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

Lord Soley Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 27th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird]

Please can we stop bringing things into the debate, as the noble Baroness said? Why do we need to deface the brilliant dedication of our teachers? This is not an anti-teacher movement. I am sorry that I missed the Second Reading. I could probably have said some brilliant things then, so I will try to do so now. Please, let us concentrate on the very sensible Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, which is about making sure that we do not send our children into a hinterland of non-education.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

I am grateful for that last-minute intervention. Anybody who believed that home education could not produce some pretty emotional responses should have listened to this opening debate or been involved with me in the many meetings and discussions that I have had, including one via Skype for Business, with people all over the country. I think that I have been able to allay some of the fears that people have.

Before I turn briefly to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, let me put all this in context. This Bill is about creating a register. We need to know what is happening and to be able to help. It is a helpful Bill; it is a Bill which we can build on. I commend the Government and the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Addington, to whom I talked yesterday, who are working with me to try to get it right. More needs to be done on it, but we need the Bill because we have no idea where some children are. I have said for many years that some people who home educate do it extremely well and the results are very good. One of my frustrations is that there is virtually no research in this area, and we need some—I have asked some universities to think about that.

A second and bigger group are people who need help in home educating. Precisely as my noble friend Lord Adonis said, children who have been pushed out of school sometimes need help because their parents might want to home educate but cannot, or there may be others who do it but find it a struggle or have difficulty accessing the resources they need—access to laboratories, for example, or access to exams and to having them paid for.

Then there is a small group who have always worried me deeply: those who are taken out of school to be home schooled when in fact it is about radicalisation, trafficking and abuse. Anybody who ignores that is ignoring something very serious.

I agree with the amendment and with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that we need to look at this. Following my conversation with him yesterday, I think that I need to look at another area where I may be able to help him, because I know that he has a particular concern which will perhaps come up on a later amendment. I also want to thank the Government for having embarked as a result of this Bill on a wide-ranging consultation which enables us to take into account many aspects of the amendments that have been put to the House. I also thank my own Front Bench and my noble friend Lord Watson, who has been incredibly helpful to someone who does not know that much about education in the round but knows a lot about the problems of children caught in impossible situations, not least in trafficking, abuse and radicalisation. The House has to take that very seriously.

I have no problem with the amendment but, if we spend as much time on all the other amendments as we have on this, this Bill will fail. I do not want to discourage people from speaking, but I say to noble Lords that it would be helpful if we could focus on the amendment and keep it brief because, otherwise, there will be no Bill and the Government, whom I commend for working closely with me on this, will be not be able to get through the consultation process that we need to build a Bill that is more fit for purpose than my present one—I believe myself, of course, that it is almost perfect, but I will accept significant changes. I think that we can do that, and it will be to the benefit of home educators who are doing it well and, above all, to children who are at the moment getting a pretty raw deal.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as patron of an organisation called SkillForce, which is probably doing more than any other organisation in the country to help those excluded. It had its genesis when a Territorial regiment in Northumberland was declared redundant. The commanding officer went to the local head of education and asked, “Can you use my NCOs in any way helpful?” He said, “They would be most valuable going round the difficult schools in the north Tyne area and persuading the potential excludees to come back into the school system”. It started under the MoD and it is now an independent charity. It uses ex-military to go into schools to persuade people not to be excluded. When I went into a school in Slough which was at the bottom of the pack, I was told by the headmistress that SkillForce had been responsible for turning her school round, not least because it had persuaded some potential excludees to join the right way.

One reason for my supporting the amendment is the register, because what SkillForce has to do might well benefit some of those being home educated. At the moment, there is no way of connecting the two. I also support my noble friend Lord Falkland, whose daughter’s films I have had the privilege of seeing. They are a remarkable tribute.

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Moved by

[Lord Soley]

2: Clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave out “monitor” and insert “assess”

[Lord Soley]

I hope this will be very brief as it is a simple amendment. It would change “monitor” to “assess”, and I propose that because in conversations with home educators, there was some concern that the current word was too heavy. I am told by various legal experts and others that there is not much difference between the two words in such a Bill. However, there was a preference among those who spoke to me for using “assess”, so this is a recognition of their concerns. I simply ask the Committee to agree this quickly and, in effect, change “monitor” to “assess” as in Amendment 2 and the associated group of amendments. I beg to move.

Amendment 2 agreed.

Moved by

[Lord Soley]

3: Clause 1, page 1, line 8, leave out “monitor” and insert “assess”

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Moved by

[Lord Soley]

4: Clause 1, page 1, line 8, leave out “, physical and emotional”

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[Lord Soley]

This amendment is slightly more complicated but it has the same sort of background. When I wrote the Bill some considerable time ago, I put “physical and emotional” in among the things to be assessed. That was partly because of my concerns about radicalisation, abuse and so on but, having thought it through, it is very difficult to do that. Additional resources would have to be put in.

One thing that various expert bodies pointed out to me was that if a teacher or an education welfare officer goes in to assess in the normal way, they will be good enough to spot when there is serious abuse. If the child is just not there or, as the Minister will know can happen, they are but there is some concern about them being sent to an illegal school at times and then brought back, in effect you need a power for the local authority to continue to visit and, if necessary, trigger additional support from health or other services to make sure that the emotional and other safeguards for the children are there. On that basis, I think there is no real disagreement on this and I know that many home educators will be pleased to see these words go. I am very happy to move that Amendment 4 and the group associated with it be accepted by the Committee.

Amendment 4 agreed.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

My Lords, if Amendment 27 is agreed to in this group, I cannot accept Amendment 28 by reasons of pre-emption.

[Lord Soley]

I am quite interested in the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has put. We have had a number of discussions on areas such as this and he has been extremely helpful. The only point that I have had made to me is that there is a problem with the definition of full-time and part-time. However, the noble Lord has made the point that this is something the Minister’s consultations and discussions should take into account. That would be helpful and I have no objection to it in principle, although there may be difficulties about definition.

[Lord Warner]

I hesitate to stop progress and I apologise for not speaking at Second Reading because I was otherwise detained then. As the Minister knows, for some time my concern has been—I think this was a concern of previous Ministers in the department—the overlap between home education used inappropriately, unregistered schools and unregulated madrassas. I am normally an enthusiast for definitions in legislation because they introduce clarity. On this, I am a bit less certain. I am not clear—I would very much welcome the views of the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Soley, here—about whether this set of amendments, excluding Amendment 28, would make it easier for someone who had a child who was flitting between home education, an unregistered school and a madrassa to use this definition to carry on doing that, because they did not meet the requirement of the length for “home education”. I wonder whether there would be an escape route for people doing that if we accepted this precise definition, but I would very much welcome the views of the noble Lords on that issue.

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Moved by

[Lord Soley]

6: Clause 1, page 1, line 10, at end insert—
“( ) Local authorities have a duty to provide advice and information to a parent of a child receiving elective home education if that parent requests such advice or information in relation to their obligations under this section.”

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for putting his name to this amendment. This is the only other amendment I have put down, which shows how perfect my Bill was in the first instance. Mind you, what I have been writing at home is another matter. This amendment relates to an important issue. It goes to the heart of what I have been saying for some time, which is that we do not offer enough support to people who are home educating, whether they are doing it very well, not so well or, in some cases, very badly. This amendment places a duty upon the local authority,

“to provide advice and information to a parent of a child receiving elective home education if that parent requests such advice or information in relation to their obligations under this section”.

I was tempted to put in the word “support” as well. I have used “advice and information” largely because in a Private Member’s Bill there would be all sorts of problems about financing that and where the money came from, and there is a problem of local authority resources generally. However, I emphasise that this is a direction in which we have to move. If we are serious about helping people who are home educating and the children in that group, we need to put some money, resources and thought into it. At the moment, that is not there. Imagine, for example, a parent who is doing a remarkably good job home educating generally, but who suddenly spots that the child is quite good at, for example, chemistry but has very little access to a chemistry lab. If advice and information was available, it could enable that parent to be directed to an area where they might be able to get it. In the long run, I would like to make that option much more possible. There are many other examples—music, mathematics or whatever—where children have a particular skill that the parent cannot meet in home education.

That is my reason for this amendment, but there is another reason, which is very important. When I launched this Bill, inevitably I got attacked from all sides, as one does, but particularly from home educators who thought I was intent on destroying the family. They referred to me as Mao Tse-Tung in drag. I am not Mao Tse-Tung in drag and I am not about destroying the family, although sometimes I feel like destroying various families, but we will not go into that in any great detail. That is my background as an MP in certain areas, I guess. There is real concern among some parents who are doing this that there is a constant attempt to take away the right to home educate. It has never been my view that we should do that. I have always made it clear that I regard it as a right. It is a complex area where you have to balance the rights of the parent with the rights of the child, which is an area which causes parents concern.

By putting this wording into the Bill, it says to parents who are anxious about this that they have a legal right to home educate. It recognises in a legislative form that there is a right to home educate. I do that because of the concern of some people who are determined to believe at almost any cost that there is a killer on the loose about to devastate every family in the land. I am not. It is working quite well. If people want to see some of the discussion on this, the interviews I did around the country last week on Skype for Business are now on the Lords of the Blog site. They are all there, and many parents were worried about this.

So I ask the House to accept this amendment for two reasons. First, it requires advice and information to be given by local authorities to parents who request it and opens the door to longer-term support. I hope that in the consultation period and the discussions with the Government we will build up a proper support system for parents who are home educating. Secondly, it puts in legislative form the right to home educate. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I support this amendment. I understand the limitations of a Private Member’s Bill. The noble Lord has done extremely well to stretch it as far as he can to get here. I say to the Minister that we really must look at proper support. To return to what I said on the first amendment, looking at the data from Northamptonshire, by the end of schooling three-quarters of children being home educated have got there not through the initial choice of their parents but because they have failed out of school. Our reaction to children for whom schooling has proved impossible to maintain for whatever reason—depriving them of all funding—is, frankly, perverse and wrong. We really ought to look at saying that these parents have taken on the burden, but they need help and we can provide it. It is probably a great deal cheaper.

From talking to home educators, I think we could probably manage special needs provision on about one-quarter of the budget that it takes to provide it through the state because the parents are doing so much of what needs to be done, but they need outside help. Even if it is fairly straightforward—just behavioural issues, not some abstruse special educational need—parents need help. They may not be good enough at teaching mathematics. They may know that. They might really like to drop their child into maths classes or literacy classes or give them a chance to play games with other children, not just with home-educated children, or get them access to the swimming pool, the library or the other things that happen occasionally in good local authorities. They should be there and be supportive.

I urge the Government to consider the idea that a budget should be given to local authorities to provide educational assistance to home-educated children. The Government are saving so much by these children coming out of school: £5,000 per year per child. The Government should not pocket the whole of that. There is no reason to. The Government should recognise that they have a continuing duty actively to support these children.

Having that fund and local authorities having that duty would produce a supportive attitude and a real reason for parents to engage with the local authority. It means that, rather than being hidden from sight, the vast majority of these children will be seen because they will be engaging in an activity sponsored by the local authority. They will be seen by independent professionals in doing that. There will be very good visibility and the whole problem of how we know that these children are being properly educated becomes easy to solve. It is solved as a side effect of educating them. That surely must be the best way to approach this.

Supportive means actively supporting their education, not just directing what it should be. There is a wide range of good practice out there that we could borrow from and, with good funding, produce something that results in a very large proportion of home-educating parents actively wishing to register. Most of them are not state phobic. Most of them just think the state has done a very bad job for them, and they do not trust some of the individuals involved. If we get to a position where the state is providing a range of helpful services, and there is a decent budget behind that, we would solve most of the problems covered in the Bill.

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[Lord Bird]

I think it is really interesting that we are talking about the legitimacy of home education. The way I see it is that schools and individual parents who are choosing that route should be going in the same direction. It is about the child, and that is really wonderful. My own children, who, like me, have problems around dyslexia, have used a wonderful system on the computer called Easyread. I would like that to be available to all our children, especially those who have dyslexia. Unfortunately, the chap has to pay for it. I would love it if our schools could get together on this because it is a brilliant method. It took my son from a very low reading age to a very high one in the space of a year.

[Lord Soley]

To sum this up, if I may, I very much welcome those remarks. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, again makes an important point about the involvement of the people doing this job with local authorities so that we can break down some of the barriers of distrust and build up confidence-building methods. There are implications about support and what that would involve in terms of finance and other resources, which is why I did not put the word in there, but the rest of the words stand. The key point here, which I think the Minister accepts, is that we need to consult rather widely on this.

Amendment 6 agreed.

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[Lord Storey]

This is an opportunity to, and I hope the Government will, consider the points made. It is shocking that we have hundreds of thousands—well, not hundreds of thousands, but thousands—of children missing from our education system and no idea where they are. No society should allow that to happen. When teaching started, there were school rolls. A pupil’s name was put on the school roll, there was an annual census, the local education authority collected all the details and they were submitted to the then Department of Education.

During the Labour Administration, there was concern about missing children, so they brought in what was called the unique pupil number. The idea was that when each pupil started schooling, they would have a number which would follow them through the education system so you would know where they were, they would not go missing, they would not fall off the cliff. I was quite comfortable with that and thought what a good idea it was, but it did not work in practice. I recall from my final years as a headteacher a particular issue with a pupil and a family. The family took the pupil out of the school, went to see the local authority, did not get the school they wanted, so moved to a different authority. I wanted to find out what had happened to this pupil. There was information about his progress, special educational needs—a host of information that the receiving school should get. Nobody had a clue where he had gone. It was a legal requirement that a receiving school had to use that unique pupil number, but he just vanished and was never heard of again in the education system.

I did not realise that if a pupil went to an independent school, that number does not go with them either. There is a whole area here that we need to understand. I am not suggesting a Big Brother or Big Sister, but we need to ensure as a society that we know that our children are safe, not being put in vulnerable positions, and part of that safety is understanding the progress of their education and where they go.

[Lord Soley]

I am of the view that it would be better if we had a system where, when a child becomes of school age, they have to be registered at a school of some type, so I support what the noble Lord says, but I cannot possibly do that in a Private Member’s Bill. It is a matter for thought and discussion in government as to whether we consider that further down the line. It would help home educators, who feel a bit pilloried because they are singled out as doing something different, which we do not do if a child is going to a private school, or whatever, so I have that long-term preference, but it does not fit in the Bill, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, recognises. It is part of the discussion with government.

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[Lord Storey]

My Lords, briefly, on safeguarding, many home educators bring in people from outside to teach in particular subject areas, and it is absolutely important that we make sure that all the adults are checked by the Disclosure and Barring Service, which is what my amendment seeks to do.

[Lord Soley]

I do not wish to take up the House’s time on this, because I am conscious that there is another Bill to follow this one, and time is tight. I hear the arguments of the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Addington, on this. I talked yesterday at some length to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about it, and I understand the problem of being too prescriptive. After our talk, I remembered that some months ago I looked at the possibility of having an appeal system for when things go wrong between home-educating parents with their child and a school or educational authority that is challenging the way they are doing it. I would not rule that out. However, again, that is too complicated to go in a Private Member’s Bill. I know the Minister is in listening mode on this, and perhaps this is one of those areas to which we ought to pay some serious attention. Although it is not a matter for the Bill, it needs serious consideration.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendments 16A and 19A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. We cannot ignore the risks associated with this, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, which is why Amendment 16A is important. It is also important that, if there is evidence that a child is going to an unregistered school, someone should be notified of that so that action can be taken.

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Moved by

[Lord Soley]

10: Clause 1, page 1, line 15, leave out “monitor” and insert “assess”

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[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I think we are a long way short of having time problems—we have 45 minutes for the last group.

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, these are complicated amendments that need to be considered in the process that we have been talking about. However, there is a bit of a time problem, and if you talk to the people who are involved in the Bill that is coming up next, they will tell you that there is definitely a time problem. I understand what the noble Lord is saying in these amendments but, again, they are too complex for a Private Member’s Bill. I know where the noble Lord is coming from: it is about having the discussion and asking the Government to consider and consult on it. I am confident they will do so, as we all need to do. This is a complex, important area, but not one for a Private Member’s Bill.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, if there was a time pressure, my noble friend Lord Cormack would be in his place. If the Whips are concerned about time pressure, perhaps someone might scurry out and get him, otherwise we will have to adjourn before the next debate.

I agree that this group is more directed at showing the Minister what is possible than for discussion today. It is a subject that goes wider than that of the Bill and I am happy to beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

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[Lord Addington]

My Lords, Clause 2, and in particular subsection (2), caused me considerable disquiet when first I saw it. Subsection (2) starts with setting out the minimum requirement for home education, which must include,

“reading, writing and numeracy, which takes into account the child’s age”.

Okay, there are some caveats, but my concern is quite simple. I am dyslexic. If you were to put me in a system where I was tested on, for instance, my spelling, I would still be being home educated now. My brain is constructed so that I do not store knowledge easily and cannot deal with it. If you put extra work on to a dyslexic, they will forget more. Problems with short-term memory and recall processes, which allow you to do this, mean they cannot do it. Children with other special educational needs will have other problems, all of them requiring some change in the learning pattern. Subsection (2) mentions “ability” and “aptitude”, but what does that mean here? You would need a complicated assessment to find out.

Special educational needs are mentioned at the end of subsection (2). As I have said before, far too much attention has been paid to education, health and care plans. Noble Lords should remember that they are designed to deal only with those at the extreme end of the spectrum. Most people with a special educational need do not qualify for one and should not. A child could have a fairly minor problem and end up in home education because of an unsympathetic teacher or because something has gone wrong—that can happen, and a child can end up in the wrong place. Dyslexics make up about 10% of the population, and if we include those with other special educational needs, it goes up to around 20%. If we put these requirements on children who need different learning patterns, we will be in trouble. That is especially true for those who do not qualify for assessment or who have not been assessed and where there is an emotional need that gets in the way of that assessment. That is why I do not want this included here. We have spoken already in a previous group about what is going on here and that assessments should be more flexible.

When discussing this with my wife, she pointed out to me, “Oh! If it is just reading and writing, there could be one text”. Let us start with a text that is not too scary: the King James Bible. How many books you would get through before you get to Mein Kampf, I am not sure, but it is a process. Reading, writing and arithmetic are regarded as the bedrock of education, but they can be merely tools to acquire an education. A couple of weekends ago, I was at a conference at which we spoke about dyslexia. The main thrust was that more people can learn to read books than can understand what is inside them. I do not think that that is a very controversial point. These are tools for education. If you are obsessed with these tools and their acquisition, you will get in the way of learning.

Are you allowed, for instance, to have a book read to you by the numerous bits of technology we have? I must declare an interest: the firm that I am chairman of, Microlink, provides such packages. If we are going down this route, with technology that turns text to voice and voice to text, which is a perfectly normal way of dealing with certain things—the way that the blind deal with these things is a very related technology—all of it would be under threat if we have this wording in the Bill.

Overloading somebody who does not respond well to these pressures is almost a guarantee of educational failure. Indeed, that is why many people might be removed from that system and I know have been in the past—a teacher says, “He’s dyslexic. Let’s give him extra spelling”, but they just reinforce failure and make a child more resistant. They have made the problem just that bit worse and they will do it again the next day and the day after that.

This wording cannot be in the Bill. Something that suggests an education would be fine; trying to put down an education that is appropriate, having taken advice, is okay. I am fine with that. But the minute you get these caveats and absolutes you are guaranteeing failure for fairly large groups, even with the best tuition in the world. You do not deal with this problem by doing this. Autistics and dyspraxics have another variation on this. Dyscalculics—that is not an officially recognised term, but that is a battle for another day—will have a problem with numeracy. We need to have a great deal more flexibility than we have now. These words cannot be in the Bill if it is to mean anything and it is not to damage these groups.

I do not want to have to stop this and call a Division. At the moment, I think that this would probably be something that we would look forward to on Report. However, I will do unless there is some way of getting this wording out. If we get this into law, we will create more and worse problems. I beg to move.

[Lord Soley]

I discussed this with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I understand his strength of feeling about it. He brings a special knowledge to this, which is important, but I think his fears are overstated. I will explain why again. For a start, the beginning of Clause 2(2) says that,

“the Secretary of State must have regard”.

As he and other Members in the House will know, “must” does not carry the same legislative power as “shall”. Straightaway there is an ability for the Secretary of State or Minister to exercise some restraint.

Very importantly, this is not as absolute as the noble Lord is reading it. He said that there was a difficulty in understanding or interpreting the meaning of words such as “ability”. I put to him that there is not. The clause says,

“reading, writing and numeracy, which takes into account the child’s age”.

That is where he freezes on it and gets quite concerned, but the following matters are really important. They are,

“ability, aptitude and any special educational needs and disabilities”.

Things such as aptitude have to be considered here. Aptitude matters and we know what it means. If a child has school phobia that is an aptitude we have to consider. You could call it a disability if you like, but a phobia is not quite that.

The clause also deals with “any special educational needs” and “ability”. It is now many years since I worked in a hospital for what were then called educationally subnormal children. We would not call them that now; it was very different. The treatment at that time, because we had less knowledge and less use of drugs, was pretty awful but we always made attempts to help those children, who had far greater problems than almost anyone in this House can imagine. We tried to teach them to have some basic understanding of numbers, reading and, where possible, although it was very rare, writing. We can do it. The reason for putting the wording in the Bill is to try to meet the noble Lord’s concerns.

I understand this, though. As I said in an earlier intervention, one of the things that we ought to consider that might give the noble Lord added reassurance on this is to look at the possibility of an appeals system to an independent or totally separate educational body, or even an individual with special knowledge and special skills. If a local authority or an individual welfare officer is doing what the noble Lord most fears, it might be that in the final Bill there should be an appeals mechanism. I ask him to think about that.

The problem with taking out this clause, which is what the noble Lord would do, is that it would leave a lot of other children vulnerable. In trying to protect that group that he is rightly concerned about he would put others at risk. We need children who do not have special problems to be able to read, write and be numerate. We know that in some situations of home education, often for children who have been pushed out of a school, they are not getting that information. The noble Lord is in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. He wants specific attention paid to a small group of children who are very important, but there is a much larger group of children who need to be able to read, write and be numerate. They are often among those people who have been pushed into home education where children are not getting these skills.

I ask the noble Lord to look again at the clause and read it as a whole. It is not an absolute requirement that the Secretary of State is obliged to enforce. It is also true that the Secretary of State has the power to say to the local authority, “You must take these other factors into account, not only age”. You cannot do it just on age, which is what the noble Lord was worried about at first but now feels that this is not enough.

Finally, you have to agree with the parents and the child—that is the second part of it. Clause 2(2)(b) states that,

“the views of children and parents who elect home education”,

must be taken into account. That is why I ask the noble Lord whether he would take away the idea of an independent appeals system. If parents and children felt that it could not work for them, which is what he is worried about, and if, for example, he is right about the case he identified, you will need an appeal mechanism, but you do not want a mechanism which does not allow the provision to happen for other children.

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[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, it may be helpful if I offer to have a meeting with the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Soley, and indeed with my noble friend Lord Lucas to discuss Amendment 23 in particular. I consider this to be part of our broader call for evidence and feedback on the draft guidance that we have issued.

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that helpful intervention and I welcome it.

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Moved by

[Lord Soley]

29: In the Title, line 1, leave out “monitor” and insert “assess”