Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Committee (8th Day) (Continued)

Amendment 203A

203A: Clause 30, page 51, leave out lines 2 to 23 and insert— “(c) a local authority is—(i) conducting enquiries under section 47 of the Children Act 1989 (duty to investigate) in respect of the child, or (ii) taking action under section 47(8) of that Act to safeguard or promote the child's welfare, in a case where the enquiries mentioned in sub-paragraph (i) have led the local authority to conclude that the child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm (within the meaning of section 31(9) and (10) of that Act).”Member's explanatory statement This amendment limits consent requirements to safeguarding cases under section 47 of the Children Act 1989. It removes subsection (3) of 434A, recognising special school placement as supportive, not suspicious, and ensures local authorities must evidence actual harm risk, rather than requiring parents to justify withdrawal.

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 203A and Amendment 215A, and to give moral support to Amendment 221. Before turning to these provisions, I wish to reflect briefly on the underlying scope and purpose of Clause 30.

Clause 30 as drafted is striking in its breadth. It hands local authorities the power to demand consent before a child may be withdrawn from a maintained school. I pick up here on a point made previously by the Minister about whether all parents could be subject to this. My assertion is that they could if a local authority decided, on the withdrawal of the child from school, to put the parent under a Section 47 order. Apparently, this is incredibly easy to do. The law requires only reasonable cause to suspect significant harm. It is a deliberately low bar, meant to protect children, and I have had correspondence—we can discuss this again in August—that indicates that it has at times been misused, just through a referral, for example, from the school itself. Let us say that a teacher does not really understand home education, is concerned that withdrawal might cause harm and alerts the local authority. Instantly, it can start an investigation. As an officer, you run that by your manager, who is busy—partly, perhaps, because there are many more families to investigate now that that the database exists. Perhaps there was a missed medical appointment, which I am sure we have all experienced, and they were late and could not see the doctor in time, perhaps because there was traffic. Suddenly, that might give rise to an S47. Although in theory, under the clause, only a certain subset of parents may be affected, potentially, in practice, depending on the ideological bias of the officers involved—and we have seen in some authorities that there clearly are some outliers—all parents may be swept into such measures.

Clause 30 as drafted hands local authorities the power to demand consent before a child may be withdrawn, yet nowhere does it properly limit the grounds on which that consent may be withheld. This gives the state a sweeping veto over parents’ decisions to withdraw their children, even when such withdrawal arises from urgent, pressing circumstances such as sustained bullying or grooming—I believe that you can be subject to an S47 if you are being groomed in a school—unmet special educational needs or serious mental health concerns. In doing so, it risks turning what should be a family’s protective step—for example, taking your child out of that circumstance of grooming by bullies in school—into a procedural trap.

My Lords, as I said at Second Reading and repeated earlier this afternoon, it is my contention on behalf of home-schooling parents that the provisions in this Bill are

“too long and too complicated”.—[Official Report, 1/5/25; col. 1414.]

To that end, I have given notice that I will oppose the Question that Clause 30 stand part of the Bill. I also put down Amendment 233A relating to Clause 31.

Perhaps we could look at the whole. I have argued against the long and complicated provisions in this Bill relating to home-schooling parents because they are frightfully oppressive on home-schooling parents and are in many ways unworkable because of the complicated language used in this Bill.

To look at it as a whole, the home-schooling provisions in the Bill are covered in Clauses 30 to 33. They cover 29 pages, from page 50 to page 79 of the Bill, and the clauses therein contain 17 very large new sections to be inserted after Sections 434 and 436 of the Education Act 1996. So the further complication is that not only do you need to have in your hands this Bill, or Act when it is passed, but you have to go back to the 1996 Act.

To take things in order, I first refer to new Section 434A(2) on pages 50 and 51 of the Bill, where the definition of a “relevant child” appears. A relevant child is described as a child who

“is of compulsory school age … is a registered pupil at a school, and … condition A or condition B is met”.

Condition A focuses on SEND children and condition B relates to children who are subject to

“enquiries under section 47 of the Children Act 1989”.

Thereafter, we are left stranded because, while those conditions are specific to two types of relevant child, the ordinary relevant child who fulfils the requirements of being a child of compulsory school age and a registered pupil at a school is simply not covered. I do not know whether the Minister can guide me to where it is, but at the moment you need a cold towel around your head to read these provisions.

Things then get more serious in Clause 31 under new Section 436C(1)(e) on page 55, which lists all the information the home-schooling parent has to provide, including

“the names and addresses of any individuals and organisations involved in providing that education … a description of the type of each provider … the postal address of each place where that education is provided … or the website or email address”

and

“the total amount of time that the child spends receiving that education”.

That is a very large omnibus of pieces of information that are sought, and this covers, for example, evening tuition in music lessons, Sunday schools the pupil may attend and physical education at a local club. None of that information is sought for children at state schools. It is sought only from parents of home-schooled children.

It gets worse in subsection (2) where there are 27 requirements on the local authority to provide information for the register. It gets even worse if you examine the Bill further. New Section 436D states that the information has to be provided within 15 days. New Section 436E says that any changes to that information have to be provided within 15 days. I am sorry that all this is complicated, but these are the complications in the Bill that I am complaining about. Under new Section 436E(8), if the home-schooling parent does not provide that information, they are subject to “a monetary penalty”. As the Bill is written, all this will apply to home-schooling parents who are busy teaching the child and should not be involved in this type of bureaucracy.