOSS safeguarding reform, it is not difficult to see that the government is seeking increased regulation and oversight in such settings. They are carrying out the necessary box-ticking “we have consulted on this” exercise by phrasing some of the questions in terms of an early stage information-gathering exercise about possible options. But those with eyes to see can tell that as with all multi-choice question papers, though several options may be offered, only one of the answers is the right one.
What can I do?
The sub-title of the providers’ guidance is a reminder of the huge range of activities which will be affected by these measures, and both parents and providers would do well to download it and read it carefully.
Typical settings detailed in the list on page 7 include tuition companies, individual tutors or learning centres; extra-curricular clubs (sports, music, drama); uniformed youth organisations – yes, Scouts and Guides are both listed – open access youth work provision; supplementary schools, private language schools and religious settings “offering education in their own faith, culture, or religious texts or preparation for rites of passage.”
As a parent, remember that OOSS are a vital aspect of the broad spectrum of groups and activities most of us take for granted in our local communities. Many families, not just home educating ones, have children who take part in some of the groups listed above.
So it’s really important to spread the word about the consultation, complete it yourself and encourage as many families as possible known to you to do the same – despite its non-family-friendly closing date of 21 August.
And of course, providers of any form of after-school activity or OOSS should read all the above very carefully, being aware of the current multi-agency safeguarding approach, and be sure to respond to the consultation.
There is no child-friendly version of the consultation, despite the options for under 12’s or 13-18s to complete it.
As you consider the scope, tone and timing of these publications, think carefully about the benefits and down-sides of increased regulation. What is the problem here that they are trying to solve?
Does increased state involvement and standardisation actually help with meeting the needs of individuals?
What is clear is that some providers may feel overwhelmed by the additional responsibilities and requirements detailed in the Guidance. Many activities are staffed by volunteers. It would be tragic if the outcome was a reduction in the number of well-established and popular activities available in any area.