Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the Bill contains a first step, possible underreach, possible overreach and, I think, a bonus.

Clause 11 is a good first step as it brings about 1,000 vulnerable young people who are deprived of their liberty under the inherent jurisdiction of the courts into a statutory framework. High Court DoLS, as they are referred to, have developed when there is no secure children’s home place under Section 25 of the Children Act, or that is not an appropriate placement for them. However, that section will still refer to only looked-after children and the report by the Children’s Commissioner on this vulnerable group makes it clear that it is not only looked-after children who are under this regime. Could the Minister clarify whether the inherent jurisdiction will still have to be used for those children? Before statutory instruments are laid, can we have some more details about the definition of “relevant accommodation”?

On the underreach, it seems that under Clause 32 a preliminary school attendance order can be made only when a child is under a Section 47 Children Act inquiry, not for a child in need or a child protection plan. It is my understanding that Sara Sharif was actually a child in need, so could we actually have bizarre underreach in that we have not covered the main mischief, the main sad case, under these provisions?

The overreach, as noble Lords have said, is in relation to special educational needs and disabilities. For many of those parents, this is not elective home education; it is sadly withdrawing your children when mainstream education has failed. I implore the Minister to have another go at stakeholder engagement with the many groups. There are fears, founded or unfounded, of local authorities coming through your front door and asking you probing questions about your curriculum and how you are educating your children. It is important to recognise that this is a very different environment for education. I make the comparison with Ofsted, which is left with some of the smallest independent schools that are often small belief systems; it has developed particular expertise to inspect those schools while keeping engagement with the parents and school leaders. It seems that that is going to be required of many local authority employees, and it is a difficult task to get right.

At this moment, I sidestep to agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, about whether the day has come for ISI. It is clearly a historical accident. Imagine if your BUPA private hospital could join an association that then gave it access to its own inspection regime. We would all be worried if our healthcare were not all inspected by the CQC. I hope we will come back to this matter in Committee.

The bonus is, I think, for those with children with complex needs. Clause 30 says you need local authority consent to remove your child from, basically, special schools. Section 61 of the Children and Families Act 2014 contains the acronym EOTAS, meaning “education other than at school”. That is not elective home education; it is where the local authority has responsibility to provide education outside school. Surely, if the local authority has consented to you removing your child from a special school, it is much more likely now that you are going to pass the test that school is an inappropriate venue for the education of your child, and therefore you will be able to have the EOTAS regime for your child with complex needs.

I greatly respect DfE officials and I hope the Minister will give parents a bonus and quash the rumours that officials are pressing local authorities not to grant EOTAS as it is saying that children can be educated at home rather than in an institution. I hope she will give that bonus to those parents today.