Possible action ahead on the home education legislation front

I am not, as regular readers will know, in general a great fan of home education conspiracy theories. However, I am beginning to wonder whether something is afoot in parliament. Consider this question, asked on January 19th of Michael Gove by Laurence Robertson, Conservative MP for Tewksbury ;

'To ask the Secretary of State for Education what estimate he has made of the number of children who were home-schooled in each constituency in the latest year for which figures are available'

A few days later, on January 24th, Pat Glass, Labour North east Durham, asked Michael Gove;

'What recent estimate he had made of the number of children in the North east Durham constituency who are home schooled'

On February 3rd, another Conservative MP, Gareth Johnson of Dartford, asked Gove;

'What estimate he has made of the number of children who are home schooled in the Dartford constituency'

In each case, Gove simply told the MPs that the Department for Education does not collect information about the number of home-schooled children and has not made a recent estimate of the number of home-schooled children in Dartford, North east Durham or Tewksbury. This is all a bit odd, especially since there was a similar string of questions last year. Sometimes, governments will get backbenchers to submit questions in this way in order to pretend that there is widespread public anxiety to which the government intends to respond with a new law. What is curious here is that these are a mixed bag of Labour and Tory, all asking precisely the same questions, to which they almost certainly already know the answer.

We know that Gove is supposedly considering what changes, if any, need to be made to current arrangements for the regulation of home education. It is odd that he should be receiving all these questions about the subject, questions which are designed to show that the government has no idea how many home educated children there are. This is something which many people, both MPs and others, find alarming. Unless we assume that this is all sheer coincidence and that all these MPs have spontaneously come up with identically worded questions for the Secretary of State for Education, then I think it a fair guess that something is about to happen.

Meanwhile, with the Welsh referendum on the March 3rd, which could grant new power to the Welsh Assembly to direct education, there is another attempt to 'do' something about home education. If the referendum goes in favour of increased powers for the Welsh Assembly, I can see something happening pretty swiftly there. This might in effect mean trialling a new system of regulation which could then be adopted in England as well. Interesting times.