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

Lord Soley Excerpts

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

Moved by

[Lord Soley]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, there is a difficult balance to be struck between the rights of parents to have the education for their child that they choose and the rights of the child. That is what I have tried to do in this Bill. We need to get that balance right. Let me be quite clear that I have always been in favour of home education. It is a perfectly reasonable choice for a parent to make, as long as they feel equipped to do it and able to accept help if they run into difficulties in any form. One thing that has troubled me for some time is that there is no registration of children out of school in this country—for either children who are not registered for a school in the first place or those who are taken out of school and disappear. For reasons that I will explain in a moment, this is becoming a much bigger problem than it used to be. The issue is not whether some parents can do it well; it is about how we help those who cannot do it well and protect the rights of the child.

Some years ago, when I first raised this in a blog on the House of Lords, I was inundated with opposition. I am delighted to tell the House that, on this occasion, the majority of letters, emails and phone calls I get are in favour of the Bill. There is recognition now that registration is important. Part of the reason for that, which I will expand on in a moment, is that children are now known to have disappeared and been abused, radicalised or put into extremist situations. We have to deal with that. We cannot ignore it, for the sake of both the child and society as a whole.

In recent years, the increase in home education has been massive and I will give examples of that. I have had help from across the board, but two of the councils that have been most helpful to me on this are Hampshire and Kent. They have given me information that I hope the Government will see in due course. I should say in passing that these are Conservative-controlled councils, but this issue goes across the board and is not party-political. The problem is throughout the United Kingdom, although the Bill applies only to England and Wales because in Scotland education is a devolved responsibility.

As I said, the expansion in home education has been considerable. Let me quote from the House of Commons report on home education. For those who have copies, I will read from page 2, which says:

“In July 2014 local authorities in England recorded 27,292 home educated children. The figure for July 2013 was 23,243. Overall, the number of home educated children increased across the country by 17% between July 2013 and July 2014”.


It then goes into further detail for those who want to pursue it.

The other report that I thought significant comes from Kent County Council, which, as I have indicated, has been very helpful with its information. It says:

“There were 1,203 new registrations during the 2016-17 academic year, which was an increase of 17.1% on 2015-16. That is just one year”.


Importantly, because this indicates where some of the problems are,

“1,003 registrations were closed during 2016-17 academic year”,

which Kent says demonstrates the numbers transferring in and out of home education status. It is in a constant state of flux, causing significant disruption to children’s education and to the school. In other words, the child is taken out for a period and then goes back in, which is disruptive for both child and school. Kent goes on to say that it believes some of this is because of parents using it to avoid school attendance orders and associated fines.

The numbers have increased dramatically. Hampshire, which, as I have indicated, took the initiative by contacting me after seeing my Bill, currently has 1,422 children registered as home educated, and those are only the ones that they know about. That number has tripled over the past five years. Again, that is common across the country. Incidentally, the BBC did a survey through local authorities and found that 32,262 were missing from school for substantial periods. Even more worrying, and I will come back to this, 3,987 could not be traced at all. That is where we have a very serious problem, which we are not facing up to.

I was pleased when David Cameron’s Government considered including an inspection for out-of-school settings. But my Bill deals with a different part of that problem, which is the issue of parents who do not register their child for school at all; therefore, we have no idea where they are or what is happening to them. Then there are those who are taken out during the course of the school year and then go back in.

I have not had a great deal of involvement in education and I do not claim that much knowledge of it, but one reason why I got involved with this issue goes way back in my own past, to many years ago when I was a probation officer. I knew then that the parents of children who took them out of school seeking to abuse them knew that they could hide the child. I must stress that, because sometimes we see such cases in the paper and we think that the parents look hopeless and incapable. That is often true, but it is also true that parents who abuse children, either sexually or physically, are very often clever, intelligent and incredibly manipulative. Social workers, psychiatrists, probation officers or anyone else dealing with such parents have to be very hard-headed and clear-sighted because it is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that everything is all right and that the black eye came from the kid falling down the stairs or something of that nature. We cannot afford to do that.

That is one reason why I have always been troubled that in this country, almost alone among the developed countries, we do not register children. Very importantly, we also do not offer much help to those who home educate but need help to do it well. We just leave them to it. Countries such as the United States, Canada and Australia not only have a system of registration, which obviously varies from state to state, but also offer great help. That is necessary if you are in a very large geographical area where home education is often the only alternative to boarding. As I say, these countries recognise the need both to register and to provide help. We do not do either.

In a moment I shall go through the Bill, but perhaps I may make a final point. When I saw the Minister the other day, I referred to two cases which are just the tip of the iceberg. One concerned a child in south Wales named Dylan Seabridge who was taken out of school. He was not known to any other local authority or organisation. The next thing that was known about him was some years later, when a 999 call was made. The child was taken to hospital but it was too late and he died. He had been starved to death. There was a similar case in Birmingham only a few years ago. Today, interestingly, I learned from a very reputable source, a local authority officer, about a child who was taken out of school at the age of about eight. He disappeared and nothing was heard any more until some months later when that child, along with his baby brother and his mother, were found buried in the garden of the house. No one knew where that child had gone. He was taken out of school, he disappeared, and then he was found dead.

The Government have been very good about issues like children being taken into slavery or those at risk of sexual abuse and so on, but unless we know what happens to children who are taken out of school and disappear or who are not registered for school, we are not doing our duty towards the rights of the child. That is why this is important.

As I say, the Bill tries to strike a delicate balance between the rights of parents and the rights of the child. I want to say straightaway that I will table certain amendments. Those who have read the Bill carefully will know that two phrases that will trouble people are the requirements to check on a child’s physical and emotional development. I put them in in the first instance precisely because of my worry about the minority of abuse cases. However, having thought about it for a week or so, it is clear that that is unrealistic. I will seek to amend the Bill to take those words out of the Long Title and subsections (1) and (4) of the proposed new section in Clause 1(2).

What I really want is a system where the majority of parents who home educate very well and want to be left alone are not caused any hassle by the Bill. We need to let them get on with it. That would be the other amendment I might possibly have to table, apart from others that may be suggested by the Government or others. If parents are subject to one inspection and the local authority feels that everything is going well, there is no reason why that should ultimately become an annual inspection. However, if parents either need help or are asking for help, or if the local authority is worried about the welfare or education of the child, inspections might need to be carried out more frequently. The wording I include in proposed new Section 436B(3) in Clause 1(2) would ensure that there was a minimum of one inspection per annum and that it would continue normally thereafter. Again, I emphasise that the majority of parents who take their children out of school are committed to educating them well.

However, there is a second group of parents—I suspect that they might form the largest group—who may want to educate their children well but they struggle. That may be because they do not have access to all the facilities they need or because their circumstances change, such as perhaps taking on a more demanding job or something of that nature. What often happens at the moment is that these children are taken out of school and then put back in again a year or so later. That is very disruptive both for the child and the school. Another issue has been pointed out to me by a representative of Kent County Council; it is something that I did not know about. There is considerable evidence to suggest that children are taken out of school to avoid attendance orders and fines. I think that the Minister ought to look at the authorities that are reporting this problem. I have been told that taking children out of school to avoid fines is a major cause of this issue for local authorities. Again, this goes across the board politically.

The Bill is straightforward in most senses. It seeks to amend the Education Act 1996 in such a way that there is a requirement on local authorities to register. Once we start registering, we can then start to help, advise, direct and protect. The trick here is to get that balance right. I want to work closely on this with the various education bodies, with the Government, in particular, and with local authorities to make sure that we do it well. I know people will say, “Well, at the moment, local authorities haven’t got the resources and can’t do it themselves”, but if we look at the numbers I gave earlier and bear in mind the problems of abuse, radicalisation and extremism, we cannot ignore this any longer.

On radicalisation alone, I would simply say that as more cases come to light, as they do, media interest in and public pressure on this issue will grow. It is no accident that 10 or 15 years ago I faced more opposition than support to what I was saying; now, I get more support than opposition. Interestingly, some of the letters I have received were from people who wrote to me 10 or 15 years ago and who are now saying, “I got it wrong. I think we have to have this, but please do it in a way that doesn’t put too much pressure on me, because I am doing it okay”. I understand that and I want to achieve it.

New Section 436B would put the duty on the local authority to monitor children receiving elective home education. As I have indicated, in Committee I will try to delete “the physical and emotional development of children”. I do not think that anybody will object; I think the penny will drop that we could not monitor that, as it did with me after I drafted the Bill in the first instance. I think also that those words troubled the people who are doing home education well; many of them wrote to me saying that I am Mao Tse-Tung in drag, trying to impose state control on all these people. Let me reassure this House and people outside that I am not Mao Tse-Tung in drag. I want a light-touch regulation for people who are doing home education well and I want to help those who are not. I also want to protect those children who are at serious risk.

My proposed new Section 436B then lists the duty of the local authority to monitor children. New subsection (2) is, in a way, the key one, because it requires registration; it brings the issue into the modern world, where we register it. New subsection (3) covers the issue of whether the assessment will be done annually, or more than annually; as I say, the key there is to allow it to be done annually for people doing home education well. We may even move to a situation where, because everybody is certified, we take that provision out altogether. We must have a minimum of annual assessments in order to allow other assessments to take place when we are worried about a child or the quality of the education, and so on. Obviously, we are concerned about the quality of education on the basics of reading, writing and numeracy, as the previous Minister and Government were, because many children—particularly those who are taken out of school and then put back in to avoid fines and attendance orders—would be left in a very vulnerable situation.

Clause 2 will give various powers to the Secretary of State to make regulations by statutory instrument if necessary. I have tried to phrase this in a way that enables the Secretary of State to consult widely and issue guidance, as and when necessary. That is a fairly normal procedure, which I happen to think will be quite important in this area. Guidance relating to elective home education—covered by Clause 2—is important because it requires that the updating of guidance by the Secretary of State must have regard to elective home education providing instruction in writing and numeracy, and take into account the child’s age, aptitude, ability and any special educational needs. That is because in the present situation there is troubling evidence—I am afraid that I cannot put a number on it at this stage—that children are taken out of school because the parent feels, often rightly, that the required special educational needs are not being met by the local authority and that they can do a better job with the child out of school. Those parents need help. It is a matter of saying not that they have to put the child back into school but that a child with special educational needs will need additional attention. The clause would give the Secretary of State the ability to offer guidance and, in Clause 2(2)(b), to take into account the views of children and parents.

As an aside related to that, we need to commission some research into this area. I hope the Government can do something about it fairly soon. We have no idea of numbers or, as I have indicated, how many children who were taken into home education have ended up in situations of abuse or being killed. Those figures should be available. I know that in the Welsh case, for example, it was stated in the court case afterwards, and it will have been stated in other cases where children have been killed, but it will also have been stated in cases where the police have been involved and the child had been put into situations where they had been radicalised or exposed to extremism. We ought to be able to get those figures. If the Minister does nothing else, I ask him to take that away in the near future and try to get some research done. It is very important.

The interpretation of the Bill is the usual straight- forward thing. Clause 4 goes on to say that it applies only to England and Wales. I stress that I have already drawn this to the attention of the Scottish education authority because I know it has a similar problem. I have looked at some of the numbers in Scotland. They too have a problem, but it is essentially an issue for the devolved Administration. I will forward it to them.

What I want to do more than anything else is work with the Government and any other bodies concerned about this. I do not pretend that I have got the Bill exactly right. I want to make changes in Committee, but I would be very happy to make changes put forward by other people to achieve this end. At the very least we need registration, with some understanding of what is happening to these children who disappear. We cannot go on with the situation where we have thousands who disappear.

I hope the Government will work with me. I understand that the Minister is very new to his job and I want to be very cautious today, but I ask him to look at this very carefully. Several disasters have already happened and we know there are more in the pipeline. It does not do anyone any good to turn a blind eye to this. It is time for us to act. I therefore beg to move that the Bill be read a second time and I will work in co-operation with all who would like to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I am very grateful to everyone who has spoken in the debate, and I can fairly confidently say that they all know far more about education in the round than I shall ever know. But I do know something about Parliament’s ability to balance competing rights, and there are competing rights here between those of parents who want to home educate—which I strongly support, as I said earlier—and the rights of the child. Incidentally, in British law throughout the United Kingdom, the courts maintain that the child’s rights must be primary. Getting the balance right is difficult, as several Members have said, but it is not impossible.

I welcome some of the concluding comments of the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, to which I shall return in a moment—I do not want to delay the House very long—but some provisions, particularly to deal with certain schools, exist in current legislation. If he is going to issue more guidance on that, I will read it with interest.

I was particularly pleased to hear the views of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and my noble friend Lady Morris, both of whom have held the challenging position of Secretary of State for Education. I was very pleased to hear that they recognise not only the problem but the type of solution that I am trying to achieve, and support it. They are not the only previous Ministers who support it—of all parties. People across the political spectrum support it. That is very important.

I also noted the reference of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, to the letter from Sir Michael Wilshaw to Nicky Morgan, to which I did not refer but which I am aware of. That is a very important letter and deserves a read. My noble friend Lady Morris referred to the Badman report, to which, again, I did not refer, although I saw Mr Badman a few days ago, and that report bears further reading.

I will not go through everybody’s comments, but generally speaking, everybody seemed to be in favour of a register of some type. I regard registration as the first line, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said. The need for a register is profound, because once you have it, you can look at the detail of how we can help and what needs to be done in selected areas. That is very helpful.

To the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, I say, first, that I was not aware that the case in Wales had been referred to an authority—it may have been a medical authority, I do not know—but if he could have a word with me later, I would welcome being briefed on that. But the child still disappeared for a long period, not just a year or two; it was a number of years before it came to anyone’s notice. More importantly, the noble Lord seemed to fear that something in my Bill implied punishment and investigation. It does not. There is no punishment here: there are no fines or imprisonment, or even a conditional discharge. That is for a couple of good reasons. First, it is not necessary or practical. Secondly, I have believed throughout my adult life that if you want to change human behaviour, rewards are far better than punishment. Punishment is necessary at times for community reasons and for the individual—notably in child-rearing situations—but rewards are more effective at changing behaviour than punishment. That is why, in general, we need to be careful before introducing punishment, and the Bill most certainly does not.

The other phrase that the noble Lord used which troubled me was “too much investigation”. This is not about investigation. Yes, it will be in limited cases where it is recognised that something is going badly wrong, but in the vast majority of cases it is about helping. Those parents who I have indicated are doing it well might have one visit per annum, and that will be it. We ought to consider a provision whereby, after a number of years, you can say that you are doing it well, there are no problems, the child is happy and so you should get on with it. But there is a second, probably bigger group of parents who want to do it but are running into difficulties or having problems with special education. They need help and advice, and it may be something as simple as discovering that the child has a special ability in music, physics or biology, for example. It may be that the local authority can point them in the right direction or help them identify a funding source if they have specific skills in, say, music. So a range of help is available, and if the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, could look at this proposal as finding ways to help people, some of his anxieties about it might be reduced.

As I said, I am not worried about parents who do this well. It really does have to be light regulation—I have said that over and over again, and I cannot say it enough. It troubles me when people write to me who have gone to considerable lengths regarding their parental rights, but who never mention the rights of the child. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, might want to consider that, as well. Children have rights, and I am trying to get that balance right. I hope that the Bill can go into Committee, where I shall lean very heavily on government and Members of this House to get this right.

A number of things the Minister said gave me some hope, although there were one or two cautious notes—he may be holding back too much on what the Government could do. Because of the problems of the minority, if we do not do something about this, it will jump up and hit the Government in the face badly. We all know there is a problem, and we have to find a way to deal with it without intruding on the rights of those who are doing well or may just need help. If he can work with me—and I would lean over backward to do so—we can get this right, and he can be proud to support legislation that improves the situation without imposing onerous regulatory procedures. I think that can be done, and I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.