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Children, Schools and Families Bill

It seems that the Government have learned very little; indeed, I believe that the report on which their recommendations are based was described by one member of the expert group called in to help us as one of the most rushed, flawed and populist exercises with which he had ever been involved. I know that the Secretary of State bears no malice towards home education, so I hope that in Committee he and the Minister for Schools and Learners will do their best to address the many legitimate concerns. I do not know of any home educating parent who supports these provisions. I, like almost every Member of this House, have been inundated by correspondence, telephone calls and e-mails from, and had private meetings with, home educating parents who are deeply concerned about this legislation, because it undermines the right of a family who have broken no laws and placed no child in danger to decide what is in the interests of their child. As the debate on home education has developed, I have become particularly worried about the way in which various issues have been conflated; I am especially worried about the conflation of safeguarding and child protection with quality of education. I deeply regret the way statistics have been used to suggest somehow that children are intrinsically at greater risk if they are being home educated; I believe I am right in saying that not a single home-educated child has had to be taken into care as a result of a child protection plan, yet there are those who have sedulously spread the myth that somehow children are at greater risk through being home educated.