Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill

 Written evidence submitted by Iain Duncan to The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee (CWSB13).

1. Written evidence for Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill committee from a home educating father for the last 7 years. I have two children, one who was withdrawn from school in year 1 and the other has always been home educated. I would like to address two sections of the bill:

a. 436G Support: I think this should be more specific in the support that needs to be offered by the local authority, including at a minimum access to examinations.

b. 436C Content and maintenance of registers: I think this clause would add an massive burden onto home educating families and the local authorities having to maintain the register.

2. I currently live on a road that has 3 schools and a further education college on it but despite this for my children to sit examinations I would either need to use a small and expensive local provider in Southampton or travel over 15 miles to an over-subscribed home education not for profit organisation that acts as a examination centre for local home educators. Local authorities are in an excellent position to act as an examination centre for home educators. They have both the expertise and the resources to be able to have a home education examination centre in every local authority. I think that clause "436G Support" should be amended to require every local authority to provide an examination centre for any home educated children wanting to sit GCSEs and A Levels. Ideally, I think that a core set of exams should be paid for by the local authority but even if they just provided the physical building and some of the administration required to be an examination centre then this would be a massive help to home educators.

3. On the topic the register I would like to first point out that the reality for most home educating families is that there is a register already maintained by local authorities. The day we withdrew my eldest from school the local authority was informed and have maintained contact with us ever since. When my youngest became compulsory school age we contacted the local authority home education team that we would also be home educating her. This informal register has allowed the local authority to have an annual contact with us which they use to access that a suitable education is taken place. They have always been able to determine this from a report we give them which they have been happy to accept in our own format. I therefore think that there is limited value of having this register at all. I know much of the debate at the second reading was around the safeguarding measures and there has been much talk about "missing children" but this is not the reality that I see in the home educating world and it is very hard for a local authority to truly know nothing about where a child is receiving education.

4. The content of the register proposed in clause "436C Content and maintenance of registers" is far greater than has been required by the local authority to determine our education is suitable for the last seven years. As written, I think this clause of the bill will place an unnecessary and cumbersome burden onto home educating parents and the local authorities. I wanted to address two sections in particular:

a. "436C (1) (d) the amount of time that the child spends receiving education from each parent of the child,". I fear that this requirement completely misunderstands the nature of home education. We are committed to lifelong learning and think that we do this throughout all our lives. There are times when each of us sits down with a child to do formal subject-based learning such as maths or science but these easy to quantify times are a tiny part of what the home educating lifestyle means to our family. For instance, our children have loved a particular book series, and we are currently doing a "character world cup" where we discuss a head-to-head competition between various characters in the book in a knockout competition to see who our favourite is.  This is done purely for the girls’ pleasure, and they delight in the conversation over mealtimes, it also is a great preparation for thinking about the analysis of characters required for future English examinations and essay writing - but they do not think of it in such formal terms. Nor do I think their education ends when we are no longer with our children. We often set them work to go off and do independently and think that much of this work is even more valuable than when we are sat with them in order to allow them to learn how to struggle through problems independently. Their free time also gives way to many opportunities for learning, they both love story writing and making books and animations together as well as reading books or cooking independently. These aren’t actions that could be quantified into "time receiving education from a parent" but are invaluable to their education, nevertheless. The existing mechanism the local authority has allows them to take a holistic look at the education our girls are receiving and trying to put a number on the hours for the sake of the register would be meaningless when we consider them to be receiving an education all the time they are awake. Therefore I think this paragraph should be removed.

b. "436C (1) (e) if the child receives education from a person other than their parent-". As with the previous paragraph this paragraph misunderstands the nature of home education and would place a huge burden on families and the local authority. As mentioned previously we consider our whole lives to be part of our education and this includes all the interactions we have. As with many home educators we attend, and run various groups, some weekly, some monthly and some as just one-off events. Some of these are by organisations and some by other home educating families. Furthermore, when reviewing our annual report the local authority always mention that they look for evidence of social interaction so they clearly view that social interactions are part of their "suitable education" checks. As written this paragraph would require every time we speak to someone to be recorded along with their name and address. This maybe slightly exaggerated but I do think that this paragraph requires an awful lot of administration from the parents and local authorities who will just become data recorders for masses of data. This process also puts a burden on providers of these groups and would create a two-tier system where they have to treat home educating families differently to their schooled piers. I fear that this will just mean that some providers stop providing services to home educated children. I think that this paragraph should be removed entirely. If the aim of the paragraph is to find unregistered schools then at the very least this paragraph should have a condition that it only applies when a provider is used for a certain amount of time. I would recommend a minimum of 15 hours per week of education without a parent present. Thanks for taking the time to read my submission.

January 2025.