""Your response identifier is 610"

Here's Ali's response, and my work on this Consultation on Home Education Guidelines is now finished. Tom has disappeared with our paper copy of the draft guidelines and says he'll submit his own response tomorrow if he can find the time.

Question 1: Do you agree that it is helpful for the DfES to issue guidelines to local authorities?

Answer: Yes

Comment: But they've got to be clear and accurate.


Question 2: Do you agree that the description of the law (paragraphs 2.1 - 2.3) relating to elective home education is accurate and clear?

Answer: Not sure



Question 3: Do you agree that the description of local authorities’ responsibilities (paragraphs 2.5-2.11) is accurate and helpful?

Answer: No.

Comment: No, because progress is a relative term and LA officials don't understand HE because they were educated and often worked as adults in schools and it's a completely different kind of education. There's a massive problem with officials not understanding at all how natural, personalised learning actually works. The term 'reasonable progress' needs to be removed.


Question 4: Do you agree that the section on contact with the local authority (paragraphs 3.4-3.7) is accurate and helpful?

Answer: No.

Comment: Re: 'risk-based approach': Some of the worst abuses and problems happen in average middle class families. It's impossible to judge, using a risk-based approach, who to investigate and who not to. They can't discriminate like that, so that whole paragraph should be removed.



Question 5: Do you agree that the section on providing a full-time education (paragraphs 3.11-3.14) – and in particular, the characteristics of provision (paragraph 3.13) – is accurate and helpful?

Answer: No.

Comment: Education inspectors are not qualified to judge autonomous home education provision in detail. If there are no books, pcs etc present and a child seems to be living a very inactive and not outgoing lifestyle even though it seems like it might want to then yes, its obvious. But with regard to the specifics the HE inspectors aren't qualified. The list in 3.13 needs to be removed.



Question 6: Do you agree that the section on developing relationships (section 4) is useful?

Answer: No.

Comment: Local Authorities should leave home educating families alone unless there is an appearance of failure to provide a suitable education.


Question 7: Are the suggested resources in section 5 and appendix 2 useful?

Answer: No.

Comment: They're irrelevant to these guidelines.


Please use this space for any other comments you wish to make about the guidance:

"Your response identifier is 605"

Zara answered the Consultation on Home Education Guidelines (closing date: tomorrow) as follows:

Question 1: Do you agree that it is helpful for the DfES to issue guidelines to local authorities?

Answer: Yes

Comment: I think the guidelines should focus on clearly explaining the legal position to Local Authorities.


Question 2: Do you agree that the description of the law (paragraphs 2.1 - 2.3) relating to elective home education is accurate and clear?

Answer: Not sure


Question 3: Do you agree that the description of local authorities’ responsibilities (paragraphs 2.5-2.11) is accurate and helpful?

Answer: Not sure.


Question 4: Do you agree that the section on contact with the local authority (paragraphs 3.4-3.7) is accurate and helpful?

Answer: Not sure.


Question 5: Do you agree that the section on providing a full-time education (paragraphs 3.11-3.14) – and in particular, the characteristics of provision (paragraph 3.13) – is accurate and helpful?

Answer: Not sure.


Question 6: Do you agree that the section on developing relationships (section 4) is useful?

Answer: Not sure.


Question 7: Are the suggested resources in section 5 and appendix 2 useful?

Answer: Not sure.


Please use this space for any other comments you wish to make about the guidance:

I want to use this response to explain how annual Local Authority monitoring of my education has affected it over the years.

For the first few years we had annual visits, not because our education was poor, but because the council kept wanting to check if it was suitable for us. They never found any problems, but the visits did cause problems for my education.

After being deregistered, we deschooled and then started learning autonomously. It’s been fantastic to be able to learn all the time, following my own interests and learning in the best way for me. My mother was always there to help but we all found that we were more interested in learning when nobody was trying to make us do it. My mother realised this and let us take charge of our learning, which meant that we learned much more than we would have done otherwise.

But I dreaded the annual visits and worried that the Local Authority advisor might find something wrong with what we were doing and that this might stop us from doing it. I became so concerned about this that I was put off the learning process for weeks beforehand and after the visits. Each home visit probably damaged my education for at least a month out of every year.

I would like the government’s guidelines to local authorities to concentrate on trying to prevent this kind of unnecessary and illegal monitoring of home educating families by Local Authorities from happening.

"Your response identifier is 554"

After much consideration and reading of other responses and related discussions, the following is my response to the government's Consultation on Home Education Guidelines (Closing Date: Tuesday 31 July 2007):


Question 1: Do you agree that it is helpful for the DfES to issue guidelines to local authorities?

Answer: Yes

Comment: Yes I do, but only if they're very carefully worded to be exactly in line with statute and case law and only if they cannot possibly be interpreted as giving Local Authorities more powers than the law allows. In their present form they are confusing, incorrect and contradictory in places, but if they were rewritten to be absolutely clear, correct and concise, and addressed only to Local Authorities rather than to home educators also, they would be helpful in many cases.


Question 2: Do you agree that the description of the law (paragraphs 2.1 - 2.3) relating to elective home education is accurate and clear?

Answer: Yes

Comment: Yes, with the exception of the use of the word: ‘broad’. The guidelines should clearly and carefully stick to adjectives such as ‘efficient’ and ‘suitable’ in describing the nature of educational provision, because use of any other terms for this purpose might encourage some Local Authorities to make ultra vires demands on home educators.


Question 3: Do you agree that the description of local authorities’ responsibilities (paragraphs 2.5-2.11) is accurate and helpful?

Answer: No.

Comment: In 2.5 “all children should make reasonable progress” absolutely needs to be removed, otherwise over-zealous officials might be tempted to use it as a reason to try to monitor home educated children in order to attempt to measure their progress. My experience of home educating is that any kind of official measuring of my children's progress had a marked, direct and negative effect on their interest in learning and their motivation to learn.


Question 4: Do you agree that the section on contact with the local authority (paragraphs 3.4-3.7) is accurate and helpful?

Answer: No.

Comment: 3.4: I know many home educators and have never met one who “welcomed regular contact with the local authority as an opportunity to reaffirm their provision.” I therefore think the first sentence in 3.4 should be removed as it may have the unfortunate effect of encouraging over-zealous officials and enabling some self-justification of their actions. The remainder of 3.4 is unclear and unnecessary in my opinion.

3.5: The wording of this section needs changing, as parts of it may lead to ultra vires actions by Local Authorities. “Can be provided” needs to be changed to “is being provided”. I’m not aware of any requirement in law that electively home-educated children should be approached by a Local Authority or by its parents to be given an opportunity to take part in meetings. Even the suggestion in these guidelines that meetings might take place (without, each time, listing all the alternative ways for parents to provide information) could encourage over-zealous officers to try to insist on meeting parents and/or children. I therefore think the last sentence in 3.5 should be removed.

3.6 also needs changing, to wording which is absolutely clear and not open to confusion or misinterpretation. “Reasonable concerns” in particular is unclear and unspecific. I think the guidelines should stick to the precise wording of the relevant statute and case law, because anything else could exacerbate the problems that I know some families have with some Local Authorities.

3.7 I am strongly of the opinion that the guidelines should not seek to make assumptions about whether parents enjoy home visits or not, because any such statements will be used by some Local Authority employees to attempt to pressurise parents into receiving them.


Question 5: Do you agree that the section on providing a full-time education (paragraphs 3.11-3.14) – and in particular, the characteristics of provision (paragraph 3.13) – is accurate and helpful?

Answer: No.

Comment: The lists in 3.12 and 3.13 should be excluded from the guidelines because some Local Authorities will misuse them as an excuse to make ultra vires demands on parents.


Question 6: Do you agree that the section on developing relationships (section 4) is useful?

Answer: No.

Comment: The purpose of these guidelines should be to assist Local Authorities in understanding how to fulfil their legal duties effectively. The development of relationships between home educators and Local Authorities, where sometimes useful when they spontaneously occur, often have their drawbacks and can sometimes result in problems between home educating families with some inevitably being excluded from the relationship, for various reasons. These guidelines will be most helpful if they retain their focus on providing a clear, unequivocal explanation of the legal position and do not seek to extend this. Talk of developing relationships is unnecessary and detracts from the absolute clarity required, in my opinion.


Question 7: Are the suggested resources in section 5 and appendix 2 useful?

Answer: No.

Comment: In my opinion the guidelines should confine themselves to the vital job of clearly explaining the legal position of Local Authorities with regard to home educators and their children. Inclusion of extra information will detract from the crucial clarity of this function.


Please use this space for any other comments you wish to make about the guidance:

You have not consulted on sections 3.8 – 3.10. My comments on these sections are as follows:

3.10 makes bizarre use of the word ‘proposals’, even though this has absolutely no relevance to English law. This section needs to be rewritten to accurately and clearly represent the correct legal position in England.

You have not consulted on sections 3.15 to 3.19. My comments on these sections are as follows:

The guidelines should make it very clear that where a statement of Special Educational Needs exists in respect of an electively home educated child, there is no legal requirement for parents to provide anything specified in the statement.

My general comments about the guidance are as follows:

Local Authority personnel often misunderstand, misrepresent and misinterpret the legal position with regard to Elective Home Education, which leads to undue problems for many home-educating families and sometimes adversely affects educational provision. Those employed to liaise with us are often ex-schoolteachers and rarely seem to have good knowledge or experience of education as it takes place outside schools.

They are often, when contracted-out, paid only for home visits and not for other home education liaison work. They often seek to create work (and therefore income) for themselves by asking for more information than stipulated by law, more frequently and in inappropriate ways. Some of them speak publicly about elective home education and home educators in very negative terms and vociferously demonstrate their lack of understanding about home education. As well as being unprofessional, this gives rise to serious concerns about conflicts of interests, in my opinion, and these guidelines could helpfully give clear instructions about the conduct and employment terms of people in those positions.

My own Local Authority has:

- insisted on regular monitoring when there was no appearance of failure to provide a suitable education;
- paid its home education ‘advisor’ for home visits only and not for processing information received from parents in other forms; and
- sent ‘first (and subsequent) contact’ letters to families containing announcement of ‘a [hitherto undiscussed] home visit on xxx date at xxx time’ and demanding samples of work and information about future plans, but failing to explain alternative ways in which families can answer its enquiries.

The effect of this on my family has been as follows:

- The first visit was made by an officer who had not read the Local Authority file on my severely dyslexic son and authoritatively demanded a demonstration of his reading and writing abilities, which he then loudly criticised. My son felt humiliated and this negated months of hard work we had spent on restoring his confidence in reading and writing. My son’s literary abilities did not recover from this for almost a year.
- Subsequent routine annual visits, although conducted more carefully by a more sympathetic person, were dreaded by my children whose interest in learning declined markedly for weeks before and after each visit.
- Only after I took the position of local Education Otherwise contact for my area and made enquiries into the professional conduct and employment terms of the local advisor did the authority’s ultra vires insistence on annual home visits to my family cease and with it, the damage such visits inflicted on the quality of my children’s education.

I would therefore like these guidelines to focus mainly on seeking to prevent the causes and effects listed above.

I'm reading...

I seem to have done nothing else other than read for the past 2-3 days. What am I reading? Consultation responses mainly, and associated files and anything else consultation-related that might come in useful. I think I've got consultation-fatigue, and I'm only doing one response! (Well 4 if you count typing out the teens') Unlike some other valliant people who are doing 2 or three - their own and other groups'.

In and amongst this, Lyddie has discovered books with chapters, so we've been reading this and also Beatrix Potters and a book about dinosaurs. She's also into AA Milne poetry, as am I, so one way or another I seem to be reading all day long!

I'm not complaining - except maybe about the sore throat - because she's my 4th child and the first one to be quite so bookish. Ali is bookish but independently-so: he would never condescend to be read to, but Lyddie is easily as bookish as I ever was, which is a great pleasure. Of course, all five children are great pleasures in their individual ways - but I love sharing a passion for reading with Lyddie. I kept a lot of my old childhood books and lamented as one child after another grew up without wanting to look at more than a few of them, so Beatrix Potter and Enid Blyton and even old AA Milne all started gathering dust. But now they're being dusted off :-)

Still no Deathly Hallows here yet. I'm waiting until these responses are in before I hunt one of those down. And then there's yet more reading to do. Six researchers. Twenty families. £50,000. Paula at Aspie Home Ed has asked a very interesting question about this research. I'm looking forward to the reply too, if it comes.

Why are home-educators so scared of being monitored?

Gloucestershire Safeguarding Children Board has responded to the Consultation on Home Education Guidelines with the claim that:

"One of the overarching themes identified during the course of the SCR [Serious Case Review] was that visitors from the Home Education Service were not able to see the children alone and were not able to gain the views of the children."

This refers to the Eunice Spry case, which was indeed a sickening catalogue of abuse perpetrated by a home-educating foster mother who was also a Jehovah's Witness. This case was a one-off. Home-educating parents do not usually abuse their children, any more than do Jehovah's Witnesses or foster parents. It seems extremely unfair that Gloucestershire Safeguarding Children Board should call, as their response does, for the law to be changed to enable regular monitoring in the form of home visits for electively home educating families.

In some ways I do sympathise with their position: Eunice Spry was free to abuse the children in her care for two decades in Gloucestershire, which does reflect badly on that Local Authority. But, as the excellent letter from Gloucestershire Home Educators to Beverley Hughes points out:

"The suggestion here is that if she had not had that legal right then she would not have had the opportunity to abuse the children. We would like to point out that she had been abusing the children while the Local Authority in the guise of Social Services was visiting. She was also approved by Social Services as a foster parent and eventually as an adoptive parent. Such approvals should be lengthy and stringent and should include talking to the children, yet Social Services missed any signs of abuse. When she did eventually adopt the children she was visited by the Local Authorities Home Visitors for home educators. Yet again the Local Authority did not pick up on any abuse, despite the authority voicing concerns on a number of occasions including just before Spry adopted the children. She was also seen, as were the children, by hospital staff and GP’s, yet no clear systematic abuse was noted or, if it was, no adequate action was taken to protect the children."

So, even if the law was changed to allow for regular monitoring of home-educating families, enabling face-to-face contact between Local Authority education employees and home-educated children, rare cases of abuse are unlikely to come to light.

So why are many home-educators so resistant to the idea of being regularly monitored by our Local Authorities? After all, we all home educate because we want the best for our children. No sector of the population was more horrified by the Spry case than ours. We do, with very few exceptions, cause them to receive efficient full-time education suitable ;
a) to their age, ability, and aptitude, and
b) to any special educational needs they may have,
exactly as required by law. In fact, it could be (and often is) argued that we are the only group of parents who are in a position to ensure the suitability and efficiency of the educational provision because we do not delegate this responsibility to Local Authorities, as most others do. The extent of our investment of so much time and commitment to our children's education demonstrates quite clearly how important it is to us and our children for the most part are in receipt of the highest quality of precision-targeted personalised educational provision. So, what have we got to be scared of from local authority inspectors? Here's what:

Regular, external monitoring of autonomous education causes serious damage to the quality of the provision.

I just had the following chat with Zara (15), in and amongst her packing to go and stay with friends for the week:

"How often do you feel curious about something and go and find out more about it, from books or the Internet?"

"Several times a day. All the time, actually. If I'm not working on my art stuff, I'm researching something I want to learn more about. Why?"

"I just wondered how that feeling of curiosity would be affected by the knowledge that you were due to be questioned about your education or even just your wellbeing by a Local Authority home education inspector today?"

"I'm not, am I?"

"No, silly! I'm just asking because I'm about to blog about why we don't like having home visits."

"Oh phew! Well, it'd just kill it. I wouldn't be curious about anything at all. In fact, I'd be terrified. The visit would stress me out for weeks, before and after, and so I wouldn't be learning much at all in that whole time."

"Why would it stress you out so much?"

"Well, what if they think I'm not learning the 'right' thing? Or that I'm not learning it in the 'right' way? Depending on their background and prejudices and opinions about what's important and what isn't, they might decide what I'm doing isn't 'good enough', even though it's perfect for me. That'd put me right off wanting to know anything about anything."

How many 15 year-old schoolgirls spend most of their time "researching something they want to learn more about"? Not many. All the ones I've ever known spent most of their time perfecting their make-up and developing their social life. Curiosity extended as far as wondering who fancied who and education was something undertaken with extreme unwillingness and reluctance. And yet Zara is no socially-excluded nerd. She loves make-up and fashion just as much as the next teenage girl and she has a wide circle of acquaintances. The only factor she doesn't share with most of her contemporaries is schooling. Zara is free to learn, therefore she wants to learn.

She doesn't have to justify that learning to anyone, or learn according to anyone else's schedule or priorities. She can follow her own interests and she is naturally interested in the world around her, as anyone else would be. She can read, write, work out bills and accounts, navigate the Internet, formulate and debate powerful arguments about current affairs and demonstrate many more functional skills which are necessary for her survival and success in the world throughout her life but above all else, she has curiosity and self-motivation.

And that's why we home educate. And that's what we're scared of being damaged by unwarranted intrusions from inspectors who know everything about schooling and nothing about home education. There's a LOT to lose from regular monitoring of home educators by home visits, and not a lot by way of safeguarding anything or anyone, to gain.

More on this from me later, I hope, when I've put Zara safely on her train and finished reading Fraggle Rock to Lyddie, amongst other things. Busy day today! I'm planning to finalise my response to the consultation tomorrow.

Local authorities' consultation responses: When "the evidence is 'lack of evidence'"

"Section 3.5 makes it seem straightforward to make progress with families where there are concerns about the education which may, or may not, be provided. It is relatively straightforward to deal with the crisis situations, but much more difficult in the many cases where the LA has concerns, but the evidence is "lack of evidence", ie little or no information about the educational plans, no evidence of real teaching and learning and no way of assessing progress being made by the child. Plans are rarely produced by home schooling parents in this LA, 3.10 AND 3.11 suggests they are not essential.

"Section 3.6 appears very woolly. Bearing in mind the minimal requirements placed on home schooling families, the reasonable concerns of the LA may well create conflict with parents who may have difficult aims and priorities for their children."

This responder is one of those Local Authority employees that cause so many problems for home educators, because they simply refuse to understand what it is that we do. I think it's scandalous that such people are employed and paid to do a job of which they have such a tiny amount of understanding and enough misunderstanding to cause major problems for many families.

This person has no concept of the idea that learning might take place outside of a schoolroom environment and sums up his misunderstanding by calling us all home schoolers, as if that's what we all do. Anyone who knows anything about home education in the UK knows that we don't call it home schooling! And of course his misconception doesn't stop there: he fails to get that parents are in charge of assessing progress and planning education, unless we delegate this to a school. Section 7 has just passed this person by completely. Whoosh, straight over their head. And yet... they earn public money for liaising with us.

Looking on the bright side, the person hopefully shows themselves up for their lack of knowledge and understanding by setting out their thinking like this and sending it to the government. Anyone with a sympathetic eye would read this and see exactly what home educators in some areas are up against. It's one of those things a person might have to read first hand to quite believe it was true.

And there's more:

"In 3.11 there is a simple and clear list of what is not required, enabling a significant number of home schooling families to get away with providing alternative education which, in my professional opinion, is minimal and unsatisfactory, yet could be claimed by parents as preparing their children for the society of community they deem appropriate. The outline of expected characteristics, 3.13 is too vague to be of real use. When the LA does follow up cases of concern, such action does not usually improve the relationship between home schoolers and the LA, nor are the families always supportive when the child is directed back into school."

In the last sentence, he sounds quite surprised!

But yes, we're 'getting away with' 'minimal and unsatisfactory provision'. In other words, we do not hold education very highly in our list of priorities for our children, for some perverse reason. And yet, why wouldn't we? I've yet to meet a parent who doesn't value learning for her child or want her child to 'do well' in life. Yes, people have different ideas of what 'doing well' actually means, but this variety is what makes our society rich and vibrant.

Differences of opinion aside - and this is all this is - the respondent has had the law set out for him in the draft guidance and refuses to accept it. A child must be made to learn in a school-type environment and this must be enforced by the LA, in his opinion, regardless of what the law states. I wonder why he thinks we bother home educating, if that's the best kind of provision we can come up with. I suspect this responder formulated his 'professional opinion' in school, and actually has no professional opinion (or understanding) of home education. Are LAs who employ such clearly incompetent people fit for purpose?

And how to counter this local authority response in our own responses? It's hard to know where to start, which gives me huge sympathy for the HEing families unlucky enough to live within this LA's catchment area.

Here are the sections in question from the draft again:

3.5 If information exists which may cast doubt on whether an “efficient and suitable education” can be provided, the local authority should seek to gather any relevant information that will assist them in reaching a properly informed judgement. This should include seeking from the parents any further information that they wish to provide explaining how they are providing a suitable education. Parents should be given the opportunity to address any specific concerns that the authority has. The child should also be given the opportunity, but not required, to attend any meeting that may be arranged or express his or her views in some other way.

3.6 If there are any reasonable concerns, a local authority may wish to contact parents to discuss their ongoing home education provision. Contact should normally be made by writing to the parents to request an updated report or seek a meeting. A written report should be made after such contact and copied to the parents stating whether the authority has any concerns about the education provision. Where there are concerns about the efficiency or suitability of the education being provided for the child, more frequent contact may be required. Where concerns merit frequent contact, the authority should discuss these concerns with the child’s parents, with a view to helping them improve their provision in the best interests of the child.

3.10 Local authorities should bear in mind that, in the early stages, parents’ proposals may not be detailed and they may not yet be in a position to demonstrate all the characteristics of an “efficient and suitable” educational provision. In such cases, a reasonable timescale should be agreed for the parents to submit their proposals.

Providing a full-time education

3.11 Parents are required to provide an efficient education suitable to the age, ability and aptitude of the child. There is currently no legal definition of “full-time”. Children normally attend school for between 22 and 25 hours a week for 39 weeks of the year, but this measurement of ‘contact time’ is not relevant to home education where there is often almost continuous one-to-one contact and education may take place outside normal ‘school hours’. The type of educational activity can be varied and flexible. Home-educating parents are not required to:

· teach the National Curriculum
· have a timetable
· have premises equipped to any particular standard
· set hours during which education will take place
· have any specific qualifications
· make detailed plans in advance
· observe school hours, days or terms
· give formal lessons
· reproduce school type peer group socialisation
· match school, age-specific standards.

However, local authorities should offer advice and support to parents on these matters if requested.

3.12 It is important to recognise that there are many, equally valid, approaches to educational provision. Local authorities should therefore consider a wide range of information from home educating parents, in a range of formats. The information may be in the form of specific examples of learning e.g. pictures/paintings/models, diaries of work, projects, assessments, samples of work, books, educational visits etc.

3.13 In their consideration of parents’ provision of education at home, local authorities may reasonably expect the provision to include the following characteristics:

· consistent involvement of parents or other significant carers – it is expected that parents or significant carers would play a substantial role, although not necessarily constantly or actively involved in providing education
· recognition of the child’s needs, attitudes and aspirations
· opportunities for the child to be stimulated by their learning experiences
· access to resources/materials required to provide home education for the child – such as paper and pens, books and libraries, arts and crafts materials, physical activity, ICT and the opportunity for appropriate interaction with other children and other adults.

I think I'll address the ultra vires issues by formulating something more in my response about the difficulties for us of dealing with Local Authorities who employ people not conversant with the law or accepting of alternative methods of educating, giving rise to the desperate need for more clarity in the draft.

The respondent complains that section 3.6 'appears very woolly' and I agree that it needs rewriting for further clarity. I still think it should say:

If it appears, from the information provided, that the educational provision is failing in its efficiency to an extent which would convince a reasonable person on the grounds of probability, the LA may make further enquiries of the family and provide specific and detailed explanations for its concern. The LA should at all stages be mindful of its duty to remain fair, clear, consistent, non-intrusive and timely in its procedures. The LA should also consider the possibility that parents may be attempting to protect their children from interventions which may be potentially damaging to their motivation and confidence.

- although I can see that even this re-write wouldn't change anything in the mind or behaviour of the author of this Local Authority response.

This response also complains that section 3.13 is 'too vague to be of real use'. Personally I'm not too worried about section 3.13, but I do take on board other HErs views that it might be too prescriptive for our liking. I'm still thinking about my final response to this section.

Local authorities' consultation responses: Awareness of concerns

"Other than in extreme cases, it is difficult to see how the LA would be made aware of concerns about a child's education, without some form of routine monitoring."

The above is a direct quote from one of the Local Authority responses to the government's Consultation on Home Education Guidelines. It's a familiar lament and appears in some form or other in all three of the Local Authority responses I've seen.

I think this needs looking at from three angles.

First: In what different ways can the LA be made aware of concerns about a child's education? LAs can be contacted by families themselves who might wish, for whatever reason, to be monitored. Or by anyone else who knows the child and wishes to register their concerns. I would say that only 'extreme cases' ought to register as a concern to LAs, who don't ensure exemplary educational provision in schools, so why should they try to in any other respect? In court we only need to be able to satisfy 'a reasonable person', 'on the balance of probabilities' that the provision is suitable, and so Local Authorities should be applying the same measure.

Second: LAs seem to want to go and look for concerns when they haven't been made aware of any. This is bizarre, unnecessary and self-defeating. I would even go so far as to say, as I did yesterday, that it might put individual officers at risk of litigation.

Third: The Observer Effect of monitoring on educational provision. I wish there was some research to which we can refer when we try to explain how direct monitoring damages intrinsic motivation, amongst other problems. Does anyone know of any?

Local authorities' consultation responses: Taking a 'risk-based approach'

I think, especially in the light of Carlotta's post today On LAs Calling for Mandatory Access, it will be useful for us to look at the term 'risk-based approach', as it appears in the context of the current Consultation on Home Education Guidelines.

Here's the relevant paragraph in the draft guidelines:

3.4 Many home educating parents welcome regular contact with the local authority as an opportunity to reaffirm their provision. However, where parents do not want any involvement with the local authority, the LA should not automatically assume that there is a problem which needs investigating. Instead, the LA should take a risk-based approach, taking into consideration the individual and community’s circumstances. As one example, recent research shows that “few Gypsy/Roma and Traveller parents have the knowledge, skills and resources to provide or deliver a full-time education that is efficient and suitable”. We do know that there will be Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children who do receive a good education at home. Those monitoring elective home education should seek advice from Traveller Education Support Services before engaging with parents from these communities.

The decision to use the exact phrase 'risk-based approach' in the draft was, in my opinion, a very deliberate and calculated one on the part of its authors. This is no casual, throw-away term which appeared there by chance. It was designed, I think, to convey a specific and important message to Local Authorities, possibly with the hope that this would be overlooked by home educators. We should therefore explore in some depth the meaning of this term: risk-based approach.

The risk in this context is a legal risk to LA agents and personnel, based on the issue of Causation in English law. This basically means that if it could be demonstrated that a member of staff or other person acting as a Local Authority representative in respect of a home-educating family had a Duty of Care towards the family, they could of course be personally vulnerable to a Negligence suit, amongst other implications.

If I was any kind of an employee of a Local Authority in respect of home education, I would be urgently seeking good legal advice about my personal position regarding the ongoing monitoring of home educating families, in the light of this consultation. And if I was a home-educating family in Glouscester, the local authority which is, we're told, planning to "make appropriate representation to Government to highlight the concern that there is currently no legal process, which ensures that children, who are educated at home, are regularly seen, and their progress monitored, by Educating Otherwise professionals", I would be very loudly reminding my local authority of this risk.

Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 tells us that "The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education." It does not tell us that the Local Authority of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education. If I was a Local Authority employee, especially a home-owning one, especially in Glouscester, I'd want to keep it that way.

The plight of the children in the Eunice Spry case should have been picked up by Social Services, pure and simple. The apparent attempts to make this into an issue about monitoring home educators should be firmly resisted, by local authority education personnel and home educating parents alike.

Glouscester aside, to counter such self-defeating requests from Local Authorities to make monitoring mandatory, I think we need to be making strong arguments about the negative effects of monitoring on our educational provision.

The autonomous method is particularly vulnerable to negative effects from monitoring, (although I think that probably all methods are to some extent.) Autonomous education relies on the student's intrinsic motivation, which usually springs from curiosity and the freedom to pursue it. In my opinion this is the most useful - possibly the only genuine - form of learning, as opposed to the basic skills training which is supposed to take place in our schools.

But yes, my very simple message to local authorities seeking increased legal powers to monitor home education provision would be this:

Be careful what you ask for: with increased powers will also come very real, very personal, increased legal and financial RISK.

Local authorities' consultation responses: definition of terms

I've seen three local authority responses to the government's home education consultation now, and they all ask for clarity - specifically, clearer definitions. The term 'reasonable progress' generates the most complaints in the local authority responses, which strengthens our arguments to have it removed.

Other terms highlighted by these three local authorities as being in need of clarification and/or definition are:

• Efficient;


• Suitable;


• Effective;


• Full time;


• Reasonable concerns; and


• Risk-based approach.

Stifling a giggle about big words and dictionaries... No, wait, here's a classic, from a response which reads like it was penned by Tony Mooney himself: "Other than making a professional judgment, it is difficult to see how one can assess whether or not a child is making 'reasonable progress'.." - which begs the question: what do you think they employ you for?! But which also reminds me about a key point I'll definitely be making in my final response:

The contracting-out by local authorities of home-educating liaison work presents a serious conflict of interests, leading to individuals acting in their own financial interests by seeking to create liaison work that does not need doing. Furthermore, these individual 'home education inspectors' are very often ex-schoolteachers or headmasters, who only have knowledge of a model of school education against which to judge us and this frequently bears no relation to the method of home education being employed. In this way, the use of such individuals for this work by Local Authorities presents a significant threat to many instances of suitable provision.

I'll probably attach the above paragraph to my comments about the negative effects of visiting and monitoring.

'Reasonable progress' is superfluous and can be removed, but some of the other terms are necessary and are defined with some clarity in the draft guidance:

2.3 The responsibility for a child’s education rests with their parents. An “efficient” and “suitable” education is not defined in the Education Act 1996 but “efficient” has been broadly described as an education that “achieves that which it sets out to achieve”, and a “suitable” education is one that “primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he is a member, rather than the way of life in the country as a whole, as long as it does not foreclose the child’s options in later years to adopt some other form of life if he wishes to do so”

Anyone receiving payment from a local authority for liaising with home educators who has difficulty understanding the definitions of 'efficient' and 'suitable' in 2.3 should examine their conscience, in my opinion.

I'll therefore be including something like the following paragraph in my final response:

Section 2.3 adequately and correctly defines the terms 'efficient' and 'suitable'. Attempts to further define these terms should be unnecessary and may exacerbate problems caused by lack of knowledge about home education methods on the part of some of the individuals employed to assess us.

Effective appears 7 times in the draft guidance, although it's not used in either Section 7 or case law referring to EHE. Bizarrely, the one single complaint about its lack of definition in the responses relates to sections 2.1 to 2.3 - in which the word 'effective' doesn't appear!

The question of full-time provision arises in section 3.11:

Providing a full-time education

3.11 Parents are required to provide an efficient education suitable to the age, ability and aptitude of the child. There is currently no legal definition of “full-time”. Children normally attend school for between 22 and 25 hours a week for 39 weeks of the year, but this measurement of ‘contact time’ is not relevant to home education where there is often almost continuous one-to-one contact and education may take place outside normal ‘school hours’. The type of educational activity can be varied and flexible. Home-educating parents are not required to:

· teach the National Curriculum
· have a timetable
· have premises equipped to any particular standard
· set hours during which education will take place
· have any specific qualifications
· make detailed plans in advance
· observe school hours, days or terms
· give formal lessons
· reproduce school type peer group socialisation
· match school, age-specific standards.

However, local authorities should offer advice and support to parents on these matters if requested.

And I think that

this measurement of ‘contact time’ is not relevant to home education where there is often almost continuous one-to-one contact and education may take place outside normal ‘school hours’

explains the term in so far as it relates to EHE very well.

I'll therefore be including something like the following paragraph in my final response:

Section 3.11 adequately and correctly explains the term 'full-time', in so far as it relates to elective home education. Attempts to further explain this term, in so far as it relates to elective home education, should be unnecessary and may exacerbate problems caused by lack of knowledge about home education methods on the part of some of the individuals employed to assess us.

Reasonable concerns is found here:

3.6 If there are any reasonable concerns, a local authority may wish to contact parents to discuss their ongoing home education provision. Contact should normally be made by writing to the parents to request an updated report or seek a meeting.

and on reflection I would agree that this section needs rewording, to avoid misunderstandings.

I'll therefore be including something like the following paragraph in my final response:

As the term 'reasonable concerns' lacks clarity, the first sentence in section 3.6 needs to be altered to:

If there are any specific concerns arising from the information received, a local authority may wish to contact parents to seek further information on the specific points.

'Risk-based approach' is definitely problematic as it occurs in the controversial

3.4 Many home educating parents welcome regular contact with the local authority as an opportunity to reaffirm their provision. However, where parents do not want any involvement with the local authority, the LA should not automatically assume that there is a problem which needs investigating. Instead, the LA should take a risk-based approach, taking into consideration the individual and community’s circumstances. As one example, recent research shows that “few Gypsy/Roma and Traveller parents have the knowledge, skills and resources to provide or deliver a full-time education that is efficient and suitable”. We do know that there will be Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children who do receive a good education at home. Those monitoring elective home education should seek advice from Traveller Education Support Services before engaging with parents from these communities.

I increasingly think that whole section (3.4) is beyond salvaging and should be completely removed. It serves no good purpose from any point of view, as far as I can see.

Those consult questions, re-worded

Everyone I know who's looked at this consultation, including all of us here, have commented on how difficult it is to answer the questions, because it involves a lot of switching between the questions and the draft guidelines, finding the corresponding parts etc. Someone here asked me to re-word the questions for them, so that they knew at a glance what was really being asked. I thought I'd blog what I came up with, not least because I think I'll be using the list below to work out my final response.

So this is my interpretation of what the questions are really asking, IMO:

1. What sort of difference do you think government guidance to local authorities will make if we issue any, given that they're advice only and are not, in themselves, legally binding?

2. Do you agree that the legal responsibility for a child's education rests with his or her parents?

3. Do you agree, given your answer above, that local authorities should regularly check that home educated children are making what the local authority considers to be 'reasonable progress'? Please give reasons for your answer.

4. Do you agree with the following statement: 'Many home educating parents would welcome regular contact with the local authority as an opportunity to reaffirm their provision'?
Do you think local authorities should pick and choose which home educating families they investigate, using a 'risk-based approach'?
Do you think that many home educating parents would 'welcome the opportunity to discuss the provision they are making for their child during a home visit' (as opposed to supplying information in other ways)?
Does your local authority request information from home educating families about whom it has concerns, in the form of a visit only, or is it more open about the different ways for families to provide it with information?
What would your preference be?
Do you trust all local authority inspectors to be capable and willing to evaluate information about home education provision as reasonable people (i.e. not educationalists) and to formulate their opinion about it on the balance of probability, as case law states they should??
Please give reasons for your answers.

5. Do you think it should be the job of local authority inspectors to decide for sure whether a child's home education provision is suitable, based on information received? Or do you consider that this decision should just be for parents (and possibly courts) to make?
Please give reasons for your answer.

6. Do you think the main purpose of government guidelines to local authorities about home education should be to 'help LAs and HErs to build effective relationships', even though there's no legal obligation to have such relationships?
Do you think such relationships actually would effectively 'safeguard the educational interests of children and young people?
Do you think that it's possible for all home educators and local authority inspectors to share mutual understanding, trust and respect?
Please give reasons for your answers.

I've left out the sections on SEN, which aren't asked about, but on which we definitely will be commenting along the lines of Dani's response.

It goes without saying that simple yes/no answers to the above questions on the consultation response form will make no sense(!) because those aren't actually the questions being asked. But I think most of the salient points might be covered above. Probably. Please let me know if you think I've missed or misinterpreted any.

***EDIT***

From comments:

Dani said: "I think there's also the secret question behind the whole consultation (and specifically question 1): "Should we leave the law on home education basically as it is, and continue to allow the LAs to interpret it as they wish, OR should we give the LAs sweeping new powers to monitor home educators according to univeral standards governing the content of the education provided and the pedagogical skill of the parents?"

and Adele said: "OR...

...Should we leave the law as it is, and clarify it, so that LAs understand that they do *not* have such powers?"

A brilliant response at Green House

I really like Dani's response to the consultation. It's very clear, concise, well thought-out and unambiguous. I don't see how anyone could ignore or argue with the points that she makes. I'm going to be drawing heavily on Dani's response to the SEN sections, if she doesn't mind.

Reading Dani's response has made me realise even more how mine can be improved. I need to put a lot more about the reasons for my thinking into mine, I think. I could also make my response a lot clearer than it is.

Do we *want* *relationships* with Local Authorities?

Sections 4.1 and 4.2 of the Elective Home Education Guidelines [opens document] says:

Developing relationships

4.1 As noted in the Introduction to these guidelines, the central aim of this document is to assist local authorities and home educators to build effective relationships that function to safeguard the educational interests of children and young people; relationships that are rooted in mutual understanding, trust and respect. The guidelines outline a number of recommendations that are geared towards the promotion of such relationships.

4.2 Whilst there is no current legal obligation on education authorities or home educators to develop such relationships, doing so will often provide parents with access to any support that is available and allow authorities to better understand parents’ educational provision and preferences. A positive relationship will also provide a sound basis if the authority is required to investigate assertions from any source that an efficient and suitable education is not being provided. This will be true whether or not parents are required to demonstrate that suitable home-education provision is being made available.

And this worries me. I'm concerned that by agreeing - even tacitly - to work on developing relationships with Local Authorities, we might be unknowingly stumbling into a bit of a trap.

If we agree that such relationships are a Good Thing - and I'm not sure they necessarily are - and we commit ourselves to 'working towards achieving them', isn't the inevitable next step going to be some kind of attempt to legally formalise the relationship? I don't want to be married to my Local Authority ;-)

Lets look at some of the pros and cons of agreeing to build relationships with Local Authorities:

1. + We might get to check and influence some of their policies and behaviours
   
   - but this is likely to lead to yet more postcode lotteries in the way they treat us.


2. + If we work really hard, they might start to understand and trust us more.
   
   - But doesn't the law say they should be doing this anyway? They're getting paid loads of money and we aren't. Why should we do their work for them?


3. - There will always be some home educators who refuse to be part of such a relationship, for valid reasons. They may also prefer to have little or no interaction with other home educators. Relationships of the kind suggested in the guidelines will put these people in an even weaker position than their present one.


4. - The draft guidance admits there's
   
   

   no current legal obligation on education authorities or home educators to develop such relationships

   
   and doing so will take considerable time and energy on our part, which may not be repaid in kind.


5. - Some of us are already unnecessarily jumping through hoops for our Local Authorities, with no legal basis for such exertions. Wouldn't an obligation to build relationships exacerbate this problem in difficult Local Authority areas?

There are more negatives than positives in my list above, and possibly even more factors to consider. But as you can see I'm struggling to see why agreeing to such undertakings is of benefit to us on the whole. I have nothing against home educators taking it upon themselves to meet with their Local Authorities with a view to improving or establishing Local Authority good practice, but I do not like the idea that they may be obliged to do so in some way.

I'd love to know what other people think about this.

Do we want the central aim of this document to be to assist local authorities and home educators to build effective relationships?

Do we agree that the building of effective relationships will function to safeguard the educational interests of children and young people?

And do we believe that it's even possible, given the track record of some Local Authorities, to build relationships that are rooted in mutual understanding, trust and respect, across the board?

OK then. Let's consult.

The UK government wants to know what home educators think of these draft guidelines [opens document] which, it's planned, will advise local authorities about how to deal with us.

The closing date for the consultation is 31st July, so we have just over 2 weeks left to say what we think about them.

Here is the response document, which I'm printing out to help me work out how they want me to respond. I could post this response on paper by snailmail, but I think I'll respond online instead, when I'm sure I've worked out what I want to say. I printed the the draft guidelines [opens doc again] before.

I hope you'll bear with me, because I've never responded to a government consultation before. I didn't believe in them, until quite recently when some people's views were, I'm told, actually taken into account in one. So I will respond to this, and I hope our collective views are properly taken into account, because I do think these guidelines might make a real difference to the quality of many children's education - one way or the other.

OK, it's printed. It's a lot of sheets, so it's going in a folder so that I can read it like a book. That took some time, but I've got them both ready now. The draft guidelines in one folder and the response sheets in another. (And Alaister Campbell on the TV - will that help? ;-)

Right. I'll get down to it then. This is the hardest part, isn't it? Just making a start.

First: do I want to keep my response confidential? Well, it's being blogged here, so it's a bit late for that! I've got nothing to lose by leaving that box unticked.

Name. Organisation - none. Address. Which of the following best describes me? Home educator, of course, but I see there's a box there for 'young person who is/was home educated'. That's good. I think some or all of the teens will be submitting a response too. I think someone said on one of the lists that their responses might carry even more weight. Hope so - they should. Tom, Ali and Zara will have a lot to say about how our LA's monitoring has affected their education. I'll ask them if I can blog what they say later.

Now the questions. I'll answer them off the top of my head, then see what people have to say in the comments. I might change some of my answers before I submit them, if I'm persuaded that it's a good idea to do so.

Question 1: Do I agree that it is helpful for the DfES to issue guidelines to local authorities?

Yes I do, but only if they're very carefully worded to be exactly in line with how the law presently stands and if there's no possible way they can be interpreted as giving LAs more powers than the law allows.

Question 2: Do I agree that the description of the law (paragraphs 2.1 - 2.3) relating to elective home education is accurate and clear?

Hmmm, let's see. Which paragraphs?

2.1 The responsibility for a child’s education rests with their parents. In England, education is compulsory, but schooling is not.

2.2 Article 2 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights states that:
“No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.”

This right is enshrined in English law. Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 provides that:

“The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable-

(a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and

(b) to any special educational needs he may have,

either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.”

2.3 The responsibility for a child’s education rests with their parents. An “efficient” and “suitable” education is not defined in the Education Act 1996 but “efficient” has been broadly described as an education that “achieves that which it sets out to achieve”, and a “suitable” education is one that “primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he is a member, rather than the way of life in the country as a whole, as long as it does not foreclose the child’s options in later years to adopt some other form of life if he wishes to do so”.

Yes, those paragraphs look ok to me. 

Question 3: Do I agree that the description of local authorities’ responsibilities (paragraphs 2.5-2.11) is accurate and helpful?

Paragraphs 2.5-2.11:

Local authorities’ responsibilities

2.5 Local authorities should provide written information about home education that is clear, accurate and sets out the legal position, roles and responsibilities. This information should be made available on local authority websites and in local community languages on request. Local authorities should recognise that there are many approaches to educational provision, not just a “school at home” model. What is suitable for one child may not be for another, but all children should make reasonable progress.

The term 'reasonable progress' could cause problems for home educated children because some officials will undoubtedly interpret this as meaning progress which needs measuring by them on a regular basis. My experience of home educating is that any kind of official measuring of my children's progress had a marked, direct and negative effect on their interest in learning and their motivation to learn. I would ask that the words:

but all children should make reasonable progress

be omitted.

2.6 Local authorities have a new duty under the Education and Inspections Act 2006 to identify, as far as is possible, children who are missing, or in danger of missing, education. The duty applies in relation to children of compulsory school age who are not on a school roll, and who are not receiving a suitable education otherwise than being at school (for example, at home, privately, or in alternative provision). The guidance issued makes it clear that the duty does not apply to children who are being educated at home.

This paragraph looks OK to me.

2.7 Local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis.

- agreed.

However, under Section 437(1) of the Education Act 1996, local authorities can intervene if they have good reason to believe that parents are not providing a suitable education. This section states that:

“If it appears to a local education authority that a child of compulsory school age in their area is not receiving suitable education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise, they shall serve a notice in writing on the parent requiring him to satisfy them within the period specified in the notice that the child is receiving such education.”

Section 437(2) of the Act provides that the period shall not be less than 15 days beginning with the day on which the notice is served.

2.8 The most obvious course of action if such a concern were raised would be to ask parents for information about the education they are providing. Such a request is not the same as a notice under s 437(1). Parents are under no duty to comply, but it would be sensible for them to do so.

- I think this paragraph should include a list of the various ways in which parents might provide information. This list of the different means of providing information needs to be inserted at every opportunity, because the possible alternatives to [apparently mandatory] visits are so often overlooked, ignored and unpublished by Local Authorities, to the detriment of children's education (see below).

2.9 Section 437(3) refers to the serving of School Attendance Orders:

“If –
(a) a parent on whom a notice has been served under subsection (1) fails to satisfy the local education authority, within the period specified in the notice, that the child is receiving suitable education, and

(b) in the opinion of the authority it is expedient that the child should attend school,

the authority shall serve on the parent an order (referred to in this Act as a "school attendance order"), in such form as may be prescribed, requiring him to cause the child to become a registered pupil at a school named in the order.”

This section is important, I think, to make very clear to local authorities that they do have legal recourse should the provision appear to them to be unsuitable. HOWEVER I think it would also be very useful to include the words:

such as would satisfy a reasonable person [i.e., not necessarily an education professional] on the grounds of probability

- again, to protect the confidence and motivation of home educated children from being damaged by over-zealous and heavy-handed officials.

The following account of what happened during our first visit from an LA official after deregistering might help to explain why this is so important for home educated children:

My son (then 10 years old) is severely dyslexic and had been recently withdrawn from school after protracted and serious difficulties caused by the school's complete mismanagement of his dyslexia. On deregistration he had absolutely no confidence in his literary abilities and we were working very hard to resolve this, with some success. We then received a visit from a Local Authority home education 'inspector', who authoritatively asked my son to read and write for him, then proceeded to loudly and sternly criticise the results. With increasing horror at my son's visible humiliation, I eventually asked our visitor if he was at all aware of my son's diagnosed severe dyslexia? He certainly should have been, because I know that the issue was well-documented in the Local Authority educational file on my son. But no, the official admitted that he had neglected to read the file before visiting us. I asked the man to leave, but it took perhaps another 6 months before my son's confidence in his ability to read and write even began to recover from this incident.

If the Local Authority had made it clear to me, as a new home educator, that the visit was not mandatory and that I could, if I wished, provide information about our provision by other means then I would have chosen instead to use one of the other methods of answering their its enquiries. But it did not. At no time was I made aware by the Local Authority that the visits were avoidable. If I had been aware of this, the careless and incompetent official would not have had access to my son and the damage to his progress would not have occurred. Furthermore, if the official had been made aware, perhaps by reading government guidelines, that the information provided could be sufficient to convince a reasonable person [i.e., not necessarily an education professional] on the grounds of probability, that a suitable education was taking place, his behaviour might have been more moderate and cautious.

2.10 A School Attendance Order should be served as a last resort, after all reasonable steps have been taken to try to resolve the situation. At any stage following the issue of the Order, parents may present evidence to the local authority, or the court, that they are now providing an appropriate education and apply to have the Order revoked. It will be for a court to decide whether or not the education being provided is suitable and efficient. Detailed information about School Attendance Orders is contained in Ensuring Regular School Attendance paragraphs 6 to 16,.

2.11 Local authorities also have a duty under Section 175(1) of the Education Act 2002 to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. This section states:

“A local education authority shall make arrangements for ensuring that the functions conferred upon them in their capacity as a local education authority are exercised with a view to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.”

Section 175(1) does not extend local authorities’ functions. It does not, for example, give local authorities powers to enter the homes of, or otherwise see, children for the purposes of monitoring the provision of elective home education.

- I'm reasonably happy with this, although I feel that the last paragraph perhaps needs to be more strongly-worded, with further explanations for those officials who seem unable to accept the truth of it.

[The response form appears to have skipped sections 3.1-3.3, but they're OK, I think.]

Question 4: Do I agree that the section on contact with the local authority (paragraphs 3.4-3.7) is accurate and helpful?

Paragraphs 3.4 to 3.7 read as follows:

Contact with the local authority

3.4 Many home educating parents welcome regular contact with the local authority as an opportunity to reaffirm their provision.

- I know many home-educating parents and absolutely none have ever expressed this sentiment to me. I therefore think it should be removed as it may have the unfortunate effect of encouraging over-zealous officials and enabling some self-justification of their actions.

However, where parents do not want any involvement with the local authority, the LA should not automatically assume that there is a problem which needs investigating.

- the preceding sentence is likely to be very helpful and should remain in the guidelines.

Instead, the LA should take a risk-based approach, taking into consideration the individual and community’s circumstances. As one example, recent research shows that “few Gypsy/Roma and Traveller parents have the knowledge, skills and resources to provide or deliver a full-time education that is efficient and suitable”. We do know that there will be Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children who do receive a good education at home. Those monitoring elective home education should seek advice from Traveller Education Support Services before engaging with parents from these communities.

I am concerned that the advice in the preceding paragraph might put some home educating families in an unnecessary position of having to provide information about their provision when there is no real reason to suspect it might be unsuitable. The terms 'risk-based approach' and 'individual and community’s circumstances' are particularly problematic, because they will undoubtedly fuel the prejudices admittedly held by some Local Authority officials which often lead to variations between Local Authority treatment of different home educators within the same area. Officials often seem to be unaware of the prejudices they hold, which makes them even more likely to act on them, I think.

For example, in a recent radio discussion about home education, a high-ranking member of a teaching association professed himself to be sure (without checking) that the children of his well-spoken co-interviewee were in receipt of a suitable education, but that others needed checking. He had no information to go by other than the interviewee's voice and very limited snippets of information, which would not have been sufficient for him to make a professional judgment. This kind of prejudice, usually  against the ability of certain ethnic groups, family-types and people who fall within certain status and income groups to home-educate effectively appears to be quite common amongst Local Authority officials, as is often transparent in such conversations. I'm also aware of families falling foul of such prejudice and being subjected to excessive monitoring which borders on harrassment, without there being reasonable grounds to suspect their provision of failing. Some home educators are more adept at defending themselves against this kind of behaviour than others, which is why the guidelines need to be absolutely clear.

For this reason, I think that section 3.4 should instead say:

Where parents do not want any involvement with the local authority, the LA should not automatically assume that there is a problem which needs investigating. Instead, the LA should consider only taking action where there are definite reasons to believe a suitable education is not taking place, such as reports of specific concerns having been received from other professionals or the general public. The LA should be aware that its interference might seriously damage the home educated child's feelings of stability, confidence and motivation to learn and should seek to balance this awareness against any evidence of concerns.

[I'm not too happy with the wording of that last sentence. Alternative suggestions welcome!]

3.5 If information exists which may cast doubt on whether an “efficient and suitable education” can be provided, the local authority should seek to gather any relevant information that will assist them in reaching a properly informed judgement. This should include seeking from the parents any further information that they wish to provide explaining how they are providing a suitable education. Parents should be given the opportunity to address any specific concerns that the authority has. The child should also be given the opportunity, but not required, to attend any meeting that may be arranged or express his or her views in some other way.

- Section 3.5 needs to include the phrase "such as would convince a reasonable person on the balance of probability." The law does not require us to satisfy an educationalist that our provision is suitable. This is important because Local Authority inspectors and advisors are very often only experienced in education as it takes place in schools, to which home education can be very different. Home educating parents are, quite rightly, less concerned with meeting school standards than they are with using the opportunity provided by home education to provide their child with a uniquely-tailored individually personalised education, which is very difficult to explain to, for example, an ex-headmaster or schoolteacher who has little experience of learning outside the classroom. The inclusion of "such as would convince a reasonable person on the balance of probability," might serve to remind such officials that their professional (school-based) judgment is neither necessary nor appropriate in this context and can be extremely problematic for home educating parents and children.

3.6 If there are any reasonable concerns, a local authority may wish to contact parents to discuss their ongoing home education provision. Contact should normally be made by writing to the parents to request an updated report or seek a meeting.

Several other methods of submitting information about provision should be included here. Also 'reasonable concerns' again needs strictly defining, to protect home educating families from over-zealous officials.

A written report should be made after such contact and copied to the parents stating whether the authority has any concerns about the education education being provided for the child, more frequent contact may be required.

This does not make sense and appears to have been incorrectly altered. A previously published version of this section of the draft document reads as follows:

A written report should be made after such contact and copied to the parents stating whether the authority has any concerns about the education provision. Where there are concerns about the efficiency or suitability of the education being provided for the child, more frequent contact may be required. Where concerns merit frequent contact, the authority should discuss these concerns with the child's parents, with a view to helping them improve their provision in the best interests of the child.

- which is more grammatically logical, but it contains wording with which I still disagree. I would instead prefer section 3.6 to say:

If it appears, from the information provided, that the educational provision is failing in its efficiency to an extent which would convince a reasonable person on the grounds of probability, the LA may make further enquiries of the family and provide specific and detailed explanations for its concern. The LA should at all stages be mindful of its duty to remain fair, clear, consistent, non-intrusive and timely in its procedures. The LA should also consider the possibility that parents may be attempting to protect their children from interventions which may be potentially damaging to their motivation and confidence.

As regards section 3.7:

Many parents welcome the opportunity to discuss the provision that they are making for the child’s education during a home visit

I repeat: I know many home-educating parents and absolutely none have ever expressed this sentiment to me. I therefore think it should be removed as it may have the unfortunate effect of encouraging over-zealous officials and enabling some self-justification of their actions.

but parents are not legally required to give the local authority access to their home. They may, choose to meet a local authority representative at a mutually convenient and neutral location instead or choose not to meet at all. If they choose not to meet, they will need to provide evidence that they are providing an efficient and suitable education.

This wording fails to convey the spirit of relevant case law, specifically Philips v Brown, in which Lord Justice Donaldson said: "the parents will be under no duty to comply. However it would be sensible for them to do so." I would therefore prefer the use of such term as:

If they choose not to meet, parents may instead wish to provide information in one of the following ways:

· write a report;
· provide samples of work;
· invite a local authority advisor/consultant to their home, with or without the child being present; or
· meet a local authority advisor/consultant elsewhere, with or without the child.
. any other method preferred.

In making their enquiries of home-educating families, Local Authorities should give equal emphasis to all of the different ways of providing information, instead of only mentioning the possibility of a visit to the house.

[Again, paragraphs which need altering (3.8-3.10) have been ignored by questions.]

Question 5 Do I agree that the section on providing a full-time education (paragraphs 3.11-3.14) – and in particular, the characteristics of provision (paragraph 3.13) – is accurate and helpful?

Here they are:

Providing a full-time education

3.11 Parents are required to provide an efficient education suitable to the age, ability and aptitude of the child. There is currently no legal definition of “full-time”. Children normally attend school for between 22 and 25 hours a week for 39 weeks of the year, but this measurement of ‘contact time’ is not relevant to home education where there is often almost continuous one-to-one contact and education may take place outside normal ‘school hours’. The type of educational activity can be varied and flexible. Home-educating parents are not required to:

· teach the National Curriculum
· have a timetable
· have premises equipped to any particular standard
· set hours during which education will take place
· have any specific qualifications
· make detailed plans in advance
· observe school hours, days or terms
· give formal lessons
· reproduce school type peer group socialisation
· match school, age-specific standards.

However, local authorities should offer advice and support to parents on these matters if requested.

I am happy with 3.11 as it stands, I think.

3.12 It is important to recognise that there are many, equally valid, approaches to educational provision. Local authorities should therefore consider a wide range of information from home educating parents, in a range of formats. The information may be in the form of specific examples of learning e.g. pictures/paintings/models, diaries of work, projects, assessments, samples of work, books, educational visits etc.

The list of suitable forms of information in section 3.12 needs to include educational philosophies and information about resources and activities.

3.13 In their consideration of parents’ provision of education at home, local authorities may reasonably expect the provision to include the following characteristics:

· consistent involvement of parents or other significant carers – it is expected that parents or significant carers would play a substantial role, although not necessarily constantly or actively involved in providing education
· recognition of the child’s needs, attitudes and aspirations
· opportunities for the child to be stimulated by their learning experiences
· access to resources/materials required to provide home education for the child – such as paper and pens, books and libraries, arts and crafts materials, physical activity, ICT and the opportunity for appropriate interaction with other children and other adults.

Some families, such as those who favour a Waldorf-type education, may prefer to discourage the use of ICT, whilst others may favour the use of ICT over such things as pens and paper. These variations could perhaps be reflected by making the list one of examples of resources and materials, rather than a rigidly definitive set of requirements.

3.14 If, on considering the educational provision, one or more of the above characteristics appear to be lacking, local authorities may choose to further investigate whether or not an efficient and suitable education is, in fact, being provided. A full written report of the findings should be made and copied to the parents promptly, specifying the grounds for concern and any reasons for concluding that provision is unsuitable. If the authority is not satisfied that efficient education is being provided, and the parents, having been given a reasonable opportunity to improve their provision and report back to the authority, have not done so, the authority should consider serving a School Attendance Order (see section 2.7).

I would like

reasons for concluding that provision is unsuitable

to instead say

reasons for concluding that provision may be unsuitable

because I feel the former implies that the provision has definitely been deemed unsuitable already, when in fact receipt of further information from the family may well allay such concerns. The section should go on to set out the various opportunities families should be given to provide information in such a way that is clear, consistent, non-intrusive and timely, before making reference to School Attendance Orders. I also think it probably necessary, at this juncture, to supply further information for Local Authorities about the law pertaining to School Attendance Orders.

Question 6 Do I agree that the section on developing relationships (section 4) is useful?

No. Sections 4.1 and 4.2 should be removed, in my opinion.

Part 4

Developing relationships

4.1 As noted in the Introduction to these guidelines, the central aim of this document is to assist local authorities and home educators to build effective relationships that function to safeguard the educational interests of children and young people; relationships that are rooted in mutual understanding, trust and respect. The guidelines outline a number of recommendations that are geared towards the promotion of such relationships.

4.2 Whilst there is no current legal obligation on education authorities or home educators to develop such relationships, doing so will often provide parents with access to any support that is available and allow authorities to better understand parents’ educational provision and preferences. A positive relationship will also provide a sound basis if the authority is required to investigate assertions from any source that an efficient and suitable education is not being provided. This will be true whether or not parents are required to demonstrate that suitable home-education provision is being made available.

The purpose of these guidelines should be to assist Local Authorities in understanding how to fulfil their legal duties effectively. The development of relationships between home educators and Local Authorities, where sometimes useful when they spontaneously occur, often have their drawbacks and can sometimes result in problems between home educating families with some inevitably being excluded from the relationship, for various reasons. These guidelines will be most helpful if they retain their focus on providing a clear, unequivocable explanation of the legal position and do not seek to extend this. Talk of developing relationships is unnecessary and detracts from the absolute clarity required.

I am satisfied with sections 4.3-4.6, but sections 4.7 and 4.8 gives rise to serious concerns.

Contact with parents and children

4.7 Local authorities should acknowledge that learning takes place in a wide variety of environments and not only in the home. Some parents are happy for the local authority to have the opportunity to see the child in their learning environment, to enable them to see the provision at first hand. Seeing the child responding to the educational provision of the parents may provide a strong indication that an efficient and suitable education is indeed being provided. The authority does not, however, have a legal right of access to the home and the matter should not be forced.

4.8 Where a parent elects not to allow access to their home or their child, this does not of itself constitute a ground for concern about the education provision being made. Although it is recognised that the learning environment can have a bearing on the effectiveness of learning, LAs should, in the vast majority of cases, be able to discuss and evaluate the parents’ educational provision by alternative means. Parents might prefer, for example, to write a report, provide samples of work, have their educational provision endorsed by a third party (such as an independent home tutor) or provide evidence in some other appropriate form.

4.7 in particular implies that providing information in the form of allowing a visit to the home is the optimal method of responding to enquiries. I feel very strongly that there should be parity, even in implication, between all methods of providing information in response to enquiries, because anything else is open to misunderstanding and abuse by over-zealous Local Authority officials.
In 4.7,

or provide evidence in some other appropriate form

'evidence' should be replaced by the more legally accurate word: 'information'.

Question 7 Are the suggested resources in section 5 and appendix 2 useful?

As regards section 5.5 pertaining to information-sharing with Connexions:

Connexions Service

5.5 The Connexions Service is for children and young people aged 13-19 years living in England (see www.connexions.gov.uk). Its services and responsibilities cover children and young people who are being educated at home. The LA is a key partner in a local Connexions Partnership and each must review how it will bring coherence to the different services and agencies within the area. The Connexions Service needs to maintain an overview of the learning and work status of all young people of a relevant age and ensure that individuals do not fall between the responsibilities and remit of different agencies and thus become marginalized or lost to the system. LAs may be asked (as partners of Connexions) to provide details of children and young people being home educated; the Learning and Skills Act 2000 gives powers for various partners to share information with Connexions, subject to normal data protection principles.

If Local Authorities are to be encouraged to share information about home-educated children without consent, there is likely to be very little trust of the Authorities on the part of home educators. This will make the process of making enquiries and providing information far more difficult than it needs to be. Section 5.5 should therefore be removed.

The section 5.10 on Truancy Sweeps:

When planning and running truancy sweeps, LAs should refer to the DfES "Truancy sweeps: Effective practice and advice" which is available at www.dfes.gov.uk/schoolattendance/truancysweeps. This includes a section on children who are educated outside the school system. Those taking part in the sweeps, including police officers, should be fully familiar with this guidance and be aware that there is a range of valid reasons why school-age children may be out of school.

also needs changing because it could easily be misconstrued to imply that home-educated children need to supply a reason for being out during school hours, which is not the case. It should instead read as follows:

When planning and running truancy sweeps, LAs should refer to the DfES "Truancy sweeps: Effective practice and advice" which is available at www.dfes.gov.uk/schoolattendance/truancysweeps. This includes a section on children who are educated outside the school system. Those taking part in the sweeps, including police officers, should be fully familiar with this guidance.

Please use this space for any other comments you wish to make about the guidance.

With regards to the section on deregistration from school, section 3.8:

First contact between local authorities and home educators often occurs when parents decide to home educate and approach the school (at which the child is registered) and/or the authority to seek guidance about withdrawing their child from school. It is important that this initial contact is constructive and positive.

should instead read as follows:

First contact between local authorities and home educators often occurs when parents decide to home educate and approach the school (at which the child is registered) and/or the authority to seek guidance about withdrawing their child from school. It is important that this initial contact is constructive and positive. Local Authorities should not seek to dissuade families from discharging their legal duties towards their children by making what they consider to be the most approriate educational decisions and should instead supply the information listed in section 3.1 promptly on request.

The final sentence in section 3.9:

Local authorities may encourage parents to inform them direct, but have no legal right to insist that they do so.

needs to be removed because it is extraneous and therefore detracts from the necessary clarity of the guidelines.

In section 3.10:

Local authorities should bear in mind that, in the early stages, parents’ proposals may not be detailed and they may not yet be in a position to demonstrate all the characteristics of an “efficient and suitable” educational provision. In such cases, a reasonable timescale should be agreed for the parents to submit their proposals.

it would be very helpful to add:

Initial assessment periods for families of between six months and one year are often required before enough useful information can be given to local authorities pertaining to educational provision.

"Surely we all need standards to make sure we're making progress?"

"Surely, at school.. in the office.. we all need standards to make sure we’re making progress and the trouble with this conversation to some extent is that we’re hearing the stories of the parents who are doing the right thing, how do we make sure that we’re keeping tabs on those who aren’t doing the right things?"
- Julian Worricker, Radio 5 Live Report on Home Education

I think this is one of the main attitudes that underpin the controversy about home education. Julian Worricker used the word 'surely', almost as if the assumption that we all need standards goes without saying now.

The use, in our society, of standards and targets was brilliantly exposed in Part 2 of Adam Curtis's documentary, The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom. Now, three or four decades after such systems were first mooted, developed and introduced, Mr Worricker's 'surely' assumption seems, tragically, to be shared by the population as a whole.

For the record, I certainly do not believe "we all need standards to make sure we’re making progress". To be human is to make progress. We can't help making progress - it's what we're designed to do.

Nobody needs to entice or encourage my 6-month old baby to roll over and to learn to support herself in a sitting position, (despite what some people might try to tell us,) - she just does it, of her own accord. Similarly Lyddie is learning to read and write, and do forward rolls, and roller-skate and draw pictures and navigate the Internet, all without standards, expectations, curricula and tests. She's just learning those skills because she wants to and because it's the right time, for her to personally do so.

If I tried to coerce or even encourage her to do these things, to comply with external standards or for any other reason, I think they'd start to feel like chores for her and she'd be much less keen on doing them.

The other main ill-thought-out assumption that came though in the piece was this, from Philip Parkin of the Professional Association of Teachers:

"I’m sure your children, Janey, do have an education, but what I’m worried about is the 20,000 or the 130,000 out there who we don’t know whether they’re having any kind of an education at all."

This highlights one of the main problems home educators have with the 'professionals' who concern themselves with us. How is Mr Parkin so sure that Janey's children are receiving what he calls an education, on the basis of this one short public radio interview? He presumably has nothing to go by other than her eloquence, her accent and the few snippets of information she gave in the programme. This is NOT enough information for anyone to decide whether a person's children are receiving 'an education', but presumably if she'd sounded a lot less intelligent and thoughtful, this crème-de-la-crème educationalist, and many others besides him, would jump to the instant and prejudiced conclusion that her children probably weren't "having any kind of an education at all."

The Tony Mooneys, Philip Parkins and many others of their ilk that we have to deal with, who think they're making judgements about us based on educational grounds, are actually not. They give themselves away all the time in conversation: they're making judgements on us based on prejudice alone, and it seems that many of them would like to have even more powers to do so.

This has nothing to do with childrens' learning! It's actually based on a subconscious desire, that many of society's natural 'policemen' seem to have, to ensure that everyone complies with the status quo. So people who are good at looking and sounding socially acceptable, like 'one of us', get the freedom to educate their own children and to say with confidence: this is what education looks like and yes, my child is doing this, without being challenged. And people who don't, don't. Pressure is put on them to return their children to school to be forced to comply. Regardless of how much or little the children in either situation are actually learning.

And if, having so remarkably quickly approved Janey's educational provision, Mr Parkin and his colleagues did succeed in tracking down and trying to evaluate "the 20,000 or the 130,000 out there who we don’t know whether they’re having any kind of an education at all," what information would they require to properly convince themselves that the education was 'suitable'?

The answer is this:

Families would be very quickly and unofficially divided into two groups - those who were deemed OK at a glance, based on location, income, marital status, accent, vocabulary and the number of books owned - and those who weren't. Those falling into the first category need only say: "My child is receiving a suitable education," and possibly wave some bit of paper and their word would be accepted. Those falling into the other category would never be believed, no matter how many hoops they jumped through. They could provide every piece of work the child ever compiled and it would never be considered to be good enough.

The thing is, the officials concerned will not admit, probably even to themselves, that they have these prejudices, much less that they act on them. But we hear it all the time: at a meeting with our Local Authority some years ago, some of us were also told:

"Yes we're sure your children's education is fine because you're obviously eloquent and you obviously care about your children, but some families are not fit to home educate and they're the ones we're concerned about."

When we pressed them into defining what kind of families weren't 'fit to home educate' we did eventually get the list: social housing, history of mental illness, single parenthood, no books... and we were able to counter it by describing people we knew about who fitted all those criteria and yet had successfully provided their children with a perfectly adequate home education. Since then we've heard of other (albeit rare) cases of families still being persecuted by them on the grounds of this kind of prejudice alone so even when you face them with the truth, they gulp, agree, and continue as before to some extent.

I suppose this is human nature, which is exactly why we have to limit the powers of officials regarding making judgments of this kind.

As the law currently says, unless there are significant, individual and specific reasons to act otherwise, all home-educating families should be left in peace.