Education Secretary Phillipson Highlights Child Safety Focus of New Bill

Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, informed the BBC that a “landmark” children’s bill, upon its introduction, “will seek to keep children safe”. Parliament received the bill on the same day that Sara Sharif’s father and stepmother received their sentences for her murder. The 10-year-old victim had been withdrawn from primary school for home education four months prior to her death. The proposed legislation includes a register to identify children in England who are not attending school, alongside expanded powers for local councils. Sara’s father and stepmother received life sentences. Mr Justice Cavanagh commented that the circumstances of the case “inevitably raise questions” regarding potential missed opportunities to prevent Sara’s death, and that it “brings into sharp relief” the dangers associated with unsupervised home-schooling for vulnerable children. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill aims to ensure continuous involvement of teachers and schools in safeguarding decisions concerning children in their localities. It also grants local authorities the power to intervene if a child’s home environment is deemed unsuitable or unsafe. Children will be assigned a unique identifier number across various services, comparable to an adult’s national insurance number. Phillipson stated on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the government’s objective was for “everyone pulling together to keep children safe”. The Education Secretary explained that this unique identifier would facilitate the sharing of information between different services, such as health and education, to prevent vulnerable children from “falling through the cracks”. She added: “It’s about police, schools, children’s social care.” She further elaborated: “The measures today will require those agencies to work together much more effectively to keep children safe.” According to the government’s proposals, parents will lose the automatic right to home-educate their children if the child is subject to a child protection plan; instead, they will first need to obtain permission from the local council. A register for children not attending school had also been proposed by the previous government. However, the Children’s Charities Coalition, comprising Action for Children, Barnardo’s, the National Children’s Bureau, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), and The Children’s Society, issued a statement saying: “The money announced today falls far short of what’s needed.” They added: “Children and families desperately need – and deserve – sustained investment in early help services, mental-health support and children’s social care. “This needs to be underpinned by an ambitious strategy to tackle child poverty.” The latest government statistics indicate a 20% increase this year in the number of children being home-educated in England. The Department for Education asserts that knowing the whereabouts of children will empower councils to guarantee the provision of high-quality education and to deliver essential support. The Local Government Association, representing local councils, has requested that the new register be accompanied by additional powers. Councillor Arooj Shah, chair of the Children and Young People Board, stated: “[The register] must be combined with powers for councils to meet face-to-face with children, which is vital to allow councils to ensure children are receiving a suitable education in a safe environment.” However, not all parties support the register proposals. Wendy Charles-Warner, chair of the home education charity Education Otherwise, informed the BBC: “International research is clear that introducing registers for home-educated children makes no positive difference whatsoever to those children’s outcomes, and leads to fewer being known to public bodies.” She further commented: “Promises of support have been made for about fifteen years now and have yet to materialise. “Over 100,000 children are already registered with local authorities as home-educated, new legislation is not needed to offer those families requested support,” she added. Multiple attempts by successive governments to introduce a register over the last decade have been unsuccessful. Phillipson expressed concern on the BBC’s Breakfast programme regarding the “big increase” in home-schooling. She stated: “I respect the rights of parents to seek to home-educate their children,” adding: “My concern is that some parents are choosing to opt out of the system because they feel their children’s needs are not being met. “We face some really big and stark attendance challenges.” The Education Policy Institute issued a warning that as many as 300,000 children might be completely absent from education. Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner, stated that she had “called on successive governments to introduce a unique identifying number for children and a register of all children not in school”. She added: “Writing these two landmark measures into law will be of huge significance for any child currently at risk of harm in this country.” She further emphasized: “It must now be supported by proper data-sharing between organisations so no child can become invisible in the system.” Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the school leaders’ union NAHT, also expressed support for the bill, noting that they had “long called for a register of pupils who are not in school” and that “it is very positive to see that this important safeguarding measure is finally being taken, after years of delay”. Implementation of the register is anticipated in 2025. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, initially revealed in the King’s Speech, encompasses a broad array of proposals, such as free breakfast clubs in all primary schools and legislation to restrict branded uniform items.