Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-04-27
Topic: Education
Clive Soley (Labour, Centre-left): I discussed this with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I understand his strength of feeling about it. He brings a special knowledge to this, which is important, but I think his fears are overstated. I will explain why again. For a start, the beginning of Clause 2(2) says that, "the Secretary of State must have regard" As he and other Members in the House will know, "must" does not carry the same legislative power as "shall". Straightaway there is an ability for the Secretary of State or Minister to exercise some restraint Very importantly, this is not as absolute as the noble Lord is reading it. He said that there was a difficulty in understanding or interpreting the meaning of words such as "ability". I put to him that there is not. The clause says, "reading, writing and numeracy, which takes into account the child’s age" That is where he freezes on it and gets quite concerned, but the following matters are really important. They are, "ability, aptitude and any special educational needs and disabilities" Things such as aptitude have to be considered here. Aptitude matters and we know what it means. If a child has school phobia that is an aptitude we have to consider. You could call it a disability if you like, but a phobia is not quite that The clause also deals with "any special educational needs" and "ability". It is now many years since I worked in a hospital for what were then called educationally subnormal children. We would not call them that now; it was very different. The treatment at that time, because we had less knowledge and less use of drugs, was pretty awful but we always made attempts to help those children, who had far greater problems than almost anyone in this House can imagine. We tried to teach them to have some basic understanding of numbers, reading and, where possible, although it was very rare, writing. We can do it. The reason for putting the wording in the Bill is to try to meet the noble Lord’s concerns I understand this, though. As I said in an earlier intervention, one of the things that we ought to consider that might give the noble Lord added reassurance on this is to look at the possibility of an appeals system to an independent or totally separate educational body, or even an individual with special knowledge and special skills. If a local authority or an individual welfare officer is doing what the noble Lord most fears, it might be that in the final Bill there should be an appeals mechanism. I ask him to think about that The problem with taking out this clause, which is what the noble Lord would do, is that it would leave a lot of other children vulnerable. In trying to protect that group that he is rightly concerned about he would put others at risk. We need children who do not have special problems to be able to read, write and be numerate. We know that in some situations of home education, often for children who have been pushed out of a school, they are not getting that information. The noble Lord is in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. He wants specific attention paid to a small group of children who are very important, but there is a much larger group of children who need to be able to read, write and be numerate. They are often among those people who have been pushed into home education where children are not getting these skills I ask the noble Lord to look again at the clause and read it as a whole. It is not an absolute requirement that the Secretary of State is obliged to enforce. It is also true that the Secretary of State has the power to say to the local authority, "You must take these other factors into account, not only age". You cannot do it just on age, which is what the noble Lord was worried about at first but now feels that this is not enough Finally, you have to agree with the parents and the child—that is the second part of it. Clause 2(2)(b) states that, "the views of children and parents who elect home education", must be taken into account. That is why I ask the noble Lord whether he would take away the idea of an independent appeals system. If parents and children felt that it could not work for them, which is what he is worried about, and if, for example, he is right about the case he identified, you will need an appeal mechanism, but you do not want a mechanism which does not allow the provision to happen for other children.