Member

Amendments 15 to 19 allow home visits to be refused on reasonable grounds. That would also mitigate the use of school attendance orders to deal with discrepancies in registrations. Conditions C and D in subsections (6) and (7) of proposed new section 436H of the Education Act 1996 would otherwise have a disproportionate impact on lone-parent households, which are mostly headed by mothers. Under proposed new section 436C, details of both parents would be required for the register, while proposed new section 436D imposes a legal duty on parents to supply that information. Without my amendments, proposed new section 436I could create a situation in which a lone parent who is scared to supply information about an absent parent or former partner is put at risk of reprisals from the non-resident parent, whose address will also be visited, as one of the homes in which the child lives.