Member

Amendments 15 to 19, in my name, relate to home visits. Home visits are part of the school attendance order process, and my amendments would put it in the Bill that there must be reasonable grounds for refusal. A child may be extremely anxious about having strangers in their safe space—their home—who are there to scrutinise how much the child is learning, and who have the power to send the child back to school if they deem what they are learning to be insufficient. A parent may therefore feel compelled to refuse a home visit. That should not be a reason to fail their home education, so it should be put in the Bill that there may be reasonable grounds for a refusal. That cannot be left to guidance at a later date. Furthermore, it would be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut if the local authority had a statutory duty to consider all the settings in which a child is being educated, since those venues and activities will constantly be evolving. Instead, the Bill should say that the local authority may consider some of those settings.