Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to sections 38 and 39 of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 on local authorities visiting home educated children, whether parents will be sanctioned if they do not respond to requests for home visits.

The Children Not in School measures of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, when implemented, will require the government to pilot mandatory meetings in selected local authorities for parents wishing to withdraw their child from school for home education. Parents will be required to attend this meeting prior to their child being removed from the school roll. If a parent does not attend the meeting, their child cannot be removed from the school roll. Further details about how the mandatory meeting process should work in practice will be outlined via affirmative regulations and statutory guidance.

Separate to this, the measures will also require local authorities to make an assessment of the child’s home and other learning environments at the point of registration on the Children Not in School registers and when deciding whether they must issue a preliminary notice or a School Attendance Order. To support this, local authorities will have the power to request a visit to the child in their home. We intend to require local authorities to record their assessments of the home and other learning environments and the outcomes of home visits on the registers. Where a parent refuses such a visit, this would be a relevant factor for the local authority when considering whether to issue a preliminary notice for a school attendance order.

Statutory guidance, which we will be consulting on, will outline the details of how visits should be organised, provide steers to help local authorities sensitively conduct visits, and determine the best way to discuss outcomes from home visits with parents. We will also be developing a training package for local authorities focusing on their new duties.