Local authorities will be required to visit children who are being home-schooled, as part of the government’s response to the harrowing death of Sara Sharif.
Sara was just 10-years-old when she was brutally murdered in 2023 by her father, Urfan Sharif, and stepmother, Beinash Batool.
A recent review into Sara’s death found she was ‘failed by the safeguarding system’ and was taken out of school to keep her ‘hidden from view in the last week of her life’.
As part of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, councils across England will now be ordered to ‘assess the child’s home environment within 15 days’ of them being listed on a home schooling register.
Education Minister Baroness Smith of Malvern told the House of Lords: ‘We must face the reality that some children are in unsafe or unsuitable education, and unlike children in school, they can lack regular contact with adults who can safeguard and support them.’
‘As part of this new requirement, local authorities will be empowered to visit the child in their home,’ Baroness Smith continued.
‘This responds directly to a recommendation from the review into the death of Sara Sharif which made clear the importance of setting a clear expectation that local authorities consider the suitability of a child’s home environment as soon as possible after withdrawal from school.’
However, she added that while ‘it is important to be clear that…home education was relevant to Sara’s visibility to agencies, her death was caused by the actions of her father, not by her being home educated.’
Before she died, Sara was pulled out of school twice. The first time was in June 2022, after a teacher spotted a bruise under her left eye, which was logged in the school’s child protection system (CPOMS). Sara claimed another child had hit her, but when the teacher raised concerns with her stepmother, a week later her father told staff he wanted to home-school her.
The second instance was in April 2023, after which Sara was never seen outside of her house again.
Over this period, both CPOMS and Surrey council’s children’s single point of access (CSPA) were contacted about Sara’s welfare but no concrete action was taken by the two bodies.
Within the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the government also proposed giving councils the ability to refuse consent when a parent wants to remove their child from school if the child has been on a protection plan in the previous five years.
Peers voted by 231 to 147, majority 84, to extend the proposal, but Baroness Barran – who also took part in the recent parliamentary debate about the school’s bill – pointed to a problem. She said: ‘[I]n Sara’s case, she was only on a child protection plan at birth, so the government’s amendment would have made no difference in her case.’
Sara Sharif was found dead at her family home in Woking, Surrey in August 2023. Urfan Sharif and Beinash Batool were sentenced to life imprisonment in 2024, with minimum terms of 40 years and 33 years respectively. Her uncle, Faisal Malik, also received 16 years for allowing Sara’s death to happen.
Image: Giovanni Gagliardi/UnSplash
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