Home Education

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on the level-headed way in which he introduced the debate.

All of us have enormous sympathy for any parent whose child has been bullied at school, or has ended up with poor mental health as a result of experiences they have had at school. As a parent, I can completely understand the natural instinct to want to withdraw one’s child into the safe bosom and cocoon of family, and get them away from bullying if the school is not able to protect the child or help to stabilise their mental health. That is a real issue that we must take seriously.

I am acutely conscious that when we talk about home education, we are talking about a huge spectrum. There are some parents who are incredibly dedicated and do it exceptionally well. I give enormous thanks for their dedication, time and sacrifice. It needs the lightest of state supervision and overview if the parents are doing a good job and the child is happy, well adjusted and learning well. That is fantastic, and I thank those families and those parents. But we have to be honest that there is a spectrum, and at the other end there are parents who cannot read or write who are “home educating” their children. I believe passionately that every single child has the right to fulfil their God-given potential, and I worry about children who are not being equipped with the widest possible education and who are unable to fulfil their full potential.

[Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)]

My hon. Friend touches on a point that is important in my constituency of Great Grimsby, where more and more children are severely absent from school and disappearing from school rolls. When we find them wandering the streets in the middle of the afternoon, we are told they are being home schooled. They are now prey to county lines and other forms of illegal activity, and their parents or carers are often unable to provide teaching and home education. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to look seriously at that?

[Andrew Selous]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend, who raises a very important point. I have seen exactly that in my constituency: school-age children in and out of shops in the middle of the day. My area is also subject to the terrible scourge of county lines. There are huge safeguarding and criminal concerns about what is happening to some of these children, and we need to take them seriously.

My concerns are shared by the Education Committee, which recently stated:

“the status quo does not allow the Government to say with confidence that a suitable education is being provided to every child in the country.”

Those concerns are shared by Ofsted. The Department for Education has stated that there is “considerable evidence” that many children who are home educated

“are not receiving a suitable education.”

It is instructive to compare England with other countries. I am indebted to the Centre for Social Justice, which points out that oversight and assessment of educational progress is commonplace across Europe but that there is no such quality assurance in England. In Germany, I am told, it is actually illegal to home educate a child. I think that that is a step too far—as I said earlier, I thank those parents who do a great job and whose children progress well, and I would leave them well alone—but what other countries in Europe are doing is instructive. They ensure regular checks on attainment and progress in home language, maths and so on.

For about 20 years, I was a school governor of my village school. At one point, I was the safeguarding governor, and as such, I was required to read a lot of guidance from the Minister’s Department. At the time, the guidance was “Keeping children safe in education: statutory guidance for schools and colleges”, from September 2016—there may be updated advice. That statutory guidance was very prescriptive and the matter was taken very seriously. Let me quote briefly from it:

“Local authorities have a duty to establish, as far as it is possible to do so, the identity of children of compulsory school age who are missing education in their area.”

There are various other pretty severe injunctions. It is curious that there is a significant body of safeguarding guidance for children who are in school but, as far as I can see, none to speak of that can be properly enforced for children who are home educated.

Before the debate, I had a look at article 28 of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, which states:

“States Parties recognize the right of the child to education, and with a view to achieving this right progressively”,

there is a requirement to make

“primary education compulsory and available free to all”,

and to offer

“different forms of secondary education, including general and vocational education”—

that is important. The article goes on to say that measures should be taken

“to encourage regular attendance at schools and the reduction of drop-out rates”,

and that state parties should take that seriously in order to contribute

“to the elimination of ignorance and illiteracy throughout the world”.

We are a signatory to that. Article 28, to which the UK has signed up, as far as I am aware, is really important. I ask the Minister: how do we enforce that right for children who are being home educated by parents who cannot read or write, or are not making any effort to teach them English, for example? I think we are in very serious breach, actually. I am afraid to say that we have averted our gaze from a contentious issue because it is inconvenient. The children do not vote, and the parents, who have a different view, do, so we are not doing what we should.

Responsibilities for home schooling are set out, as they are for every child, in section 7 of the Education Act 1996, which states:

“The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him”—

as the father of three daughters, I think it should say “or her”—

“to receive efficient full-time education”.

Rather bizarrely, it goes on to say later that they are not required to provide a broad and balanced curriculum, and do not have to follow the national curriculum. Central Bedfordshire Council, which gave me a briefing before the debate, stated:

“The local authority has a legal duty under Section 437 of the Education Act 1996 to act ‘if it appears’ that a child of compulsory school age is not receiving suitable education, although the Education Act does not give powers to the authority to insist on seeing the child, visit the family home or see the work that the child is completing.”

It is pretty challenging for the local authority to assess how well the child is doing if it cannot see the child, visit the family home or see the work the child is completing. Some local authorities manage to do that, which is tremendous, but I worry about the fact that we have not given them the powers to make sure every child is receiving an “efficient full-time education” that is suitable for them. That should concern us.

If a child is in a mainstream school or an academy, the school is expected to enter them for national curriculum assessments. There is also a statutory duty on all children to be in education or employment with training up to the age of 18. I agree with both those requirements, but the reality is that that is not happening for a number of home-schooled children.

I am also aware that when some parents claim their children are being home schooled, they are actually in unregistered schools, of which there are a number. I read an article in The Economist last year about a young man of 18 who had been in an unregistered school—I think his parents claimed that he was home educated—and sometimes had schooling for 14 hours a day, but when he left at 18 he could not read or speak English. Are we really saying that that is acceptable? That was an unregistered school, and Ofsted has a duty to do something about that, but it is quite hard for Ofsted to get on top of the issue because a lot of parents say that the child is being home educated. What about the right of that young person to read and speak the mother tongue of their home country? Do we care about these things or not?

In my constituency, like that of the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson), whose presence graces us today, the numbers of children being home schooled have gone up very significantly. On 15 June 2015, in the 2015-16 year, 283 children were in elective home education in my area. By 2020-21, that had gone up to 493. That is the most recent figure that I could get. No doubt the figure is higher; I suspect the majority are probably in my constituency, as well. How high are we happy for that number to get without knowing what is happening—1,000, 2,000, or 3,000? Is that acceptable? Personally, I do not think it is.

I would say that across the Chamber, whatever political party we are from, we are all concerned about the life chances of children. We are all concerned about ladders of opportunity. We are all concerned about social mobility and the elimination of poverty. However, how will we achieve any of those things when a significant number of our children are not having the education it is their right to have? We talk about the rights of parents and I believe, as a parent myself, in those rights, but I think that children have the right to a proper, broad-based education to enable them to achieve everything that they are capable of achieving.

That is why I encourage the Minister to progress down the route that the Secretary of State has said she wants to go down. Of course we need to do it sensitively. I do not want heavy-handed officials going into people’s homes in an inappropriate manner. It needs to be a decent, civilised conversation on how the child is progressing and we cannot afford to just look the other way, as I believe we have done on this issue for far too long.

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

We now move to the Front-Bench contributions.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.