Asked by Baroness Deech To ask Her Majesty’s
Government, in the light of the Wood review of local safeguarding
children boards, what steps they are taking to assess the risk to
children in unrecognised school settings or receiving home
education. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department
for Education...Request free trial
Asked by
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To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the Wood
review of local safeguarding children boards, what steps
they are taking to assess the risk to children in
unrecognised school settings or receiving home education.
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, protection from abuse is a fundamental right for
children in and out of school. Local authorities are
responsible for safeguarding children in their area,
including those educated at home, and, with local
safeguarding children board partners, should be assessing
any risks to children wherever they are educated. The
department is working closely with Ofsted, local
authorities and the police to tackle illegal schools. This
collaboration has resulted in the closure of many such
settings.
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(CB)
My Lords, in the first Question the House expressed its
very worthy concern for the learning ability of primary
school children. What about the children who are never sent
to school at all? The Wood review, Ofsted and Dame Louise
Casey have all drawn attention to the lack of power to make
parents co-operate in ensuring the quality of home
education. The local authorities do not have the power to
see the children or check on them. We care about abused
children and others. We must take steps to safeguard the
children who are not known to schools, who are sent to
unregistered schools and who are below the radar. The
Government did not respond to the comments on that issue in
the Wood review. Local authority officers have written to
me to express concern and call for new statutory powers.
Will the Government take those necessary steps?
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Some home-educated children attend unregulated education
settings and we are taking determined action to tackle
illegally operating unregistered independent schools. We
also remain committed to regulating out-of-school settings
and received more than 18,000 responses to our call for
evidence, which we are analysing carefully. We know that
greater oversight of home education is sought by many local
authorities. We are listening to both sides of the debate
and considering our position.
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(Lab)
My Lords, the Minister might remember that the problem has
been raised here a number of times of home-educated
children who have not been seen by anybody and are subject
to abuse. I am happy to send him the details of another
case from the last month or two, of a child who died in
hospital and who was home educated, the parents having
taken them out of school. I am all for people home
educating if they do it well and properly but to say that
the state has no responsibility to provide safeguards in
some form of inspection, whether of the Badman report type
or some other, is frankly unacceptable.
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Some people think that they should be allowed to educate
their children at home with minimum interference; others
feel that society has moved on somewhat in recent years and
it is something that we should look at again. As I say, we
are looking at this carefully.
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(Con)
How are Her Majesty’s Government taking forward the
recommendations in the Wood review?
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On this aspect, as I say, we have received 18,000 responses
to our call for evidence and we are considering them
carefully. We want a system that regulates out-of-school
settings and works effectively but is not overly
burdensome, because we know that many of these settings are
small and staffed by volunteers.
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(LD)
My Lords, the Minister may recall that I asked him a
Written Question about whether the Government,
“have any plans to increase oversight of or the level of
responsibility in home-schooling in the light of”,
a 40% increase. In answer, the noble Lord, , referred to his reply
of 14 March 2016, which said:
“Some local authorities maintain voluntary registers of
children educated at home but as they have no statutory
basis, they cannot be regarded as an authoritative source
of data”.
If we have no real complete data on the number of
home-educated children, never mind those who never go to
school, how are we able to safeguard those children? Will
he seriously consider now giving local authorities a
statutory responsibility in this matter?
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I have already said that this is something we are seriously
looking at.
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(Lab)
My Lords, what is the Minister’s assessment of the reason why
a significant proportion of Gypsy and Traveller children are
home educated, and of the quality of that education?
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Again, we do not have any evidence that they are any more at
risk than other children but we are considering this whole
area of home education carefully.
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The (CB)
My Lords, can the Minister give a picture of the extent of
the increase of the home education of children? I think the
noble Lord, , referred to 40%. How are
the changes progressing?
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We have fairly limited visibility on this but I will write to
the noble Earl with any up-to-date figures.
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(Lab)
My Lords, the recently departed HM Chief Inspector of Schools
made determined efforts to uncover and root out illegal
schools, and it is certainly to be hoped that his successor
will not lose that focus. All schools which cater for five or
more pupils full-time must be either maintained by a local
authority or registered as an independent school. There is,
however, a significant loophole in that schools which
operate, for example, four days a week can claim not to be
providing full-time education. The Labour Government’s
Education and Skills Act 2008 provided a means of closing
that loophole but this Government have refused to implement
it and seem to be in denial about this as an issue. If that
is not the case, can the Minister explain why, as the noble
Baroness, Lady Deech, said, the Government’s response to the
Wood review made no mention of any action on home education
or unregistered school settings? When will the 2008 Act be
fully implemented?
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We have just had a call for evidence on unregulated
out-of-school settings and have had 18,000 responses. We are
determined to regulate in this area but we need to tread
carefully because many of these organisations are small, open
for only a few hours a week and are staffed by volunteers. We
do not want a cumbersome regime but one that works.
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