My Lords, I shall also speak to the other amendments in this group. I apologise to the Committee for the appalling drafting of Amendment 101A; it must be hard for anyone here to understand what I am about. All the amendments concern home education, and Amendment 101A seeks reassurance from the Minister that it is intended that the local offer should cover children in home education and not just children in conventional schooling.
Amendments 164A and 164B cover a part of the Bill where it seems that the wording reverses the current relationship between local authority and parent when it comes to education. Our education legislation is written so that the responsibility for educating children rests with the parent, and the local authority then has duties in support of that. The way in which the Bill is worded at the moment seems to place the duty on the local authority, with the parent in support. If that is the case, I hope to put the situation back to where it always has been and, to my mind, where it should be.
Amendments 152ZA and 157ZA are on a more optimistic note. In recent years, there has been a considerable improvement in relationships between local authorities and the home education community. We have escaped from the cloud cast by the Badman report and are entering a period where there is a spirit of co-operation and mutual understanding. It seems to me that we ought to look for a situation where a statement of special educational needs can encompass education otherwise, as it is known; that is, that the provision might be made otherwise than at school and as part of a home education package.
For that to happen, both the local authority and the home education parents would have to agree that this was a suitable package. There would have to be rapprochement between the two sides but, as I have said, this is becoming much more common. It therefore seems sensible that we should have an arrangement where it is possible for local authority and home-educating parents to co-operate in the interests of the child, rather than the current arrangement, with the rather strange Catch-22 situation where if a home-educating parent asks a local authority for help for a child with special educational needs, that is taken as proof that they are not able to provide properly for that child and that child must go straight to school. If the parent therefore does not ask for help, the local authority has no right, role or responsibility for making any provision whatsoever. That seems a dichotomy that does not act in the best interests of the children concerned.
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I hope that the Minister will signal that we might be entering a period of better relationships—more constructive and engaged relationships—so far as children with special needs in the home education community are concerned, and that the provisions of this Bill will allow that progress to continue. I beg to move.