Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-18
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, in moving this amendment I will also speak to my other amendments in this group. This group is looking at the stage of the process at which penalties start to come in. I feel that the wording of the Bill is at the moment far too hair-trigger. The words that Amendment 87 seeks to replace mean that a local authority must tip a home-educating parent, or a parent, into the school attendance order process if they have failed to provide any scintilla of information. That could be anything; it could just be that they have spelt something wrong or have not got the date right, or whatever, and does not seem appropriate I am not sure that the Government will find my wording appropriate either, but we ought to look to soften this to make it clear that for these hard-pressed parents, an ordinary error of forgetfulness or a failure which does not find its roots in opposition or deliberate obfuscation should not be punished immediately. It should be something the local authority should seek to engage with I came across one example where the local authority had been corresponding with a good home-educating parent and had decided that it really wanted to see examples of the child’s work. It is one of those arguable questions you come across as to whether the experts’ report that had been provided should have been sufficient. It did not then e-mail the parent to say, "If you continue in this, we will tip you into school attendance orders". It wrote by snail mail, to an address which was wrong, and made no other reference to it until six months later when the school attendance order appeared. There needs to be a much more active relationship and there should not be things in the Bill which make a lazy relationship between the local authority and parents acceptable. The local authority ought to be working with the parent to get things right Amendment 88 seeks to restore the current timescale of 15 days, rather than the 10 days in the Bill. This is the crucial step; it is the point when things get serious. Parents ought to be given a reasonable length of time and 15 days is what is accepted. The Government have argued us out of all sorts of other extensions of timescales, but this one is crucial Amendments 90 and 92 come back to the subject of a tribunal, which we have covered. It is really important that the Government do something. I am with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on Amendment 95 in wanting to reduce the maximum prison sentence to three months In Amendment 97, I am urging the Government to provide proper funding to local authorities as they take on these additional duties on school attendance. Particularly post Covid, this is clearly a complicated problem with its roots in all sorts of aspects of society. Local authorities ought to be properly supported to get it right and become really effective at helping children to get into school I also look forward to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, speaking to Amendment 100. He has put his finger on a really serious thing there My Amendment 110 suggests that Ofsted should be able to inspect local authorities on their performance with elective home education and absence. I do not want all these things we have suggested to come into force—it would just be ridiculous to have everything—but we need some structure for oversight of local authorities, so that they feel motivated to improve. Ofsted might be one of the options, so I hope that the Government will keep that under consideration I look forward to what other people will have to say on this group and beg to move my Amendment 87.