Proposals requiring families of children subject to protection enquiries to get council consent for home education risk creating an “abuser’s charter”, the government has been warned.
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, announced this week that she would legislate for new powers and protections for children in the social care system.
Under one proposal, families of children subject to child protection enquiries or plans will need local authority consent to withdraw their children to educate them at home.
The law would also give councils the power to require children already in home education to attend school if they become subject to an enquiry or plan.
Child protection enquiries are made when councils have “reasonable cause to suspect that a child who lives, or is found, in their area is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm”.
A child protection plan sets out the action that needs to be taken to keep the child safe.
‘Abuser’s charter’ warning
Wendy Charles-Warner, of home education campaign group Education Otherwise, said it was “perfectly reasonable” to require consent for those with child protection plans.
But including those who are subject to protection enquiries would “lead to any child referred to children’s social services for assessment being subject to (presumably) a school attendance order, regardless of the outcome of that referral”.
Government data shows there were more than 621,000 referrals to children’s social services in the year to March 2024, compared to 49,900 protection plans.
Charles-Warner said the new law risked becoming an “abuser’s charter”.
She added: “This will also lead to abusive former partners or individuals seeking to harass families making nuisance-mongering referrals in order to exploit the provision to further their abuse and harassment.”
In its policy paper on the proposals, the government said it would “be further aided by our plans to enable local authorities to consider the home and any other learning environment when determining whether home education is suitable”.
Charles-Warner said this “appears to be a statement of intent to introduce mandatory home visits and inspections”.
“There is no basis for mandating such meetings, which would invade the privacy of every home-educating family and do nothing to ‘safeguard’ children.”
‘Protective factor that school can offer was missing’
It comes as a growing number of parents are choosing to educate their children at home. Labour has pledged to create a register of children not in school, and a single unique identifier so children can be tracked across different services.
A Schools Week investigation found the rate at which children left the classroom for home education doubled last year, with big increases in some of the country’s most deprived areas.
A Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel report in May warned that children in home education had died or were abused because “the protective factor that school can offer was missing from their lives”.
Most children in home education were “safe, thrive and live happy lives”, it added.
The panel, which conducts reviews of serious child safeguarding cases, published a report about 27 referrals received between August 2020 and October 2021 about 41 children who were not in school.
The children were “subjected to sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect”. Six children died and the 35 others were “seriously harmed”.
The panel found that home-educated children who were the focus of safeguarding reviews were “less visible to safeguarding agencies than those who attend school”.
Twenty-three children were previously known to social care as children in need or were the subject of a child protection plan. But half of the children “appear to have been kept out of sight of any agency”.
However, home-educating families have increasingly warned that they are being forced to take their children out of school because their needs are not being met.
More parents ‘forced to home educate’
Stephen Kingdom, a former DfE adviser, warned that “increasing numbers of parents are forced to home educate because they have been unable to get the support their children need in schools.
“We also know… that failings in social care can lead to parents of disabled children being subject to child protection proceedings rather than receiving the help they need.”
The government has confirmed that it will extend the duty of councils to promote the educational achievement of looked-after children, children in need and those on protection plans to kinship carers. The role will be carried out by virtual school heads.
Ministers will “consider whether the extensions to the role of the virtual school head should include a requirement to support all children leaving custody”.
Phillipson has also announced a “crack down” on care providers making “excessive profits”.
Several large companies providing social care also run independent special schools. Schools Week asked the DfE what it expects the policy impact to be on the schooling side of the firms’ work. It has received no response.
Children with additional needs become traumatised in school
Schools and local authorities refuse to support those children
These individuals in positions of power either through lack of skill or blatant exploitation of that power then blame the parents for the trauma caused in school.
The odds are stacked against them fines criminal record social care CIN child protection.
Those parents sacrifice their income their wellbeing and in desperation try to educate their children themselves once they accept noone will listen noone will help.
So far the education secretary has increased the powers to punish these parents and force the kids back on a school roll and increased fines and the power of those who due to incompetence or abuse of power have caused this trauma. In relation to SEND she has told everyone to ‘be paitient’
We have been very very patient. Support our kids. Don’t force them into mainstream schools where they have been caused harm. Inclusion is another word for cost cutting.
Untill you can support them accept our choice that you are not up to the job and address the reason such rapidly increasing numbers think you are not up to the job.
Kids and parents are voting with their feet be it long term absence or EHE our kids are not fine in school. This is not a home problem this IS a SCHOOL problem.
All this does is confirm to me you don’t understand the problem and untill you do you will not solve it.
Why isn’t the education secretary engaging with home ed families to understand why they make these choices and how they could be supported. Why is she just engaging with education and social care they don’t have a clue if they could support our kids then they would be supporting our kids.
There are different schools, some great some not so much. Focus should be on bettering monitoring wellbeing of children attending schools and home schooling should be in my opinion only in exceptional circumstances or when homeschooling may be more beneficial for a child (let’s say only bad rated schools nearby and it’s easy to see that education at home is better option, child is happy and attends other no school related clubs, activity groups) . Child that is homeschooled may not have their activities enriched, may be not exposed to different viewpoints, social situations that eventually they will have to navigate as grown ups, they may have no friends, or only in family group. I’m sorry that I fail to see how one parent maybe without knowledge of basic psychology/pedagogics is supposed to educate their child. If child attends school teachers, other parents, other children can notice if something’s wrong. If they don’t attend, unless they scream on top of their lungs at home and walk in rags all seems well. I feel that if homeschooling, parents should get yearly visits and children evaluation not of their skills but of their wellbeing without parent present once a year.
It’s all fear mongering control by the Privateers posing as service provider. Profit led not care led. The government is nothing more than mafia.
Councils child trafficking through unconstitutional family courts. Sham concens fear mongering propaganda.
God bless our families and keep our children home safe from the child snatchers.
Terminology is important..”Children not in school” are not the same as “home educated children”.
Children not in school includes:
* Children missing Education
* Home schooling aka Education otherwise than at school (EOTAS), (This category includes:
– hospital school
– CAMHS kids,
– Flexi schooling and children waiting for a school place or EHCP appeal due to current school unable to meet needs
* Off Rolled children
* Elective Home Education aka Home Ed
It is extremely unfair on home educated parents to assume that a child missing Education is home educated unless the parent has stated as such. There is a much greater risk to a child who’s parent is not willingly taking on their child’s education so haven’t deregistered.
Also I would argue that being in school is not a safe place. As most of the children listed above are not in school as they came to harm being there,
Which is why the parents either took on their child’s education and are doing a sterling job or their child is stuck in a void because their parents can’t or won’t take on their education but the child can’t/won’t attend school. These are the kids missing Education and are at risk and the system should be ashamed for letting them down.
Legislate helping those stuck in the void those missing an education not home ed!
Absolutely.
Conflating absent from school with Home-ed children, is a deliberately misleading statement. The vast majority of children, sadly harmed or killed, are known to social services and often courts due to their parents/ carers problems. Not the typical home-schooling carer.
Also if forced back to school on a mere investigation, the only schools with immediate vacancies, will be the worst schools, so likely to be worse for the children, especially those who’s carer’s elected homeschooling after trying state schooling.
Many councils consider a child who is disabled, a “Child in Need”.
If this is taken to it’s logical conclusion, any child with SEND who is EHE, (often due to the lack of suitable support in mainstream schools coupled with a dearth of suitable specialist provison) could be required to attend school and parents served with an attendance notice!