Children: Missed Education

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we believe that part of the reason for the awareness of more children being home educated is as a result of the duties we placed on schools in the 2016 guidance, which I mentioned in my first Answer. The next stage is to ensure that local authorities are using all their existing powers to investigate cases of where home education might be occurring or where children are missing. Yesterday, in our integration strategy, we announced further measures on that.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that these children will form a high priority for the teaching of English, reading and writing, given that they are most likely to be among the three-quarters of a million people in the United Kingdom who do not speak our native language?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

Obviously, children who are missing from education are one of the highest priority categories that we have to worry about. In the integration strategy document announced yesterday, we launched a consultation on the guidance and enforcement of independent school standards—a lot of children can end up in such small schools—and guidance on unregistered schools, which will deal with similar issues.