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Home Education

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on his effective and balanced opening speech in this important debate on elective home education. The Government support this parental right and want to ensure that parents who choose to educate their children at home have access to local support to enable them to do this well. The Government’s priority is to continue to raise educational standards so that children and young people in every part of the country are prepared with the knowledge, skills and qualifications they need to reach their potential. Education should be provided in a safe environment, whether that is at school or at home.

Home education works best when it is a positive and informed choice, with the child’s education at the centre of the parent’s decision. For many parents and children, that will be the case but local authorities report an increasing number of children being home educated, exacerbated not only by the covid-19 pandemic, but by other factors, as was ably pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous). In its annual elective home-education survey, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services estimated that 37,500 children were home educated in 2016. That increased to over 81,000 children by 2021, including a significant jump of 38% between 2019 and 2020—the height of the covid-19 pandemic. The increase in the number of children being home educated is not a problem in itself, but local authorities report growing concerns that the increase is being driven by reasons that are not in the best educational interests of the child, and that some of these children are not receiving a suitable education.

My hon. Friend raises an important issue about Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children. We know from local authorities that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children are over-represented in their cohorts of children not in school. The measures proposed in the Schools Bill would provide a duty on local authorities to provide support for families, which would, of course, apply to those children and their families. The data from the proposed register would also help provide a proper understanding of the scale of the issue raised by my hon. Friend.