Home Education

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petitions 594065 and 617340, relating to home education.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I thank the petitioners, Kilby Austin and Laura Moss, for their campaign. Laura is here today and I welcome her to Westminster Hall. The petitions received more than 35,000 signatures between them, so it is right that the House discusses them. The petitions state: “Do not impose any new requirements on parents who are home educating” and “Do not require parents to register home educated children with local authorities”.

First, I will speak about the current position on where responsibility lies. We have a system in which it is the parent’s duty to educate their child but not to school them. There is also a duty on local authorities to ensure that all children have a decent education. As a way to discharge that overall duty, many local authorities use an informal register, but some do not.

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Member agree that local councils still have a duty of care to children who are home schooled? Local authorities cannot be left in the dark; there must be a register to assist them to ensure that all children are receiving a good education and being looked after.

[Nick Fletcher]

That is what we are here to discuss. I will look at both sides of the argument, as I do when I lead petitions debates.

As a member of the Education Committee, I spoke to the Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, when she kindly attended an evidence session on this subject. Only last week, we met again through the Petitions Committee. In her role as Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel wrote to all local authorities on this subject. The feedback was patchy in many areas. Dame Rachel was concerned that no one really knows how many children are not in school.

The Centre for Social Justice recently published a report entitled “Lost and Not Found”, written by Alice Wilcock. The foreword was written by my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) and spells out the problem: 140,000 children were severely absent from school in summer 2022. That is a staggering number considering the fact that “severely absent” means they are missing more than 50% of the time. My fear is that many of those children will be off-rolled from school by parents simply to stop the letters and fines. The Centre for Social Justice made seven recommendations to tackle the problem; although the Government have put additional protections in place, I hope they will read the report and take note.

We can see that there is obviously a problem with school attendance, but would a register help? The children who are severely absent are already on a register. The biggest problem comes when they off-roll from school: when a parent informs the school that they are going to home educate their child, that is it. When the child falls off the register, the letters and fines stop and the school no longer has any obligations to the child. There is no more register. As Dame Rachel de Souza has stated, there is an ongoing duty of care on local authorities, but the data is patchy. Herein lies the problem: a child can be taken out of school for many reasons that are not necessarily in their best interests.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

What the guidance says at paragraph 5.4 is that each local authority

“should provide parents with a named contact who is familiar with home education policy”

and who

“ordinarily makes contact with home educated parents on at least on annual basis so the authority may reasonably inform itself of the current suitability of the education provided.”

In other words, if the local authority can gain access—not forced access or a legal right to access, but by having a proper dialogue with the parents—it can reassure itself of the quality of the education. If it was unable to do that, the presumption that the local authority would make would be that the child was not receiving a suitable education in the home environment.

[Ms Rimmer]

Last year, the Education Secretary said that legislation would come in the new year—this year. Now, the Department is saying that it will come at the next suitable opportunity. Could the Minister be more specific on the timescale that we can expect for the legislation, which will provide a concise and complete list of children who should be getting an education? At the moment, there is no secure way for a local authority to ensure that it has a full register of children within its borough.

[Nick Gibb]

I say to the hon. Member that we are serious about wanting to introduce legislation, and she will know the pressures in this building around legislative programmes. We are determined, and it is our intention to do so at the earliest opportunity, but the guidance that was issued in April 2019 was designed to address many of the issues that have been raised on both sides of the debate. That is why we published very cohesive guidance to help local authorities deal with the very issues she talks about.

[Ms Rimmer]

I have always respected the Minister and the work he does, but it is absolutely necessary that we have a register and that we have it soon. We have children who are vulnerable. They are being exploited, and their families do not have the capacity or the will to do what is necessary. We have young children being exploited by criminals. When are the Government going to get it into their heads that we need to tackle this problem? We are failing in our duty as parliamentarians by not ensuring that children are safe. Will the Minister please treat this issue more seriously? There is nothing more important than children being cared for so that they can live a decent life, contribute to society, enjoy life and not be abused.

[Nick Gibb]

I think everyone in this debate would agree with the hon. Member. I certainly agree with what she said and the passion with which she said it.

We are determined to press ahead with the provisions in the Schools Bill relating to the introduction of a compulsory register. In the meantime, the guidance to local authorities is clear: under current legislation, they have a duty to ensure that all children living in their local authority area are receiving a suitable full-time education. The guidance provides a lot of detail about how local authorities can go about determining whether children are receiving suitable home education.

The Government are taking a number of other measures to identify children who are missing education. This is a serious issue in our system and we will have more to say in due course. The proposals set out the responsibility of parents and the steps a local authority can take if it is not satisfied that the education provided by parents is suitable. That is set out in the 2019 guidance, as I said.

The Department’s guidance also details eight components that should be considered when determining whether a child is receiving a suitable education, including includes enabling the child to participate fully in life in the UK, which my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire raised; that education should not conflict with fundamental British values; and isolation from a child’s peers.

Home education does not need to follow a broad and balanced national curriculum or involve the undertaking of public examinations, although the Department believes, and I certainly believe, that doing so would constitute strong evidence that the education received by a child is suitable. We remain of the view that a centralised definition of “suitable education” would not be in the interests of children, families or local authorities. Each individual assessment of whether education provision is suitable must rest on the balance of relevant factors depending on the circumstances of each child. The Department will review our guidance for local authorities and parents later this year.

Following an inquiry into home education, the Education Committee published in July 2021 a report on strengthening home education, which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire. In the Government’s response to the Committee’s recommendations, they agreed that there is value in having a form of registration for children who are not in school. We also agreed that there is a need for better data to help Government and local authorities to improve their understanding of these cohorts of children and to improve local authorities’ ability to undertake their education and safeguarding responsibilities. The Government did not agree with the Committee that greater assessment of home educators is required; existing powers are sufficient for reasons I have set out. We provide guidance and outline good practice on what we expect when assessing suitable education.