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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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The Minister for Schools (Nick Gibb)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on his effective and balanced opening speech in this important debate on elective home education. The Government support this parental right and want to ensure that parents who choose to educate their children at home have access to local support to enable them to do this well. The Government’s priority is to continue to raise educational standards so that children and young people in every part of the country are prepared with the knowledge, skills and qualifications they need to reach their potential. Education should be provided in a safe environment, whether that is at school or at home.
Home education works best when it is a positive and informed choice, with the child’s education at the centre of the parent’s decision. For many parents and children, that will be the case but local authorities report an increasing number of children being home educated, exacerbated not only by the covid-19 pandemic, but by other factors, as was ably pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous). In its annual elective home-education survey, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services estimated that 37,500 children were home educated in 2016. That increased to over 81,000 children by 2021, including a significant jump of 38% between 2019 and 2020—the height of the covid-19 pandemic. The increase in the number of children being home educated is not a problem in itself, but local authorities report growing concerns that the increase is being driven by reasons that are not in the best educational interests of the child, and that some of these children are not receiving a suitable education.
My hon. Friend raises an important issue about Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children. We know from local authorities that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children are over-represented in their cohorts of children not in school. The measures proposed in the Schools Bill would provide a duty on local authorities to provide support for families, which would, of course, apply to those children and their families. The data from the proposed register would also help provide a proper understanding of the scale of the issue raised by my hon. Friend.
Andrew Selous
For parents, whatever group they are from, who are unfortunately unable to read or write, what are the Minister’s thoughts on whether they are properly able to home educate their children?
Nick Gibb
My hon. Friend raises an important point. This is also about attendance at school. There is a range of measures that the Department is engaged in on improving attendance of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children, as well as other children who, because of the covid pandemic, are not returning to school. We need to ensure that children attend school.
Andrew Selous
Sorry, I was actually talking about illiterate parents who are home educating their children. These are children who are not in school—they are being home educated—when their mother and father cannot read or write. To me, that is simply unacceptable. I would like to help the adults as well with adult literacy, but it is completely wrong as far as the children are concerned.
Nick Gibb
As my hon. Friend and others have pointed out, under the Act, there is a requitement for children to have a suitable education. Clearly, if there is no one at home who is able to read or write, those children cannot possibly receive a suitable education. The local authority therefore has a duty in those circumstances to intervene, to act and ultimately to provide an order requiring those children to attend school.
The two petitions that led to the debate are focused on the Department’s proposals to introduce a duty on local authorities to maintain statutory registers of children not in school. The proposal was included in the Schools Bill 2022. Although the Government confirmed in December last year that the Bill will no longer be continuing, the Government remain committed to legislating on the children not in school measures at the next suitable opportunity.
The Petitions Committee helpfully conducted a survey of those who contributed to the petitions we are debating today. The thousands of responses received have given us additional valuable insight into the views and experiences of home educators. I was particularly struck by the number of respondents who cited special educational needs and disability as the reason for their decision to home educate and the range of experiences people have had with local authorities. I noted in the survey the number of families who cited the positive effects that home education has had on their child’s development and health. Those positive experiences demonstrate how vital it is to support the parental right to choose how best to educate children, and this Government will continue to support and uphold that right.
The current legal framework for elective home education is not a system for regulating home education per se or for ensuring that parents educate their children in a particular way. Instead, under the duty in section 436A of the Education Act 1996, local authorities must make arrangements to identify children who are not receiving a suitable full-time education. Local authorities have the same wellbeing and safeguarding responsibilities for children educated at home as for other children and must take action where required, using safeguarding powers appropriately.
Every local authority has a statutory duty to satisfy itself that every child of compulsory school age is receiving a suitable education, but there is currently no statutory requirement for local authorities to maintain registers, nor is there a general requirement on parents to inform anyone of their decision to home educate, although the Department recommends doing so. That means that local authorities have low confidence that their existing voluntary registers, if they have them, include all children educated otherwise than in school. This can create challenges in establishing whether a child is in receipt of suitable home education or is missing education. In addition, there are inconsistencies between local authorities in the level and quality of information collected about eligible children. Those are some of the issues that the children not in school measures seek to address.
The Department’s commitment to establishing a local authority-administered registration system was first set out in our children not in school consultation response, which was published in February 2022. The consultation received almost 5,000 responses, which were all carefully considered. The Department previously ran a call for evidence on elective home education in 2018, which provided useful information and data.
The children not in school measures, as contained in the Schools Bill, proposed the creation of duties on local authorities to maintain registers of eligible children. The information contained in the registers would help authorities to undertake their existing responsibilities. Parents would be required to provide only the specified information necessary for local authorities to maintain their registers. Failure to do so would require local authorities to begin formal inquiries as to the suitability of the child’s education, because it would create a legitimate presumption for a local authority that an investigation would be required. Only if education was deemed unsuitable following those inquiries would a local authority need to start school attendance order proceedings, as is the case now. Certain providers of out-of-school education would also be required to provide information to the local authority on request, to ensure that as many children as possible who should be on the register are and, in particular, to help with the identification of children who are missing education or attending illegal schools.
The measures contained a duty on local authorities to provide or secure support, where requested, to registered home-educating families to promote the education of the child. The support element of the measures is an important component in encouraging positive engagement between local authorities and home educators, and helps some home educators to provide good-quality education. The support would include, for example, advice about education; information about sources of assistance; provision of facilities, services or assistance; or access to non-educational services or benefits. The Petition Committee’s survey results show that a high number of home educators would appreciate additional support from their local authority. It remains our intention to work closely with home educators and local authorities on the implementation a new statutory system prior to its introduction.
The Department’s proposals do not feature any additional local authority powers to explicitly monitor education or to enforce entry into the home. The Government’s view continues to be that local authorities’ existing powers, if used in the way set out in the Government’s guidance, are sufficient to enable them to determine whether the provision is suitable. In April 2019, we published revised guidance for local authorities and parents on arrangements for the oversight of home education.
The hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) gave examples of local authority interventions that may well exceed the wording in the guidance on elective home education, which is designed for local authorities. Paragraph 5.2 of that guidance says:
“It is important that the authority’s arrangements are proportionate and do not seek to exert more oversight than is actually needed where parents are successfully taking on this task”
of home educating their children. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire will want to know, a local authority may specify its requirements about how effective a child’s literacy and numeracy must be when deciding whether an education being provided to a child at home is suitable.
Andrew Selous
I am very grateful to the Minister for making that point, but it is still not clear how a local authority would know if a child could not read or write. It is very welcome to hear that the local authority should expect the child to be able to read and write, but if the local authority is not allowed to see the child, enter the home or see the child’s work, how would the local authority know whether that child could read, write or add up?
Nick Gibb
What the guidance says at paragraph 5.4 is that each local authority
“should provide parents with a named contact who is familiar with home education policy”
and who
“ordinarily makes contact with home educated parents on at least on annual basis so the authority may reasonably inform itself of the current suitability of the education provided.”
In other words, if the local authority can gain access—not forced access or a legal right to access, but by having a proper dialogue with the parents—it can reassure itself of the quality of the education. If it was unable to do that, the presumption that the local authority would make would be that the child was not receiving a suitable education in the home environment.
Ms Rimmer
Last year, the Education Secretary said that legislation would come in the new year—this year. Now, the Department is saying that it will come at the next suitable opportunity. Could the Minister be more specific on the timescale that we can expect for the legislation, which will provide a concise and complete list of children who should be getting an education? At the moment, there is no secure way for a local authority to ensure that it has a full register of children within its borough.
Nick Gibb
I say to the hon. Member that we are serious about wanting to introduce legislation, and she will know the pressures in this building around legislative programmes. We are determined, and it is our intention to do so at the earliest opportunity, but the guidance that was issued in April 2019 was designed to address many of the issues that have been raised on both sides of the debate. That is why we published very cohesive guidance to help local authorities deal with the very issues she talks about.
Ms Rimmer
I have always respected the Minister and the work he does, but it is absolutely necessary that we have a register and that we have it soon. We have children who are vulnerable. They are being exploited, and their families do not have the capacity or the will to do what is necessary. We have young children being exploited by criminals. When are the Government going to get it into their heads that we need to tackle this problem? We are failing in our duty as parliamentarians by not ensuring that children are safe. Will the Minister please treat this issue more seriously? There is nothing more important than children being cared for so that they can live a decent life, contribute to society, enjoy life and not be abused.
Nick Gibb
I think everyone in this debate would agree with the hon. Member. I certainly agree with what she said and the passion with which she said it.
We are determined to press ahead with the provisions in the Schools Bill relating to the introduction of a compulsory register. In the meantime, the guidance to local authorities is clear: under current legislation, they have a duty to ensure that all children living in their local authority area are receiving a suitable full-time education. The guidance provides a lot of detail about how local authorities can go about determining whether children are receiving suitable home education.
The Government are taking a number of other measures to identify children who are missing education. This is a serious issue in our system and we will have more to say in due course. The proposals set out the responsibility of parents and the steps a local authority can take if it is not satisfied that the education provided by parents is suitable. That is set out in the 2019 guidance, as I said.
The Department’s guidance also details eight components that should be considered when determining whether a child is receiving a suitable education, including includes enabling the child to participate fully in life in the UK, which my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire raised; that education should not conflict with fundamental British values; and isolation from a child’s peers.
Home education does not need to follow a broad and balanced national curriculum or involve the undertaking of public examinations, although the Department believes, and I certainly believe, that doing so would constitute strong evidence that the education received by a child is suitable. We remain of the view that a centralised definition of “suitable education” would not be in the interests of children, families or local authorities. Each individual assessment of whether education provision is suitable must rest on the balance of relevant factors depending on the circumstances of each child. The Department will review our guidance for local authorities and parents later this year.
Following an inquiry into home education, the Education Committee published in July 2021 a report on strengthening home education, which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire. In the Government’s response to the Committee’s recommendations, they agreed that there is value in having a form of registration for children who are not in school. We also agreed that there is a need for better data to help Government and local authorities to improve their understanding of these cohorts of children and to improve local authorities’ ability to undertake their education and safeguarding responsibilities. The Government did not agree with the Committee that greater assessment of home educators is required; existing powers are sufficient for reasons I have set out. We provide guidance and outline good practice on what we expect when assessing suitable education.
Andrew Selous
When the Minister gets back to the Department, would he be kind enough to ask his officials to speak to those in our embassies across Europe to get the best possible feedback on how other European nations monitor the progress of children who are home educated? Sometimes we are a little insular in the way we do public policy; we do not always look to learn from best practice in Europe and elsewhere. We may be able to learn something useful. I ask the Minister, if we are an outlier, to have that international perspective on how we could learn from other countries that are perhaps doing something rather well in this policy area.
Nick Gibb
I am keen to take up my hon. Friend’s suggestion; in fact, it is a suggestion I make in respect of almost every new policy area. We need to look around the world. We are not always the leader on these issues, and there may well be counties that have been through these issues long before we have, so I am happy to take up my hon. Friend’s suggestion.
Finally, I reiterate the Government’s support for home-educating parents. The Department has received lots of correspondence in recent years from proud home-educating parents, and I have met home educators in my own constituency and heard about the positive work they do. Indeed, I have been to visit their homes and seen that home education happening. I remember one particular constituent being home educated, and she is now a mother herself—that shows how old I am.
Our commitment to registers of children not in school will not affect parents’ right to educate in a way they deem appropriate, provided that it is suitable. Notifying a local authority that one is home educating or wishes to home educate one’s child should not be burdensome and will help local authorities to undertake existing duties and help to identify issues with the school system, to identify children missing education and to offer support to home-educating families. I hope that will reassure those home educators who expressed concern in the Petitions Committee’s survey that registers are a step on the road to monitoring education provision, which they are absolutely not.
When we find a suitable legislative opportunity to take forward the children not in school measures, we will do so, and we will continue to work closely with home educators, local authorities and other stakeholders to ensure that the new registration system works for everyone.