Labour Government reasserts its determination to continue the push to enforce registration and monitoring on home educated young people.
What’s been said?
It’s been an unusual time since the General Election – a fresh set of MPs to be sworn in, many of them new to Westminster, and the parliamentary machine scarcely in gear before it was time for summer recess.
Once the media had announced the initial Cabinet appointments, reporting was fairly generic over the summer months, high on speculation and low on fact, because in many ways there was little for them to report.
Since Parliament reconvened on 2 September, there have been some indications of a return to normality, though the party conference season has brought its own disruption.
Labour’s new Education team (details here and here) made a decisive start. On the first sitting day Baroness Smith of Malvern informed Peers of the Education Minister’s statement that single headline grades would no longer be issued by Ofsted. Two days later Phillipson delivered her message to schools at the start of a new term.
The following Monday (9 September) saw Phillipson and her team responding to their first set of education questions in the Commons. (Transcript | Video). Schools Week headlined the key issues, with passing reference to the Children’s Wellbeing Bill [CWB] coming “as soon as parliamentary time allows.”
But it was two identical Written Questions submitted by different Labour MPs which provided more information about this as Stephen Morgan, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Minister for Early Education), responded on the same day to identical questions from Jo White Question UIN 900341, and Perran Moon Question UIN 900343.
On 3 September both MPs asked:
“To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to identify children who are educated outside school.”
Because of its relevance, Morgan’s reply is cited here in full [emphasis added in all instances]:
“The department is committed to giving every child the best start in life, regardless of where and how they are educated. We cannot ignore the rising numbers of home-educated children and official data which shows that growing numbers of children have been moved into home education due to mental health concerns or lack of provision for special educational needs in their local schools.
Local authorities have legal duties to be satisfied that all children are receiving a suitable education. However, this duty is undermined by the fact that parents have no obligation to inform their local authority of their decision to home educate. This means that local authorities are unable to fulfil their duties. There is a risk that children are going under the radar and missing out on the education they deserve that will enable them to access the best opportunities in life.
For this reason, the government will use the Children’s Wellbeing Bill to require English local authorities to maintain registers of children not in school. Parents and certain out-of-school education providers will be required to provide information for those registers. This will help local authorities piece together a fuller and more accurate picture of those children who are receiving education otherwise than at school and target resources to locating and supporting those who are missing out on education. Local authorities will also have a duty to provide support to those home-educators who request it, which will act as an incentive for families to register.
The registers will contain information on those children who are registered on a school roll and are receiving education otherwise than at school. It will not include children who are on a school roll but failing to attend. The department is taking separate action on that important issue of persistent absence.
In terms of this new system of registration, parents can be assured that the registers will not be used to criminalise any parent who does not send their child to school. Parents who do not provide information for the registers will result in their local authority being unable to be satisfied that a child is not receiving a suitable education and so the local authority will need to proceed to a formal request for evidence about that education. If that evidence is not forthcoming, or is insufficient, this will usually lead to the local authority needing to issue a School Attendance Order. This is the same mechanism that exists in the current law; no change will be made.
The government takes the matter of data protection very seriously, including any threats to privacy and personal data. Local authorities will be legally restricted as to whom they may share register information with and for what purposes. The usual provisions of the UK-GDPR will apply to all data processing activities.
The department continues to work with local authorities on existing non-statutory registers and to collect data from those registers.”
Why does it matter?
Clearly the desire to identify children “educated outside school” has not abated, even with seismic changes in Commons membership, and it didn’t take long for the issue to raise its head again. This is no surprise, as the move to register and monitor HE children began with a Labour Government as far back as 2006.
Morgan’s response gives the clearest statement of Labour intent we have seen yet – though nothing will be certain until the text of the Bill is published, and it seems that no date has been set at present. His opening statements cover a lot of familiar ground. Governments are clearly rattled by the increase in HE, and frustrated by the lack of parental obligation to inform LAs that they are HE. They therefore appeal to the risk of children going under the radar, which to them is a known unknown, and they see that as leaving them vulnerable. Politicians need to remind themselves that the larger one makes the haystack, the harder it becomes to find any needles that may be in it!.
But we do find here the first definitive statement that the CWB will be used to “require English local authorities to maintain registers of children not in school,” and that “Parents and certain out-of-school education providers will be required to provide information for those registers.” The proffered ‘support,’ in the case of home educating families who request it, is openly declared to be “an incentive for families to register.”
We also see a rather unconvincing attempt to reassure parents by clarifying that it’s not failing to send their child to school to be educated which would criminalise them. However, failing to provide information for the registers will result in School Attendance Orders being issued, and non-compliance with SAOs is considered a criminal offence.
It should also be noted though that the government does appear to have listened at least to some extent on two matters:
- they have recognised the problem with their previous conflation of CME with school absenteeism. (Remember the debâcle over Phillipson’s Opposition Day debate earlier in the year, when Hinds and several other Conservatives pointed out the mistake as they voted her motion down?);
- there was some recognition that people have major concerns about data security when it comes to large databases.
For the moment, however, the government has to be content with what data they can glean from ‘existing non-statutory registers.’
Confusion, however, persists between EOTAS and EHE. The fourth paragraph of Morgan’s answer opens with a reference to “children who are registered on a school roll and are receiving education otherwise than at school.” That can therefore only refer to children whose education “outside school” is funded by the State, not their parents.
What can I do?
One thing which has been emphasised recently is the importance of HE parents establishing a connection with their MPs as soon as possible, so that they can be made aware of widespread objections to registration before the text of the Bill is published.
It would be easier for any sympathisers to nudge things in a better direction at that stage than after a Bill is laid before Parliament. Time for debate is always limited, and we know that registers have wide cross-party support so the relevant sections are very unlikely to be voted down.
Connecting with any new MPs is especially valuable, in that you may be able to share your views on registration (and other threatened state incursions into HE) with them before they absorb too much of the standard narrative promulgated through the media and ascribed to by the majority of parliamentarians.
It’s important that they get to hear practical counter-arguments to registration as well as ideological ones, as the narrative has shifted public opinion over the years to registers being necessary.
You could talk about costs, difficulties over inaccuracies, whether registration will actually achieve the desired aim, the problem of estranged partners potentially being able to access family data and anything else which you feel strongly about. Safeguarding is commonly advanced as the reason for the necessity of registers; the current English Guidance relies heavily on it. There is, however, no evidence that registers do actually safeguard children – if they did, every child in school would be safe.
You could also raise with your MP the civil liberties issues of registers around privacy and data protection, in other words the unwarranted state incursion into family life.
It’s a known fact that MPs’ views are shaped by accounts of their constituents’ experiences, so if you have already lived through difficulties such as attending school being damaging for your child, or an LA going beyond what the law actually says, they could be a good starting point. Doing this might give rise to an opportunity to explain how the current guidance commonly causes confusion when LAs interpret it as giving them ‘duties’ they don’t actually have. Or you could speak more generally about the widespread lack of trust of LAs which exists among HE parents, and a similar lack of respect for HE parents on the part of LA officials.
In short, HE parents need to work hard at finding ways to dispel the negative image of HE as something dubious, in need of regulation. It is therefore important to listen to your MP, in order to understand where they are starting from. Most will have little or no knowledge of HE, so will rely on their Party’s briefing notes. Asking your MP if they already know any HE families is a good starter. If not, why not offer to help them to get to know some, though you would need to provide a suitable context and other families who would be happy to participate.
And finally, if you have a Lib Dem or a Labour MP, you could remind them of their party leader’s words:
In a recent interview with PoliticHome, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey spoke about the LDs’ identity and how supporting communities and freedom are important to him – quite a contrast to his party’s policy on HE.
“I talk about how, for me, it’s ultimately about the power of the individual. It’s about empowering the individual to be the best they can be, and holding the already powerful to account. So that’s my short version of liberalism, and I think that that set of values and set of philosophy is the strongest in British politics.”
In his Downing Street remarks on 6 July after appointing his Cabinet, the Prime Minister said, in the context of working collaboratively with the other nations of the UK:
“The principle I operate to is those with skin in the game know what’s best for their communities, and that does require us to be bold about pushing power and resource out of Whitehall…”
Exactly! Home educating families have skin in the future wellbeing of their children game, and there is a need for them to be equally bold in pushing back when an intrusive state makes unjustified inroads into their lives. If they don’t, the machinery of the state will overwhelm conscientious parents and their children.