Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to ensure local authorities have the necessary (a) resources and (b) training to effectively safeguard children receiving elective home education.

The department has collected termly data from local authorities concerning their cohorts of home-educated children since autumn 2022.

The most recent published data shows an estimated 92,000 children in home education in October 2023, a rise of around 12,000 from the previous year. The most common reasons for home education are religious, philosophical, mental health and dissatisfaction with schools. The department has used this data to analyse trends in the growth and motivations behind parents opting to home-educate. This analysis has helped to identify impacts on the school system and local authority resources. For instance, in relation to numbers of school attendance orders issued and types of support offered to home-educating families. It also enables the department to better understand the educational journeys of these children.

The government provides funding through the local government financial settlement, enabling local authorities to carry out their duties toward children not on a school roll. This includes overlap with children’s social care teams, whose work includes those children not in school and their safeguarding.

The government’s elective home education guidance contains information about safeguarding children, as well as the principles of a suitable education. This guidance should be read in conjunction with other documents such as ‘Working together to safeguard children’ and ‘Keeping children safe in education’. The department’s elective home education guidance is currently under review following a consultation and an updated version will be published in due course.

The department’s guidance is clear that parents who choose to home-educate are responsible for the costs of doing so. When a child who is moved into home education has an education, health and care plan, it is the local authority's duty to ensure that the educational provision set out in that plan is provided to the child, unless the child’s parents have arranged for them to receive a suitable education in some other way, in which the responsibility for the educational provision rests with the parents.

The government is committed to a system of registration of children who are not in school, including those who are home-educated. It intends to introduce this system as part of the Children’s Wellbeing Bill, as announced in this year’s King’s Speech. Registers will aid local authorities in their duties to identify those children who are receiving their education otherwise than at school and ensure that those children are receiving a suitable education.

The statutory requirements to maintain registers and provide data to my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education will ensure the department obtains more robust and thorough data on home education issues that will further inform policy development and identification of those children who most need support. The measures in the Bill will include a requirement on local authorities to provide support to those home educating families who request it. A full new burdens assessment will be conducted in anticipation of the measures coming into force, to ensure that local authorities are equipped with the training and resources needed to comply with these new duties.