Home Schooling

Question

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to review the rules on home schooling in the light of the murder of Sara Sharif.

Before I address the Question, I beg your Lordships’ indulgence as I would like to say a few words about Sara Sharif. On behalf of your Lordships’ House, I pay tribute to a beautiful 10 year-old girl who loved to sing. I extend our condolences to those who knew her, who must be devastated by her loss in such circumstances. Sara’s father, stepmother and uncle have rightly been brought to justice, and I hope that this serves as some comfort to those who love her. While the local child safeguarding practice review into Sara’s death will identify any failings, we must also recognise that social workers, police officers, health workers, teachers and others, serving our country’s most vulnerable children and families, strive every day to keep them safe.

Protecting children from harm could not be more important to the Government, and we are already taking swift action through our landmark reforms to children’s social care, the biggest overhaul in a generation. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, introduced this week, brings forward a series of new safety measures, with a focus on a joined-up system to help prevent vulnerable children falling through the cracks. This Bill contains measures requiring parents to obtain local authority consent before they can home educate if their child is subject to a child protection inquiry or has a child protection plan. Local authorities will have powers to require any home-educated child to attend school if their home or learning environment is unsuitable.

I thank the Minister for her moving Answer to my Question. The death of Sara Sharif and the subsequent trial have, understandably, caused the deepest upset across the nation, especially in the diocese which I serve and the church school from which Sara was withdrawn by her father and stepmother. I welcome the proposals in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and the Prime Minister’s strong stance during PMQs in the other place. Could I ask His Majesty’s Government to go further than is currently envisaged and consider creating a new statutory duty on local authorities to visit home-schooling homes at least once a term to ensure that children’s education and their welfare are properly monitored and protected?

My Lords, I put on record our thanks to the right reverend Prelate for the work that he will be doing in his diocese to support the communities which will be struggling, especially right now, and coming to terms with the consequences of the trial. With regard to the proposals put forward by the right reverend Prelate, we are about to start consultation on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which was introduced in the other place just this week. Consultations will continue in this place, and I look forward to discussing it with him. In advance of such discussions on the legislation, I have spoken to the Minister responsible in the other place, and she has offered to host a round table immediately after Christmas with noble Lords who are interested so that we can discuss these issues in detail in a more appropriate setting.

My Lords, I echo the Minister’s sentiments about the tragic death of Sara Sharif and thank her for starting her Answer in that way. On these Benches, we welcome very much the proposal in the new Bill that children who are subject to a plan or an investigation will not be allowed to be home educated. I wonder whether she could commit to going back and talking to her honourable friend the Minister for Children and Families, urging her to write to every director of children’s services now to establish how many children who are home schooled currently are on the child protection register or subject to an investigation, and make sure that we check up on their safety.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, who has great experience from her previous role in engaging with this. I reassure your Lordships’ House that local authorities are already actively engaged in this area. On the safeguarding statistics related to home education, of the 111,700 children in home education, 1% were children in need, while less than 0.5% were recorded as having a child protection plan or being a looked-after child. This compares with 3% of children in need, 0.4% having a child protection plan and 0.7% being looked-after children among the wider child population. We have the statistics, but, obviously, all local authorities have an onus to make sure that children are safe.

My Lords, the MP for Woking, where this young girl Sara lived, was, interestingly, on the child protection register himself. He said:

“Sara’s life cannot be brought back, but we owe it to her—and every vulnerable child—to ensure her suffering was not in vain. Change must happen, and I will not rest until it does”.

Sadly, for many children, it will not be a happy Christmas this year. It is not just the issue of home education but of children in care: children in unregistered care homes and schools and those put in care homes miles away from their family and community. I am interested in what the Minister said about round-table discussions, and I hope and am sure that these issues will be picked up in the Bill that is due to come before us.

I thank the noble Lord for his question and for the work that he has done in this area. We look forward to working with your Lordships across the House to make sure that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill delivers. This is not party political. This is genuinely about how we keep children safe from harm. While I have the opportunity, not only are there many children who will not be having the Christmas—or the Hanukkah, for that matter—that we wish for everybody but there will be public servants who will be giving up time with their own families and will endeavour to keep others safe. We thank them for their service at this time of year, too.

My Lords, there is a disproportionately high number of minority-ethnic children in home elective education. If we look at the numbers where ethnicity is known, they amount to about 30%. What are the Government doing to look at the contributing factors, including that the local schools do not meet their educational needs, including special educational needs?

My Lords, there are many different parts to this. To answer the noble Baroness’s question, reforming social care is critical to giving hundreds of thousands of children and young people the start in life they deserve, whichever ethnic minority they come from. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill follows the publication of Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive, which sets out the Government’s commitment to whole-system reform of children’s social care. Additionally, the Budget announced £44 million to support kinship and foster carers. This includes the largest ever national investment in kinship care. We have also just announced half a billion pounds for the next financial year in direct preventive services, to help fund local authorities to fulfil this work. If the noble Baroness would like to have a specific discussion about how we can make sure that this is getting to every community and no one is excluded from it, I look forward to meeting her.

My Lords, does not the case of poor Sara indicate the urgent need for removing the legal defence of reasonable chastisement of violence against a child? Surely doing so would send out a message that it is never reasonable to beat a child.

I personally agree very much with the noble Baroness but, in terms of what we are doing, this Government does not condone violence or abuse of children in any form, and there are laws in place to protect children from this. We are looking closely at what is happening in Wales and Scotland and will continue to build our evidence base but have no plans to legislate specifically for smacking at this stage, which I believe the noble Baroness was alluding to. We want to consider further evidence carefully ahead of deciding whether a change in law is required. We want to make sure that the voices of children, parents and trusted stakeholders are fundamentally at the heart of this discussion, and that will feed into any amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

My Lords, would the Minister agree that part of the difficulties of this tragic case were the inadequacies of the social work supervision? Would she therefore support much more emphasis on the recruitment of adequate numbers of social workers with sufficient experience and on support for them thereafter in the very difficult work that they do?

I thank my noble friend for her question. The reality is that we do not yet know the detail of the specifics related to Sara Sharif, because, on the advice of police, the local child safeguarding practice review was not to be undertaken until after the completion of the trial. I would be reluctant to put any blame on any individual. In terms of next steps, I would like to take this away from Sara Sharif, because this is about how we protect all children who are at risk of harm. This is about how we can deliver stronger, multi-agency working protections, which we are doing. Statutory guidance reinforces multi-agency working across the whole system of help, support and protection. Recently introduced national multi-agency child protection standards and our new child wellbeing Bill will build on this. I also raise the fact that, as part of the legislation, we are introducing the unique signifier information, which will make it easier for multi-agency working to work. Some 56% of cases failed, and children slipped through the net, because one agency could not link up with another, so we need to introduce the single unique child identifier.