My Lords, I rise to speak to six amendments standing in my name. Amendment 101 removes from the register any requirement to record the means by which a child is being educated—something that ought to be discretionary on the parents. It replaces it with a less intrusive requirement to record only those details that demonstrate that the child is receiving a suitable education in accordance with the existing duty on parents to secure compulsory education for their child or children.
Amendment 105 curbs the local authorities’ proposed power to contain within the register
“any other information that may be prescribed”—
it is very broad and open to abuse—solely to instances where the safeguarding of the child is a concern. Surely that is the point.
Amendment 108 removes the wide-ranging power for local authorities to collect any other data they consider appropriate. Again, this is a highly undefined power that could be used to target individuals with protected characteristics, and it makes the state ever more intrusive. The amendment replaces this new subsection with a more clearly defined power permitting local authorities to collect special category data—such as ethnic origin, philosophical beliefs and sexual orientation—only in cases where the safeguarding of the child is concerned.
Amendments 111 and 112 ensure that parents are properly informed about the data collected: how it will be stored, shared, published, and when it will be deleted. These amendments are complementary to the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, requiring the Secretary of State to introduce regulations related to the not in school register, which I welcome.
Finally, Amendment 127 safeguards any data collected by local authorities when directed by the Secretary of State to provide information on the register. This is done by requiring that all data is either aggregated or anonymised unless there is sufficient reason for the Secretary of State to request information relating to an individual child, the sufficient reasons listed being safeguarding concerns or issues of public safety and criminality.
At this stage, these are probing amendments. However, they reflect a number of serious concerns that many of us have about the danger that this Bill poses to home
educators and the right they have to decide on a suitable education for their child. I do not oppose, in principle, a register containing information about home-schooled children in a local authority’s area. What concerns me is that the implementation of such a register as it exists within the Bill poses an attack on the principles of a free society where parents retain the discretion to educate their child in accordance with their own values. Without meaningful safeguards, this register could be the thin end of a slippery wedge resulting in Ofsted in the home: parents being mandated to teach specific things in a specific way, or being directed by law to send their children to school to receive a particular type of education.
After tabling these amendments, I decided to try and explore the rationale between the wide-ranging powers they sought to give to local authorities. I presumed there would be a vast array of evidence of why we desperately needed to have the collection of all this information. Well, the House of Lords Library kindly prepared a briefing at my request. The Government’s guidance from April 2019 stated that there was
“no proven correlation between home education and safeguarding risk.”
Furthermore, the Library was unable to provide any information on the exam success rates of children receiving an elective home education. However, from a cursory glance online, there is quite a lot of evidence to strongly suggest that children receiving EHE outperformed their counterparts in state education, so it is entirely reasonable to ask the Government why they believe local authorities should have the right to collect highly sensitive data pertaining to things that are not necessarily relevant to the child’s education. A register simply to track the number of home-educated children, at its core, is a sensible proposal. Likewise, there may be understandable instances where information beyond that needed just to register the child is required, but surely this should be the exception not the rule.
Her Majesty’s Government need to provide the rationale behind this proposal to give local authorities the right to collect to contain “any other information” they consider appropriate. This must be more specific so that there exists a clear legal boundary determining what information a local authority can collect, and for what specific reasons. Currently, this broad ambiguity allows local authorities to request entirely inappropriate special category data without good reason.
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I suspect the reason is to allow local authorities to collect information as set out by Amendment 102, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. Although I do not oppose this amendment, on the principle that the parents retain the discretion and freedom of conscience to home educate their child, and that the state has no right to inquire as to their specific reasons, at least these noble Lords are honest as to the sort of data that they wish to contain within the register.
The Government appear to be hiding behind a discretion placed on the local authority to decide what information is appropriate. Amendments 105 and 108
would set fair boundaries on what information is circumstantially, rather than unilaterally, appropriate to collect. Furthermore, Amendments 111 and 112 would add additional safeguards to any Secretary of State’s regulations so that parents can feel confident that the data contained in the register is secure, respects privacy and is subject to the proper consent of the data subject where sharing and publication are concerned.
Similarly, why do Her Majesty’s Government believe that the Secretary of State has the absolute right to access information relating to an individual child without providing a just reason? This is highly sensitive data, and the Secretary of State ought to be able to provide a suitable reason to access information relating to an individual child. This would be remedied by Amendment 127, which requires the Secretary of State to have a clearly defined reason when accessing individual data from the register. Without this requirement, the state could essentially snoop on parents without providing any justification for doing so.
I remain concerned by the idea that local authorities can collect
“such details of the means by which the child is being educated”.
The “means” by which a child is being educated is only one degree away from requiring the actual content of what a child is being taught. However, even the idea of the “means” implies that there is a correct means and an incorrect means—correct content and incorrect content. In fact, the way a child learns can vary, and it strikes me that the parents are best placed to decide how a child needs to be educated. In my opinion, as set out in Amendment 101, all that needs to be proved is that
“the child is receiving a suitable education”.