Home Education

Debate between Nick Fletcher and Andrea Jenkyns

Monday 27th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[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.