Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill

 Written evidence submitted by Rowan and Dana Smith to The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee (CWSB12).

Father and Mother of two, home educated children, one 12 year old SEND child, the other a 15 year old.
Dana qualified in Education and Professional Studies (BA Honors 2:1)

In my submission I refer to the terms of reference and will cover:

· 436C Content and maintenance of registers (1)

· 436C Content and maintenance of registers (2)

· 436I School attendance orders

Executive summary

Whilst supporting the creation of a new register in the bill we both have quite serious concerns with amount of data that the register will keep.
The bill aims to move children who are happily home educating back into school situations by creating as much red tape for parents as possible and transferring power to local councils. Forcing a "school system" upon children who do not fit it is incredibly thoughtless and detrimental to both the child’s education and their mental health. We don’t have time to play these dangerous experiments with our children whilst the government attempts to ‘fix’ SEND provision and the school system. We only get so long with them. The bill has no regard for wide variety of home education styles and paints children as monotone beings who learn in just one manner and has no respect for the rights of parents to look after the welfare and education their children, placing them in the pocket of the state from day one. The changes to VAT in the bill also push lower income privately educated children back into state schools alongside the home educated children creating a perfect storm of bloating class sizes adding to a system which is well known to be struggling. A system that without a doubt currently eased by parents of SEND children choosing to educate their children outside of state schools. Does the bill even consider travellers? Are they intending on putting them under the same microscope? Honestly, this entire section of the bill appears to fly in the face of Englands rich multi-cultural heritage.

 

Section 1[436C Content and maintenance of registers (1)]

Local authorities currently keep registers of children who have been withdrawn from school to home educate; however this does not cover children who have never attended school and we can both see how this could potentially be problematic. If the child is home educated but the local authority has no record of this, there is no way of the local authority asking about the child’s education using the powers they already have.
The powers already in place to ask for a summary of the child’s home education are more than ample and strike a good balance between protecting a families right to privacy and also the child’s right to a good education. It has worked well and has protected rights of children and families for many many years, enabling the many different and varied styles of home education which are all, always, tailored specifically to the child in question. The new register seeks a vast amount of information from parents far beyond what is currently required by local authorities. To provide the name and address of "any individuals and organisations involved in providing that education," would be unimaginably huge. We have books upon books written by others, youtube and tedtalk lectures, websites upon websites and that is before we even get started on the regular field trips to museums and businesses where tens of people a day are talked to and are ‘educators’ for our children. Then to log time spent; when you will find that most families are constantly home educating their children as education is quite literally in everything we do in our day to day lives.
Again, I point out that local authorities already are required by law to make enquiries about the provision of education provided at home.

Recommendation: We would recommend that the register is still implemented, as
it is needed, but the content of the register stripped back to just
a) the child’s name, date of birth and home address,
(b) the name and home address of each parent of the child
There is no need for any more information in the register as with this register in place the local authority can use the powers it already has to carry out investigations.

Section 2: 436C Content and maintenance of registers (2)
We were alarmed to read that in the second section it makes provision to keep a log on a childs ‘protected characteristic’ which would include both their religion and their sexuality.
This appears to be another huge overreach and quite literally none of a councils business as to the sexuality of our children. Do schools keep this information? Do young children even have a sexuality yet? We’re left quite speechless at this proposal.

Recommendation:

Remove this wildly intrusive section from the bill.

Section 3: 436I School attendance orders
The school attendance order section concerns us as local authorities are already known to take varied approaches to how they conduct their home education "audits" and to leave the final decision as to how OUR children are educated up to somebody employed by the council strips us of our responsibilities as parents and places our children at the mercy of the state. A single word from an individual working for the council would result in a family’s home being visited upon and deemed worthy or unworthy of their own personal standards. Unless of course, a family refused to have their privacy encroached upon. In which case it says here that refusal to let the council into your home to judge your family must be taken as a relevant factor in deciding whether the child’s parent have failed to satisfy the local authority. This is literally guilty until proven innocent. What would the visit be looking for? It doesn’t actually say. Is it up to the Council officer’s discretion as to whether we are being good parents? Do they know our child and what their educational needs are? Would they understand?

Recommendation:

This is another section of the bill that isn’t required. School attendance orders already exist and can be used if needed. Like the maintenance and content of the register it appears to seek only to push children out of home education and back into a school setting; which in many cases are just not appropriate for the child. This can be for many reasons be it how the child learns, the stage of development that child is at (some times much higher than what schools can hope to provide; in our case we have a child that is learning at a college level of skill whilst only being 13 years old) or many other reasons including SEND failings. Forcing children back into school BEFORE fixing those SEND failings is literally playing experimental guinea pigs with our children.

January 2025.