My Lords, I note my noble friend Lord Soley’s request to be mindful of time constraints and will say that this is the only time that I intend to speak today. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that I recognise the amount of time and effort that he has put into framing the amendment. We support it, although I would not wish it in any way to detract from the key aim of the Bill, which, as my noble friends Lord Soley and Lady Morgan said, is ensuring a form of registration.
I shall repeat what I said at Second Reading, in so far as we support the Bill and are concerned about the situation regarding children in non-school settings. Elective home education is a right established under the Education Act 1996. I am certain that in the clear majority of instances, such a decision is right for the children involved and is supported by parents who have an understanding of the educational needs of their children and the ability to ensure that they are met. Many work well with their local authority to ensure that a good education is provided. In those cases, home schooling is appropriate and such out-of-school settings do not present cause for concern. I say to noble Lords that these are not the people at whom this Bill is primarily aimed, nor is it aimed at the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and his family, because nothing in the Bill would have prevented the rich home education that his children and grandchildren clearly had.
The problem that must be addressed is that many children who are either never presented to school or subsequently withdrawn do not enjoy such a benign experience. For the few parents who abuse their children, home schooling offers the perfect environment to keep that abuse and those children hidden. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, the question of exclusions is a further concern in this regard. I listened with great interest to the comments of my noble friend Lord Adonis, particularly informed by his visit to Gateshead yesterday. Pupil referral units, which I mentioned at Second Reading, are often very much part of the problem and very rarely part of the solution.
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There are other concerns as well, because in some schools we know that some teachers will, shall we say, encourage parents to find a more suitable school, perhaps with an eye to improving the school’s exam outcomes. Putting that pressure on parents is invidious and should not happen; it is not the parents’ role in those circumstances to deal with a child that the school, for whatever reason, has decided that it cannot deal with. Indeed, some parents, with the best will in the world, are incapable of finding alternative mainstream education and they therefore turn to home education very much as a last resort. Sadly, that is something for which few parents in those pressure situations are equipped. It is also sad to note that in many cases this involves children with special educational needs or disabilities. For whatever reason, not all home education is genuinely elective education. As I said, for some parents it is the last resort.
I believe that it is a question of protecting children. While home schooling can be a suitable and nurturing environment, concerns arise when the education provided is not suited to the child’s aptitude and ability, or when
the choice to educate at home is perhaps a further component, in some way, of abuse and neglect. The Casey review into community cohesion published in 2016 highlighted the fact that the lack of duty on parents to register their children as home schooled means that local authorities do not have any sure way of knowing the extent of home education. The statement, if any, that should cover this debate is that the Government just do not know how many children are in non-school settings: that is a very worrying fact. The Casey review should interest the noble Lord because it links with the Integrated Communities Strategy Green Paper, issued last month, in many ways. To repeat the point, we believe that the focus should be on safeguarding rather than on an education check. It is obviously important that children are being properly and appropriately educated, but from a safeguarding perspective, nothing is more important than that parents registering their children do so from a position of strength, not weakness.
I have one point on an event that has happened since Second Reading: the Government—after some delay, it has to be said—published a response this month to the consultation on out-of-school settings, including proposals about providing intensive education and the number of hours that that involves, powers for Ofsted and so on. It is very disappointing that the Government concluded that they are not going to pursue the model proposed in the consultation or take forward new legislation at this stage. It is particularly disappointing because there is a gap where education Bills normally sit: there is certainly no lack of opportunity for those issues to be pursued. Although it is not part of my noble friend Lord Soley’s Bill, and while the question of out-of-school settings and unregistered schools is not for today, it is notable that more than 50% of respondents to that out-of-school settings consultation were faith groups. It is for another day but those issues are very much linked with out-of-school education and we have to be aware of that.
The noble Lord, Lord Storey, made a point about British values which is important here. Some respondents actually highlighted the fact that being forced to teach British values could run counter to their religious teachings. That in itself would be a worry and it sounds to me like a ringing endorsement of the need for the Bill. The safety of children should not be allocated to a category marked “Don’t know” by the Government. Child protection is surely too important for that to be the case, but as things stand, it is. My noble friend Lord Soley’s Bill aims to ensure that information is provided in future to the maximum extent possible through legislation and that is why it is worthy of support in your Lordships’ House.