Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department’s statistics entitled Academic year 2023/24: Elective home education, published on 29 February 2024, if she will take steps to ensure that children remain in mainstream education rather than home education.

All parents have a legal responsibility to ensure their child receives a suitable, full-time education and they have the right to choose how their child receives that education. For example, by attendance at school or by home educating them.

The number of children in home education has risen significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, with an estimated 92,000 children believed to be home educated as of October 2023. There is also an increase in parents reporting that they are moving their children into home education due to mental health concerns or special educational needs.

The department intends to introduce a package of measures to help ensure that children receive a safe, suitable education regardless of the setting they attend. The ‘Keeping children safe, helping families thrive’ policy paper, published on 18 November, confirmed the department’s intention to create a new requirement whereby parents will need local authority consent to home educate if a child registered at a school is subject to an enquiry under section 47 of the Children’s Act 1989 or on a child protection plan. If a child is subject to a section 47 Children Act enquiry or on a child protection plan and is already being home educated, the local authority will be able to require them to attend school.

We also intend to make improvements to the School Attendance Order process and, as announced in the King’s Speech, the government will introduce compulsory Children Not in School registers in every local authority in England as part of the Children’s Wellbeing Bill.