My Lords, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
I echo the two phrases that the noble Lord, Lord Soley, used: we want to protect the vulnerable and protect the rights of children. There are some amazing home educators who do an amazing job, but there are also some amazing local authorities which do a very good job as well. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, praised local authorities, and I pay tribute to my former local authority. We had a boy with a phobia of being in school who had to be home educated. It was not because his single-parent mum, a nurse, wanted that, but because we just could not physically get him into school, so we home educated him. And guess what? Knowsley LA—I will name-check them—supported my school in doing that, in financial terms as well.
There are lots of examples of good local authorities, just as there are hundreds of thousands of examples of good home educators, but it should not be “us and them”. Disagreeing with whoever said it, I like the language used by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. This is an opportunity to reset the dial in terms of home education, to do the things that protect the vulnerable and protect the child, but to ensure that local authorities work with home educators. There are all sorts of ways in which we can do that.
Hopefully, if we do it that way, in a few years’ time, home educators will realise the value and importance of local authorities and how much they can bring to the table. Perhaps there are ways of doing it. I like the suggestion by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, of an ombudsperson. That might be a mechanism for ensuring that home educators do not feel threatened, because they would know that there is a way of dealing with it. As long as that does not lead to a massive increase in bureaucracy, maybe we should consider it.
Let us also remind ourselves of an important point which has not yet been made. Through formula funding, every child who goes to school is worth a sum of money; is it £6,400? Home educators do not get that money, so every child who is not taught at school but taught at home saves the Government money and those home educators have to pay for it. They give up not only their time but considerable money to home educate. Therefore, it seems sensible that we should show willing and give something back to home educators. Maybe one way would be by taking Amendment 130, tabled by my noble friend Lady Garden, and looking at supporting them when they want to take examinations.
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For example, when we have established this new relationship, we could ensure that local authorities give learning resources and materials to home educators, if they want them.
I want to talk about attendance, which is a very important matter. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, will recall that the
Blair Government put great store on attendance and rightly so. They put great store on children not being permanently suspended from school. When I had a welcome meeting for parents, I would say, “Look, the most important thing you can do for your child is to make sure they are in school every single day”—they cannot be if they are really ill, but the more school they miss the more learning they miss. You can do this in two ways: you can either use a stick and beat up or threaten parents, or you can use a carrot and encourage them. Most schools try to celebrate and reward good attendance, and this must be the way to do it, because language is important. Of course, there are cases of parents not sending their children into school and they do them a total disservice, but I am sure there are ways we can get around this. There are charities that have all sorts of good ideas about how to encourage good attendance, and we should be listening to them and considering or adopting some of their ideas.
The noble Lord, Lord Wei, mentioned Finland and many do—I remember Michael Gove always going on about Finland—but people always mention Finland in regard to their own particular issue; they never mention Finland as a whole. I agree with the noble Lord, but we should therefore adopt all the other things that Finland does: every teacher must have a master’s degree; every teacher must be paid a Rolls-Royce of a salary; every pupil has to—et cetera. Let us not just dip into the little bits of Finland that we like.
It is hugely important that we get this right. I quite agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and would rather go the extra mile, even if it means another week or whatever it is, so that we do what is best for our children. This is not a race to get to the finishing tape; it is about making sure that we end up with legislation with which we all agree.