Contribution
I thank noble Lords for their very considered comments, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, for bringing his experience into the Chamber. I thank him for the considerate way that he has approached this. I hope we will continue to have a constructive dialogue as we move forward on these important issues.
Amendment 160, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and Amendments 161A and 175ZC tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, seek to require local authorities to act supportively towards, and establish advisory boards of, home-educating families, and ensure that home-educated children can access examinations. As I said at the beginning of this group, local authorities should be sources of support for home-educating families. Noble Lords’ engagement has been constructive and I reassure them that this will be further strengthened by the support duty in the Bill, which is the first ever duty on local authorities to provide support specifically for home-educating families, as well as the government amendments in this group, which clarify that information on GCSE exam access should be provided as part of the support duty and require local authorities to arrange biannual engagement forums, as we have discussed.
We also recognise the importance of ensuring that parents are responsible for bearing the costs of any exams they may enter their child for before they make the decision to withdraw them from school. This is something already made clear in the department’s Elective Home-education guidance and which we would expect to be discussed as part of the mandatory meetings pilots that my noble friend described earlier. To expand on this, while some of these things seem straightforward, they are more involved than perhaps has been suggested. The question is: why can we not require local authorities to find exam centres for all home-educated students? This would involve a local authority forcing a state school or college to accommodate a home-educated pupil. We do not think this is right or appropriate. Exam centres, schools, colleges and private institutions rightly take their own decisions on whether they can accept private candidates based on their individual circumstances, such as financial and administrative capacity and logistical considerations. Schools and colleges have finite resources and exams must be delivered in line with strict regulatory requirements, including desk spacing, appropriate invigilator-to-candidate ratios and the secure administration of assessments to ensure that they are conducted fairly and safely. When a centre is able to accommodate a private candidate within these requirements, we fully encourage it to do so. However, it would not be appropriate to require a centre to breach exam regulations or compromise the integrity of the assessment, or to require a school with a full exam hall potentially to exclude one of their own pupils to make space for a private candidate. Instead, we encourage arrangements to be based on an understanding of each exam centre’s local circumstances and relationships.
However, the department will contact both state-funded and independent schools and colleges to encourage them to accept private candidates and to be included on the list of centres published by the JCQ, as appropriate. To pick up on the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Russell, we will also work with the JCQ to explore whether this list can be made available earlier in the year so that families have timely and accurate information to support their planning.
In addition, we will update our guidance to local authorities, encouraging them to provide clear and accessible information for home-educating families at an early stage about the qualifications and exam centres in their area. This will help families to consider exam arrangements before starting a course of study, make informed choices about assessment options and avoid unnecessary travel, where possible.