The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Wei, Lord Lucas and Lord Crisp, my noble friend Lord Hacking and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester for taking time over the summer to meet my officials. Having the opportunity to discuss in detail with noble Lords how the provisions for children not in school are intended to work in practice was extremely beneficial and instructive. I am giving careful consideration to some of the finer details of the provisions with which noble Lords have indicated that they are not wholly satisfied. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that in government we have worked well and closely with home educators, who are rightly challenging on many of the issues that noble Lords have raised in the debate. Just to be completely clear, we know that the home education community is diverse and varied. Home education can take place in all walks of life, in cities or the countryside, and be delivered by those with professional teaching experience and those without. It often delivers an excellent education to children, but it is important that the registers work as intended. They should not encroach on the ability to home-educate. I have said previously in these debates and will continue to say that we wholly recognise the right of parents to educate their children outside schools. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, said, it must be possible for local authorities to identify all children not in school to ensure that they are receiving a full-time, suitable education. That oversight should be underpinned by local authorities engaging positively with home educators. That is why the Bill also places a new duty on local authorities to provide advice and information when requested to do so by parents. The registers should give us a clearer picture of not only how and where children are being educated but also how local authorities engage with and support children not in school and their families. This information will support the department to identify best practice and consider how it can potentially be replicated across authorities to build strong, trusting relationships with parents. I recognise the point made by several noble Lords that it is important that we ensure that these relationships are maintained and built on the basis of trust and a sense that what is being asked for by the Government is reasonable. We will, as the noble Lord, Lord Frost, said, use this information to support and direct local authorities to ensure that that is happening, not, as I know some people fear, to prevent parents from home-educating, but to make sure that that relationship is based on a recognition of the best interests of children and of the right of parents to educate their children at home as long as they are providing a suitable education in doing that. The department will and has stepped in where local authority practice is wrong or overbearing. Speaking in particular on the amendments in group one, these amendments seek to limit which children must be registered on local authority children not in school registers and to reduce the mandatory information that is requested from parents for the registers. This group seeks to do that on account of evidence provided by the parents or the circumstances of the child or parents. I will respond first to all the amendments dealing with which children should be included on registers: Amendments 231, 232, 233, 318, 321 and 322. As we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, a key objective of the registers is to aid local authorities in their existing duty to identify, as far as possible, all children in their areas who are not registered pupils in school and who are not receiving a suitable full-time education. Exempting eligible children from inclusion increases the risk of a local authority failing to identify a child who may be receiving an unsuitable education. While I do not agree with the amendments, I appreciate the intention behind them, but I am afraid that the logic does not track even in terms of the arguments made by noble Lords. For example, to exempt children of parents with formal teaching qualifications from registration, as per Amendment 233, or children of parents who have submitted a portfolio annually demonstrating suitable education, as per Amendment 231, the local authority would need to know of the children and to record details of their parents, which might be even more cumbersome than the requirements that this legislation is asking for. Amendments 318 and 322 seek to exempt children from rural areas, unless safeguarding concerns are present, or children from nomadic families as long as education is provided. This would still require the local authority having knowledge of these children in order to make these assessments. A registration system is the obvious solution to collect an appropriate level of information about a child’s circumstances, as my noble friend Lady Whitaker identified. Amendment 231 seeks exemption for inclusion in the registers should the parent have previously demonstrated suitable education through an annual portfolio, while Amendment 232 seeks exemption if the parent has previously home-educated a child who progressed to university, employment or vocational training. Just because a parent has previously demonstrated suitable education, has previously home-educated a child who progressed to further or higher education, or holds certain qualifications, it does not necessarily follow that the child will receive a suitable education indefinitely or at all. Furthermore, exempting children on the basis of one measure of ability, such as achieving the status of a chess grandmaster, as per Amendment 321, offers little reassurance that the child is in suitable education overall or is safe. I turn now to the amendments in this grouping concerning the mandatory information that is requested from parents to be held on local authority registers: Amendments 234 and 238. We will, in our debates on later groups, talk further about the nature of this information. The information required of parents is necessary to build an accurate understanding of who is involved in a child’s education and where this education is taking place. Let me be absolutely clear: the only information required to be held on registers is information which is easily available to parents and obtainable by local authorities and which is considered necessary for ascertaining suitability of education and safety of the child. This includes basic information such as the child’s name, date of birth and address, as well as high-level details of education provided by the parent and others. We will go into this in more detail but, to be absolutely clear in relation to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, of course this would not require daily, weekly or even monthly reports from parents. That is absolutely not the intention here. We do not believe that this basic information is overly burdensome for parents to provide or for local authorities to request and maintain. Amendment 234, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, would mean that parents would not be under a duty to provide information for registers. We know that many local authorities already maintain registers and that some parents voluntarily provide information for these, but the status quo is not good enough. It is currently too easy for children to slip under the radar. If a child has never attended a school or has recently moved to a new local authority area, for example, the local authority may be unaware that the child is in its area and not attending school. We need to be certain that local authorities are aware of all children not in school in their areas so that they can identify which children are missing education and are therefore in need of support. A parental duty to give information is the only way to achieve this. This requirement is proportionate and brings the process in England and Wales to the same level as that in the majority of other countries. In some cases, it would in fact be much less intrusive and much more supportive of home education than in many other countries. I hope that noble Lords will permit me a brief digression to clarify a point of confusion—I know that this has been raised by and is concerning parents—regarding the consequence for parents failing to provide information for registers. If a parent does not supply the required information, they are not subject to a fine. Instead, the consequence of failing to provide information is that the local authority may, at its discretion, issue a notice requiring the parent to satisfy the local authority that their child is receiving a suitable education. As is the case now, should the parent fail to do this and it is expedient for the child to attend school, the local authority must then issue a school attendance order, requiring the child to attend school. If the parent breaches that order and cannot prove in court that the child is being suitably educated, only then will they be found guilty of an offence and could be subject to a fine imposed at the magistrates’ court’s discretion. Again, it is important to reiterate that the school attendance order process that would be used here is an existing process and that the fines for breaching an order are completely avoidable through compliance. With this in mind, the number of families ultimately subject to a fine for breaching an order will be low compared to the overall number of orders issued.