Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential (a) administrative and (b) psychological impact of children not being on school registers on home schooling families of neurodivergent children.

There is currently no duty on parents to notify local authorities when they have elected to home educate their child. The ‘Children Not in School’ measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will help remedy this by placing a duty on local authorities to maintain compulsory registers of all children not in school in their areas, and accompanying duties on parents and out-of-school education providers to provide information for these registers.

Information recorded on registers could include whether an eligible child has special educational needs. This would enable local authorities to provide tailored support to these children and their families, and for a more accurate assessment to be made of the impact on these children of not being on school registers. Statutory guidance will be produced to go alongside the measures, which will set out requirements for local authorities and parents.

The department has conducted an Equalities Impact Assessment on the ‘Children Not in School’ measures. As part of this assessment, we have considered the potential impact on children with special educational needs and disabilities, including those who are neurodivergent.