Home Education

Nick Fletcher 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.

[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

In recent months I have heard from parents across my constituency who feel they have no choice but to home educate their children due to age-inappropriate sex education that exposes infant children to information about adult sexual acts. Does my hon. Friend agree that, as legislators and as parents, we have a duty to protect the innocence of our children, and that this debate should reflect the reasons why parents are choosing to home school their children?

[Nick Fletcher]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend and will address that issue later in my speech.

I am sure that many of us believe that the situation is simply not acceptable. There will be some children who have never attended school at all. A child’s last engagement with anyone in authority could quite possibly be the midwife when the child is two, but many fail to attend that appointment. Are these the real lost children? I am told that 1.1% of children are home schooled, but in the Traveller community it is 6%; for children of young offenders it is 6%; and for children with a social worker it is 3%. We can agree that complex backgrounds have a bearing on the numbers, and that is what many professionals would like to tackle.

There is another cohort of home-schooled children. They have dedicated parents who make huge sacrifices to educate their child at home and do an excellent job. I spoke to the petitioners Kilby and Laura last week, and both appear to be very dedicated. I have also spoken to other parents who home school, and they speak of the joy it brings to them and their children. These days, there are huge resources available on the internet, and many home-schooling communities have joined together for some lessons, such as sport, music and art, so the children have opportunity to mix but also have the benefit of one-to-one tuition at home.

Done properly, home schooling has many benefits, and it saves the taxpayer money, too. It gives parent the opportunity to educate their child as they wish. It also enables a parent to teach the subjects that they feel are most beneficial to their child. More importantly to many, it enables them not to teach the subjects that they do not think are beneficial. We have all heard recently of some of the totally unacceptable topics being taught to our children. Although the Minister is meeting me to discuss the issue and the Prime Minister has ordered a review, unacceptable material and politically contentious issues are being taught as we speak. I would seriously consider home schooling my children if they were of that age.

Why are Kilby and Laura so against a register? Kilby feels it would fundamentally change the opt-in process for schooling. The law puts responsibility to educate children on the parents, and they can choose to opt into schooling if they wish. She believes that a register would be more like an opt-out system and could end up making school attendance mandatory. Laura believes that the implementation of a register would be the first step to more oversight of parents who home educate. I can see their point: it would be a fundamental change in the relationship between the state, parents and children.

One reason why many home schoolers do not want to register is the overreach of some local authorities with the powers that they already have. Some are far too overbearing when, quite simply, an experienced officer could see that a home-schooled child is happy in a good home and is being educated well. Some home-educating parents have children with special educational needs and disabilities, and they have removed their children from state education because their needs were not being met. Some of the parents have had particular difficulty with local authority officers not being equipped to assess the complex situation. That begs the question: is a register necessary? Or should local authorities just do a better job with the resources and powers that they have?

Section 437 of the Education Act 1996 states that “if it appears” to the authority that a child is not receiving a suitable education, it can apply for a school attendance order to send the child to school. Section 47 of the Children Act 1989 states that local authorities

“have reasonable cause to suspect that a child who lives, or is found, in their area is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm”,

they can make inquiries and, if need be, make an emergency protection order for the safety of the child. Therefore, if a child who is persistently or severely absent is off-rolled, the local authority already has the power to deal with the situation.

When we investigate further than a headline, we see yet again that good people who are doing a good job are threatened with more state overreach because of the poor behaviour of the few.

[Sir Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. In Staffordshire, we saw a large pre-pandemic increase in the number of children being home schooled, and the trend is continuing post pandemic. Of course, many brilliant parents are doing great work in home schooling, but the underlying issue is that we should be concerned about a number of children who are being labelled as home schooled but not actually getting any schooling at all. Is a register not just a proportionate measure that could help to make sure that all children get the type of education we really want, while still protecting the rights of parents to home school their children?

[Nick Fletcher]

I completely understand where my right hon. Friend is coming from. As I continue, Members will hear some thoughts on that. I thank him for his contribution.

What is the answer? As I have just said, we will discuss that today. I want to protect our children as much as anyone else does. I see the damage done by kids not being in school. I see the antisocial behaviour. I see the organised crime gangs stepping in where parents, schools and the state have let children down. This is happening in my city of Doncaster and we need to do something, but I also understand the desire and the right of responsible parents to educate their children at home.

With the Government seemingly wanting to push forward with a register and the Education Committee, the Children’s Commissioner, Members of Parliament and my local authority, at least, agreeing that it is a good idea, I can see that the petitioners will not be pleased. The Government need to be careful with any legislation. There have been issues in Scotland and the Isle of Man when registers have been introduced, let alone any issues with the general data protection regulation. I therefore suggest that if we go ahead with a register, we need to put in place new safeguards and protections for parents and families who are doing a good job and, as is their right, home educating their children.

As I have mentioned, I have spoken to home-educating parents who have concerns about the state being handed more power over how they educate their children. Let us be clear: it is a parent’s right to home educate their child. However, there is no doubt that there exists in our society a presumption that children will be in school, and there is therefore suspicion around home education. Parents have told me about their rough treatment at the hands of local authority inspectors who have assumed rights of inspection over the nature of families’ home-education decisions that they do not have. A new registration requirement could, then, be accompanied by a much clearer statement of the limits of the local authority’s role when a child is home educated, and a clear complaints process for home-educating parents. After all, I suspect the sector is likely to continue to grow. I look forward to hearing the contributions from other Members on this complex issue.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Fletcher]

The conversation will continue, but I have a few queries. We really need to be asking why parents are not sending their child to school. As my hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns) said, there are concerns among parents about the relationship, health and sex education curriculum. There are also concerns among parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities. We need to work with those parents to ensure that we can get as many children into school as possible.

If we are to bring in a register, it needs to be extremely light touch for the ones who are doing well, and we need experienced people to go in and see that and just say, “Yes, this is a child who is doing well.” That is really important. If we are to bring in a register, we need to ensure that it captures the children we are really concerned about.

If we bring forward legislation, it should work and we should enforce it. Local authorities have an awful lot of powers but really do not use them. If we are to create more legislation and it captures good people—such as the petitioners and those who have signed the petitions, who are doing a really good job—yet those who are doing a poor job are still left and the powers are not used, it will have been a complete waste of time. That is something I am extremely concerned about.

I want to wrap up by thanking everybody who has attended today’s debate. I have listened to all that has been said, and there have been really positive contributions. I thank the petitioners and all who signed the petitions. I thank the Petitions Committee, which does fantastic work. I want to put on the record that it was not me who secured this debate but the Petitions Committee. I seem to be winning lots of debates, but that is down not to me but to the Committee.

I thank all who gave evidence: the CSJ, which has spoken to me; the Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel; the parents; and lots of other people who are deeply concerned about the issue. I came into this thinking, “Yes, let’s have a register. Forget about it—just let’s do a register.” But when we delve into this subject, we find out what the issues really are and why people are concerned about it, so it has definitely been an education for me.

Finally, I thank you, Sir Mark, and the Minister. As I said, I do hope that if we move forward with a register, the concerns of the petitioners will be taken into account.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

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