Register of Home-educated Children

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are clear that many parents provide elective home education and do it extremely well. The outcomes for their children are excellent, including for many children with special educational needs and disabilities. However, in the consultation it was clear that we need the data to find out where certain children are being electively home educated.

[Baroness Meacher (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am disappointed that the Minister was unable to give a timeframe for the register. In the meantime, is any work being done to assess the extent to which fundamentalist religious parents, in particular, are preventing their children receiving appropriate education and, indeed, teaching in English?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, as I have outlined, every parent, regardless of their religious persuasion, has a duty to ensure that their child receives a suitable education. If a parent removes their child from school—and obviously during Covid we have seen a lot of movement of people and removal from the school roll—we have strengthened the regulations so that head teachers have to inform the local authority and have a specific ground for removing a child from a school roll.