Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of changes to the School Attendance Order process in the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill on local authority staff time.

The department is legislating through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to make School Attendance Orders a more efficient remedy to ensure that children are in receipt of suitable education. This includes making it an offence for parents to withdraw a child subject to a School Attendance Order from school without following the proper procedure. This means that parents convicted of breaching a School Attendance Order can be prosecuted again if they continue to breach it without local authorities having to restart the process from the beginning, which will save resources.

Other measures which will impact on local authority staff time include additional statutory timelines on parts of the process, a new requirement for local authorities to consider the home and other learning environments, and a new power for local authorities to request to see the child in their home(s).

Where additional local authority resources will be required to undertake new duties created by these School Attendance Order changes, the department is considering these additional requirements and will conduct a full new burdens assessment as is required.