Many of my constituents who have taken the time to write and share their concerns around the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and I note there are particular worries about the potential impact on home schooling and the plans to introduce a single unique identifier (SUI) for children. Additionally, 506 constituents in my East Grinstead and Uckfield seat signed the petition calling on the Government to withdraw the Children’s Wellbeing & Schools Bill.
I would like to express my appreciation to those who chose to share their personal experiences of both mainstream and home schooling with me. We all want the best for our children and I am aware many parents opt to homeschool because they feel the state system has failed their children or it is simply not the right environment for their child.
I strongly believe all children are entitled to receive an education that allows them to reach their potential and the Government should be ensuring that all parents who decide to educate their children at home are supported. However, it is also vital that children and young people are not allowed to simply drop off the radar, and children are not home schooled when they are under a social care order and registered as necessary to do that.
I am fully committed to ensuring every child's wellbeing, both nationwide and here in my East Grinstead and Uckfield constituency. Every child deserves the opportunity to lead a safe and fulfilling life, and I welcome the child protection measures in this legislation that have clear merit. However, when the Labour Government first came to power, the plan was for a limited Children’s Wellbeing Bill dealing with children’s social care, including a national register of children not in school, which the previous Government had also been developing. But the scope shifted, and, as you are very aware, the resulting legislation now risks being both heavy-handed and poorly targeted.
Whilst I support the sentiment behind many of the child protection measures in this Bill, I am clear these registers must be a simple and non-intrusive as possible, with minimal bureaucracy. I also supported amendments to make the Bill less intrusive for families acting responsibly. One would have ensured that short activities such as those run by museums, libraries, or individual tutors would only be captured by the register if they exceeded six hours a week. Another would have removed the blanket requirement for all children in special schools to secure local authority consent before being home educated. Parents of children with serious health or special needs should not face the same bureaucracy as families under live social services investigation. I was disappointed these sensible changes put forward by the Conservatives were not adopted in the Commons.
As my colleague, Rebecca Smith, the Conservative MP for South West Devon, said
“I don’t think a lot of these parents are against having to say something about what they’re doing, but to suggest that they have to give absolute chapter and verse to their local authority – who in many cases are going to have failed them already, where that relationship may well have broken down – feels like it’s too much of a strike.”
While a consistent identifier would make it easier to join up services and better provide for children's needs, I understand a number of outstanding concerns remain about what safeguards would be in place to prevent unlawful access to children's information and you have covered these issues very comprehensively in your email.
I do support data sharing between organisations as a means of ensuring concerns about a child's wellbeing are acknowledged by all relevant parties. Tragic past cases show the dangers of not sharing information when the concerns of schools, the police, and social workers are not pieced together, and a common identifier between organisations would help to prevent this from happening again in future. Equally however, past failures of central information sharing services for children such as ContactPoint highlight the need for strong data protection measures to be laid out in advance and to ensure such a system does not turn people away from using public services for fear of private information about them being shared.
I understand the Government has said it intends to pilot the use of children's NHS numbers as SUIs and will proceed with a wider rollout only when it is satisfied the effective security and governance of such a system is in place. I shall continue to watch this matter closely for further developments and hold the Government to account on ensuring it has safe and effective measures in place to ensure our children's wellbeing.
As I said earlier, whilst I support the sentiment behind many of the child protection measures in this Bill, I believe the 'schools' element of it will be devastating. This is because it will end the freedoms given to academies that have driven improvement in England's schools for more than a decade.
The proposed changes will end academy flexibility overpay which will mean high-performing trusts will no longer be able to reward and therefore retain their best teachers above the national scale. It will also restrict schools from teaching anything other than the national curriculum, thereby limiting schools' ability to innovate and tailor their teaching to their pupils' needs. It even removes headteachers' ability to hire exceptional and experienced teachers from independent or overseas backgrounds without Qualified Teacher Status, adding cost and excessive red tape.
The Bill also ends the requirement to convert underperforming local authority schools into academies and allows councils to open new maintained schools, reversing the reforms of previous Governments that incentivised high standards and parental choice. In addition, it would also give ministers new powers to issue directions to academies on any issue from admissions to uniform, allowing Whitehall to micromanage even the smallest of decisions.
There is no other major public service in the UK that has improved as much as English schools have improved over the last 14 years. The Government now wants to undo that progress and jeopardise the education of our children for their own ideological reasons. It is educational vandalism and my party colleagues and I oppose it.
Finally, I recognise your concerns regarding ill-defined and generic terminology in the Bill’s drafting leaving far too much to interpretation and secondary legislation, with unspecified powers remaining open to future abuse or unregulated expansion. In this case, leaving important details to be decided by this or future Secretaries of State without suitable limitations or proper consideration of unintended consequences or harms is unbelievably irresponsible.
Sadly, we have also seen these issues raised about the Terminally Ill (End of Life) Bill. I agree it is not the way to create good legislation and we, as the Official Opposition, will continue to challenge the Government on this concerning lack of detail. There is much to be done by this Government to answer the many questions that parents and MPs have, as well as reassuring those who have misgivings about this, perhaps well-intentioned, but ill-thought-out Bill.
The Bill - now at the Report stage – a further chance to closely scrutinise elements of the bill and make changes – is yet to be scheduled, having concluded its line-by-line examination during the twelfth day of committee stage on 18 September.
You may be interested in reading this debate transcript from the Lords on the 10th of September covering, amongst other issues, amendments 426D and 426E put forward by the Conservative peer Lord Wei which address the way that our system interacts with families who choose to home-educate or educate otherwise,
‘Together, these two amendments embody a balanced approach. Amendment 426D asks us to learn from those local authorities that have built constructive, low-conflict relationships with families. Amendment 426E asks us to ensure that, in our zeal to regulate, we do not inflict greater harm on the very children we seek to protect. In an era when parental choice, diversity of provision and flexibility of learning are increasingly recognised as vital, we cannot afford a heavy-handed approach that alienates families and risks undermining children’s welfare.’
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill - Hansard - UK Parliament
On Monday 1 December, I am sure you know, MPs debated a petition relating to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill which received more than 166,000 signatures. Unfortunately, due to a pre-existing parliamentary diary appointment I was unable to attend but I followed the debate with great interest. I have provided the link to the full debate transcript here for you to read if you would like:
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill - Hansard - UK Parliament
In it, my colleague Bradley Thomas MP spoke for many when he said,
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.
The right balance must be struck between strengthening the safeguards for children and young adults and ensuring that the new legislation does not unintentionally harm thousands due to a one-size-fits-all approach. Rather than demonising all home educators and introducing measures that, in practice, will fail to improve many children’s wellbeing, the Government should redirect their focus towards improving support for SEND provision and children’s social services, ensuring better working relationships between home educators and local authorities, and fostering school environments that actively tackle bullying and rising classroom violence
I can assure you my colleagues and I in the Conservative Party will continue to press this Labour Government to provide answers to the questions and concerns I know so many of my constituents still have regarding this legislation.
