Members of the House of Lords have warned the government that its proposed home education register would create a culture of ‘surveillance’.
During the House of Lords’ Committee Stage on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, Peers finished debating the proposals’ overreach into family life, which critics describe as an ‘unworkable administrative burden on families’.
Parents must provide not only their names and addresses, but the amount of time each child spends ‘receiving education from each parent’ – and provide the same information for anyone else who educates the child, updating it within 15 days of any change.
Green Party Peer Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb emphasised that it is ‘simply not true’ that school is the ideal place for all children, and by ‘making home education harder for parents, we are discouraging them from doing what is best for their child and for many others’.
She highlighted that there is an ‘inaccurate conflation of home education with a safeguarding risk’, and ‘intrusive monitoring’ would only be ‘another diversion targeting huge swathes of decent people and ignoring those in real need’.
Conservative Peer Lord Lucas also questioned the ‘breathtakingly open-ended’ data collection, calling the time-keeping requirements an attempt ‘to force home education into a classroom straitjacket’.
