My Lords, I am pleased to speak in support of my noble friend Lord Solely in his aim to introduce a register, which I think
would be a significant and relatively straightforward step forward. This is an emotive and emotional subject, probably because, as we have already heard, there is a minority of vociferous parents who undertake home schooling perfectly well—in fact, very well, in many cases—and because of the minority of cases where home schooling is undoubtedly not in the interests of the relevant children, with grim consequences. One difficulty is that we do not know what we do not know: that is, we really have no idea about the scale of the problem.
I do not want to take an overly partisan view of home schooling. This Bill is an appropriate response to issues of concern, while maintaining the right to home educate for those parents who really want to do so. I know the boundaries between the rights of parents for their children’s well-being and intervention by government is very tricky, and we have seen that in recent medical cases. But that is not a reason to close our eyes to this. I recognise that, for some children, home schooling works well. With short-term physical or mental illness, home schooling may be the answer for that child, as well as when there are particular special educational needs—although sometimes I think that it is because the system is failing to meet those needs. Obviously, children may have had bad experiences at school, particularly in relation to bullying, and in that case home schooling is really the most supportive thing to do, at least for a period. In other cases, parents absolutely believe that they are giving their children the best possible education; they do not like the options available to them and want to emphasise particular curricular areas. Personally, I am somewhat sceptical that children’s social development is best served by not being in school, but I know that parents can make huge efforts to deal with that challenge.
Above all, it is our responsibility to ensure that we safeguard all children, yet there is no statutory duty on any public body to monitor the quality, impact or outcomes of home education. There is no evidence on the educational attainment or socioeconomic progress made by home-educated children. Parents still do not have to co-operate with local authorities or schools in tracking or supporting pupils, and local authorities have no powers to gain access to pupils without going through the process of performing a well-being check. Parents are not legally required to tell their local authority or any other public body, for that matter, that they are home educating their children. They have the right to teach their children at home up to the end of the compulsory school age, and there is no checking through the system at all on that. As we now know, learning takes place in a variety of locations and does not have to be limited to the child’s home. That is an increasing trend, as we have already heard, and I will not rehearse those arguments.
Crucially, it is parents alone who choose to home educate their children, and they are the people responsible for ensuring that the education provided is “efficient”, “full-time” and “suitable”, whatever that means. Suitable education is set out in guidance and case law as an education that,
“primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he”—
sic—
“is a member, rather than the way of life in the country as a whole, as long as it does not foreclose the child’s options in later years to adopt some other form of life if he wishes to do so”.
So on the one hand, for most children, there are clear national guidelines around the curriculum including, for example, arguments about evolution against creationism, the need to understand different religions and cultures and, more recently British values, but essentially a void for home schooling. It is also worth noting that one argument for free schools was that a group of parents could come together to develop new provision where they felt very strongly that they wanted a particular focus. Indeed, there are now many studio schools that focus on a particular curricular area. Of course, those schools are within our overall schooling and inspection framework.
I declare an interest as a former chair of Ofsted. When I was there, there was a growing concern about home schooling. There had been an expectation after the Badman review in 2009 that a compulsory register would follow. Indeed, the idea of the register was included in the Children, Schools and Families Bill, introduced in 2009, but it was dropped in the later stages of the parliamentary process pre the general election in 2010. So we have been here before. Since then, however, and most crucially, concern has grown dramatically and is now pretty widespread. Ofsted, the Wood review and the Casey review all drew attention to the dramatically rising numbers of home-educated children—and, of course, the extremely murky area of unregistered schools and significant weaknesses in current legislation.
Quite simply, as we have heard already, there is no national information collected, which is really an outrage. Local information is extremely patchy and variable. Collectively, if we are honest, we all know that there is a problem here. So I hope that the Minister will commit to helping us to sort this out. Everyone here is willing to help constructively on this. We know that the Bill as drafted is not perfect, and I think that everybody will co-operate fully on a Committee stage, which I hope that we will reach, to take that issue forward. So I hope that the Minister will respond positively.
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