Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Meston Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

We have a lot to debate on these measures and I look forward to that. I hope that we can try to be succinct, given the amount we have to cover, but noble Lords should please rest assured that they will still receive a full answer, either in my responses or in the engagement that I have identified we will be very content to involve noble Lords in between now and the next stage of the Bill. I hope that means that some noble Lords might feel able not to introduce some of the very detailed and narrow amendments should they feel that their point has been addressed.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 226 in my name differs from others in this group, which are more concerned with children not attending school because they are not registered at any school, and the amendments we have discussed so far are more concerned with home education in its various forms. My amendment concerns those who are on a school roll but not attending and focuses on the responsibilities of local authorities in such situations. I apologise, therefore, if my amendment seems to be somewhat out on a limb, but I think it is quite an important limb.

There is no doubt that the Government are working hard to address the problem of what has been described as an epidemic of school absences. It is well understood that such absences disadvantage children educationally and socially and deprive them of the value of education and of opportunities, in both the short and the long term. I will not attempt any analysis of the many explanations for failures to attend school, but they clearly include poverty, mental health problems and the pandemic, which is thought to have led some parents to see daily school attendance as optional. In this context, the fundamental duties are those of parents to ensure that their children of compulsory school age are receiving suitable full-time education and those of schools to record and monitor attendance and to inform local authorities of failures to attend regularly.

In August last year, important revised statutory guidance on children missing education was issued. It states:

“Schools should monitor attendance closely and address poor or irregular attendance. It is important that pupils’ poor attendance is referred to the local authority”.


The guidance is also clear that the duties of schools and local authorities are to be viewed alongside the wider duties and local initiatives to promote the safeguarding of children.

In October last year, the Government announced increased investment in attendance mentoring. On 22 October, the Minister, in answer to a Question from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, expressed her determination to bring absenteeism figures down. She also referred to the work already done by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran.

Between the guidance issued in August and what the Minister said in October, in September 2024 the Children’s Commissioner published a powerful and wide-ranging report entitled Children Missing Education: The Unrolled Story. This provided analysis of the procedures followed by local authorities to support children missing education and analysis of the characteristics and histories of children known or suspected to be missing education, who are among the most vulnerable in society and in need of support.

The report found that there are significant inconsistencies between local authorities in the use of the term “children missing education”, which can lead to children falling through the gaps; that few local authorities take proactive steps to prevent children from going missing from education; and that there is little one-to-one support available for children missing education to reintegrate into school. It referred to the lack of a shared national definition and to differing interpretations of children missing education. It called for resources for local authorities to trace and support children missing or at risk of missing their education.

The commissioner expressed her increasing worry about thousands of children being denied their right to education, having fallen off the radar of their local authorities. She said that in too many instances, no one knows where these children are or whether they are safe. She described a shocking lack of urgency in trying to trace these children. My amendment seeks to address, in terms of statutory duties, some of the main deficiencies and inconsistencies identified by the commissioner and to underpin in primary legislation what is or ought to be required by existing guidance and regulations.

Absenteeism requires a fast and sometimes robust response. Good practice should not be piecemeal. The amendment seeks to provide for such a response with consistent arrangements for local authorities to be promptly informed of persistent non-attendance or irregular attendance; a duty to take urgent steps to trace any child known or believed to be missing school without authorisation or satisfactory explanation; and a duty to provide appropriate support as soon as the child has been traced. I therefore hope the Minister might take the opportunity to indicate the Government’s response to the commissioner’s report and recommendations and indicate what is already being done to ensure compliance with the latest guidance.

The other trigger for this amendment is my experience of cases in the family court when the court is provided, sometimes as an afterthought, with the school attendance records of the child or children concerned in those proceedings. These can show how unexplained or unsatisfactorily explained absences can be a marker of significant neglect or mistreatment, which may have been unknown or not visible to other agencies. On occasions, with provision of those records, the court is left wondering why nothing or nothing more was done to follow up the absences much nearer the time. On other occasions, the court itself can be left to ask for unprovided information about school attendance. That explains the last sub-paragraph of the proposed amendment. All in all, I seek that the Government confirm that there will be a consistent approach, better communication and a better and faster response to absences.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I think this is a very important amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Meston. It reminds us that, in this part of the Bill, we dealing not just with parents who choose to educate their children at home but with some very substantial problems that state education has in not keeping hold of and looking after children who are nominally registered at school. I will come on to the question of unregistered alternative education, to which the state commits many children, in a later amendment. This is about looking after the children and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Meston, has put his finger very firmly on what we ought to be doing.

If there is a whole structure being built here to get better information on home-educated children, what is the point of it if we are not already using the information we have on children who are registered? Is there actually a responsive system that all this extra information is going to be fed into? Are we actually focusing on the children who need our help, or are we just making life more difficult for a lot of very responsible and successful parents? I am grateful to the Minister for setting out the Government’s approach to elective home education. I felt that there was a good deal in common in our approaches and I very much hope to be able to build on that as we look at these amendments.

I will very much endeavour not to take up the time of the House if I can avoid it. In that context, picking up on the Minister’s very kind offer of conversations with officials, might it not help if those conversations could take place between today and 1 September? That would mean that I would not have to take up time in Committee: we could short-circuit it before then. I am in the UK all August, but perhaps that might not amuse her officials.