Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill

 Written evidence submitted by Jo Rogers to The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee (CWSB17). 

Dear Members of the Scrutiny Committee,

I am writing to you as I am concerned about the proposal of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and how this will impact the rights of home educated families in England. As a former teacher and current education consultant and home educator I feel that I have an important perspective to offer on this matter.

I have been happily home educating my son for several years and he is flourishing in this environment, following his interests and passions free from the tight constraints of the school system. Unfortunately, his early experiences in school resulted in long term trauma which we are still trying to treat, and it would be inappropriate for him to return to such an establishment.

The right to home educate in the UK is important to offer families an individualistic, positive approach to education and people are drawn to it for a wide variety of reasons. It is appealing to many parents as it allows them to connect and educate their children as individuals, responding to their specific needs and fostering their wellbeing. The current school system does not have the capacity to cater for individual differences and, in my opinion, this is directly related to the ever-increasing mental health crisis of young people in schools today.

Guidance for home education in the UK is already set out in law and any parent de-registering their child from school are connected with their local authority and lists of home educating families are made by these authorities. My local authority is aware that I am home educating my son, and they make regular enquiries regarding the suitability of his education in terms of age, aptitude and ability and they are able to take further action if they deem it to be unsuitable. Local authorities can serve a notice 437(1) and ultimately a School Attendance Order (SAO) if concerns about the education are known and they can also refer to children’s services (social workers) if they have any safeguarding concerns.

Part 2 section 25 of the Bill: Registration – this entire section should be scrapped. It is wholly unnecessary as local authorities already keep lists of home educated children and this register does nothing to identify children missing in education. If children are currently missing in education, then that is a failure of professionals to use existing legislation. This section also requires excessive details from home educators, and which are inappropriate given the nature and diversity of home education; the information is sought with a formal education bias. Home education is not quantifiable in terms of hours as it is often flexible and adaptable to respond to the experiences in the home environment and the needs of the child. It is about quality rather than quantity. This will mean that many styles of home education will not be possible as home educators will not be able provide this level of detail and therefore their child’s education will be deemed unsuitable.

The Bill means that parents will no longer have the right to home educate their child as it will give local authorities the power to stop a parent from home educating on the basis that the local authority considers home education to be not in the child’s ‘best interests’, regardless of whether or not the education is wholly suitable within the meaning of the Education Act 1996 s7 or extant legal precedent. More sinisterly, this undermines the primacy of the parent in the child’s lives and no other cohort of children is subject to this test of ‘best interest’ other than when the authority has a court order giving it that responsibility. This Bill treats home educating families as guilty until proven innocent.

Local authorities should absolutely not be allowed to add in their own criteria in request of information from home educators. Whilst my local authority sticks to the guidance set in law, there are, unfortunately, many local authorities who already misuse their duty, and try to overstep their remit with un-informed home educators. If a register must be in place, then the criteria should be uniform across all local authorities. 

The Children’s Bill is in many respects laudable, but it goes considerably too far in respect of home educating families and is being driven by misplaced emotive responses to a death of a child which would have been wholly avoidable if the family court and Children’s Social Services had acted as they should. Sara Sharif was known to Children’s Social Services (CSS) from before her birth including being in foster care for a period. Then, in 2019, a family court judge gave her to the care of her father, despite being the same judge who presided over previous hearings in which the father was recognised as being a perpetrator of serious domestic abuse. Whilst in school, Sara was referred to CSS which failed to act, let alone take her into care. CSS failed to act 16 times in total, failing Sara completely.

Local authorities already have the power to serve a School Attendance order on parents and Child Social Services already have the power to take any child into care should that child be at significant risk of harm and a court grant an order for it to do so. Sara’s death was not in any way as a result of home education and in fact, she died in the summer holiday period. Her death is, however, being exploited to further this Bill.

My aim of this letter was to communicate to you the positive aspects of home education that are at risk of erosion by the Children’s Bill, in it’s current form and I urge you to take these points into careful consideration. Home education is a beneficial and much needed alternative to formal schooling for many children and we should be proud as a nation that families have a right to chose this as it exists now.

Kind Regards,

Jo Rogers

 

BSc, PGCE, Dip.OCR SpLD

January 2025.