Home School Education Registration and Support Bill [HL]

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Friday 15th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, it has to be said that this is not new territory. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, mentioned previous Private Members’ Bills. In the Queen’s Speech of November 2009, the Labour Government announced the introduction of a Children, Schools and Families Bill, which was to have amended the Education Act 1996 so as to require home-educated children to be registered with the local authority. Unfortunately, the proposed changes were dropped the following year due to a lack of cross-party support in the wash-up.

Now, 15 years on, despite support for a register being signalled by all four Tory Ministers whom I faced at the Dispatch Box during my time as shadow Education Minister in your Lordships’ House—including the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, now on the Opposition Front Bench—we are no further forward. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on presenting this Bill and I am fully supportive of its aims. However, I believe its title should have been “children not in school registration” rather than “home school education registration”, as the concerns go wider than the home. I say that bearing in mind the noble Lord’s comments at the end of his introduction.

In many instances, the decision on home education is right for the children involved; supported by parents who have an understanding of the educational needs of their children and the ability to ensure that these needs are delivered, it is beneficial to them. In those cases, home schooling is appropriate and can be nurturing, and such out-of-school settings do not cause any concern.

The problem which has to be acknowledged, however, is that many children—either never presented to school or subsequently withdrawn—do not enjoy such a benign experience. The issue that I find of most concern is that there are no accurate figures for how many children in England are not in mainstream education. For the status and safety of children to be allocated to a category marked “Don’t know” by government is totally unacceptable. Child protection is too important an issue for that to be the case, but under existing legislation it is.

Some parents are ideologically opposed to formal education and indeed to almost all forms of state intervention in their lives—apart from child benefit, of course. I endorse their right to hold such views, but it is unrealistic—indeed, irresponsible—to expect that the wishes of a minority of parents should be permitted to override issues of child safety and protection.

The significant increase in children not in mainstream education, which has taken place in recent years, has not arisen from any significant growth in the number of those who believe in the virtues of home education for its own sake. Rather, the factors leading to a significant proportion of the children now claimed to be receiving education at home are, I fear, more negative. They include difficulty in obtaining within the school system what parents see as adequate provision, especially for children with special needs; disagreement with schools about academic or behavioural issues; and a perceived lack of suitable alternative provision for those children who would benefit from it.

It is now essential to move towards a position where, when necessary, local authorities will be in a better position to take effective action to ensure that a child is receiving suitable education. The first step in this is to ensure that local authorities are aware of the existence of all children who are not in mainstream schooling.

I would like to see the Bill amended to include the introduction of a duty on settings attended by children on the register to respond to inquiries from local authorities as to whether a specific child attends that setting.

The Bill does not refer to unregistered schools, but it is impossible to separate them from the issue of home education. As long ago as 2018, Ofsted inspectors discovered 286 unregistered schools in England, with around 6,000 young people attending them. I do not have up-to-date figures but, in many cases, it was claimed that the pupils were being home educated when in fact they were attending such schools every day. Thus, the Education Act 1996 is being exploited to enable children to attend those establishments. For that reason, I hope the Bill will be amended in Committee to more accurately reflect the extent of the problems associated with children being invisible and therefore potentially at risk of harm.