Register of Children not in School

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential merits of a register of not-in-school children.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. The Prime Minister describes a good education as

“the closest thing we have to a silver bullet”,

and he is right. Education unlocks the door of opportunity, raises aspiration and sets children up for future success. The Conservatives have delivered on education. After successive Conservative Governments, we have more schools rated good or outstanding, we have improved our standing in the international league tables, and the progress made on phonics has been monumental.

However, as the legacy of the pandemic continues to blight our children’s lives, the education system is grappling with huge challenges that could leave untold damage done to the future of our children, society and economy, if left unresolved. Absence rates are at crisis point, suspensions are at record levels and some children are falling off the school roll altogether. The Government have shown leadership in tackling many of those challenges. Last year we outlined an ambitious vision in the “Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan”. We are piloting attendance mentors, rolling out attendance hubs, and increasing the number of mental health support teams working across schools and colleges. But what is of huge concern to me and many colleagues in this House, and what this debate seeks to address, is that no one—not Government, local authorities or schools—can honestly answer the question: how many children are missing from school?

A good education is pivotal to a child’s future success, yet we do not know how many children are not in school, where they are and what quality of education they are receiving, if any. We do not even know if they are safe. That is not acceptable.

From the limited data available, we know that children who are moved out of school are disproportionately likely to be from a low-income household, need SEN support and have a history of school absence and exclusions. Those children and families desperately need our support, but we are unable to offer it because we simply do not know who they are or where they are. While we do not have the data to fully understand where those children are and how many there are, it is thought that many not on a school roll are in home education.

In England, parents rightfully have a choice over where to educate their child, which school to send them to, or even to not send their child to a school but to home educate them instead. The fundamental right to home educate is enshrined in law and always should be, with many home educating parents providing a high-quality home education for their child. However, owing to a lack of oversight, we have no way of knowing whether that is the case for every child in home education. Nine in 10 local authorities believe that they have not been able to identify every child in home education. With vulnerable children disproportionately likely not to be in school, it raises serious questions about whether every child in home education is there because it is in their best interests.

Research by the Centre for Social Justice has uncovered a growing number of parents opting for home education because they feel that they have no other option because of their child’s needs not being met in school. That could be the result of unmet SEND needs, a lack of support for mental health or bullying. Of particular concern is the number of parents who have felt coerced into home education through the scourge of off-rolling. Those parents can be left deliberately uninformed about the consequences of moving off roll and ill-prepared to deliver a suitable home education. That cannot be allowed to continue.

As Conservatives we must make sure that all parents can freely and informedly choose how to best educate their child and that every child thrives in their education, whether in school or the home. A register of children not in school is the first step to achieving that.

Educating children at home is no small task for anyone. I thank the many parents who are doing an admirable job providing their children with a high quality home education. I want to reassure those parents that a register would not seek to disrupt their right to home educate or add extra burden. Quite the contrary, it would allow us to offer assistance and resources to those who are home educating at great personal cost, time and effort, should they want such support. But not every child is your child. Not every child is in home education because it is in their best interest. Not every parent feels equipped to provide the quality of education they feel their child needs. Not every child is safe at home.

For a parent who felt coerced into removing their child into home education against their better wishes, the prospect of home educating their child, without any support or advice, can feel overwhelming. A number of organisations, including Ofsted, the Children’s Commissioner and the Centre for Social Justice, have uncovered worrying reports of home-educated pupils being left without access to an appropriate quality of education, and of parents left struggling to cope with the demands of home education.

A register would allow us to find and support those families who have been left on the fringes of the education system. Most importantly, it would help us uncover those children whose safety is at risk. In 2020, the child safeguarding practice review panel uncovered 15 incidents of harm involving children reported to be in home education. Those included severe harm, such as serious neglect, emotional abuse and intrafamilial harm. In three of those cases, the children had died. The panel concluded that those children were often invisible. They were not in school and did not receive home visits.

Such safeguarding concerns have been echoed by local authorities, which have spoken about a range of concerns, including county lines involvement, gangs and exploitation, as well as child employment. We cannot continue as we are, unable to guarantee the safety, welfare and basic educational progress of every child. Across Europe, oversight of educational progress is commonplace. England is an international outlier in that respect, and this change is well overdue.

The limited data available suggest that home education is on the rise. As the number of home-educated children increases, so should our drive to ensure that parents are able to exercise their right to choose how best to educate their child, that every child is supported to achieve the best educational outcome, and that all children are protected equally, whether at home or at school.

That is not to infringe on a parent’s right to home education or to add any extra burden to those who are doing it well. A register of children not in school would not change much for those families who are already doing an excellent job, but it would make a big difference to the small number of children on the fringes of our education system, who may be at risk of harm. It is time to bring those children who are out of sight and out of mind back into view.

This is not just an educational issue but one of social justice and national economic importance. Education is a major route out of poverty, opening doors to greater employment and lifelong learning. If children do not receive a suitable education that allows them to develop the skills to gain meaningful employment, that will cast a long shadow over their lives and over the economic wellbeing of the country. Education is key to the country’s continued prosperity and must remain the focus of any Government. I hope, therefore, that all colleagues will back my private Member’s Bill to introduce a register for children not in school, due for Second Reading on 15 March.

I am grateful that education Ministers have repeatedly voiced their support for such a register. It is time to turn those words into action. I call on the Minister to confirm that the Government will fully back my Bill, which would allow us to legislate for a register of children not in school, without any further delay. By implementing that register, which is so important for ensuring the welfare and education of every child, we will continue to build on the success of driving up standards, and unlock that all-important door of opportunity and aspiration for all children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I had not intended to speak in this debate, but I was inspired to do so by the opening speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond). I congratulate her not just on securing today’s debate, but on her Children Not in School (Registers, Support and Orders) Bill, which I will certainly support and which I hope the Government will pick up.

I should declare an interest: I chair the safeguarding board of the National Fostering Group, which is relevant because of the access of children in care to education. One of the things we do is monitor the attendance in school of children in foster care. We have consistently had well above the national average, which shows that even more challenging children in the care system, when properly monitored, can get a full education, and it is perhaps even more important that they do.

This subject is really important, so it is somewhat surprising that there is not a single Labour Back Bencher or Liberal Democrat MP here, such is their constant criticism of the Government’s education policy, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley set out at the beginning of the debate, has been a largely unsung success story for literacy and numeracy rates and the improvements that we have seen over the last 14 years. That was helped substantially by the drive for phonics and making sure that children in schools have a grasp of the basic skills that are needed for every job and for success in life.

I am glad to report that in my constituency, every single primary and secondary school bar one is rated “good” or “outstanding”. Across the UK, and certainly across England, the figures are now something like 86% or 88% against 66% back in 2010, so there is good progress there—but it is not progress for everybody. We must be particularly concerned for children whose progress is much more difficult to monitor because they are not within the conventional, mainstream school sector. That is the purpose of this debate.

That problem has absolutely been exacerbated during and since covid. The Children’s Commissioner has done work on identifying more than 100,000 so-called ghost children who are at school less often than they are absent from school, and in some cases are not at school at all. That is a really worrying phenomenon. We have only just started to see the consequences of lockdown and the closure of our schools. That was such an error, which the Government were forced into. I have to say, there was triumphalism—I remember it well, receiving the press releases from the National Education Union, which forced its members not to turn up at school. I think something like 8,000 schools had to close simply because the NEU staff did not turn up. That was the beginning of a slippery slope, supported by the Labour Opposition, of keeping our schools closed.

There was no evidential base on which children were more vulnerable than anybody else; indeed, they were far less vulnerable. The consequences for their education, socialising and mental health of not being in a regular school setting are only now coming out of the woodwork. The impact of that will be with those children for many years to come. It is deeply worrying that, quite aside from the academic catch-up, there are many other consequences. It has led to a lot of children not going back into mainstream school since covid. They are supposedly being home educated in most cases, but we are not sure how well they are being home educated, and if they are getting any reasonable education at all.

The problem of children not in school and, hopefully, being educated outside a school setting is not new, although it has been exacerbated since covid. When I was the Children’s Minister some while ago, we looked at regulating out-of-school provision and keeping tabs on children who were not attending school, particularly from a safeguarding point of view. I absolutely echo the points made earlier by my hon. Friends the Members for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) and for Meon Valley about the generally high quality of care, and hopefully education standards that go with it, provided by parents who choose actively to home educate their children for whatever reason. There are some, however, who cannot and do not sufficiently, adequately and appropriately provide that education to their children.

There are also establishments setting themselves up as unregulated schools, often with a religious bent. Some years ago, there was a big scandal about madrassahs exposed, I think, by “Panorama”. There was some really worrying treatment of children attending those schools, either in place of regular school or as religious schools available at weekends and evenings, in completely unregulated settings. It applies to other unofficial faith schools as well. I was keen to bring in some form of regulation of those establishments at the time, but alas I was thwarted. The issue has returned, but I am pleased to note that the Government are at last taking action on it.

There is also the issue of what we more formally know as alternative provision. Again, there are some really good examples of this—I can cite some in my own constituency—but they are not regulated. Many of them actually want to be regulated, but there is not the facility to do that. It would give them a degree of respectability and status, from which many of them would benefit. It is a bit of a wild west out there, and it absolutely needs to be addressed.

The reasons parents choose to home educate, as my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley has said, are varied. In some cases, they do not want to send their children to faith schools, and there are no alternatives available. Increasingly, it is because of problems with special educational needs. Despite the good reforms that the Government have brought in, with the use of education, health and care plans, there is still a serious problem with the number of children identified with special educational needs who are waiting to be assessed for an EHCP. If it goes to appeal, the vast majority of appeals by parents are upheld. There has been something like a 24% increase in appeals between 2022 and 2023, and parents usually win them. Even when they get that status, the support that is supposed to come with it is not always forthcoming, and certainly not to the level that certain children need. It is no wonder that some parents choose to take their children out of school because their special educational needs are not being provided for in those schools.

I recently held a summit with the heads of SEN provision for every primary school in the Adur district in my constituency. Most of the heads turned up as well, such was the seriousness of the subject. I arranged a follow-up meeting with the cabinet member for schools and the director of children’s services in West Sussex because this is a real problem, and it is driving more children out of the mainstream system.

There are other reasons why parents keep their children out of school—for example, because their child is suffering from mental health problems. We know how bad that has gotten—again, exacerbated by covid. Something like one in six school-age children now demonstrate some form of mental illness. Again, the Government have done good work on mental health support in schools, but they are not keeping up with the demand. The threshold for identifying children with mental health requirements is quite high. Even when a child does reach it, they need to access the support in a timely manner, and it is not always as forthcoming, and certainly not as urgent, as it needs to be.

There are also problems with bullying and the impact of social media, which is why I very much welcomed the announced yesterday by the Secretary of State for Education about limitations on mobile phones, which have an awful lot to answer for in our schools. Good schools, such as Worthing High School, which the Secretary of State visited yesterday in launching the new programme, have been practising that for some time, and it is clear for all to see how it has benefited the children. Another reason is eating disorders—a fast-growing phenomenon. Again, that was exacerbated by the pandemic for those children who now feel they cannot attend school because of it. There is a whole raft of reasons why children are being home educated and effectively going under the radar.

There is also the question of parents not being able to get their children into their school of choice. I have a particular problem, which I have raised in this Chamber before—and my right hon. Friend the Minister of State has agreed to meet me shortly to discuss it—as children in Adur, in Shoreham, in particular, have to go out of district because the county council has effectively messed up its calculation of secondary school place need in the area. A lot of parents—from one school, about 50 children are faced with this—have chosen to home educate their children rather than sending them to a school they know little about and which is a long way from home. It is important that we can monitor how many and which children are being home educated, what sort of home education they are getting and who is providing it.

[Mrs Drummond]

Part of the Bill that I propose to introduce will give support to parents who are home educating and put the burden on local authorities to provide that support and funding. I assume that that would help my hon. Friend’s constituents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) on securing this important debate and on her campaigning work on the issue of persistent school absence. She rightly highlighted the lack of transparency about the numbers of children not in school and some of the wider drivers of that in our education system, such as the damaging use of off-rolling by some schools. She was right to point out that a register would have little impact on the families of children receiving a high quality of home education.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) took us down memory lane to his own childhood, and spoke about the importance of having a register so that help and support can be provided to families whose children who are not in school, where that is needed.

The hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) highlighted the situation in her constituency, where there is a school in which 47% of the children were persistently absent. That highlights the shocking scale of this issue and the urgency of addressing it.

We heard from the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), for whom I have a huge respect due to his long experience and his work in this field. However, I have to say that he gave a disappointingly partisan speech on an issue on which there is a broad cross-party consensus. It was his Government who chose to reopen pubs before schools during the covid-19 pandemic, so the Opposition will take no lectures from him on schools policy during the pandemic. Nevertheless, he rightly highlighted that significant problems with the SEND system and with poor mental health are factors that contribute to persistent absence. On that, we can agree.

Everyone who has spoken agrees on the importance of children and young people accessing a high-quality education. Education is vital in giving them the best start in life and opening up future opportunities, whether through employment or discovering new interests and passions, yet increasing numbers of children and young people are out of school. The rate of persistent absence has doubled in just six years, with more than one in five children missing at least 10% of the school year in 2022-2023.

The situation could not be more urgent. On the current trajectory, developed using Department for Education data, more than 2 million children will be persistently absent from school by 2025-26—a generation tragically lost from England’s schools. More than 130,000 children are already missing more than half their time in school, and recent research by the Children’s Commissioner found that pupils who are persistently absent in years 10 and 11 are half as likely to pass five GCSEs as their peers with good attendance records. That is embedding lifelong disadvantage and limiting the opportunities that young people can pursue later in life.

Although many parents throughout the country lawfully and properly deliver an effective and high standard of education at home, far too many children are now falling through the cracks and not getting the education they need. We need action to ensure that if a child is not in school, the local authority is clear about where they are and what education they are receiving. Members have raised their support for a register of children not in school; the Opposition are clear that we support this objective. As this debate has evidenced, there is broad cross-party support for legislating for a register.

Earlier this month, a motion tabled by the shadow Secretary of State for Education—my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson)—and the Leader of the Opposition sought to make parliamentary time available to legislate for a Bill as soon as possible. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham raised the question of the attendance of Opposition Members at this debate. I gently say to him that all Opposition MPs voted for our motion earlier this month; that is the indication he needs of the strength of commitment and support for this matter on this side of the House. It is extremely disappointing that, despite voicing their support this morning, when they were faced with that motion in that debate, Government Members voted it down.

[Mrs Drummond]

One of the reasons why I did not vote for the Labour party’s motion was that it conflated persistent absence with the not-in-school register. Children with persistent absence are on the school register already, and the local authority knows exactly where they are. A register of children not in school is for those children who are not on any other register. That is why I was unable to support the Labour motion: because it was not correct.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Drummond]

I thank everybody for their contributions today, and again pay tribute to all home educators, including my niece, Emma Loder-Symonds, who runs a farm school to bring home-educated children together. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned that that happens in his constituency too.

The Bill is backed by local authorities, which currently do not have the statutory power to meet face to face with children who are out of school to identify whether they are receiving an effective education, or where families may benefit from additional support. I mentioned those children who are invisible and may be at risk of harm, Sara Sharif being a recent example. A young man who had had to educate himself wrote to me to say that the Bill will help people like him get the necessary support. I look forward to bringing this important Bill through Parliament, and particularly to working with the Department for Education and Ministers to ensure that we get it absolutely correct.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the potential merits of a register of not-in-school children.