Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Written evidence submitted by Anonymous to The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee (CWSB78)

Submitted by, a home educating parent, in a personal capacity. For privacy reasons, I would prefer my name to be redacted when published.

I am writing in response to the call for evidence regarding the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill as I am particularly concerned about sections relating to Registration for children not in school.

- Content of required register information

- Privacy concerns with Notices to Satisfy in advance of School Attendance Orders

- Lack of duty for support of elective home educators by local authorities

1. The information specified for inclusion in the register goes above (436C) and beyond what is reasonable or possible for a family to accurately report.

2. Given parents who live together with their children have joint responsibility for education, the clause 436C(1)d seems unnecessary. At a minimum, it should be amended to only target families where children are court-ordered to split time between households. More importantly, it is very difficult to quantify how many hours each parent spends educating a child - 436C(1)d - because home education simply does not work like that for a large proportion of families. This has been written with "school at home" in mind.

3. Many electively home educated children are self-directed learners, which 436C(1)d and (e) fail to consider. For example, with my children this could be studying topics of interest through independent research, maths using a textbook, or languages using apps such as Duolingo. In addition, there are often times where both parents may be present where children are engaged in learning. For a simple example, if a child is doing music practice while both parents are at home (or no parents home, in the case of an older teenager), this is undeniably part of their education but neither parent can confidently claim that *they* are providing the education. There is a difference between someone specifically educating a child and a child being educated.

4. Some families have varying work hours; for us, the time each parent spends with the child has changed on a near-weekly basis in previous years due to one parent working shifts and the other fitting in self-employed work around them. It is common for home educated children to have parents with flexible work hours, for obvious reasons.

5. When children visit museums, castles or other sites of interest, both parents or other adults may be present so again it is hard to accurately comply with this clause of the register, and it is also difficult to quantify the amount of time spent learning, yet it is undeniable that education is occurring. At a botanical garden today, we alternated between leisure walking and educational moments (e.g. learning the difference between pine and spruce cones). It is not practical to record this sort of information accurately in line with the proposed bill. Electively home educated children we know tend to visit these types of places often, but not for a set number of hours each week. In our family, education is part of life and can range from an hour at a local museum one week to spending multiple weeks away touring UNESCO sites. It is rare for two weeks to be the same but over a year a huge amount of education (and specific academic progress eg with numeracy and literacy) is complete.

6. I don’t see how this can work. 436D(4)d specifies that the parent should notify the local authority of changes to reported information (such as the education hours provided by each parent) within 15 days of the change. Is the schedule required to be reported by parents instead intended to be an average? If so, the bill should be amended for clarity. In advance or retrospectively (what if plans change)? If it is averaged over a year, how many weeks of the year should it be recorded for? Home educators do not follow state or private school term dates unless they opt to, as it simply works differently. If my child reads a series of books over the summer, or attends an evening class (both things they have done or continue to do) that is part of their overall education despite not occurring between 9-3.30pm, Monday-Friday within a prescribed 38 weeks a year.

7. If the bill continues as it is, we will be required to contact the local authority multiple times a month with updates to our schedule as the information will almost instantly be out of date. This is a huge amount of admin for both our family and the local authority, and feels very intrusive as it amounts to tracking our movements. I don’t know how we will begin to accurately quantify the information requested. According to the bill, parents innocently reporting incorrect information triggers the pathway towards a school attendance order. This is very concerning to many in our network and it should be considered whether collecting these data is truly necessary to meet the aims of the register.

8. There is a larger problem of what is considered education. For school attending children, this includes e.g. numeracy, literacy, arts opportunities, sports. The bill seems focussed only on desk-based learning for home educated children. My children, and other home educated children, get many of these opportunities by attending evening or weekend groups with school-attending children. Obtaining first aid training via Scouts is part of their education, sports training is part of their education, playing in an orchestra is part of their education. The teachers, coaches and volunteers that enable these opportunities do not have to share their home addresses or information with school-attending children who join the groups as extra-curricular activities and yet home educators will be asked to provide them to the local authority according to 436C(1)e(i). I fear that inclusion of this will mean my children are asked to leave groups, or not be allowed to join new opportunities.

9. 436E(1) suggests only providers of education above an unspecified prescribed threshold are included but weekends away with e.g. scouting or orchestra groups would easily exceed any hours threshold designed to identify illegal schools. In addition, trips away with relatives e.g. grandparents could also fall into the scope of this requirement. My own children have historically spent long days or multi-day trips out with grandparents accommodating subjects of interest; for example, exploring historic houses, watching plays or visiting museums of Greek artefacts with specific learning aims in mind. This is part of their overall education but it is not reasonable for grandparents to record precisely how many educational hours they have spent together over a period of several months in case the local authority requests it - 436E(3)b - or risk a financial penalty - 436E(8)b. Again, it shows a mis-understanding of how education outside of a school system works.

10. More practically, having spoken to our local children’s music service last week about the requirement for them to provide information to local authorities on request, they would not be able to comply with this as they do not keep dynamic data on which students are home educated at any particular moment. It would also be a significant administrative task to calculate the hours of education provided over the previous few months, as the clause requires, because they would need to trawl registers etc for weekly music centre attendance. They do not have the staff or funding for this. The duty of these providers to share information to "promote welfare" (16LA(2)) is also too broad and goes too far both in terms of administrative burden and data sharing.

11. I am troubled by the significant decline in educational opportunities that our children will likely experience as a result of inclusion of these clauses in the bill. The purpose of a register for electively home educated children should not inhibit the provision of high quality education via resources and opportunities outside of the school system.

12. The bill allows for "postcode lottery" privacy issues. 436C(3) allows that the register may include "any other information the local authority considers appropriate". Register-related data collection must be highly regulated; after all, it will be the only mandatory register of law-abiding citizens that exists outside of professional registers, and it relates to children. In a report released earlier in December 2024, "Improving support for children missing education", local authorities shared that they unofficially gathered health information about children on the CME list, as well as details of social media accounts for both the children and parents. It is scandalous that this unnecessary and unregulated data collection is already occurring, especially when consideration is given to the fact that 20% of local authorities admitted recording children under compulsory school age on the list, significantly outside their remit. Other local authorities tracked religion; I do not need to tell anyone the potential dangers of this. 436F(3) allows the local authority to provide information from their register "for the purpose of promoting the education of the child". This is much too broad and undermines our data privacy rights. In addition to the general invasion of privacy, data breaches from local authorities are frequent (over 5000 breaches in 12 months) and it is extremely concerning that detailed information about our family may not be secured properly. Tracking our community so intensively simply for exercising a specific legal freedom (to educate our children according to Section 7 of the Education Act, 1996) should only proceed with extreme caution.

13. My next concerns are related to serving school attendance orders. It is not uncommon for home educators to be reported to social services e.g. by neighbours and the vast majority of these cases are identified as malicious referrals and closed after brief enquiries are conducted. 436H(1) now adds a duty for local authorities to serve a preliminary notice on the child’s parent during this time. This is not necessary at this stage, when social services already have powers to investigate educational neglect. In addition, 436H(2) adds a duty on local authorities to serve a preliminary notice on the child’s parent should any of the information in the register appear to be incorrect (condition "D" - 436H(7)b). As discussed earlier, it will be almost impossible for many home educating families to supply or maintain accurate information in the register and serving a notice that should be responded to in as little as 15 days (436H(8)c) is unreasonable. This is less time that individuals have to respond to a penalty charge notice e.g. relating to a parking ticket. Expediency of safeguarding concerns is not a valid reason for the short timeframe as safeguarding falls under the remit of social services.

14. 436I(2) requires that when a notice is served, a local authority must consider where the child lives, and may request to visit the child inside their home. 436I(3) states that if this is refused, the local authority *must* consider it a relevant factor in deciding whether the education is suitable; and a School Attendance Order served if declared unsuitable. This is effectively mandating the home visits as it offers no real choice (coercion). As a family, we have a right to privacy in our home (Article 8) and our community are extremely concerned about the implications of these home visits in the complete absence of safeguarding concerns. For many children, particularly those with SEN who have had failed school placements, home is considered their safe space and home visits may be distressing. If a house is safe to live in, it is safe to home educate from (learning may also take place away from home). A duty to take into account the suitability of the environment when considering whether education is suitable will be subject to prejudice. This clause should be amended or removed but as a minimum, if included it should, at a national level, state precisely what would be considered suitable because otherwise this will disproportionately impact lower income families who may rely on an overcrowded social housing allocation.

15. In the vast majority of circumstances, it is not necessary for the local authority to meet home educated children as they are present in the community among many other adults with safeguarding duties. As a community, we are extremely concerned about administrative clerks interviewing our children, especially in our homes. The duty of Ofsted in relation to home educators needs to be clarified as it is stated that register information can be shared with them but the purpose of this is not clear.

16. Finally, the government talked at length about the "support" home educators will be offered. The community asked for assistance with registering for GCSE exams at not-for-profit (or low-profit) prices, which is much more difficult to secure in the post-pandemic era. Instead, the bill offers "support to the parent by securing the provision of advice and information relating to the education of the child." This is not required for the majority of us as we are a well-informed and connected community.

January 2025