Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Soley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

Such an ombudsman would listen to parents if they felt persecuted but also be a sounding board for local authorities and prevent court cases through mediation. It should ideally be voluntary, in that the role should be filled by somebody who is doing it voluntarily, as many home educators are, and not paid for by the Government or any other party. They could even work with the Oak National Academy to improve the resources, skill levels and data sharing made available to home educators, with consent, which would then enable local authorities to focus on going after the bad guys and not the vast majority of home educators, who need help, not hindrance or overzealous monitoring.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

I would like to come in on Amendment 112A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and say I agree with a great deal of what he said. Indeed, we have discussed it in the past; there is an issue here. I am not convinced by the idea of the noble Lord, Lord Wei, that we can do it all by current IT methods—I think there are problems there. Although I have some sympathy with some of the things he is saying, actually this is a very difficult area.

Amendment 112A is, to my mind, incredibly important, because one of the things we have to do is work out the best type of appeal system. My starting point is really where I ended up when I spoke on Monday, which is to say that this legislation on home education needs to be seen as supportive, not punitive. That is very important. If we can develop a supportive method of local authorities and home educators co-operating together, there will not be many problems in the future, and ideally, practices and strategies could be developed, both by local authorities and by home educators, for dealing with the problems that will inevitably emerge.

The appeal system must deal with many of the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, raised. When I was consulting widely on my Bill, I had such a wide range of claims as to why local authorities were doing it badly. I cannot go through them all now, but some suggested that a local authority was blind to the individual needs of the child. It might have been about educational achievement, but it might also have been about behaviour, because at times it was clear that the school was pushing the child out of the school because their behaviour was so challenging. So you actually have a problem that is, in a way, the reverse of what we expect—the school saying, “This kid is a problem: let’s get them out of the school.” That has to be dealt with, too. The rights of the parents to appeal to an independent person or organisation is, to my mind, incredibly important. As I say, I could give many other examples that came to me when I was consulting on the Bill.

But I also have to say that this is two-sided, and it is the classic problem we deal with in Parliament, time and time again, of the balance between individual rights and the rights of society, to protect the vulnerable. At times, some of those home-educated children are vulnerable, and that is something we have to face—and it is difficult to face. As I said on Monday, my knowledge of education generally is not particularly good, but as a former probation officer and senior probation officer of 40-odd years before I became an MP, and having taken children into care on occasion when I had to when social services could not do so for legal reasons, I can tell noble Lords that it is not just a difficult decision: some parents are incredibly cunning, incredibly devious and incredibly cruel. That comes out if you talk to someone like the noble Lord, Lord Laming, who has chaired committees dealing with abuse. You realise how clever some cruel people can be in fooling anyone—doctors, probation officers, social workers, the general public, neighbours, all sorts of people—into thinking everything is all right.

One thing in my mind, and I want to make this clear, is that when I put that Bill forward, I put it forward as an education measure, not a social or psychological measure. But in doing so, I recognised that if a child was not being given a proper education—and by proper education I do not mean some set educational system but growing up able to read, write and be numerate—we had to be able to be sure that that was being done. The interesting thing for me is that, of all the people I talked to about home education, when I dealing with the Bill, it was actually a small but significant minority who said that the education authority must never be allowed to see the child or should not see the child with them. I remember one parent saying to me, when I said, “Well, why should they not see the child?”, that the child does not like being seen by a stranger. That immediately made me raise my eyebrows, because if a child of school age is nervous about being seen by a stranger, you wonder how the education is being done—unless they have got special needs, because there may be circumstances in which they will be nervous about being seen by a stranger. But by and large, children are far more resilient than we give them credit for. Indeed, one of the problems in society, I often think, is that parents are overprotective, and we do not recognise that children are actually very resilient and can cope with situations like this.

But what I want to make clear here is that the problem is two-way, exactly as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, described. It is also that, at times, the education authority will have a concern that the child is not being properly educated. If you say that the education authority cannot see the child, how will it ever know? One person said to me that the authority could ask to see written work. But you will not even know whether that child did the written work. So it is not just a measure about behaviour here, or about abuse or radicalisation; it is also about whether the child is being properly educated. As I have said, I do not mean some particular system of education, because I know that troubles quite a few home educators; it is about being able to cope in society as you grow up, and I gave an example on Monday of someone who was left very vulnerable because of the way that home education was done.

My argument here, and this is something I ask the Minister to really take on board—it is a difficult one—is about how to get an appeal system that can work in both directions. It is absolutely right that the parent can appeal against the local authority that does not understand the problems that they or the child are facing, but it has also got to be one where the education authority can say, “We are not absolutely sure that this child is being educated. We are not absolutely sure that there is not some more nefarious process.” Indeed, one of the cases I took up before as a result of my Bill that got some publicity in the press involved three children, if I remember right, in one of the London local authorities who were being trafficked. Two of them just disappeared and, to my knowledge, though I have not checked up recently, have never been seen since. Now, the local authority—or to be more precise, the school—was worried about what was happening, because it knew what had happened to one of the children but did not know what had happened to the other two.

So I say: if you do not have a system where the local authority can say, “We need to be able to see the child, and see that the child is receiving an education”, then you have got a system that is almost designed to blow up in your face. Sooner or later, at some abuse inquiry or other inquiry into a case, you will find it being said, “Well, we the education authority were not allowed to see the child, so we could not know.” I ask those Members who are taking a very clear view on the rights of the parent here to recognise that the rights of the child are absolutely important: in key situations, they override the rights of the parent. I think all of us accept that in other circumstances—if you did not, it would be very bizarre; you would be arguing that whatever the parent did to the child was acceptable.

I have not got a model for the Minister, I am sorry to say. I wish I could say, “This is the way to do it”—I have not got that. I would be very willing to engage with her in further discussions, if that would be helpful, and I think people like the noble Lord, Lord Laming, might be very useful on this too. What you need is a system designed to be supportive, not punitive. That is the key to this. Then you start by saying, “We know what a lot of these parents want,” because the examples are already there—the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, gave them. Those are the ones who appeal, but we also need the ability of the local authority or education authority to appeal against not being able to see the child, where it is worried about the child and might need to visit more often than it would do otherwise. I think that is profoundly important. As I say, I would be happy to offer whatever help I can in getting that bit right.

As I said on Monday, I commend the Government for taking my Bill on board and delivering on it in the way that they have. It is very commendable, but this is the most difficult area. The education authority must have the right to see the child and must have some rights over how often and in what circumstances. However, that needs to be appealable in both directions: by parents and by the education authority.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, I suggest to the noble Lord that if we look at this as a supportive, not punitive, measure, we need not get into the trap he is describing.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the tenor of many of the amendments in this group, as explained by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas: they strengthen parents’ hands against any overbearing local authorities. That is not to suggest that all local authorities will be overbearing, but it ensures that they are not necessarily interpreting their role always as one of policing. This is all about balancing powers and having a sense of proportionality. I like the idea of the home school ombudsman suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, although I would rather it were not needed because I do not like lots of this part of the Schools Bill.

I listened carefully, in particular, to what the noble Lord, Lord Soley, said, including his last point on this being supportive, not punitive. Those points are very important, but I want to raise my qualms about this. Of course, those noble Lords who raised the point about bad actors are correct: some parents are cruel and some represent a threat to their children. However, in a free society, do we not assume that the vast majority of parents are not a threat to their children? At the moment, as far as I know, we have not nationalised parenting. We are not saying that we are better at doing it than parents; we assume that parents are good at it.