Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department's Children Not in School Registers: regulatory impact assessment for the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, published on 30 January 2025, for what reason (a) higher and (b) lower numbers of School Attendance Orders would be seen as measures of success for the Children Not In School measures.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill introduces a duty on local authorities to maintain registers of children who are not in school, and a duty on parents to provide certain information for those registers. Parents must only provide details of their child’s name, date of birth, address, the parents’ names and addresses, the details of where the child is receiving education and who is providing it. All other information is optional to provide. Parents will only be expected to notify their local authority of that information when they first begin home-educating, or their circumstances change, such as a move to a new area or a new education provision.

The department will share clear guidance on what information parents should provide to their local authority to avoid irrelevant information being given. This will form part of the statutory guidance we will issue following a public consultation. That consultation will take place following the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill reaching Royal Assent.

In the published regulatory impact assessment for the ‘Children not in school’ measures, it is stated that we will request data from local authorities concerning the use of school attendance orders and how many result in a conviction for breach. We believe that a higher use of such orders would indicate a lack of compliance with the registration duties and higher numbers of parents who have opted to home educate but have been unable to provide a suitable education, who in the absence of a mandatory register, would have gone unknown to their local authority. A lower rate may indicate high compliance with the registration duties and parents being able to provide a suitable education, potentially through take-up of the support duty on their local authorities. Both outcomes would inform further policy development in this area.

The department began a termly collection of data relating to home education in autumn 2022. The data collection includes an annual return of the usage of school attendance orders. Data for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 academic years can be accessed here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/elective-home-education.

In reference to the request to publish historic data on the usage of school attendance orders, the department does not hold information on the use of fines for breach of those orders. Fines for non-compliance are a result of a criminal conviction, and that data is recorded and held by the Ministry of Justice.