Remove CWS Bill clauses and provide tangible support to home educating parents

We urge the Government to remove the provisions of the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill on "children not in school", conduct proper independent research into the outcomes of home educated children and provide tangible support for home educating families including:

- Tribunal access for parents aggrieved by local authority decisions. - Access to public examinations for children on request. - Free access to publicly funded leisure centres and museums on request. - Home education experts be included in all planning and development of home education regulations and guidance. - A clear Government statement that home education is equal in law to school.

The Children Not in School measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill are central to the government’s ambition to ensure that all children can achieve and thrive – whether they are educated at school or otherwise.

Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 is clear that parents have a responsibility to secure an efficient, full-time, suitable education for their children, and can choose to do this by sending them to school or otherwise – for example, by home educating them. Local authorities also have existing legal duties to identify children in their areas who are not in school and not receiving a suitable education. This Bill does not change this.

The Department has undertaken extensive consultation and engagement to bring us to taking forward the Children Not in School measures in the Bill. The 2018 call for evidence on home education highlighted that local authorities could not be certain that they know of all children not in school in their areas as parents are not required to notify them. The 2019 consultation on Children Not in School, 96% of local authorities agreed that a compulsory system of registration was needed to help them fulfil their existing education and safeguarding duties towards these children. Several reports and briefing papers from the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel highlight that, while the majority of home educated children are safe and thriving, there are some that have experienced serious harm or even death. This, coupled with Department data which shows that numbers in home education have more than doubled since 2019, means that the evidence for action is clear.

The Children Not in School measures in the Bill are intended to support local authorities to carry out these existing duties and, where necessary, to support children into safe, suitable education. The information provided by parents for Children Not in School registers will help local authorities to identify all children not in school in their areas and gain a fuller picture of these children’s educational needs and circumstances. Not only will this enable local authorities to better support individual children, but information on the registers could also be used to better understand outcomes for home educated children at a national level.

The Bill also introduces the first ever duty on local authorities to provide support specifically for home educating families in the form of advice and information. This duty will establish a reliable, baseline level of support across all English and Welsh local authorities for home educating families who choose to access it. Under this duty, we would expect local authorities to provide information on access to public examinations for home educated children if their parents requested it. Local authorities will still have discretion to provide higher levels of support to home educating families.

Where families do not agree with local authority decisions on support or other matters, there are several routes of complaint available. For example, where a parent believes a local authority has not acted according to law and guidance, they should contact their local authority’s complaints department. If not resolved by the local authority they can contact the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, who will make a decision on the complaint. The Department can also take action should a local authority fail to discharge a duty imposed on them or is unreasonable in exercising a duty.

Through the Bill, we are also establishing a new complaint route in relation to the requirement for some parents to seek local authority consent before they can withdraw their child from school for home education. Any parent of a child on a child protection plan, who is the subject of a section 47 child protection enquiry, or at a special school under arrangement by the local authority, and who disagrees with the decision of the local authority as to whether to grant consent for the child to be home educated can request a review of the decision by the Secretary of State. We believe these complaint routes for parents are sufficient.

It is important that the Department for Education hears the views of all key stakeholders and factor their expertise into the delivery of the Children Not in School proposals, which includes the development of regulations and statutory guidance. That is why we have established stakeholder implementation forums to enable us to engage with a wide group of stakeholders at appropriate intervals during the progress of the Bill and subsequently. This includes a group of currently home educating families, organisations that represent the home education community, and local authorities.

Department for Education