My Lords, I will start with Amendments 74 and 75, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas. The law is clear that parents have a right to educate their children at home, and local authorities should already be working collaboratively with parents to ensure the best outcome for the child. We are keen to ensure that home-educating parents, and local authorities, are fully supported in ensuring that the education received at home is suitable. Therefore, as my noble friend Lady Barran said, as part of the implementation of the Bill we will be reviewing our existing guidance and publishing new statutory guidance for local authorities on their “children not in school” responsibilities, which will include advice on how they should discharge their new support duty.
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As my noble friend said, we will develop this collaboratively, prior to public consultation, with the new implementation forum we are establishing of local authorities, home educators and safeguarding partners to support the introduction of the registers, ensure the system works for everyone and that parents have the support that they need. As I think my noble friend acknowledged, statutory guidance is the appropriate medium to outline best-practice examples of how local authorities and home-educating parents can engage positively to achieve the best outcome for the child, while also encouraging local authorities to maintain a consistent approach.
In addition, the registers will help local authorities and the Department for Education to identify where decisions to home educate are in response to failures by particular institutions, perhaps in relation to special educational needs provision or bullying, and where those issues are common or recurring. That would allow for targeted action to be taken to resolve the underlying issues and improve education provision overall.
I think that is also relevant as I turn to Amendments 76 and 79 from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. I reassure noble Lords that local authorities are already legally required to take into account all relevant factors, including the views of the child or their parent, where known, when making decisions and are able to consult experts, such as a child’s doctor or social worker, when they consider it appropriate to do so in the context of the individual case.
Similarly, on Amendment 84 from the noble Lord Storey, all local authorities should already have the in-house expertise to provide suitable support to children not in school. In most cases they will have an elective home education lead in place but if they do not, they can and should appoint a suitably qualified person.
As I have referred to previously, the new statutory guidance will set out clearly what factors local authorities should take into account when discharging their new support duty. This may include the types of experts it may be appropriate for local authorities to consult and factors they should consider when determining how best to respond to a request for support.
Turning to Amendments 77 and 78, we of course want home-educated children to be able to access exams like their counterparts in schools. For many home-educated children, finding an exam centre is not a problem. Candidates use private exam centres or approach schools and colleges to arrange to sit exams with them. A new database run by the Joint Council for Qualifications now enables candidates to locate the nearest centre available to sit their GCSE, AS or A-level exams. Where parents or children are not able to make their own arrangements, local authorities would already be able to provide support with this as a way of discharging their duty. However, the Government do not believe that setting out in law exactly how the support duty should be discharged, as proposed by my noble friend Lord Lucas, would be the best outcome for home-educated children. Decisions are best made locally,
reflecting both what the parents want in terms of support and the local authority’s assessment of the needs of the child and the wider needs of families in the area.
On the issue of cost, as my noble friend the Minister has said before, parents electing to home educate accept full responsibility for their child’s education and its cost. Under the duty, local authorities will consider requests for different types of support, again taking into account individual and wider circumstances. Support with exam fees would already be a valid way of discharging the duty, and we could outline it as an example in the new statutory guidance depending on the outcome of the collaboration and the public consultation.