Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she has made of safeguarding risks to children who are homeschooled.

Local authorities’ safeguarding powers are available for use for children receiving home education on the same basis as children attending school. The Department for Education’s view has been that those safeguarding powers are adequate to deal with home educated children, and recent serious case reviews have not shown otherwise.

As stated in the answer I gave to the hon. Member on 20 October (210289), however, safeguarding is an aspect of home education included in the discussions we have started with representative bodies this autumn and it is a key theme emerging in those discussions.