My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 100, in my name and the name of my noble friend Lord Shipley. I hoped that we could have spent the same amount of time talking about the most disadvantaged children in our society as we have on home education. These are young people, mainly with special educational needs, from the most deprived communities and from ethnic minorities, who are permanently excluded from school. What we do with some of these children reminds me of Victorian education, to be honest.
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If they are lucky, they are put into a pupil referral unit attached to the school, and that is where you get some very high standards. If they are unlucky, they go into an unregistered provider. The horror stories of those unregistered providers are not worth considering, because we as a society would be ashamed of what we were doing to these young people. It is an educational disgrace. I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I cannot understand why local government is putting these vulnerable children into unregistered provision. This amendment seeks to prevent that.
Having said that, some very good practice goes on, and we need to learn from that. Liverpool Hope University has a wonderful scheme for these young people, working with schools in the Everton area, and there are other examples up and down the country of very good practice. I hope that the Government will give an undertaking to learn from this good practice and ensure that every young person is in that position.
When all these home educators attend the Conservative hustings to choose the leader, what a pity they will not be joined by all the parents of those in alternative provision to try to ensure that changes are made.
I want to briefly comment on some of the other amendments in this group, because they are equally important, particularly Amendment 91 from my noble friend Lord Shipley, Amendment 95 from my noble friend Lady Brinton, Amendment 96 from my noble friend Lord Addington, and Amendment 97ZA from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. These all, in some ways, look to make school attendance orders more workable and more acceptable for particular groups of children in particular circumstances.
I want to make the point that the most important thing for a child is to attend school, because every day they miss is a day less of education. The way we ensure that children are in school is by the school taking a register so that we know children are in school or we know why they are not. But a very small minority of parents do not comply, for whatever reason. Often it is because they need help and support as well; they are often in the most deprived communities. We need some mechanism to make them realise that attending school is very important, and if we do not have attendance orders, there is precious little else we can do. I do not want us to think that attendance orders are something we should disparage. They are something we should support. But quite rightly the movers of these various amendments are looking at ways that we can make them more effective and more compatible with individual circumstances.
I take the point about knowing about medical conditions—this amendment is hugely important—and whether a child needs to be supported in school. If we do not do that, again, it creates a circle in which the child might suffer, which we do not want to see.
I hope the Minister will reply supportively to my Amendment 100, and also take on board some of these very important amendments to make school attendance orders reflective of the situation that people find themselves in.