Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill - Committee (9th Day) (Continued) – in the House of Lords at 3:45 pm on 2 September 2025.
Lord Lucas:
Moved by Lord Lucas
271: Clause 31, page 57, line 9, at end insert—“(6) The register of children not in school created under section 436B must be maintained solely by the local authority and must not be compiled into or made accessible through a national database.”Member’s explanatory statementThis Amendment prohibits the creation of a centralised national database of home-educated children. It ensures that all data collected under section 436B remains under local control, in line with principles of data minimisation, family privacy, and proportionality.
Lord Lucas
Conservative
My Lords, on this I think it would be best if I listened to the Minister’s responses. I beg to move.
Lord Addington
Liberal Democrat
My Lords, we are doing things in a slightly unconventional way today, but I agree that it is probably in order. These amendments come down to the use of information. I would hope that education policy follows information and knowledge. I am talking here about the groups of home educators who are doing it not because they like the idea but because they feel they have to because needs are not being met.
Earlier the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, spoke to an Amendment specifying that you should find out certain things. Effectively, it is a reaction to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Wei. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has tabled rather subtler amendments about the use and storage of information. I hope the Government can give us at least an assurance that they will be collating information to make sure that those who are home-educating because they feel they have no choice have an answer going forward. This will be very important in the Government’s long-awaited—and, I hope, not just aspirational—changes to special educational needs. We are a large group. I would hope that they are collecting this information, making sure they do something positive with it, then telling us how they manage and distribute it afterwards. That is an equally valid point.
The Earl of Effingham
Opposition Whip (Lords)
4:00,
2 September 2025
My Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Wei, are seeking further clarification on His Majesty’s Government’s intentions about the use of data from the children not in school registers at a national level. These are indeed valid points to probe, although we might suggest caution around creating a transparency register as set out in Amendment 307, with the additional workload burden it may have on currently overstretched resources.
It is worth noting that there is already a register of information processing, often referred to as a record of processing activities: a document that outlines how an organisation handles personal data. It is a key requirement of data protection Laws such as GDPR, and serves as an inventory of all processing activities to ensure transparency and accountability within data handling practices.
Amendment 308 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, sets out some of the purposes for which national data should be kept, including monitoring the overall number of children receiving elective home education or children missing education. We will listen with interest to the Government’s feedback on this amendment.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent
Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip), Lords Spokesperson (Cabinet Office), Lords Spokesperson (Northern Ireland Office), Lords Spokesperson (Wales Office), Lords Spokesperson (Scotland Office)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for stepping in and moving the Amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this short but thoughtful debate. I will not take it personally.
Fundamentally, the Government believe that the department’s understanding of children not in school can be improved through the measures in this Bill. Although we currently have collected and published aggregate data on home education and children missing education from local authorities since 2022, our understanding of this cohort of children can be enhanced further through improved quality of data collected by the department. This data will help identify trends among the cohort of children and help determine future policy needs. I assure noble Lords that any data handled by the department will be dealt with in accordance with data protection law and GDPR principles.
I turn to the substance. Amendment 271 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, would disallow data held on a local authority register from being stored on or shared with any other database that is held and managed by an organisation such as the Department for Education. We believe there is considerable value in the Secretary of State being able to receive data from local authority registers to improve oversight and understanding of this cohort on national and local levels. It will make it easier to identify when children have fallen through the gaps.
The information collected will be used for straightforward reasons, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Addington. Analysis to identify trends to feed into policy development, maintaining the integrity of the register and supporting safeguarding, education and welfare will allow us to identify why some children are moving out of mainstream education. The adoption of this amendment would therefore undermine our efforts, as outlined in the Bill.
Amendment 307 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, would require certain public bodies that process data to create a transparency register. As we have heard, this would require those bodies to produce and maintain detailed records of all data processing including the form and publication of the record, retention period and disclosure circumstances. Transparency is an important principle, but current statutory accountability mechanisms and audit provisions already provide appropriate oversight. For example, as part of the department’s commitment to transparency, details of all organisations with which we have shared personal data are published quarterly on GOV.UK, alongside a short description of the project, which I hope the noble Lord considers to be an appropriate safeguard.
Amendment 308, also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, would, as written, make local authorities unable to share individual-level data with the Secretary of State unless it related to making a direction about a school attendance order. Other information concerning home-educated children or children missing education would be shared only at an aggregate level.
The data processed through children not in school registers is envisaged to have wider uses than just determining whether to issue a direction regarding a school attendance order. Allowing the Secretary of State access to individual-level data will provide for more robust data analysis and research and the join-up of functions aimed at promoting a child’s education or safeguarding. For example, the sharing of individual-level data will enable cross-referencing with departmental databases to locate children who have slipped under the radar due to relocation or changing educational provision.
The provision in the Bill for local authorities to share information from registers with Welsh Ministers could be used in a similar way to enable the location of children who have disappeared from registers due to moving from England to Wales or vice versa. This amendment would therefore undermine the purpose of the registration system, limiting the use of the data it could contain to statistics and exceptional cases concerning school attendance orders. For the reasons I have outlined, I kindly request that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, withdraw his amendment.
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Many hundreds of amendments are proposed by members to major bills as they pass through committee stage, report stage and third reading in both Houses of Parliament.
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