The authority published a termly newsletter, met regularly with home educators and arranged opportunities for home educating children to sit exams externally.
As Ralph Lucas asked in the Lords debate, "What have these people done?" Originally the government conflated educational and safeguarding issues on the presumption that all home educators are potentially not merely non-educators but also abusers.
The last Labour government commissioned a report by Graham Badman, a former council education director, who recommended home educators be forced to register with their local council, submit learning plans and face regular inspections, prompting an outcry from home education proponents.
Local authority officials tended to view home educators as "weirdos", said a spokeswoman for Education Otherwise, a home education support group.
That school should be the benchmark against which all education is measured is resented by many home educators.
Home educators cite statistics* showing that it helps both educational attainment and the course of grown-up life.Labour's latest big idea in education is "personalisation", which is intended to allow much more flexible timing and choice of subjects.
Progress evaluation happens naturally through the one-on-one process of home educating, although in some areas the law requires periodic formal testing or evaluation of home educators.
From the home educators' point of view, however, the conflating of welfare issues with education is a dangerous step.
While home educators used to mainly be those with philosophical objections to the state education system many were now parents of children with special needs or of those who had faced bullying, she said.
While officials talk the language of individualism and chances for everybody, home educators are in a position to deliver precisely that kind of tailor-made education.
