Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Browne of Belmont Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the care and sensitivity that she has displayed in introducing this important Bill. Balance is very important. I must declare two interests: first, I was for many years a grammar school teacher; secondly, I have a grandchild who was exclusively home educated from the ages of five to 14. For those reasons, I wish to comment on some aspects of the Bill that touch on home education.

I am concerned that an unintended consequence of the Bill will be a reduction in educational diversity. That would be damaging to children’s well-being, purely because children themselves are diverse. The register of children not in school is presented as a research tool, enabling the Department for Education and local authorities to better understand the different learning strategies used in home education. For example, many home-educated children learn to read and write when they feel ready, with some learning at three and others at seven.

However, if officials compare these children to their counterparts in British primary schools, it may appear that only half of them are receiving a suitable education. The risk of officials viewing the data through a pro-school lens has been noted by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. If staff use age-related attainment targets set in British schools, they may conclude that the education being provided is not suitable and serve a school attendance order on the child. This undermines the very reason for home education: to introduce learning at a time that both suits and appeals to the child.

The Bill also contains provisions for local authority staff to enter and inspect the homes of home educators and, if refused, to apply a school attendance order. We should not use threats of court orders to force people to give up human rights. We should remember that, if local authorities have reasonable grounds, they already have plenty of powers to enter homes and safeguard children. These include the Education Act, the Children Act and the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, covering education, well-being and radicalisation.

Research conducted by the charity Education Otherwise showed that 0.44% of home-educated children were issued with a child protection plan in 2018, compared with 0.43% of children in school. On this basis, we must ask whether the cost of setting up a new register is justified. Fundamentally, if we want to make the biggest possible difference to child well-being, surely we should target the huge cost of creating this home education register at children who are already known to be in the most severe and distressing need—the thousands of children in care who go missing each year, the 5,000 child prostitutes, the child slaves, unaccompanied child asylum seekers with PTSD and homeless children.

Finally, I am concerned about the way in which we are approaching well-being. For some children, their well-being is best achieved by being home educated, and we should encourage the state to recognise and celebrate this. With this in mind, I draw attention to the Northern Ireland home education guidelines, codesigned by Home Education Northern Ireland, the Children’s Law Centre, the Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland and the Department of Education, which are an excellent case in point. Built on very similar laws to those governing home education in England and Wales, they recognise home education as an imaginative alternative framework that is equal to but different from school, and I commend them to all.