Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Lords Chamber

Amendment 318 from my noble friend looks at the difficulty and concern about people who are distant from maintained schools. Amendment 321 is looking, again, at people who are clearly succeeding. Amendment 322 looks at how you deal with nomadic families. All these are details on which I hope to hear from the Minister or, later, from her officials. We need to understand how these things work. But if there is the basic arrangement of quality local authorities supported by clear direction from the Government, a lot of these difficulties are clearly superable without getting too fussed about them in legislation. I beg to move.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, as this is the first time I am speaking in Committee, I declare various unremunerated positions in Gypsy, Traveller and Roma organisations. I wish just very briefly to comment on Amendment 322, on nomadic organisations. I should say that all the evidence I have seen, and many conversations, attest quite firmly to the fact that most Gypsies and Travellers, that small minority who lead a nomadic life, welcome registration and the offer of support from local authorities—although I shall have something to say about that later. This amendment does not correspond to the experience of Gypsies, Travellers, boaters or showmen. I just briefly add that it seems that most of these amendments are at odds with the reality of the situation of most children who are not in school, and with the intentions of the Bill, but I will not prolong the debate at the outset at this stage.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to have the chance to speak after the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and his eloquent and rather moving statement to the Committee about how he sees this. Echoing those important points, in the end this is about relationships, and about children and their needs and relationships. As the noble Lord said, with the Bill there is a real danger that this will be hugely disruptive for local authorities and parents, and in many ways could be a recipe for trouble to come if we get this wrong. But there are ways in which we can get this right and get proportionate reporting around the Bill. So there is a lot to get right here.

I will come back to various of those points later, but the simple point I wanted to make here was in relation to Amendment 238, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, which is about the requirement to know which parents are educating, how and for how long. We will come back to that point in various ways in later groups. There are two key points here. One is about safeguarding, where there is an issue with at least one of the parents, which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has an amendment on, and there is one about the division of time between parents educating, which the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has an amendment on.

This whole section needs to be rethought. What do we really need to know? We need to know which parents are taking responsibility, and where they are and how they can be contacted, but it seems that the rest of it is superfluous. I simply make those points in response to Amendment 238.

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[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I want to say a few words about Amendment 254A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, to which I have added my name. I want to spell out what I suspect noble Lords understand fully, which is that there are issues here. In certain cases, where perhaps one parent has been abusive to their child, partner or spouse, it is vital that addresses are not made available to that parent.

Perhaps I could just go back two or three steps and preface my remarks by saying, first, how much I appreciate the warm remarks on home education made by the Minister in opening. They set a much better tone than has tended to come through in this debate. Something else that I omitted to say at the beginning is that my thanks go to the Minister and her officials for the excellent meeting we had. It lasted much of the day and, frankly, they were very open and willing to discuss things; that was very helpful. I do not know how much movement we got out of it—we will see during the course of today—but it was helpful to have that meeting and to understand things clearly.

As all noble Lords have said, there is an issue of balance here between supporting the good people who are providing home education because it is best for their children, or for another good reason, and supporting the missing children who are abused or neglected or have missed out. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, made an important intervention on this. We need to get that balance right.

We discussed with officials the issue dealt with in Amendment 254A. It was said that this could be picked up in regulations or whatever, but there needs to be something in the Bill to help parents who are specifically worried about safeguarding. This amendment is probably as simple as it gets in pointing out that where there is a concern about abuse, or an order standing against one parent, this should be handled by an authority in an appropriate fashion.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 267 in my name and in those of the noble Lord, Bourne of Aberystwyth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, whom I thank for their support.

This amendment mandates local authorities not to keep the information they have on the register after the child has grown up, for two reasons. First, it is not necessary after the age of school education has passed. Secondly, many Gypsy, Traveller and Roma families have a well-founded mistrust of unnecessary scrutiny, targeting and intervention on the part of authorities. This amendment would allay their fears and ease liaison with the registering authority. It may be that discretion should be used in the case of SEND children, perhaps until the age of 25, but that is for discussion later. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will understand the need for this amendment.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 254A, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, for his comments. As a society, we can be proud that, over the years, we have carefully and proportionately brought in safeguarding procedures which really make a difference to the lives of children and young people. We know that, by and large, our children are safe. Occasionally, we find a gap in the regulations or in the provision, and we come together to try to sort that out.

In a sense, safeguarding information can be shared with parents. This amendment comes out of conversations with a number of organisations that have given thought to how, in some cases, this can be harmful for the child. If there is a safeguarding concern, details can be shared with both parents, but my amendment questions whether it is appropriate if it risks further harm to the child. In a sense, this is a probing amendment, and I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say as it will impact my thoughts when we come to Report.

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[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I rise briefly in support of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. I added my name to his original amendment. I am afraid I was a bit slow off the mark in adding it to his revised amendment, to which the noble Lord has just spoken. I strongly support it. The noble Lord has set out the case for it extremely well.

I want to emphasise a couple of points. I have always had concerns about young carers being withdrawn from school for home-education. I am concerned that they do not get the necessary breaks from caring responsibilities. We all know how important respite care is for all carers, particularly young ones. Young carers can find themselves taking on ever-increasing levels of caring responsibility. Some of the case studies I have been looking at may well be at the extreme end of the spectrum, but they were talking about young carers who were looking after mum and dad with multiple physical and mental health needs, as well as looking after two or three younger siblings. I really do not know how on earth they can take on that caring responsibility and still ensure that they are educated.

I was also very struck by the statistics mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Young. He said that over 15,000 children were caring for 50 hours or more per week. This is not compatible with a child receiving the degree of education that we would all want them to have for their own life chances.

I am also concerned that they will be missing out on the support that can be provided for young carers just because they are not in school. I know that some schools are very good at running groups for young carers, such as peer support, mental health support and additional academic support. It is critical that young carers can still access this kind of support if they need it and are being educated at home.

My main concern is the inappropriate or excessive levels of care that these young people are being asked to take on, because of the feeling of isolation and the emotional impact it has on them. This amendment is essential to protect them. The word the noble Lord, Lord Young, used was “safeguards”. We need strong safeguards if we are to be satisfied that young carers with significant caring responsibilities at home are also being home-educated.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 250 in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, whose support I greatly value. This amendment would oblige schools to ask for and record why the child is to receive home-education. This is not done at present and the Department for Education lists the reasons as “unknown” in 42% of cases. The current census estimates that 111,700 children are being home-educated, a 20% rise since last year—hardly an endorsement of what has been going on in some schools. The reasons must be collected to get a better understanding of why children abandon the advantages of school and where feasible, deal with them. We know there are many reasons, some of which, like the bullying which so many Gypsy, Traveller and Roma children endure, must be more effectively and specifically tackled; among those reasons, regrettably, is the desire of some schools to ensure their exam pass rates reach a certain level, thus neglecting the children who most need their education to work. I hope my noble friend the Minister can accept this amendment.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will contribute very briefly to this debate. I thought that the amendments by the noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Crisp, showed the difficulty of the Bill in that very different groups of young people are being referred to and both sets of needs need to be met. Therein is the difficulty of getting the legislation right. I very much took the point about children with caring responsibilities and hope that we can take this opportunity to improve that; it is something about which I have been concerned for a while.

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Some very important, broader points were made in the debate about support for young carers, some of which are outwith the remit of the Bill. I think all noble Lords will have recognised the important case being made for maintaining and improving support for young carers. The point here is whether these bits of information should be mandated through the amendments in the way in which they are. My noble friend Lady Whitaker seeks to require local authorities to include the reasons why a parent of a child has chosen to home educate. I know that she is aware—

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

I apologise for interrupting my noble friend in her very helpful answer. My amendment would require that schools get this information so that they can learn how they could educate children better. Of course, it is excellent that the local authorities have it, but should not schools have it too?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I understand the point my noble friend makes. When children’s parents ask for their child to be taken off the roll of a school, which of course is absolutely their right, and the school should do that, it should also, as my noble friend says, reflect on the reasons why the parents are wanting to home educate that child. More broadly, in policy terms, I think we all need to reflect on the points made by my noble friend and others about where the reason is less a positive decision about home education and more a concern about provision for children with special educational needs or otherwise. I think my noble friend is aware that the department already collects information on reasons for home education, but, as she has highlighted, there are gaps in the data. That is why the Bill already allows for this information to be prescribed for inclusion.

For example, recording whether a child is a young carer could be prescribed under new Section 436C(2)(m) of the Education Act,

“any other information about the child’s characteristics, circumstances, needs or interactions with a local authority”.

If prescribed, local authorities will need to record this information if they have it or can reasonably obtain it. We will consult on the content of these regulations, and they will be subject to the affirmative parliamentary procedure. I hope that this will help to ensure that the information prescribed for inclusion in local authority registers is appropriate and useful. However, it is necessary that the information outlined in the noble Lord’s and my noble friend’s amendments remains voluntary for parents to provide. For some parents, the reason they have chosen to home-educate is deeply personal. Requiring it could cause parents to try to avoid registration altogether, making it more difficult for local authorities to identify and support those children who need it.

Amendments 260 and 261 in some ways reverse the argument being made in the previous two amendments, a point also made by the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge. These amendments aim to restrict any further information being prescribed for inclusion or recording by local authorities on their registers other than that which is set out in the Bill. To be clear, the purpose of these powers is to ensure that local authorities can include useful information in their registers that has not been explicitly mentioned in primary legislation or prescribed through regulations. It will allow that information to be recorded. We do not want local authorities prevented from making their registers a productive tool due to a lack of flexibility but, just to reiterate once again—