Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Crisp Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to support the amendment in principle. I wonder whether we could get one or two simple targets to measure as indicators of potential poverty. Yesterday, a new report came out called, It’s Like Torture: Life in Temporary Accommodation for Neurodivergent Children and their Families. I believe that temporary accommodation for children is one of the biggest indicators of a lack of well-being, and it is linked to poverty. During Covid, we got almost every rough sleeper off the streets. It is time that we set a target to get every child in temporary accommodation into secure long-term accommodation. I urge the Government to consider that in relation to children’s well-being.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow so many powerful speeches and support my noble friend Lord Bird’s amendment. As a former chief executive of the English NHS, I know a thing or two about targets. There are some awful targets and some good ones. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Barber, is in his place, as the then Government’s “delivery tsar”, or whatever the right title was in those days.

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Moved by

[Lord Crisp]

120A: At end insert—
“(4A) Condition B does not apply to a child who has been adopted, if the action specified in subsection (4)(b) occurred before the child was adopted.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that parents are not required to receive local authority consent to withdraw adopted children from school if action was taken under section 47(8) of the Children Act 1989 in respect of the child before they were adopted.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister that the Government have moved on some of the concerns raised by me and others, particularly about some of the detail required on the register. However, I of course want to press her to move further. A lot of new and significant amendments have just arrived. I want to make two general points relating to those amendments and then comment on several of them.

I believe that the Government need to revisit their whole policy on home education. We are debating a significant set of amendments very late in the day which are creating a new regime, but I do not think the full implications have been thought through. Let me give one example which is relevant to this group and to other areas. As many noble Lords will know, most local authorities—I believe it is most rather than just many—hold annual meetings with or request annual reports from home-educating parents in their area. These are done regularly on the basis of case law, which says that local authorities are entitled to ask for an annual meeting or an annual report, which involves quite a lot of work.

I do not understand why these have been ignored and the additional requirements for meetings, information and monitoring are not built around them. There seems to be inconsistency in developing the policy. I would be grateful if the Minister would explain—either on this group or on one of the groups to do with information on activities on the register—why the Government have chosen to ignore this annual reporting system which exists in so many places. Presumably, it was an explicit decision to do so. Can I also ask her to confirm that parents will still have to comply with requests for annual reports or meetings? Or can they now just say, “Look at the register”?

Home education has changed enormously in the last few years and policy certainly needs to reflect this, but it needs to be based on a detailed examination of what is going on. Most importantly—we have not really spent time in Committee on this—we need to understand in some detail the causes of the big increase in the last few years, driven by parents who believe that schools are failing their children, many of whom have special needs and require special hope. These are big questions, and it is important that the Government take this beyond this Bill and look at the wider policy. After all, those parents are taking on emotionally and financially demanding responsibilities. Why do so few head teachers use their powers of flexibility to accommodate children in the way that their parents would want them to? Some of those issues are around mental health and other things that we have touched on, but they are also about how schools are governed and the increasing requirements placed on them.

Another question that needs to be considered is: how many parents are trying to home-educate for all the wrong reasons? What proportion do we think this is? I know from listening to education officers that it is quite small, but it demands attention. Let me be clear that I understand the concerns about safeguarding and educational standards. They are real, just as they are real in schools, and they need to be dealt with proportionately. In terms of safeguarding, Peers who like data may want to know that the only figures I can find are that home-educated children add up to about 1.4% of the population of schoolchildren and they account for 1.2% of serious case reviews. As noble Lords will know, those are reviews where children are seriously harmed or die. These figures suggest that home-educated children are no more at risk than children at school and conceivably less so. My point is that home education should be seen as a risk factor only for those with a record of abuse or where there is an existing concern, but not for the generality of parents, yet the approach we see in the Bill suggests that all home-educating parents are viewed with suspicion. That is certainly what they feel.

Looking ahead, once proportionate checks are done at the beginning of a relationship between parents and the authorities, I believe the approach should be one of partnership, as the Minister said. It is strange that it is not, given that in other policy areas government is considering more partnership with parents. In health, for example, it is now becoming accepted that parents know their child better than any professional can. As the Minister knows, I am working with a group of home-educating parents together with a home education officer and my noble friend Lord Hampton to look at alternative policy ideas for the future, and I am grateful to her for facilitating access for discussions with her officials about this.

Let me turn to specific amendments. Government Amendment 120 gives authorities the power to withhold permission to educate, or to decide whether they can educate, from parents of children who have been the subject of action under Section 47 in the last five years —i.e. things that have to do with safeguarding issues. To that extent, it seems proportionate and in line with what I have just said about risk factors. However, I have one significant concern. Many adopted children will end up being caught by this, because those children may have been the subject of such proceedings earlier in life before adoption. Noble Lords will know that adoption is a one-year or two-year, rigorous process. Do we really think that local authorities should second-guess parents who have been though that process about the best education for the child that they have just been entrusted with? Are they really a source of risk? I would be enormously grateful if the Minister would exempt them. My Amendment 120A makes that specific point.

However, Amendment 121A from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, seeks to change the five-year period into a lifetime requirement and include proceedings under Section 31, where children have been taken into care, and Section 17, where children have ever been in need. I believe this is disproportionate in its impact. It will draw many people into this group. Do we really want to treat disabled children differently simply because their parents have asked voluntarily for some help, or because they were in care before adoption? I know of cases where children were taken into care at the request of the wife during proceedings against an abusive husband.

Amendment 121B tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, is potentially extremely dangerous for that last group of parents, who are seeking to avoid abusive ex-partners, as it will reveal their location and possibly their address. I cannot make this point strongly enough. I know women who are in this situation. The amendment says that all parents should be consulted. The Minister will also know that where such partners discover the authority or address, they may well bring allegations against their ex-partner under Section 47, causing as much damage as possible. I note in this context that deregistering a child from a school requires only one signature, not the signature of all the parents involved. This seems inconsistent.

However, Amendment 123 by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, seems eminently sensible in requiring that local authorities should spell out reasons for refusing permission to deregister children in special schools. My Amendments 122 and 124 would serve similar purposes. They are about holding authorities to account for their decisions. The wording of Amendment 122 relates to local authorities judging that staying at a school is in the child’s best interests. There needs to be some appropriate mechanism for confirming or challenging this, and I propose that it should be confirmed by a court. My Amendment 124 addresses cases where parents appeal against an authority’s decision; it asks that the Secretary of State or Welsh Ministers issue guidance on how they would judge an appeal. This seems to me a very straightforward ask. People will need to know how their appeal will be judged. I hope the Minister agrees. The more transparency here, the better.

I agree with the Minister that government Amendment 125, about meetings at the point of deregistration, seems generally sensible and worth taking forward as a pilot. I believe they should also be treated as exit interviews, asking why the relationship between the school and the child has broken down—if that is the case, because it may not—and making that information available to the education committee and Ofsted. Schools and authorities need to use that information to improve their services, and that is the purpose of my Amendment 125A, which I believe from my correspondence the Minister agrees with.

I turn to government Amendment 131 along with Amendment 131A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, about requesting meetings in the child’s home. This is the most controversial area, and I suspect other Peers have had more correspondence about this than anything else, raising a whole range of issues about access to people’s homes. I note that this is not mandatory, although there are implicit penalties for not complying. What relationship are they trying to establish? This is problematic legally, but I am not going to dwell on that; my earlier comments on Amendment 121 by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, apply here: do the parents of adopted children have to apply?

I have two further points. First, I am not clear what this inspection is about. What criteria will be used? The home as such is not a proxy for the standard of education. Surely we need to know the criteria that are involved. The only criterion that I can possibly think of is that the child has some quiet space at home or elsewhere to study, although that raises questions about Travellers.

Lastly, even more importantly, why should the child be subject to two meetings in 15 days? This is a real issue, involving the invasion of what is, for many of them, their safe space. This is very problematic for many children. We need only think of adopted children, many of whom are terrified by any officials and live in a constant fear of being rejected or taken away again. This amendment requires more debate and more answers. I certainly feel it is important that the child should be at one or other of the two meetings that are proposed in the first 15 days, but two meetings with officials in 15 days seems excessive.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 121A, relating to local authority consent for the withdrawal of certain children from school, and to Amendment 131A, empowering local authorities to make home visits to children who have ever been subject to a care order or on a child protection plan. Both amendments have been proposed by my noble friend Lady Barran and are supported by other noble Lords on other Benches.

Broadly, I have welcomed the provisions in the Bill strengthening protections for children not in school or removed from schools, and I am grateful to the Government for the amendments that they have tabled since Committee, but I do not believe that is enough. We need to recognise more clearly that, in some circumstances, the declared intention to home-educate can in itself be a signal that some risk or harm has resurfaced.

No safeguarding system can ever be entirely comprehensive and infallible, and indeed safeguarding work should always be proportionate, but schools are an important part of that system, especially for children at higher risk. Social work always involves a difficult balance. A care order is a drastic intervention. Maintaining a child protection plan is expensive and intrusive into family life. We do not keep children in care or on protection plans by default, and it is normal for the level of intervention to be adjusted in line with circumstances. So, while a child is of school age, schools provide an important continuing residual line of sight to the child and are responsible for alerting local authorities if they believe that a child’s circumstances have deteriorated.

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I will first focus Amendment 120A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, which would seek to exclude from the consent mechanism adopted children who would otherwise be in scope because they were on a child protection plan within the last five years, where that plan was discharged prior to them being adopted. We recognise that different groups of children may need different approaches. It is important to emphasise that local authorities must give consent unless the legislative tests for refusal are met. We will provide guidance to local authorities on how they should approach consent decisions and will consider making particular reference to adopted children. However, we do not want to exempt adopted children from the consent measure. These children are likely still to be vulnerable because of the circumstances leading to their adoption and the significant transition and likely trauma involved. As with all children, school can be a protective factor, offering familiarity and consistency. Removing these children from schools could further destabilise them, increasing vulnerability to further harm. Of course, parents of adopted children will already be known to the local authority, and we would expect checks—

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

Is the Minister saying that when a local authority has just granted authority to parents to take responsibility for life for what are difficult children with trauma in their background, fairly soon afterwards you are going to second-guess them about how they should do education? The Minister may say that it should be done softly, but essentially that is what she is saying—that she is going to make them jump through yet another hoop.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

No, that is not what I am saying. I am saying that these are children who, almost by definition, will have gone through difficult and traumatic circumstances. Therefore, the opportunity within that five-year period to have the process for ensuring that they would not be better served by staying at school would serve those children well. I was about to say that, of course, those parents will already be well known to the local authority, and we would expect those checks to be relatively quick because the relevant information and relationship with the parents is already built.

On Amendment 121A tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, I thank the noble Baroness as well as the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and others for their constructive engagement last week. They have referenced the meeting they had with my officials on the detail of their amendment; of course, it was also with Steve Crocker, the non-executive board member for the department and former president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, and the DCS in Hampshire. The amendment would seek to extend the requirement to get permission to withdraw a child from school to home-educate them to a much broader group of children, including all children who are or who have ever been the subject of a child protection inquiry or child protection plan; those who are or have ever been the subject of proceedings relating to supervision or care orders; and those who are currently receiving support and services as a child in need under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989.

We tabled our amendment to extend the requirement to children who have recently been discharged from child protection plans because we felt that five years was a reasonable period in which to expect a family to show sustainable change. Extending the timeframe to consider all children previously subject to a child protection inquiry or plan, and including those who have been subject to proceedings or are currently receiving support from children’s social care, risks discouraging families from agreeing to accept support and services early or may lead to them withdrawing from this support, if consent from the local authority is required to home-educate.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester called this amendment a nuanced approach. Well, it is not a nuanced approach because it aims to use this specific consent provision to solve much wider issues within the Bill and goes far beyond, in terms of the breadth of children it would encompass, those included by the Government’s amendment. It is exactly the opposite of what we want to achieve through the Families First Partnership programme, whereby we want to broaden the group that come forward for help at the earliest possible opportunity.

Noble Lords have rightly expressed their concern about the children who fall through the cracks in the system, and that is why we are fixing the system that safeguards and protects children and investing £2.4 billion in rolling out the Families First Partnership programme. It is why we are developing multi-agency child protection teams in every local area and legislating for better information sharing and a stronger role for education and childcare settings in local safeguarding arrangements. These measures are designed to identify and support more quickly children who need help and protection.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, touched on the fact that this amendment would capture every parent whose child has ever been the subject of a child protection inquiry who wishes to remove that child from school. Let us not forget that a Section 47 inquiry is a significant event for a family—an intrusion into family life without consent. I know we all agree that this is the right thing to protect children from harm where it is needed, but last year alone just under 200,000 children aged between five and 15 were the subject of an inquiry. While I recognise that only a small number of these parents will want to home-educate, it would be both a significant undertaking for a local authority and a significant additional intrusion for those parents where concerns were not substantiated and no further action was taken.

On broadening the consent measure to include children where supervision or care proceedings are or have been initiated, once again it is a significant undertaking for the local authority to seek court intervention in family life. In these circumstances, the local authority should and will be assessing the safety and well-being of the children. Most of these children will have been on child protection plans before proceedings are initiated, so they will already be within the consent measure. Where proceedings are historic and there are still safeguarding concerns, these children should be being picked up through existing safeguarding mechanisms such as those already captured by the existing consent requirements. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether this is a proportionate approach. I understand the concern to mitigate risk at every possible occasion, but we also need to recognise that this is not the appropriate tool to use, given that this Bill is about improving the whole of the system much more radically.

Amendment 131A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, would require local authorities to visit the child’s home environment for certain groups of children. Amendment 131 already provides sufficient safeguards by allowing local authorities to consider the child’s home and other education settings and to request a visit to meet the child. Local authorities should already be undertaking home visits as part of their regular oversight of children subject to child protection inquiries or plans, children on child in need plans, and those involved in care or supervision proceedings. The statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, is very clear. It is part of their duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children in their area; this would include visiting children who need help, support or protection, and we will also clarify in statutory guidance on the registers that these children should be prioritised for visits at the point of registration.

Amendment 121B, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, seeks to ensure that the views of all parents of the child are considered as part of the local authority’s decision to grant permission for a child to be removed from school for home education. In most cases, we would expect local authorities to seek the views of all parents when they are considering whether to grant consent. However, there will be situations where doing so would be inappropriate. I think we can imagine what some of those might be. Of course, requiring the local authority to consult all of those with parental responsibility could delay a consent decision in circumstances where, for example, estranged parents are hard to reach. We will make this clear in statutory guidance.

Amendment 122, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, would require a court to confirm the local authority’s assessment that it is in the child’s best interest to receive education by regular attendance at school. We believe that local authorities will be well placed to make these decisions, as they will be aware of the child’s circumstances and can draw on multi-agency expertise, as well as parental views, in their decision-making. Introducing a requirement for court confirmation would add unnecessary delays.

Amendment 123, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, seeks to require a local authority to provide a statement of reasons if it refuses to grant permission for a child at a special school to be home-educated. I wholly agree that it is right for reasons to be provided, and we intend to make this clear in statutory guidance, which we will consult on. In that consultation, we will also consider to what extent a local authority’s reasons for a decision should include the costs and benefits to the child of permission being granted or refused.

Amendment 124, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, seeks to ensure that the process by which parents can appeal a consent decision made by a local authority is transparent and fair. The first proposed new subsection in this amendment makes many sensible suggestions but I do not think it is necessary to place this level of detail in the Bill. I wrote to noble Lords earlier this month outlining the department’s intention to provide more in-depth guidance on the appeals process, which will include target timelines and examples of the type of evidence that may be submitted. I am afraid that I do not agree with the second proposed new subsection. The tribunal process can be lengthy and these types of cases do not fall within the current remit of the Local Government Ombudsman. The appeals process proposed in the Bill is uncomplicated, objective and will be the most efficient route for parents to get a final decision.

Amendment 125A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, seeks to amend the provisions of government Amendment 125 to establish a pilot scheme of mandatory meetings. I am grateful to the noble Lord for the intention that lies behind his amendment. The Government’s amendment places a clear requirement on local authorities to record the outcome of these meetings. Should this provision be accepted, statutory guidance will make explicit that the record must include any concerns that parents express about schools, as well as actions taken by the authority in response. As part of the pilot, we intend to gather this information so that we can understand how it is being used and how it might drive improvements across the system—this is a call made by other noble Lords as well—so we can get a better understanding of why, as was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, parents are withdrawing their children from school.

Amendments 164B, 164C and 167A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, seek to give discretion or place limitations on when local authorities may issue preliminary notices or school attendance orders. The department agrees that it is important that local authorities work to foster positive relations with home-educating families, which is why the Bill introduces a support duty. We have tabled an amendment to require local authorities to offer home-educating parents a biannual forum to discuss any concerns or issues. However, if a child is in potentially unsuitable education or education that is not in their best interest, action must be taken without delay.

Amendments 170A and 170B, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, seek to place limitations on when a local authority can request a home visit when considering whether a school attendance order should be served. By this stage of the school attendance order process, a local authority will already have used informal inquiries and a preliminary notice to the parent to obtain information about the child’s education. A parent will therefore have had several opportunities to satisfy the local authority that their child is in receipt of a suitable education. Requiring a local authority to obtain a court order to conduct a visit would not be an appropriate use of the court’s time and could prolong the time a child spends receiving an unsuitable education. We will use statutory guidance to help local authorities sensitively conduct these visits and we are developing a training package for local authorities focusing on their new duties.

Amendment 175ZD, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, is unnecessary because Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 is clear that education otherwise than at school is a legitimate choice for parents—incidentally, a point that has been made by the Government throughout the whole of this debate and consideration of the Bill.

Amendment 175ZE, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, seeks to require the Secretary of State to issue a code of conduct in respect of attendance. There is already statutory guidance that sets out in detail the roles and responsibilities for all the institutions and persons listed in this amendment in relation to improving school attendance. The department published the Working Together to Improve School Attendance guidance in 2022, following full public consultation, and it was updated less than 18 months ago in August 2024.

This has been a wide-ranging group of amendments, but I hope that I have addressed noble Lords’ concerns. I commend the government amendments, particularly government Amendment 120.

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[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Young of Cookham) (Con)]

The debate is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. Does he wish to respond?

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

Sorry, my Lords, I did not realised that I have the chance to respond. I feel somewhat outnumbered on a number of the things that I said. I think there is a real need to have a proper look at policy about how all this fits together. I think we are going to come across quite a lot of unease and protest, in various ways, around the country as a result of some of these measures being brought in, perhaps at rather a late moment. Having said all that, I am very happy to work with others to try to find some solutions and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 120A (to Amendment 120) withdrawn.

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[Lord Wei (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments in my name in this group, namely Amendments 148A, 148B, 148D, 148E, 153A, 155A, 161D and 174A. Together, they are concerned with one question: how information about children and families is collected, used, retained and acted on under the Bill. Again, I begin by recognising that the Government have shown restraint where Ministers have strengthened scrutiny, tightened procedures and limited the scope for open-ended regulation-making, and it deserves acknowledgement. My amendments in this group are animated by a single concern: if Parliament is minded to create a register, it must be tightly bounded, purpose-limited and structured so that it does not normalise suspicion or routine burden and data sought must be proportionate to serving a legitimate aim and narrowly tailored. It must not indirectly discriminate against or unduly burden parents who choose to home educate when compared with children attending recognised schools.

Amendments 148A and 148B concern data use and data governance. The true risk of a register lies not only in what it collects but in what that information becomes over time. Data once shared rarely contracts. Once repurposed, it rarely remains confined to its original purpose. We are collecting quite a lot of data here on quite a lot of sensitive matters. Some have argued that this is really a kind of digital ID by the back door, which I do not think many of our citizens are very enamoured of right now.

Amendment 148A would draw a clear statutory boundary. It would provide that information may be shared only where necessary and proportionate for the education or welfare of the individual child, and it must not be repurposed for population-level profiling, predictive modelling, automated risk scoring or speculative secondary uses. This is not hostility to safeguarding, it is respect for trust. Safeguarding will collapse when families believe that information given for one reason will be later used for another. Amendment 148B would complement this by making explicit that all regulations governing the register must comply with data protection law by requiring consultation with the Information Commissioner and representatives of affected families before regulations are made. This is not decorative, it is constitutional. When people cannot foresee how their data will be used, trust dissolves.

Amendment 148D would introduce a deletion rule so that information must be removed after five years or earlier where the child is no longer within scope, unless there are recorded safeguarding grounds for attention. Childhood is not a permanent status, and our legal architecture should reflect that. Permanent records create permanent consequences. This amendment would prevent the register becoming a life history file for families who have done nothing wrong while preserving the ability to retain data where there is a genuine and ongoing safeguarding justification.

Amendment 148E is equally important. It would place into statute the principle that Ministers have articulated today, namely, that education otherwise than at school is lawful and must not of itself be treated as a reasonable cause to suspect harm or educational failure. I know there was an assurance about this principle that home education is legitimate, but much of what we have seen in the Bill does not seem to suggest that that belief is held tightly by those who drafted it. Presumptions are powerful. Once a category is treated as suspicious, every interaction becomes shaped by that assumption. This amendment would ensure that the burden of justification remains where it belongs: with the state.

Amendments 153A and 155A address burden and frequency. Amendment 153A would place a clear ceiling on routine requests for meetings, information or home access of no more than once in any 12-month period, unless there is reasonable cause to suspect significant harm, in which case more frequent engagement remains possible but is still bounded. It would make clear that a parent’s failure to comply with a routine request must not of itself be treated as evidence of unsuitable education and that a parent’s notice to home educate takes legal effect when given. This is about temporal proportionality. Frequency is not neutral. Repetition changes the character of a relationship. Rolling engagement becomes rolling surveillance.

Amendment 155A would complement this by requiring that information demands must be reasonably required, proportionate and not of such volume or frequency that they materially damage the child’s education by diverting parental time and resources away from teaching. This is a real risk. Oversight that crowds out education defeats its purpose. I have also tabled Amendment 161D, which would require written reasons for decisions to provide families with a right to correct factual inaccuracies in the register. Large systems generate errors. If we are going to create records that shape how families are treated, those records must be contestable and correctable.

I support the proposed cyber security Amendments 172 and 247A, which would prevent these provisions being commenced. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made a great point in Committee about reviewing the cyber security risks around storing this data, which is so important given that just recently we had a breach of government data.

I should be clear about what I cannot support. I cannot support approaches that normalise routine monitoring or turn lawful difference into a reason for scrutiny, nor can I support amendments that increase admin burdens on families by default rather than in response to evidence of harm.

The question before us is not whether the state may act where there is evidence of risk—it must—but what kind of system are we going to build? Is it going to be targeted, proportionate and trusted or one that drifts into routine suspicion and routine intrusion? I commend these amendments to the House.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 135A in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. Before doing so, I once again thank the Minister for having reduced the requirements in this section considerably—I am very pleased not to have to comment on whether Scouts, rugby clubs, cricket clubs or anything are included—and getting rid of the 15-day requirement to report. Those are significant improvements.

In terms of process, I shall just pick up on one point, which I raised earlier, so I will not speak at length on it, about how this process of putting information on the register fits in with the annual reporting process that happens in an awful lot of authorities. That may be a local issue rather than a national one, but I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response on that.

Amendment 135A from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, is largely heading in the same direction as the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking. I think it is proportionate. I think it is important that proposed new subsection (3) states:

“Nothing … prevents a local authority from requesting further information … where the authority has reasonable cause to believe that a child may not be receiving a suitable education”.


In other words, it is a two-step process so that one does not automatically assume that the parents are guilty, as it were, because there would be a two-step process before the local authority asks for more information.

I shall draw out one point that the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, made, which is that not all parents need to be recorded on the register, only those who are taking responsibility for the education of the child. That is entirely in keeping with where we are currently, in that to withdraw a child from registration to school, you need only one parent’s signature. It seems to me that, in putting them on the register in this way, you only need those parents who are taking responsibility. It is not necessary to involve other parents, including those who may be a danger to the other parent or to the child. I simply make those points.

I have a lot of sympathy for the various amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, around the security of the use of information, not least because I believe I am right saying that we are talking not about one register but 150. This is not a national register, this is 150 registers. What chance do we think that somewhere in those 150 problems will occur in terms of security and of people getting access? I think these are real concerns, and I will be very interested to hear what the Minister says about the various amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Wei, has tabled.

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[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

The government amendments in this group seek to strengthen the support and engagement local authorities offer to families who wish to home educate. As my noble friend the Minister said during Committee, it is vital that local authorities build constructive relationships with parents. Such relationships are the most effective way for local authorities to understand a child’s education and circumstances and to identify any support families may want or require. The Department for Education is committed to fostering these partnerships wherever possible.

Government Amendment 144 would amend Section 436C(2)(j) to remove the specific reference to institutions in the further education sector. This would ensure that the department can require local authorities, via regulations, to record information about any education institution a registered child is attending or has attended in the past where the local authority has the information or can reasonably obtain it. Such information could be beneficial to include on registers because a history of establishments attended will give local authorities a clearer idea of the child’s circumstances and educational history. This understanding will enable the local authority to offer and provide more bespoke support to the child. For those parents who feel forced into home education, a record of previous schools attended would also give the local authority insight into which settings parents were dissatisfied with. Further analysis of this information could reveal where there may be gaps in support for parents within the school system, enabling the local authority or central government to take action.

Government Amendment 146 would make it clear that information on young carers may be prescribed for inclusion in children not in school registers. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, for raising this important matter in Committee, and the Carers Trust for its tireless work on ensuring that young carers are identified and supported. As my noble friend the Minister said in Committee, knowing whether a child is a young carer provides important context for an elective home education officer, both in assessing whether the child is receiving a full-time suitable education, and in ensuring that the family is signposted to any relevant support to which they are entitled. Prescribing this information for inclusion on the children not on school register would ensure that local authorities must record it if they can reasonably obtain it.

Turning to government Amendment 158, the department’s guidance is clear that when a parent elects to home-educate, they must be prepared to take full responsibility for their child’s education. This includes making arrangements for access to exams the child may wish to take. Local authorities should, however, be sources of advice for home-educating families. That is why we have tabled Amendment 158, would make it clear that local authorities must give advice and information about access to GCSE exams if requested by the parent of a home-educated child registered on their children not on school register. This advice could include signposting to local centres that may be open to taking private candidates; providing information on how to enter GCSEs as a private candidate; and signposting the Joint Council for Qualifications’ list of exam centres that accept private candidates, and organisations that provide guidance on exams or careers, such as Ofqual and the National Careers Service.

At a national level, the Department for Education will send communications to schools encouraging them to take private candidates and to join the list of centres held by the JCQ. We will engage with the JCQ to explore options for updating this list earlier in the year, ensuring that families have timely access to accurate information to support their planning.

Government Amendment 159 would require local authorities to hold forums with home-educating parents twice a year as part of their support duty, if there is an appetite on the part of parents for them to do so. These forums would be an opportunity for the community to provide feedback and to ask the local authority how the registered support duty and school attendance order process is operating. In turn, the forums would provide local authorities with a better understanding of the needs and views of home-educating families in their areas, laying the foundation for more constructive relationships.

Government Amendment 161 would ensure that the duty on local authorities to offer a biannual engagement forum is targeted specifically at home-educated parents. This would ensure that the forums remain focused on their core purpose. We know that some parents whose children are on a school roll or whose education is arranged by the local authority may also want the opportunity to speak directly to a representative from the local authority. However, where the issues relate to other duties, such as those under Section 19 of the Education Act 1996, those discussions are often highly technical or specific to an individual case. Such matters would not be well suited to an open forum of this kind, so those parents would be better supported through the existing routes of communication available to them. I beg to move.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 160. As I did in the last group, I start by saying that I am grateful to the Minister and her colleagues for having moved in some way on the information provided about exams, and for setting up a forum; it will be interesting to see how that operates. I am also very sympathetic to Amendment 161A from the noble Lord, Lord Wei, in which he proposes setting up a proper forum where parents are asked to take some responsibility for the relationship. That seems quite a positive, and maybe a longer-term, way forward.