Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill

 Written evidence submitted by Catherine Oliver to The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee (CWSB26). 

I am a home educating mother of two. We didn’t expect to home educate, but my eldest was in Reception when the pandemic hit and we discovered that we loved learning at home together. I was already off work looking after my second child, so we decided to try home education and see how it went. We never looked back; she’d now be in Year 4 if she were at school. We are in the fortunate position that both my husband and I are Oxford graduates, so we have an excellent education of our own as a foundation. I also write the Substack newsletter How We Homeschool, which puts me in touch with home educators around the UK as well as further afield. 

My primary interest in the Bill is Sections 26-29, regarding children educated at home. I am not averse to increased oversight of home educated children. Not all children are as lucky as my two, who I am confident are receiving a good quality education. But I don’t feel that the Bill in its current state is of any benefit to the children who are most in need of support. 

My principal concern is that the register of children not in school is being put forth as a solution to a problem which has not been properly considered and defined. 

The desire for a register stems from concerns about children unknown to the state, who may be unsafe and/or receiving an unsatisfactory education. Recently the case of Sara Sharif has been used as evidence that home educated children are unsafe. There are also concerns about high rates of persistent absence, and about illegal faith schools. But it is not clear how a register of home educated children will address any of these serious concerns:

· Sara Sharif was known to Social Services throughout her life. Social Services had fifteen separate opportunities to intervene and save her life. When Sara was removed from school, supposedly to be home educated, she would have been placed on the local authority’s register of home educated children, as happens to all children withdrawn from the school roll in favour of home ed. The scandal of Sara’s death is that she was well known to the authorities, who utterly and repeatedly failed her. 

· Home educated children are already twice as likely to be reported to Social Services by concerned members of the public, compared to schoolchildren and children under 5. But after the referral they are then significantly less likely to have the child made subject to a child protection plan. Even without the proposed register, home educated children are already more likely to be referred, and then less likely to have any action taken. 

· On the quality of education received, the problem with the Bill as it stands is that there are no details given as to how the authorities will decide if a child is receiving a suitable education, nor who the inspectors will be or how they will be qualified to make those decisions. Home educated children are not obliged to follow the National Curriculum. There are no agreed standards that families and inspectors can use to say whether the education provided is or is not acceptable. Home educated children are not ‘state-educated at home’ children. They and their parents are free to choose their subjects and how they study them. This freedom is a huge privilege and should be a great source of strength. As Baroness Hale said :
"In a totalitarian society, uniformity and conformity are valued. Hence the totalitarian state tries to separate the child from her family and mould her to its own design. Families in all their subversive variety are the breeding ground of diversity and individuality. In a free and democratic society we value diversity and individuality. Hence the family is given special protection in all the modern human rights instruments including the European Convention on Human Rights […]. As Justice McReynolds famously said in Pierce v Society of Sisters 268 US 510 (1925), at 535, "The child is not the mere creature of the State".

Unfortunately variety, diversity, and individuality are very difficult to record and quantify on a local authority spreadsheet. 

· Children who are persistently absent are not home educated, and do not belong on a home ed register. They are clearly already known to their schools.

· Illegal faith schools are already illegal, and a task force already exists to find them and close them. Parents sending their children to these schools are already willingly breaking the law and deceiving the authorities, and it is not clear to me how the Bill in its proposed form will suddenly turn them into law-abiding citizens. 

The Bill purports to be concerned with children’s safety, and the idea of a register is that children who are known to the state will be safer than those who are unknown. Again, any home educated child who has ever been on a school roll is already known to their local authority. But more importantly, we already have many thousands of children known to the state who are being unforgivably failed by the very authorities who are supposed to protect them. The victims of the grooming gangs are overwhelmingly children in care, who should have the highest levels of protection of all children. Time and again we learn of children who have been appallingly mistreated, despite being well-known to Social Services. From an education perspective, roughly 20% of secondary schools are rated by Oftsed as requiring improvement or failing. In 2023, 41% of Year 6 pupils failed to meet the expected standards in literacy and numeracy. That’s 275,000 school children, failing to meet the government’s own standards, in a single year. Since 2016 more than 180 council-run libraries have been either closed or handed over to volunteer groups. One in three consultant child psychiatrist posts are vacant in England. Around the country, children are having to wait months for an initial appointment with mental health services. 

As we are constantly being reminded, the national finances are impossibly tight. I can’t help feeling that the enormous resources required to create and monitor a national register of home-educated children would be better spent on the many children that we already know are being unforgivably failed by the existing system. 

The threat of jail terms for parents failing to comply with a School Attendance Order seems bizarrely heavy handed and not in the best interests of the child (Section 436P). Moreover, it is highly likely to fall disproportionately on mothers. Section 436C says that the parent(s) responsible for providing education must be named as part of the registration process. In my experience of home educating families, the primary providers of education are overwhelmingly mothers. 

In the same Section 436C, the Bill states that registering parents must provide the names and addresses of anyone providing education to their child who is not their parent. This is particularly vague and unhelpful. Are swimming lessons and Scout groups educational? They are certainly a part of my child’s education. Will children registered at school be required to disclose this information as well? 

Parents who choose to home educate often choose to forgo an entire income, with all the sacrifices that entails. They care deeply about their children and think long and hard about how best to educate them. The laughably short section ‘436G: Support’ says only that a local authority must provide support when requested by a parent, but that ‘the advice and information to be provided is whatever the local authority considers fit’. There is no mention of financial support for public exams, which home education groups have been requesting for years. GCSEs cost over £200 per subject. When I was at school I sat ten. If both my children do the same that’s well over £4000 just to sit the exams–that doesn’t include any text books or tutors. A government so concerned with children’s welfare and educational achievement should surely be encouraging and supporting all children to achieve these qualifications, not only those in school.

The Bill as it stands seems overly concerned with clamping down on dedicated, caring parents and catching them out, and not remotely interested in supporting them or their children. I am also concerned that the Bill is being rushed through with undue haste. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act was ‘paused’ to take the ‘time to hear concerns about its impact’. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act is a much wider-ranging document with far-reaching impacts. It deserves considerably more time and consideration to ensure it supports the children and families who need it most. 

Kind regards, 

Catherine Oliver

January 2025.