Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Written evidence submitted by Professor Stephen Hodkinson to The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee (CWSB73)

by Professor Stephen Hodkinson  and Mrs Hilary Hodkinson

Executive summary

We write in a personal capacity to express our concerns about several clauses in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill regarding Children not in school (clauses 24-29). Based on our personal experience as successful long-standing home educators, we raise concerns regarding the following matters and suggest appropriate amendments to the text of the Bill:

· Clause 25, 436C(1). The information required from parents is unclear in its temporal scope and hence potentially disproportionate and time-consuming for parents to provide. Subsection (1)(e) should be amended to specify that it relates only to education that a home-educated child receives during times when other children are in school.

· Clause 436D(2)(b). The requirement to inform a local authority of a change to any information in the register is problematic for subsections (d) & (e)(iv), which concern the amount of educational time received from each parent and the total time without parental involvement. The clause should be amended such that the requirement to report changes to amounts of time applies only to substantial long-term changes not to minor short-term changes.

· The Bill gives excessive powers to local authorities. Clause 436C(3) should be amended to specify restrictions as to what additional information they may add to the register. An additional clause should indicate the right of parents to view and, if necessary, correct such information. Clause 436I (3) should be amended to remove the assumption that a parent’s denial of a home visit is necessarily a relevant factor in deciding whether the child’s parent has failed to satisfy the local authority that the child is receiving a suitable education.

Full submission

We write in a personal capacity as experienced and successful home educators. We educated three of our children at home during their primary and secondary education up to Year 10, after which they attended educational institutions (part- or full-time) for their GCSEs and FE colleges (full-time) for their A-levels or BTEC qualifications. All three obtained excellent post-16 qualifications and then 1st class Honours university degrees. Two of those three children are now married parents who have begun to home educate their own primary age children. We are currently involved in supporting our grandchildren’s home education. We have the following concerns about the Bill:

1. Clause 25, 436C(1). We have no objection in principle to a register of children not in school. However, the information required from parents as specified in sub-section (e) ‒ supported by Clause 436D ‒ is unclear in its temporal scope and threatens to become disproportionate and excessively time-consuming for home-educating parents to provide. Specifically, subsection (1)(e) specifies that the register must contain considerable information about any individuals and organisations [other than the parents] involved in providing a child’s education. The Bill gives no indication of the temporal scope (e.g. which hours in the day) to be covered by this subsection. For considerations of equity, it is important that home-educating parents are not required to provide information about individuals and organisations involved in their children’s activities at times for which similar information is not sought regarding children in school (i.e. outside school hours or during school half-terms or holidays). That would be inordinately intrusive into a family’s and child’s entire life. It would be excessively time-consuming for home-educating parents to provide all such information, especially if they have multiple home-educated children. It would draw into the scope of the Bill, and cause a deal of new bureaucracy for, a wide range of voluntary and other organisations which home-educated children attend, (typically alongside schoolchildren) in the evenings, at weekends and during school half-terms and holidays. Subsection (1)(e) should therefore be amended to specify that it relates only to education that a home-educated child receives during times when other children are in school.

2. Clause 436D(2)(b) requires a parent to ‘inform the authority of a change… to any of the information required to be included in the register under section 436(C)(1)’. This provision makes sense for parts of section 436, such as subsections (a)-(c) regarding the child’s or parent’s home address and name of parent, which represent consequential changes. However, it is more problematic for subsection (d) regarding the amount of time that the child receives education from each parent, and for subsection (e)(iv) regarding the total amount of time that the child receives education without any parent being actively involved. There will often be short-term fluctuations in these amounts of time: for example, when one parent has to undertake an occasional work trip away from home; or when a grandparent who normally provides education to the child for an afternoon each week becomes temporarily unavailable through minor illness. It would be excessively onerous for parents to have to supply, and of minimal benefit for the local authority to have to process, details of such minor short-term fluctuations. We recommend that Clause 436D(2)(b) be amended such that the requirement to report changes to amounts of time applies only in the case of substantial long-term changes.

3. The Bill gives excessive powers and latitude to local authorities in relation to home-educating parents and their children, beyond what is necessary for safeguarding purposes or for ensuring that a child is receiving a suitable education. In our experience local authority officials have rarely had any substantial amount of training regarding home education; and hence typically have very limited expertise or understanding concerning its nature and requirements. Consequently, local authority assessments of the education being provided are often heavily dependent on the personal attitudes of individual officials. In such circumstances the granting of excessive powers risks creating considerable hazard for home-educating families. Examples of such excessive powers include:

a. 436C (3): ‘A register under 436B may also contain any other information the local authority considers appropriate.’ This catch-all clause should be amended to specify restrictions as to what type of additional information may be appropriate. A further clause should also be added to indicate the right of parents to view and, if necessary, correct such additional information and the means by which they can do so.

b. 436I (2)(c) & (3). For determining whether a school attendance order must be served, the local authority ‘may request the child’s parent… to allow the local authority to visit the child inside any of the homes in which the child lives.’ If that request is refused, ‘the local authority must consider that to be a relevant factor in deciding whether the child’s parent has failed to satisfy the local authority…’. This insistence on entering the child’s home is an excessive power of intrusion which a parent should have the right to deny without it necessarily being used as a negative indicator about a child’s education. Many children, including our own grandchildren, naturally ‘clam up’ when a complete stranger enters their home; and a parent may well have good cause to believe that such normal behaviour might be misinterpreted negatively by the local authority official. Clause 436I (3) should therefore be amended to read ‘the local authority should consider whether or not that may be a relevant factor in deciding whether the child’s parent has failed to satisfy the local authority…’

Professor Stephen and Mrs Hilary Hodkinson

January 2025