Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill - My letter to the lords
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill has had its second reading in parliament and will be going to the house of lords in a matter of weeks.
I think this bill is a terrible idea and I (Jay) have written a letter to some of the lords to tell them why.
Read on to find out more….
“This bandwagon of villainising home education is causing far more harm than good. I urge you, please, please, please, for the sake of vulnerable children, speak up against this bill and all the harm it is going to do.”
If you would like to know more about the bill, please see the home ed daily website, education otherwise website and/or watch my interview with Amie Miles on YouTube.
I decided to take part in a Education Otherwise campaign to write to members of the House of Lords about this bill. You can read my letter below. If you would like to write your own letter, see the bottom of the page.
My letter (sent to 5 members of the House of Lords ahead of the reading of the bill there)
I am writing to you regarding the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill as I have grave concerns about the content about Elective Home Education (EHE).
My background and current situation put me in an excellent position to comment on these issues as I was electively home educated myself (until the age of 14), along with my 3 siblings, have home educated my son from the age of 7 to his current age of 16 and also work with the home education community.
My concerns are as follows:
It effectively removes a parents right to choose the education that best suits their child and places far too much power in the hands of the local authorities.
I know my son better than any other person alive (apart from himself of course!), how could it be possible that another person, no matter how much training they have had, could know better what he needs than the person who has been with him and cared for him constantly since the day he was born (and, in fact, before that too!)
When he started school refusing at age 6, I knew that it was due to the pressures he was facing at school. I knew that he struggled to use the bathrooms because they were too crowded at break times and often dirty or felt unsafe. I knew that he would misbehave just enough so that he would be sent to read because his developing brain needed rest periods and this was his way of meeting that need. I knew that asking him to do homework meant that his precious rest and recreation time with me was being eroded and sullied. I also knew that this was completely pointless as the evidence is clear that homework has zero effect on achievement for under-11s, as Professor John Hattie found in his Visible Learning meta-analysis (2009).
Against my better judgement and instincts, I continued to force him to go to school as recommended by the teachers and I saw how much it affected his trust in me, his self-confidence and his mental health. There is a reason why youth mental health has declined in the last few years. Action for Children notes that a recent study found that there was a 65% increase in mental health admissions for young people being admitted to general acute medical wards in England over the last decade and goes on to cite school pressure as one of the causes.
By the time I decided to deregister my son from school, our relationship was seriously damaged and his mental health had suffered greatly. He was having regular meltdowns, some of which resulted in him “throwing himself away” in the recycling bins in our front garden because he was “garbage” (quotes are his words).
It has taken many years to repair the damage done in those few months and our relationship is now the best I could possibly imagine and he tells me I am the best Mum in the world every single night, I know this sounds like a lie but I promise it is the truth! He recently tried out a 14-16 programme at a local college but still finds the mainstream education system too overwhelming so I know that his time in school had a lasting impact on that.
Having worked with the home ed community for many years I know our story is far from unusual. In fact, I have heard far, far worse. Sadly I know of many children who have turned to self-harm to deal with the emotions they were feeling as a result of their time in school.
This is why the rhetoric this bill pushes, that school is the safest, best place for children to be, seems absolutely ridiculous to me. So many children suffer in schools, at the hands of bullies (peers and staff), with the pressures of forced academia, with the sensory input, with the lack of freedom. I know that school works perfectly well for some children but it simply DOES NOT work for all.
2. I have seen the argument that this bill will simply give local authorities powers which they can use if needed but there are issues with this too.
Local Authorities cannot agree on what they call the person or team tasked with liaising with the home ed community, or what their job role is so there is no consistency. Those holding these roles often have no relevant qualifications and are not required to have any knowledge of home education. Part of their job role is often “to support children to go back to school”, which is often not the best course of action, nor practicable in a lot of cases. This immediately shows a level of prejudice which is completely unacceptable. In addition to this, many local authorities repeatedly overstep the legal bounds of their jobs. Many illegally doorstep home educators, turning up at the homes of children who have been traumatised by the education system and demanding entry, to see work, to see the children etc. This causes a great deal of upset to families who are trying to heal from deep emotional stress, which I am sure you can imagine, is anything but helpful. Even worse, there is no viable form of address for local authorities who have overstepped the mark in these ways, leaving these families powerless to combat this kind of behaviour.
3. Of course, we need to address the issue the bill seems to be riding on - safeguarding. I need to be very clear about several points here, as I believe they are pivotal and extremely important for safeguarding children.
Here I am going to quote a report from 2015 by Education Otherwise (Home Education and the Safeguarding Myth: Analysing the Facts Behind the Rhetoric) as it clearly sets out the evidence for my argument that home education is not a safeguarding risk:
“Recent reports have described home educated children as ‘invisible and isolated’ leading to safeguarding risks. The NSPCC recently published a report which used Serious Case Reviews in which home education was cited as a ‘key factor’, to support their call for monitoring of home educated children. This call has been taken up by the Chair of the Association of Elective Home Education Professionals, a group of Local Authority staff, to further the agenda of introducing such monitoring. This research uses information provided by 132 Local Authorities in England, in response to Freedom of Information requests, to analyse the comparative levels of safeguarding risk in children aged 0-4 years, children aged 5-16 at school and home educated children. Home educated children were found to be disproportionately scrutinised, being approximately twice as likely to be referred to Social Services at 9.39 – 10.19%, as were children aged 0-4 years at 5.24% and children aged 5-16 who attend school at 4.93%. Despite that double referral rate, Child Protection Plans were in place for only 0.17 - 0.24% of home educated children compared to 0.69% of all 0-4 year olds and 0.49 of 5- 16 year old schooled children. Referrals to Social Services were found to be 3.5 - 5 times less likely to lead to a Child Protection Plan with home educated children than with referrals of schooled children aged 5-16 at 9.5% and 5 - 7 times less likely to lead to a Child Protection Plan than referrals for children aged 0-4 years at 13.23%. Rates of home educated children subject to a Child Protection Plan at 0.17 - 0.24% of the population, were also found to be less than teaching staff guilty of abuse offences 0.18 – 0.46%. Home educated children are found to not be at increased safeguarding risk, rather they are shown to be at lower risk than other children. Analysis of the Serious Case Reviews cited by the NSPCC as having home education as a ‘key factor’, demonstrate that all of the children involved were known to professionals and that there were multiple missed opportunities to act on concerns expressed by professionals, in each case.”
Of course, the recent case of Sarah Sharif, has been talked about a lot in reference to this bill and I want to make it clear that every child should be cared for and protected to the full extent possible and that what happened to her, and to all the other children who cases get mentioned in reference to these issues, is awful and should never have happened. What I want you to understand is that those cases did not have the outcomes they did due to home education. Sarah Sharif was known to Children’s Social Services (CSS) from before her birth, subject to prior foster care and numerous referrals were made to CSS which were not properly acted on (Education Otherwise report, 2024). A careful examination of the many other cases that get mentioned as issues with home education, will show that this is the case over and over again. Home education is repeatedly conflated with off-rolling (a practice where a school encourages the parents of “problem children” to deregister them so that the school no longer has to deal with them) or children missing in education. These are 3 different things and need to be treated as such.
What worries me so much about this is not only that families who are home educating are being scapegoated and made to suffer due to these inaccuracies and prejudices, but the fact that the proposed measures in this bill (such as a register and increased oversight) will not do anything to stop children being neglected, abused and murdered. I am desperately upset at the thought that money is going to be wasted on penalising and further traumatising families who are doing the best thing for their children, whilst not having any positive effect on safeguarding the most vulnerable children in our society. What we need is proper funding for children’s social services, so that the caseloads can be reduced and the social workers can focus on helping the children they already know to be in danger.
This bandwagon of villainising home education is causing far more harm than good. I urge you, please, please, please, for the sake of vulnerable children, speak up against this bill and all the harm it is going to do.
There are so many other issues with this bill but I feel that this is all I can manage to write about for today. If you would like to speak to me further about this bill I would be very happy to discuss it at your convenience.
Thanks so much for reading.
Jay
References:
Professor John Hattie, Visible Learning meta-analysis (2009)
Action for Children, Is youth mental health getting better or worse? (2025)
Education Otherwise, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill (2024)
If you would like to write your own letter, I would recommend joining this facebook group and searching for “Calling for volunteers. Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill”.
Here are some points you may want to include (written by Hafod Holmes):
1. The Bill undermines the primacy of the parent in the child's education by introducing a requirement to gain consent to remove children from the school roll.
2. It gives local authorities the right to decide your child’s best interests.
3. There is no viable form of address for badly behaved local authorities.
4. The Bill introduces automatic formal procedures requiring them to satisfy the authority that home education is in the child's best interests on the basis of a Children Act 1989 s47 investigation, despite 78% of such investigations do not end in Child Protection Plans.
5. It will disrupt children’s lives even when their education is excellent.
6. The level of data reporting required is excessive and unmanageable for many. Covering weekends and holidays.
7. It is intrusive of family privacy and goes well beyond the data held for school children.
8. Data changes must be reported within 15 days including details of how many hours each parent spends providing education to the child. This completely ignores the reality of home education and is grossly intrusive of family privacy.
9. Education providers, (absolutely everyone, not just businesses) must all provide data to the local authority for every home educated child but not for school children receiving the same service at the same time. This will mean that providers stop offering services.
10. If a request to enter the family home is refused by the parent, the local authority can serve a school attendance order on that basis. (If a child is on a child protection plan and the parent refuses entry to the home, children's services have to make an application to court to obtain an order for assessment and yet, home educating parents are subject to automatic orders).
11. The Bill contains no tangible support for home educating families whatsoever. Not even access to exams.
