To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what recent estimate he has made of the number of home educators in (a) Gloucestershire and (b) Stroud constituency; and what estimate he has made of the cost to his Department of their regulation should the recommendation of the Badman review of secondary education be accepted. (312747)

Gloucestershire local authority (LA) provided us with information about the number of children in its area, which includes Stroud, who were known by the LA to be home-educated in May 2009 (254) and again in September 2009 (224). This data has been used to inform Graham Badman’s Review of “Elective Home Education England”. We have not collected data below local authority level.

There may be other home-educated children in the Gloucestershire LA area of which the local authority is not aware because there is no current requirement for local authorities to keep a register of home-educated children.

We estimate that the cost of the registration and monitoring proposals for home-educated children will be around £26.3 million in the first year and £14.6 million in subsequent years, based on 20,000 home-educated children. We do not have figures available yet for allocations below national level. We will develop detailed funding methodologies for local authority allocations after discussion with the Local Government Association and local authorities.