Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 722377 relating to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

It is always a pleasure to serve under your authority, Ms Barker. As Chair of the Petitions Committee, it is a privilege to open these petitions debates. I do find it extraordinarily encouraging that so many members of the public are actively engaging with the Government and, in this case, engaging with legislation that is passing through Parliament.

The e-petition was created by Michelle Zaher, who is in the Public Gallery. Prior to the debate, I had the pleasure of speaking to Michelle to understand the motivations behind the creation of this petition. She explained to me that she believes that the implementation of the Bill falls far short of addressing the real problems in the education system, and that instead it tightens controls on parents and educators without consultation.

There are a plethora of reasons why signatories of the petition believe the Bill needs to be withdrawn, but the primary concern that came out of my conversations in preparation for this debate was the lack of consultation with key stakeholders in the Bill’s development. The Bill has the opportunity to embed children’s wellbeing at the heart of our education system and to create lasting safeguards and opportunities that no amount of voluntary guidance could match. However, those who signed the petition believe that the Bill does not do that, and that it should be withdrawn before it goes any further. We are here to debate their concerns.

Before we start the debate, I note that we still await the White Paper for the schools section of the Bill, so we approach the debate on the legislation without the full picture before us. I shall begin by outlining what the Bill aims to do. To put it simply, the Bill is set to prioritise children’s needs and raise standards for every child across the whole of England. It introduces mandatory participation in education, safeguarding, clear information sharing and multi-agency child protection teams. In an ambition to tackle inequality, the Government have included measures to support kinship carers and care leavers, and to provide free breakfast clubs in primary schools.

Crucially, the Bill seeks to remove unnecessary barriers in our schools by limiting branded uniform items, standardising teacher pay and conditions across academies, and establishing registers to safeguard children not in school.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for outlining the Government’s supposed intention for the Bill, but is he aware that Amanda Spielman, the former Ofsted chief inspector, said that this Bill was “very likely” to have a detrimental effect on children’s education?

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. That point was made in the consultation I had before this debate.

To continue, the Bill proposes wellbeing co-ordinators, structured mental health assessments and greater collaboration with community health services to embed wellbeing alongside literacy and numeracy as part of what every school must nurture. These are noble aims. Heaven knows, if a child is struggling mentally, they are not going to learn very much about trigonometry, are they?

We must approach the issues that campaigners have with the Bill. Previous Governments have spent decades giving academies and trusts more and more control, only for this Government to take it away again. Sometimes the best way to support wellbeing is to give schools freedom, not more top-down rules. In some instances, an attempt to standardise pay would mean giving our teachers in academies pay cuts. School groups have emphasised to me that the importance of local decision making cannot be underestimated.

Perhaps I have misunderstood, but I am sure that the Minister has clarified that the standardised pay across the sector should be a floor, not a ceiling. Can the hon. Gentleman confirm that that is his understanding too?

It will be interesting to see what the Minister says on that. Perhaps there is a little bit of misunderstanding on that issue. Let us leave it at that.

Teachers, parents and local authorities often know best what their children need—far more than we in Westminster ever could. They understand their communities and deserve to be trusted and, I believe, properly consulted.

The Bill also reaches into the world of home education, with measures such as a national register of children not in school, requirements for local authority consent to home school in certain cases and powers for councils to intervene if a home environment is deemed unsuitable.

I thank my hon. Friend for the way he is introducing this petition. I am sure he is aware of the case of my murdered constituent, Sara Sharif from Woking, who was abused, tortured and murdered. The safeguarding report that came out last month highlighted the failings in the home schooling system and the fact that a register is needed. Does he agree that parents should lose the right to home school in the event of child safeguarding concerns?

In proceeding with a Bill of this nature, that precise point has to be taken into account and weighed in the balance, because it is a matter of getting it right. That is precisely the reason behind the petition. I stress that many people think that we are not getting it right at this stage, but improvements can be made.

It is a fact that more families than ever are turning to home schooling. Some do it because the nearest school is miles away or parents deem it to be teaching to an inadequate standard; others because their child thrives better with one-on-one attention and teaching, perhaps for special needs that a standard classroom cannot accommodate. Campaigners for home education—some of whom I heard from in preparation for the debate—fear that the Bill amounts to an attack on their parental rights.

I apologise in advance, Ms Barker, for the fact that I cannot stay for the full debate because I have been assigned to a Delegated Legislation Committee. I want to echo the concerns of my constituents, many of whom are home educators, about the legislation. Will the hon. Member join me in calling on the Government to put firmer safeguards on data security in the Bill, provide clear protections in the legislation for parental responsibility to decide what education is in their child’s best interests and ensure that the Bill does not try to force home educators to fit into school-style timetables?

I am sure that is a wise intervention. I should imagine that we can all take heed of it, including the Minister.

The parents I mentioned previously argue that legislation for the regular registration of what learning has taken place in the home limits a diverse community where learning might be child-led one day and structured the next—all tailored to individual family needs. Those parents also spoke to me about their unease concerning the reach of new information-sharing duties and the requirement for child registers and unique identifiers. They fear overreach, diminished family autonomy and the erosion of parental rights, particularly where home education is concerned.

I should also add that I have been approached by religious groups that have serious concerns about the Bill as currently drafted. They believe that it fails to recognise the vital structure of education in stricter religious communities. In the case of Jewish children who attend yeshiva alongside homeschooling, for instance, the Bill seeks to pigeonhole the method of schooling that a yeshiva provides within two categories that do not apply to it. It has been argued that the lack of proper consultation with affected groups means that under the current proposals, yeshiva schools would be forced to close their doors.

The sheer scope of the Bill means that there are numerous factors about both wellbeing and schools that require thorough discussion. There is a substantial array of groups with specific grievances about particular clauses in the Bill. I hope that there will be sufficient space in the debate this evening and in the days, weeks and months ahead for those cases to be heard and considered properly. I see that a good number of colleagues have joined us for the debate, for which I am grateful as Chair of the Petitions Committee. I will conclude my remarks to allow everyone to participate.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Barker. I begin by thanking the petition organiser and all who engaged with it. Like many colleagues from across the House, I entered politics because I wanted to make sure that all children, regardless of their background or circumstances, had the opportunity to have the best start in life. I am sure that that is also the motivation for the majority of those who signed the petition, even if we might disagree that the Bill represents positive progress. Although the petition primarily addresses the school reform aspects of the Bill, it is important to underscore the significant child protection measures it contains that would be lost if the Bill were withdrawn as the petition proposes.

The measures broadly enjoy cross-party support and have been developed following what we have learned when things have gone tragically wrong. One of the most significant protections is the introduction of a single unique identifier for every child, an innovation that will transform how we monitor and safeguard children throughout their educational journey. With a unique identifier, schools, social services, the NHS and other agencies can securely share essential information, ensuring that no child slips through the cracks. Instead of scattering attendance records, safeguarding concerns and progress across disconnected systems, this approach brings everything together. For a child at risk, perhaps moving between schools or facing hardship at home, this identifier becomes a vital thread linking their past experiences to the support they need today.

Time after time, when a serious case review occurs and the resultant review looks at how it could have been prevented, featuring in there somewhere will be poor communication and a failure to connect the dots between agencies. The unique identifier is a key step towards preventing that from happening. Safeguarding cannot happen in silos. That is why the Bill creates multi-agency child protection teams, bringing together professionals from education, health, social services, mental health, housing and law enforcement. When the teams work collaboratively, risks are identified earlier and responses are more effective. For children living in unstable homes, struggling with mental health challenges or at risk of neglect, the joined-up approach can become life changing.

On the point about branded school uniforms, headteachers in my constituency have often bulk bought school uniforms through a supplier, so it can be more cost-effective to buy the uniform through the branded supplier than to buy it on the high street. Surely what the hon. Gentleman suggests could have a perverse outcome. Does he not think that if branded items can be bought at a cheaper cost, they would be better than buying off the peg?

That is an interesting approach; it is a shame that has not been rolled out more widely. That is not the experience in the schools in my constituency. Across the population, the measures in the Bill will reduce costs for all. That is my view; the hon. Gentleman is welcome to his.

In short, the Bill is about ensuring that every child is safe, supported and given the chance to succeed. To withdraw it would be to turn away from that vision. Instead, we must commit to a future in which protection and education go hand in hand and no child is left behind.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Barker. I thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for introducing this important debate.

Home education is often misunderstood. Some dismiss it as children avoiding education. Others portray it as an isolating environment, and even a potential safeguarding risk. Although that may be the case in the smallest handful of instances, the reality is that the large proportion of home educating families are those who have been let down by the state education system and act in the best interest of their child. For them, home education is not the easy choice but, often, a lifeline—a vital alternative for children who do not “fit” within the confines of mainstream schooling.

Families turn to home education for many reasons. We might be talking about children who have medical needs or anxiety and have been pressured out of school, those excluded because of unmet special educational needs, or those enduring unresolved bullying. Some parents make a philosophical choice to educate outside the mainstream system. This discretionary right, exercised by parents and guardians, allows learning to be flexible, personalised and responsive.

Taking away the option to home school through a poorly designed policy that fails to recognise the context and individuality of each home education journey is yet another example of the Government refusing to listen to communities they do not understand. We saw that with the changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief for farmers, and we saw it with the unjustified housing targets imposed on rural communities. We now see it again—this time with thousands of home educators’ pleas being ignored.

Despite the Government’s unwillingness to listen, I have had the pleasure of meeting numerous constituents and campaigners to discuss the potential impact of the flawed Bill and to listen to their individual stories. One has a child with Down syndrome and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and another who is autistic, with global developmental delays and dyslexia. They were overwhelmed and dysregulated by the one-size-fits-all design of the school system, but now they are home educated and can truly thrive in a personalised learning environment.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for outlining the situations in which his constituents find themselves, as mine do in many cases. Is he as concerned as I am that mandatory registration for home education essentially risks treating every parent as a potential safeguarding concern, rather than recognising the fact that they are doing their absolute best for their children? They absolutely want to comply with the law and should not be treated as criminals in the first instance.

I agree wholeheartedly. My hon. Friend demonstrates the perverse reality of what is proposed, in that these parents and children are often seeking to break away from being a one-size-fits-all family, but they are being pushed into a one-size-fits-all approach that risks stigmatising home education and the very children who benefit from it.

Importantly, in the instances that I have cited, both families will be adversely affected should the Bill progress to further stages in its current state. As many home educators have argued, the Government, schools and local authorities are not the ones witnessing the emotional breakdowns before and after school. They are not the ones being forced to watch their children’s health deteriorate because of unsuitable environments. They are not the ones supporting them at medical appointments or sitting up with them late at night.

A decision to home educate is not often taken lightly. Parents and guardians weigh up the benefits and consequences of all education options. If, after that careful deliberation, a parent or guardian, who knows their children best, chooses to take the leap into home education and provides a safe, stable and nurturing environment, they should be free to continue with that choice.