"Maintaining the status quo is out of the question." Time for some blue skies thinking.

Well, it's that kind of a day:



Mr Badman also said to Julie last Thursday something like: "In the light of the current climate of concerns over child safety, things will not remain as they have been up till now."

So I'm looking at these blue skies and I'm thinking...

He's right.

In the current climate, a lot of children aren't safe and they aren't happy. And nothing stays the same: everything in the universe is always in flux.

Looking at the figures on AHEd's anomaly campaign:

More than 360,000 children injured in schools each year
450,000 children bullied in school last year
At least 16 children commit suicide each year
as a result of school bullying
An estimated 1 million children truant every year
Treasury statistics show more than 1 in 6 children leave school each year
unable to read, write or add up

Terrifying figures proving beyond any shadow of a doubt that children are not safe in school, and yet many of those will not officially count as 'child abuse'. That ground is shifting too. If you want to take a peek at what will be officially classed as 'child abuse' in the near future, you need to look no further than this NICE draft guidance, about which I blogged in January.

So you can be a child who is deeply unhappy, suicidal, being bullied at school etc., but as long as you look clean and presentable, wear 'appropriate' clothing and do not cling unduly to your parents, your state of wellbeing will not officially worry anybody. On the other hand, you can be happy, contented and thriving in home education, being free to wear what you like regardless of convention - but woe betide you if you're especially fond of a piece of clothing of which you have now outgrown, for this will officially be a sign of child maltreatment. And if your beloved parent becomes distressed during the ensuing questioning and you move to comfort her - slam. That's another one. (I wonder if they'll operate on a 'three strikes and you're out' basis? It seems only sporting to give us some sort of a fighting chance.)

So. Blue skies.

Sun is shinin' in the sky
There ain't a cloud in sight
It's stopped rainin' everybody's in a play
And don't you know
It's a beautiful new day hey,hey

First: what's wrong with the status quo?

Where do we start..?

1. Too many children are stuck in a school system that doesn't suit them. They might be being bullied, they might not be learning. They might be deeply unhappy. This could be fixed, if Local Authorities complied with their legal duty to inform parents about the option to home educate.
2. Many Local Authorities make it difficult for some families to home educate without official interference. If the Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities [opens pdf] were, I don't know, made statutory? That might remedy the situation.
3. The government is phasing out Income Support, which means that some families will be financially excluded from the option to home educate. This will create a biased situation, which could be remedied by the provision of a realistic rate of Child Benefit payments for all families. This would enable those parents who choose to devote their time to their children to reduce their working hours accordingly.
4. The ECM framework [opens pdf] is problematic for home educators and needs to be changed.

Runnin' down the avenue
See how the sun shines brightly in the city
On the streets where once was pity
Mister blue sky is living here today hey, hey

And then there are still going to be those problematic families who struggle to look after their children properly, exception to the rule though they are. Their children don't necessarily thrive any better in school than they would at home, but they need help all the same.

Whether or not they're being home educated, we already have effective systems to deal with such situations.

The problem is not that home educators could hide abused children. It's that Local Authority officials are either reluctant to use their current powers, or - amazingly - are totally unaware that such powers exist. There is also a lack of research to demonstrate the negative effects of monitoring on a child's education and wellbeing. We need a new, balanced system that takes all of this into account, but that doesn't try to fix anything which ain't broke.

Mister blue sky please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long
Where did we go wrong?

We don't have to go along with the rhetoric. Yes, there needs to be change, but it should be the kind of change that actually makes things easier for us to enable our children's lives to be as good as they are, if not better.

Hey you with the pretty face
Welcome to the human race
A celebration, mister blue sky's up there waitin'
And today is the day we've waited for

It's just an idea, but we still have so many opportunities to interact with the review. Not just the scheduled meetings still to take place, but also the invitation for us all individually to submit the electronic equivalent of one side of A4 to the review team, all of which Mr Badman has promised he'll read. We could be looking at what we think is wrong with the status quo, and suggesting solutions for the review to fix these things. After all, it has to justify its existence somehow.

Hey there mister blue
We're so pleased to be with you
Look around see what you do
Everybody smiles at you

I think I'm going to do just that with my side of A4, personally.

Mister blue, you did it right
But soon comes mister night creepin' over
Now his hand is on your shoulder
Never mind. I'll remember you this
I'll remember you this way

And I think we should collect all of our submissions into one huge document with a summary of them contained in a press release for immediate circulation on the same day that the recommendations of the review are published - just to show what we perceived the problems were, and how we asked for them to be fixed.

Hey there mister blue
We're so pleased to be with you
Look around see what you do
Everybody smiles at you

And now I think we're going outside to play in the sunshine and to plant some more seeds.

This blog was brought to you by the legendary Electric Light Orchestra [opens flv].