Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Written evidence submitted by Dr G McNeill and Ms E Ridley to The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee (CWSB99)

Written evidence submitted in our capacity as experienced home educating parents to two children aged 14 years and 8 years.

We have been home educating our children since 2018, our daughter being 8 years old when we removed her from the state school system. We were dissatisfied with the way in which children were being continually assessed and with little innovation being used in teaching methods even at this early age. Our daughter’s strengths were not encouraged whilst we were fobbed off with how weak some of her skills in maths were. Additionally, the disruptions to the classroom by students who had additional needs that were not being met made it unconducive to receiving a suitable education.

Home education continues to give both our children the tools and abilities to be successful in life. Our daughter has already taken three GCSE’s (Classical civilisation, Sociology and Environmental Management) and is due to sit a further four GCSEs this year (Mathematics, Statistics, Religious Studies and Psychology). She has a passion for learning and has a wide range of interests and hobbies that she participates fully in.

After the successes of home educating our daughter, it was an obvious choice to continue this with our son. He is thriving at home with a great love of maths, reading and animals. He recently took the KS2 National Tests in both maths and reading and was at the expected level for a year 6 pupil (he would be in year 4). At school we believe he would have been bored and frustrated at the one size fits all approach. It is often commented by parents of his school going friends that he is articulate, happy, friendly and knows lots of interesting things.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is not fit for purpose, and needs to be radically rethought. Please see below our summary and submission.

Summary

· Content and maintenance of registers: no actual information of what an education provider is, and impractical to fulfil.

· School Attendance Orders: can be acted on by unqualified individuals who have little or no experience of home education and may be strongly encouraged to get children back into school as per the government's comments that school is the best.

· Revocation of school attendance order on request: no actual recourse if dissatisfied with the local authorities actions.

· General points on the bill as a whole

Submission

Page 49: 436C Content and maintenance of registers:

(e) if the child receives education from a person other than their parent- ( i) 25 the names and addresses of any individuals and organisations involved in providing that education, (ii) a description of the type of each provider named under sub-paragraph (i), (iii) the postal address of each place where that education 30 is provided (where different from the address in sub-paragraph (i)) or the website or email address of the provider if that education is provided virtually, (iv) the total amount of time that the child spends receiving that education and the amount of time the child spends receiving that education without any parent of the child being actively involved in the tuition or supervision of the child.

8. Further clarification of who and what an ‘education provider’ is must be clearly defined in the bill, as well as what is actually expected to be recorded.

9. As a home educator, we enjoy using a wide range of online resources, utilising museums, visits to historical sites and talks by experts in their respective fields. Each day can bring about a new learning opportunity. Are we expected, under the new bill, to provide names and addresses of all that we come into contact with, as well as time spent with them, even if this is only fleeting and spontaneous?

10. Eg: My children enjoy the ‘Learn with a Lord’ sessions run by the Learn with the Lord's team - do I have to report that they spent 45 minutes talking to a specific Lord, and their address?

11. Does this cover activities such as football and dance sessions, will my home educated children be expected to give over details of these providers when school educated children do not?

12. Will we as a family be classed as not providing a ‘suitable education’ as we do not give details of external providers (tutors) as we do not use them?

13. Are state and fee paying school children subject to this rule when they access tutor support outside of school, or when they attend an event in the school holidays or are these intrusive restrictins only for home educated children?

Page 50: 436C Content and maintenance of registers:

A register under section 436B may also contain any other information the local authority considers appropriate.

14.This allows local authorities the right to hold any information it wishes regarding the child and the family whether or not it pertains to the education being received. This is clearly unacceptable - what would happen if a 14 year old child objects to this information being kept or passed on via their parents - would the local authority agree that this does not have to be recorded, or would the authorities deem this to be a violation of the bill and issue a school attendance order?

15. As a family we have had our data shared via the GP without our consent all because we are home educating our children. Why should education and health departments be allowed access to this information when there are clearly no safeguarding issues, as these would have been referred direct to social services.

16. Obviously safety of the collated information should be paramount, however local authority sectors are responsible for many breaches of data. Research shows Local Authorities are one of the top offenders for data breaches with the education and childcare sector coming second for breaches of pupil data (health was first). It is unacceptable that more and more of our information is being requested could be at risk.

17. This register feels very similar to the heavily criticised database ContactPoint which was scrapped in 2010 due to privacy, security and child protection reasons. The very issues that this was scrapped have not been fully resolved, and yet we are being asked to provide more information.

Page 59: 436I School attendance orders

(1) A local authority in England must serve an order under this section on a child’s parent if- (a) the authority has served a preliminary notice on the child’s 20 parent under section 436H, (b) the child’s parent fails to satisfy the local authority, within the period specified in the notice, that- (i) 25 the child is receiving suitable education, in a case where condition A, C or D is cited in the notice, (ii) it is in the best interests of the child to receive education otherwise than by regular attendance at school, in a case where condition B is cited in the notice, and (c) 30 in the opinion of the authority it is expedient that the child should attend school.

18. This effectively is giving the state overall control of home eductaed children in England. Employees of the local authority may be biased towards a school education and, despite the child receiving a great education at home the family is open to staff members, who do not know the child, and have not asked them, being able to say what is in that child's best interests.

19. The decision of who is receiving a suitable education is left to the person who is responsible for that caseload - but what makes them actually qualified to assess this? We would be right in thinking that the person assessing suitability would be a qualified teacher, with experience in home education, however this appears to not be the case. In a brief search we found that two education authorities were currently advertising for an Elective Home Education advisors to undertake annual assessments to ascertain suitability and they only need to be educated up to A-level or equivalent standard. This could mean in many situations (certainly in ours) the assessor is substantially less qualified and less knowledgable than the person providing the education.

20. It is very likely that these assessors have a school-centred ideology, will be working to a strict tick-box protocol which again, will be school focused, and may not be able to appreciate or understand the many ways that home educated children learn. It was clear at the reading of the bill that many MP’s do not understand home education, and are still in the opinion that school is best. Clearly local authorities are going to act accordingly with the school-centred directives from the government.

Page 59: 436I School attendance orders

(2) For the purpose of determining whether an order must be served under this section in respect of a child, the local authority- (a) must consider all of the settings where the child is being educated and where the child lives, (b) must consider how the child is being educated and what the child is learning, so far as is relevant in the particular case, and (c) may request the child’s parent on whom the preliminary notice 40 has been served under section 436H to allow the local authority to visit the child inside any of the homes in which the child lives.

21. Though this is written as a request, the family cannot decline this request as this would allow the local authority to consider this a cause to serve a school attendance order. The families rights and privacy are being taken away from them.

22. Local authorities, who issue and prosecute school attendance orders will be able to bypass all legislation, and will have more powers to enter a home educators residence than CSS do when a family on a child protection plan refuses entry (in those cases the CSS must go to court).

23. It is a scary option, that we may be judged on our home, the area we live and how we approach the education of our children. We are very much open to the whims of the potentially unqualified assessor, who could be very against home education.

Page 66: 436O Revocation of school attendance order on request

(4) If a person is aggrieved by a refusal of the local authority to comply with a request under subsection (2) (a) the person may refer the question to the Secretary of State, and (b) the Secretary of State must give such direction determining the question as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.’

24. As a family, if we wished to have a school attendance order revoked the Secretary of State should not be who we should be needing to contact and the Local Government Ombudsman will not consider cases. There should be a tribunal where parents can address local authority inappropriateness - without this families are dependent on local authorities behaving in a correct and lawful manner, which unfortunately cannot be counted on.

Additional points

25. The bill implies that the state is better at parenting than parents themselves, which contradicts section 7 of the Education Act 1996 that affirms a parent’s legal duty to ensure that their children are receiving a suitable education, either by attendance at school or otherwise (please refer to our points earlier in paragraphs 18, 19, 20 about who is assessing if the education is suitable).

26. The government appears to be aiming to make the education system more consistent, however this is very much a one size fits all approach which is at odds with the diverse world in which we live. Further inconsistencies seem to be evolving between what the government is proposing with academies and the requirement to follow the national curriculum - will this also be made a condition of fee paying schools? Currently they are under no obligation to do either. This does not strike as a ‘consistent’ education system.

27. It was very disappointing to listen to the debate and hear the misconceptions that some MP’s have around home education and the deregistration of children from school - there are very few cases of a child not being known to the relevant authority, if everybody did their job the current legislation would work perfectly well.

28. Home educated children are not missing from the system, nor missing in education. When a child is removed from school there is paperwork that is lodged with the local authority, and protocols that should be followed. Where a child has never been in a school they will be known to the local authority due to appointments at GP’s, hospital and by having home educated siblings - data is shared, even without consent.

29. There is currently no obligation for parents to have input from a local authority / health professionals until they reach compulsory school age, and the parent is deemed responsible to provide for and do things in their child's best interests. Why suddenly does this change when they are due to start school?

30. Obviously there will be some children who are failed at home, however, there are many more who are being failed in a school environment. The government highlights the tragic cases of children being abused in their homes however seems to be very quiet on the children who have committed suicide due to issues in school. Surely these issues require addressing?

31. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, despite being described in the debate as being for children by the Secretary of State does not appear to include any reference to listening to the children, and what they themselves want. It is apparent that this government does not think children are equipped or able to have a say in their education and with what happens to their data. The tragic case of Sara Sharif is being used to push forward this bill, conflating social services with home education when they are separate things.

A member of our family would be happy to give oral evidence if required.

January 2025