Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL]

Baroness Morgan of Huyton Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 24th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to speak in support of my noble friend Lord Solely in his aim to introduce a register, which I think would be a significant and relatively straightforward step forward. This is an emotive and emotional subject, probably because, as we have already heard, there is a minority of vociferous parents who undertake home schooling perfectly well—in fact, very well, in many cases—and because of the minority of cases where home schooling is undoubtedly not in the interests of the relevant children, with grim consequences. One difficulty is that we do not know what we do not know: that is, we really have no idea about the scale of the problem.

I do not want to take an overly partisan view of home schooling. This Bill is an appropriate response to issues of concern, while maintaining the right to home educate for those parents who really want to do so. I know the boundaries between the rights of parents for their children’s well-being and intervention by government is very tricky, and we have seen that in recent medical cases. But that is not a reason to close our eyes to this. I recognise that, for some children, home schooling works well. With short-term physical or mental illness, home schooling may be the answer for that child, as well as when there are particular special educational needs—although sometimes I think that it is because the system is failing to meet those needs. Obviously, children may have had bad experiences at school, particularly in relation to bullying, and in that case home schooling is really the most supportive thing to do, at least for a period. In other cases, parents absolutely believe that they are giving their children the best possible education; they do not like the options available to them and want to emphasise particular curricular areas. Personally, I am somewhat sceptical that children’s social development is best served by not being in school, but I know that parents can make huge efforts to deal with that challenge.

Above all, it is our responsibility to ensure that we safeguard all children, yet there is no statutory duty on any public body to monitor the quality, impact or outcomes of home education. There is no evidence on the educational attainment or socioeconomic progress made by home-educated children. Parents still do not have to co-operate with local authorities or schools in tracking or supporting pupils, and local authorities have no powers to gain access to pupils without going through the process of performing a well-being check. Parents are not legally required to tell their local authority or any other public body, for that matter, that they are home educating their children. They have the right to teach their children at home up to the end of the compulsory school age, and there is no checking through the system at all on that. As we now know, learning takes place in a variety of locations and does not have to be limited to the child’s home. That is an increasing trend, as we have already heard, and I will not rehearse those arguments.

Crucially, it is parents alone who choose to home educate their children, and they are the people responsible for ensuring that the education provided is “efficient”, “full-time” and “suitable”, whatever that means. Suitable education is set out in guidance and case law as an education that,

“primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he”—

sic—

“is a member, rather than the way of life in the country as a whole, as long as it does not foreclose the child’s options in later years to adopt some other form of life if he wishes to do so”.

So on the one hand, for most children, there are clear national guidelines around the curriculum including, for example, arguments about evolution against creationism, the need to understand different religions and cultures and, more recently, British values, but essentially a void for home schooling. It is also worth noting that one argument for free schools was that a group of parents could come together to develop new provision where they felt very strongly that they wanted a particular focus. Indeed, there are now many studio schools that focus on a particular curricular area. Of course, those schools are within our overall schooling and inspection framework.

I declare an interest as a former chair of Ofsted. When I was there, there was a growing concern about home schooling. There had been an expectation after the Badman review in 2009 that a compulsory register would follow. Indeed, the idea of the register was included in the Children, Schools and Families Bill, introduced in 2009, but it was dropped in the later stages of the parliamentary process pre the general election in 2010. So we have been here before. Since then, however, and most crucially, concern has grown dramatically and is now pretty widespread. Ofsted, the Wood review and the Casey review all drew attention to the dramatically rising numbers of home-educated children—and, of course, the extremely murky area of unregistered schools and significant weaknesses in current legislation.

Quite simply, as we have heard already, there is no national information collected, which is really an outrage. Local information is extremely patchy and variable. Collectively, if we are honest, we all know that there is a problem here. So I hope that the Minister will commit to helping us to sort this out. Everyone here is willing to help constructively on this. We know that the Bill as drafted is not perfect, and I think that everybody will co-operate fully on a Committee stage, which I hope that we will reach, to take that issue forward. So I hope that the Minister will respond positively.

Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL]

Baroness Morgan of Huyton Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 27th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Falkland]

Absolutely. The connection, which may upset people, is that I think the Bill is total nonsense in the way it is being followed through. I do not think that the teachers of this nation, most of whom are very dedicated people, are meeting the requirements—which they could do if they “get real”, to use the phrase of the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, again. My daughter, through what she does, has put around 100 young people into a new frame of mind, having lost all their instincts for violent reaction and such things. That is the way forward.

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton (Lab)]

My Lords, those of us who were present at Second Reading were clear about the importance of keeping things simple in the Bill. When there has not been an education Bill for a long time, there is always a tendency for all sorts of things to be raised. Those of us who have taken part in this debate over months, if not years, are clear that there is a precise need to start to move forward on this issue, which we will do by moving forward on registration. There is a time and place for wider conversations and today is not it.

[Viscount Falkland]

I take the noble Baroness’s hint. I shall wind up my discourse by saying this. If we are to see in children of the background that I have described a change in their behaviour, their mood and, one hopes, their enjoyment of life, the best way to bring it about is to get people such as my daughter who are volunteers to do the work in the home, because the parents will not be any good at doing it. As is often the case in this country, the voluntary sector needs to be involved. I have much more faith in the voluntary sector than in the teaching profession and education generally. On that rather contentious note, I will now allow the House, with apologies, to continue in its normal vein.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, we very much support the amendment. It is a huge decision when you decide to teach your child or children at home. Yes, there is a very large home-school movement in this country. They network together, work together and support each other. In fact they have an annual five-day festival every year of home educators from all over the country. I have been invited to attend this year’s event and perhaps other noble Lords might like to come along and see them at work. However, they are on their own. There is no support and no advice. What happens during the period of exams? Where do the pupils sit their exams? They need help and support in that direction. What happens when they might actually want to use some of the facilities of a local school? Maybe the local school will be anxious to oblige, and the local authority can provide a brokering role. So I think advice and support are really important.

I suspect that the issue of resources is crucial. You cannot do this properly and make those provisions unless those resources are available. I shuddered slightly when the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned special educational needs, because already in mainstream schools there is a major funding issue over SEN. I do not know how we could make those resources available in the home education system; we should do, but it is quite a complex area. So this is an important amendment to support.

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton]

Personally, my Lords, I think we need to be a bit careful with this. Given the conversation on Amendment 1, when we were talking about one of the problems being large numbers of pupils who are now excluded from schools in a way that most of us feel very uneasy about, I would hate us to end up producing something in this Bill that said it was okay because there was a fund that did a little bit to help children who are being home educated. I accept that it is important to have the legal right to home educate but, again, the more that we keep this simple and have the wider conversation about support in the discussion that the Minister has offered on exclusions, the more helpful that would be.

[Lord Bird]

I think it is really interesting that we are talking about the legitimacy of home education. The way I see it is that schools and individual parents who are choosing that route should be going in the same direction. It is about the child, and that is really wonderful. My own children, who, like me, have problems around dyslexia, have used a wonderful system on the computer called Easyread. I would like that to be available to all our children, especially those who have dyslexia. Unfortunately, the chap has to pay for it. I would love it if our schools could get together on this because it is a brilliant method. It took my son from a very low reading age to a very high one in the space of a year.