5. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Education: Securing the Right to a Suitable Education for All Children

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:13 pm on 30 January 2018.

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Photo of Kirsty Williams Kirsty Williams Liberal Democrat 5:13, 30 January 2018

Thank you, Llyr. Can I start with the issue of—? Apologies to Darren Millar. When considering the approach, I have indeed looked at the legal obligations that we as Welsh Government are under, and that includes the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Improving outcomes for all learners, whether electively home educated or in mainstream education, I believe, contributes to article 3, article 4, article 5, article 12, and articles 18, 19, 24, 28 and 29 of the UNCRC and we will continue, as we develop the statutory guidance, to ensure that a full children's rights impact assessment is carried out at those stages. Certainly, those have been at the forefront of my consideration in looking at these issues.

The Member asks, 'Why not a register?' and actually wouldn't a register be easier. Well, a compulsory register—a compulsory register that would potentially criminalise parents if they failed to register—relies on those parents to do that. The issue is that that legislation would only be as good as our ability to enforce it, which means you need to know who hasn't registered. So, there's a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario there. I have thought very carefully about it. If a parent, for whatever reason, is determined to not have their child known to services, I suspect this element of compulsion could have the unintended consequence—the very real unintended consequence—of driving those parents further away from engagement with statutory services. By placing the requirement on local authorities rather than parents, I think that gives us the best possible chance of identifying as many children as possible, recognising—and, Llyr, you and I have had this conversation before—that this is not the answer to all our children's safeguarding issues, because whether you have a compulsory register that puts the legal emphasis on the parents or whether you take this approach, which puts the emphasis on local authorities, this only applies to children of a compulsory school age, and that is five to 16. So, it would be remiss of us to think that any approach around bigger regulation of elective home education solves that problem of a small minority of families who decide, for whatever reasons, to keep their children away from universal services.