Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he plans to launch a public consultation on his proposal for a register of electively home-educated children when the draft legislation is published.

The department does not currently collect data on numbers of home educated children or school attendance orders. Such data as is collected is held by local authorities. Parents are not required to register if they are home educating their children and, therefore, there is not a robust basis on which the department or independent accredited researchers can reliably collect statistics on home education.

The department supports the right of parents to educate their children at home. Most do so with the best education of their child at the centre of their decision. The department is aware of increasing numbers of home educated children, which cannot be overlooked. For some parents, the child’s education is not the primary reason behind the decision to home educate, which can mean that some children are not being provided with a suitable education.

Local authorities are under a duty to take action if it appears to them that the home education provided to a child is unsuitable. The department issued revised and strengthened guidance to local authorities in April 2019, setting out how they can exercise their powers in this regard. This guidance will be reviewed again in due course.

The department remains committed to a form of local authority register for children not in school and we will legislate for it at the next suitable opportunity. The department have already consulted on proposals in the Children Not in School consultation, and their response to the consultation, published on 3 February 2022, reaffirmed this commitment to create local authority registers of children not attending registered independent or local authority- maintained schools, and to place a duty on local authorities to provide support for home-educating families (should they want it). Such duties will help local authorities undertake their existing duties, improve data on children in scope, as well as help safeguard all children who are in scope. In addition to the Children Not in school consultation, officials continue to engage with relevant stakeholders as we prepare for the next legislative opportunity. There are no immediate plans to commission, undertake or publish any independent accredited research on elective home education, for the reason noted above.