Sometimes It's Peaceful

2012. Game: on

2012-01-20T14:05:00.007Z

So here we are, home educating in England at the start of 2012. What's the legal position now?

As far as I can tell, as parents we're still primarily subject to Section 7 of the Education Act :

7. Duty of parents to secure education of children of compulsory school age.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.

which tells us that:

It's the parent's job - not the government's, school's or local authority's job - to 'cause the child to receive' the education.

The education has to be full-time, so all day, every day. (Children naturally learn all the time, so this is not difficult.)

It has to be suitable for the child's age, ability and aptitude. (Hard to achieve in a school class of 30; easy for a parent at home who can constantly assess and adapt to fewer children's unique requirements.)

The education has to be efficient. So, no waiting around for someone's attention, or to use equipment etc, or for questions to be answered. (Again, easy at home for parents: almost impossible in a school scenario.)

- and therefore leads us to conclude that elective home education is still the best way of delivering the kind of education required by law.

Local authorities have some legal requirements too. Under the Education and Inspections Act 2006:

436A Duty to make arrangements to identify children not receiving education

(1)A local education authority must make arrangements to enable them to establish (so far as it is possible to do so) the identities of children in their area who are of compulsory school age but—

(a) are not registered pupils at a school, and
(b) are not receiving suitable education otherwise than at a school.

(2) In exercising their functions under this section a local education authority must have regard to any guidance given from time to time by the Secretary of State.

And section 437 of the Education Act:

437 School attendance orders.

(1) 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.
(2) That period shall not be less than 15 days beginning with the day on which the notice is served.
(3) 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.

But these are requirements for local authorities, not parents. As far as I know, there is nothing in statute to compel us to try to prove anything about our children's education to our local authorities.

But they'll ask us to anyway.

Why? Mostly, I think, because they're trying to comply with their legal requirements, set out in Section 436A and 437 (above). Some will also be motivated by their own, personal, ideological reasons ("The best place for children is in school"; "Parents can't be trusted and must therefore be monitored" etc) - even though pursuing a personal ideology in their professional role will in most cases be a clear breach of their employment contract.

But legally they're in a difficult position really, and I sympathise - though not enough to jeopardise my children's education just so that they can feel safe from any repercussions their might fear. My child's wellbeing comes before a local authority officer's salary and position in my own scale of priorities, though I'm aware it's probably the other way around for the local authority officer.

Incidentally, my reasons for home educating are:

love for my children; and
parental instinct

- not just because it's the best way for me to comply with the Education Act! But English Law is eminently sensible in accommodating parental instincts in this way. I want to cause my child to receive an efficient, full time education suitable to his age, aptitude and ability - and I would have done it anyway, even without the law telling me I must.

So here I am, happily complying with my part of the law. And here's the local authority, trying its best to comply with its part. Noticing my child doesn't attend school, it asks me for information about his educational provision.

At this point, I have to make a decision about how to respond.

Often, my response will depend on how I'm asked. A simple, one-off request for information to enable the local authority to ascertain that my child is not 'missing education' isn't likely to cause me any problems, especially if it reminds me of my right (as set out in the Elective Home Education Guidelines For Local Authorities) to respond in a format of my choosing. So I could, for example, give assurance in writing on paper or online, or at a meeting with or without my children, at our house or at any other venue, at a time and place I choose to arrange with them.

But an ultra vires, high-handed and threatening sounding notice of an officer's intention to visit my house, without waiting for my reply to the above request, or sometimes without even bothering to send the request in the first place, is not likely to be received so well by me. Why should I comply with such instructions when there's no statutory reason or need for me to do so? Sections 436A and 437 are not my problem as a parent: they're the local authority's problem, although it's possible that the new Localism Act enables them to send such notices anyway. But in statute I don't have to comply.

Accepting regular visits from the local authority might well affect my ability to comply with Section 7, as might receipt of a school attendance order. Case Law advises me that it's unwise to ignore a request from my local authority for information about my provision. So, how do I decide how to respond?

The conflicting priorities between me the parent (my child's needs and my Section 7 responsibilities) and the local authority (its legal requirements) produces a point of tension between us. A power struggle. A game of brinkmanship, in which there are eventual winners (home educators who get left alone, local authority officers who succeed in extending their power) and losers (home educators facing a barrage of increasingly ultra vires hoops through which they're being asked to jump, local authority officers who must reluctantly be satisfied with receiving minimal information about provision.) And an overall, ongoing war of attrition to establish the new status quo between the two which may or may not lead to future changes in statute accordingly.

In this game, local authorities often try to pretend they have more power than they actually do. ("It is our duty to monitor education provision..." There is no 'duty to monitor'.) Or that they're here "to help and advise you". But the way I see this situation is similar to being arrested by the police. In an interview in which anything I may say could be taken down and used as evidence against me, could their priority really be to help and advise me? No! They're seeking to gather evidence to build a case against me, and to try to assess my strengths and vulnerabilities, to get an idea of how I might come across in a court of law.

Some people respond by asking the local authority for specific reasons why it appears to them that the provision might not be suitable. This is a great stance to take, in my opinion, if it achieves its objective in persuading the local authority to back off.

In any case, I'm going to be very careful what information I divulge to them, in case it might be taken down and used in evidence against me. I won't ignore their request for information, but I will supply the bare minimum to demonstrate (not to prove - it would be impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt to unreasonable people, and I don't know if these are reasonable people) that my child is being caused to receive an efficient, full-time education, suitable to his age, aptitude and ability. And I will do this in a format of my choosing - regardless of how the local authority asks for it.

And - to do my bit to ensure the local authority continues to have no duty to monitor on an ongoing basis - I will only do it once.

"Threatening behaviour can consist of the deliberate use of silence."

2011-07-22T08:14:00.004+01:00

- according to this document: 4.17 Working with Uncooperative and Hostile Families Practice Guidance, which was first mentioned on Lisa's post (which ties some prevalent issues together for us) which was brought to my attention by Raquel.

Are you deliberately using your silence in a threatening way? Be careful. You might be. And how would you know if you were? I'd love to hear how that would play out in a court of law (although if it was the Family Court - as it would be - nobody ever would): "She used her silence in a threatening way, Your Honour." Right. Bang her up then. How dare she?

This is being circulated as an official guidance document. By government officers. It's not only in Lincolnshire. It's also in Manchester, Bury, Sussex, Luton, Stockton-on-Tees, Salford, Doncaster, North East Scotland, Barnsley, and Cardiff (whose is actually listed in Google as that of Sheffield LSCB, which is where I understand this thing to have originated). And those are just the ones I could access in a quick Google search this morning. I suspect there will be yet more versions of this same document. So I want to have a look at it in more detail.

It consists of a number of trigger words. These are judgments made - not by a court of law - but by officials on the ground, off the hoof. These labels will be attached to people (and will stick) based on very little information of the person as a whole. In my view then, they're not judgments at all, in a fair sense. They're prejudgments ("An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts.") This is a document about prejudice. And not how to combat it, but how to practice it, with official impunity.

I'm going to try my best to give it the benefit of the doubt. To work from the basis of an assumption that the author of this had the best of intentions to help people who were dealing with the worst of circumstances in the course of their everyday work. They perhaps didn't realise how it would read to the rest of us: ordinary parents who might have good and valid reasons for being [*prejudicial labelling alert:*] service resistant. We might imagine - you might say, foolishly in this day and age - that we could parent our children without official input and supervision, as our ancestors have successfully done for these past millennia. We might actually be capable - as our children's continued health, education and happiness would testify, should such a thing every be doubted (and what sort of society would doubt it?!) - of doing so.

So as that kind of ordinary parent, apparently doing a pretty good job (if I say so myself) I'm going to now go quickly through this document and highlight the elements of it that fill me with unease and alarm, from the sheer terror of imagining ever finding myself being [pre]judged in this way, and unknowingly/ accidentally attracting any of these damaging labels to my name. (Please note that the following excerpts are selective and need to be read in context with the full document.)

From time to time all agencies will come into contact with families whose compliance is apparent rather than genuine, or who are more obviously reluctant, resistant or sometimes angry or hostile to their approaches.

First, I want to know what constitutes an 'agency' in this context. What's its legal status? Is it a public body? How is it funded? What laws and regulations is it answerable to?

Then we get onto 'apparent compliance' rather than 'genuine compliance'. But before that.. compliance? With a service? Call me old fashioned, but I'm only in my early 40s and yet I still think of a service as being something that works for us rather than the other way around. An optional thing. Unless the meaning of the word 'service' has now been changed to 'agent of an aggressive dictatorship' when we weren't looking, then 'compliance' is an extremely odd and worrying term to be used.

So how are we, 'service users' - assuming we choose to be compliant at all - to know whether our compliance appears to be 'apparent' or 'genuine'? The answer to this is not yet made clear.

2.1 There are four types of uncooperativeness:

Ambivalence: can be seen when people are always late for appointments, or repeatedly make excuses for missing them; when they change the conversation away from uncomfortable topics and when they use dismissive body language.

What's classed as 'dismissive body language'? How are we to know? How can we avoid using 'dismissive body language' to avoid the label 'ambivalent uncooperative' - when we don't even know what it is? The answer is: we can't.

Avoidance: a very common method of uncooperativeness, including avoiding appointments, missing meetings, and cutting visits short due to other apparently important activity (often because the prospect of involvement makes the person anxious and they hope to escape it).

The message I take from that is this: Set your dealings with these people as your highest priority, over and above meeting your children's needs, your own needs, and the needs of other 'agencies'. Otherwise you might attract the label 'avoidant uncooperative'.

Confrontation: includes challenging professionals, provoking arguments, extreme avoidance (e.g. not answering the door as opposed to not being in) and often indicates a deep-seated lack of trust leading to a ‘fight’ rather than ‘flight’ response to difficult situations.

Not answering the door equals confrontation??! In crazy daisy upside-down world, maybe. But in this one - still, despite these people's best efforts - not answering the door is usually seen as an avoidance of confrontation. The complete opposite.

2.2 Reasons for Uncooperativeness

There are a variety of reasons why some families may be uncooperative with professionals, including the fact that they:

Do not want their privacy invaded;

Have something to hide;

Refuse to believe they have a problem;

Maybe they actually don't 'have a problem'. Who gets to decide whether a person 'has a problem' or not? This is where I worry about the legal status of such 'agencies' and the basis of their power. And to crave more accurate definitions and more thorough rationale. I don't think it's too much to expect from people trying to wield such immense and potentially destructive power over their neighbours' lives.

2.3 A range of social, cultural and psychological factors influence the behaviour of parents. The more uncooperative the family, the more likely it is that the main influences are psychological.

This is blatantly not true. I know lots of families who would resolutely deny official screening of their homes and families, who would - no doubt - present as 'extremely uncooperative' in such circumstances (but who are perfectly nice people in other circumstances, and exemplary parents). Without exception the main influences of this would be idealogical. Political. Emotional. Protective. Not psychological, which makes it sound like an irrational choice. (Although I suppose, if these 'agencies' are threatening to remove children from families on an arbitrary basis, then anything other than a terrified and absolute compliance could increasingly be viewed as irrational! One of the main problems with this being, it would be difficult to work out from this document even how to demonstrate such compliance in the 'correct' way! How have we come to this?)

2.4 In general a parent will try to regain control over their lives, but they may be overwhelmed by pain, depression, anxiety and guilt resulting from the earlier losses in their lives. Paradoxically, the uncooperativeness may be the moment at which the person opens up their feelings, albeit negative ones, at the prospect of help. They are unlikely to be aware of this process going on.

I simply cannot believe the patronising tone of that paragraph. Bear in mind, these might be people who have had their beloved children forcibly removed from them, or received explicit threat of such. By those very people who are there to 'help' them, whether they like it or not.

3. Impact on Assessment

3.1 Accurate information and a clear understanding of what is happening to a child within their family and community are vital to any assessment. The usual and most effective way to achieve this is by engaging parents and children in the process of assessment, reaching a shared view of what needs to change and what support is needed, and jointly planning the next steps.

This sounds quite cosy, doesn't it? I wonder if the family and community are also made aware that if they are accidentally silent or seen to be using the wrong body language, this could affect their treatment considerably. It would be only fair to tell them in advance, so they could be sure to keep any gaps in the conversation well filled at all times.

3.2 Engaging with a parent who is resistant or even violent and/or intimidating is obviously more difficult. The behaviour may be deliberately used to keep professionals from engaging with the parent or child, or can have the effect of keeping professionals at bay. There may be practical restrictions to the ordinary tools of assessment (e.g. seeing the child on their own, observing the child in their own home etc). The usual sources of information/alternative perceptions from other professionals and other family members may not be available because no-one can get close enough to the family.

This harks back to the old chestnut that 'a child not seen is a child at risk'. Not true. Not true. Could just be that the parents want to protect their child from the stress of being interviewed, of knowing their conduct is under question, of feeling insecure. Could be that the parents are - quite justifiably, reading documents like this - worried about being misjudged or prejudged, based on their 'presentation'. Or their child's. Could be that they struggle to see why their privacy should be invaded if a convincingly valid reason for this has not been properly cited. (To be fair, the document does mention this reason, but I think only in the context of yet another obstacle to be patiently surmounted by the official.)

There's a lot more, but I've had enough now. Suffice to say (in suitably panicked tone):

If it doesn't look like there's 'enough' food in my fridge, that's probably because I haven't been shopping yet today. (Are we all to go shopping all the time and keep excess food stores in case of spot checks?)
If my child is happy with her sleeping conditions, why do they need to be checked?
Why can you not take anything I say as a parent at face value, whatsoever?
Why must we have this climate of policing one another with perpetual mistrust?

Yes, child abuse happens. It happens in the upper classes, in the middle classes, and in the under classes. It happens - as those examples show - both at school and at home. It happens to children in 'care' and in church. It is surely endemic, across the board.

But it is still the exception, not the rule. Most parents are good and loving parents who are their children's best advocates and staunchest protectors. We are the people who know and understand our children best - the only ones who can offer them truly unconditional love. The document I've been reading today completely overlooks this crucial aspect of the picture. In its tone - in my opinion - it is patronising, superior, careless and suspicious. It seems to be designed to engender conflict rather than to resolve it.

I accept there are problems in society and some families, and that some children need help. But this kind of 'help' cannot be the way. Why aren't we looking for causes of the problems, instead of dirty, ineffective sticking plasters like this? Why don't we address the issues that cause unbearable stress for some families (mostly, IMO, based on lack of sufficient natural space, resources and influence over their environment such as is required for good mental health) instead?

I'm wondering who wins, in this current situation. Not the abused children, for whom adequate salvation is often not found regardless of the quality of 'interventions'. Not the non-abused children, who have to live in this environment of perpetual suspicion of all parents, just in case. Not the abusing parents, whose real problems are invariably never addressed. And not the innocent parents, whose innocence is never trusted or taken at face value, so that we're all treated as guilty until proven innocent. Not the 'agency operatives' (officials, social workers, etc) who are paid to execute this crazy process. I can't imagine a more stressful career.

So who wins? Who profits from a nationwide climate of fear, suspicion and separation? If we can work this out, we might stand some chance of collectively resisting it.

Government monitoring of home education provision: some points.

2011-07-21T07:12:00.003+01:00

The government's own, existing EHE Guidelines for Local Authorities clearly state:

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

None. No annual visits. No annual reports. No biannual visits or reports or meetings elsewhere or otherwise jumping through hoops to get permission from anyone else to home educate our own children.

If you can get your head around the unarguable reality of that legal position, you can perhaps start to understand something about how important it is, and why it's vital for home educators to work hard to maintain it. Or at least, do nothing to erode it.

It's the position that stops the inevitable bureaucratic turn of the screw. If you don't know what I mean by that, then Adam Curtis's The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom, aired on the BBC in 2007, the same year as those guidelines were published (DVD here) is the best explanation I can think of citing.

Some home educators think we should all be monitored by the state. Read that again if you like. Believe it, because it's true. Some of the reasons I've heard for this are as follows:

"If it saves one child.."

But monitoring of elective home education won't save any children at all. Eunice Spry was monitored, every single year. Home visits and everything. But because routine monitoring is not, by definition, a response to specific concerns, it becomes just that. Routine. Blasé. Easy to fool.

There is already a good enough Child Protection system in this country, which applies to all children: home educated and schooled. Yes, I think it's a mistake to focus this on schooled children, but would I sacrifice the freedom of home education to fix that? Of course not! I'd switch the focus of it back to the community instead, duh.

"The reputation and therefore the value of good home education is sullied by those people who aren't doing it properly. We need to sort the wheat from the chaff so that our children stand a chance of getting into some of the better universities.."

Here is my answer to that. It's a very dangerous position to take, because once you've opened yourself up to monitoring, it won't stop. That screw just keeps on tightening until your own provision is monitored out of existence along with all the others. Your child has a proven academic record of excellence? Some officials would think this meant she was being hothoused and socially deprived. You live in a good neighbourhood? Some officials would think this meant your children were 'denied the opportunity of getting to know and understand other children from different backgrounds.' There's always someone who will disagree with what you're doing and seek to stop it, whoever you are. Whatever you're doing. So don't give them the power. Don't fall into that trap.

It doesn't do any harm and it's good to get some feedback to know whether I'm on the right track..

I answered this a couple of years ago: suffice to say, speaking as someone who's done about 17 years of different kinds of home educating now (yes, I was a hot-houser once upon a time!) I now know that it does do harm and - to be blunt - if you feel the need for official sanction of your home education provision... well. You perhaps need to rethink a few things! Anyway, officials are always available to be consulted on an as-and-when basis for people who want to do that. It's not a right I'd take away from them.

So I'd really appreciate it if they didn't try to take my rights away from me.

Once again:

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

A 'family' of home educators in Wigan has tendered for and secured the job of monitoring home education provision in Wigan, which is the reason for this post, and my current feeling of despair.

Localism Bill - emergency Trojan Horse alert for home educators.

2011-07-07T10:13:00.006+01:00

I haven’t blogged for a long time. Apart from some talk about a bunch of clowns trying to write a set of guidelines to which they daren’t even put their names, nothing much seems to have been happening in the world of home education politics since Graham Stuart’s speech to the Commons at the defeat of the horrific 20-day deregistration clause. Consequently I've been digging our field instead of blogging.

But now there's something to cause us to jam the brakes on developing the self-sufficient dream, stop cruising happily along and come screeching to a halt, dropping the spade and everything. To look, suddenly, in the field full of horses nearby - because something's not quite right with it somehow. They all look innocent enough, quietly grazing away there - except one, which looks a bit oversized and yes.... wooden. A fake horse. A Trojan Horse. Quite convincing though - I wouldn't have noticed it if it hadn't been for Neil T's helicopter searchlight patiently shining on it, pointing it out to anyone with eyes who cares to see.

The fact that this horse must have been there for quite some time, slowly advancing below the radar, is pretty scary. Its builders must possess some skill and so I just know that whatever's concealed inside it can only mean one thing: Big Trouble.

Sigh. I'd much rather just keep digging away here and keep ignoring the weird looking things in other fields, despite my growing unease and despair about them all, despite my - surely paranoid? - feeling that they all seem to be getting closer. Digging earth and tending crops are quiet and contemplative activities, while the children play happily nearby in the grass and the trees. For a long time I can pretend that all is still right with the world. But I know that to ignore that particular searchlight is to lay down and die. And I can't do that to my children and future grandchildren. I have to address the issue - which means approaching the horse and inspecting its contents.

Luckily Neil has beaten us to it, extracted them and laid them out on the grass for us to see. And he's jumping up and down with his searchlight again, shouting "OVER HERE!" He's even made some helpful, eye-catching signs in large print, comprising full explanations in case we didn't recognise them for what they are. I don't know what we'd do without his help, and that of a few others of his ilk. Next to nothing, in my case, except keep digging and try to look the other way - even though I was fast running out of other ways to look.

What exactly is laid out on the ground, then? Some parts of a huge machine: it can only be the one taking shape in the distance - the only machine anyone's working on, these days. (In fact, most people seem to be working on it in some way or another - whether they realise it or not!) So big by now that it keeps blocking out the sun. The machine we're told is going to help us all, but I can't see how my crops can grow and my children can thrive without sunlight, so I don't believe them.

However, I don't see how I - just one insignificant person - can do anything to stop it being built, so I've been trying to ignore it and concentrate on helping the crops and kids instead, in spite of the lengthening cold, dark times. What else could I do? Also - significantly - I don't personally remember asking for help in the first place, but never mind. Such details are lost in the midst of time now, and we're here. Looking at these things on the ground.

These parts look like yet more of the same kind of universal little cogs we're all so used to seeing everywhere around that they've become part of the scenery. But according to Neil's signs, they're quite definitely not the same kind. No, these are *vital components* in transit. In disguise, wrongly labelled, packed up in a Trojan Horse. Neil's right: they must be important.

The box is labelled: Localism Bill, which sounds like a good and useful thing, surely? We've all been feeling starved of proper communication and real democracy at the local level - not to mention that nourishing sense of belonging and protection one feels from prolongued co-operation with one's neighbours. Real local community. That's where most of the important decisions should be made - collectively and face-to-face, in people's kitchens or at most, in village halls. With everyone given chance to speak, no matter how big or small. This might be good news then...? Neil's shaking his head slowly. (First group on this page, if you want to read for yourself, although posting anything on there is a bit like blogging, or booking a spot on the open mic session at a big, busy pub. Pretty daunting in itself! Crowds of spectators, loads of whispering behind hands. Lots of not paying attention. Not much open feedback or response, since responding in itself is to grab the mic and draw attention to oneself, isn't it?)

Its contents include, in 'plain English', the following:

General power of competence

Local authorities´ powers and responsibilities are defined by legislation. In simple terms, they can only do what the law says they can. [Neil says: "ie. they are not free to act ultra vires." (outside the law)] Sometimes councils are wary of doing something new - even if they think it might be a good idea - because they
are not sure whether they are allowed to in law, and are concerned about the possibility of being challenged in the courts.

The Government thinks that we need to turn this assumption upside down.Instead of being able to act only where the law says they can, local authorities should be free to do anything - provided they do not break other laws. [Neil says: "In other words, be free to act ultra vires."]

The Localism Bill includes a `general power of competence´. [Neil says: "ie. power without competence!"] It will give local authorities the legal capacity to do anything that an individual can do that is not specifically prohibited; they will not, for example, be able to impose new taxes, as an individual has no power to tax."

"Who do these people think they are?"

2011-05-13T17:47:00.001+01:00

Asked Graham Stuart in his brilliant speech to the House of Commons about local authority's treatment of home educators on Wednesday. (You can read it here, watch it here between 3:59:00 and 4:22:00 and read commentary and discussion about it here, here, and no doubt elsewhere.)

Some of my favourite excerpts:

On the face of it, that recommendation seemed reasonable, which I am sure is why the Government came forward with proposals to implement it, having seen that both Badman and the Select Committee supported it. However, it was not recognised that the Government’s formal consultation on the Badman recommendations had shown that, far from being uncontroversial, the proposal had attracted opposition from 75% of those who responded, with only 13% agreeing. Why would that be the case? Why would families be concerned about having the power to return their children to school within 20 days, with no restriction whatever on their freedoms and no delay forced on the start of their home education? The answer lies in the behaviour of local authorities.

His reminder about the consultation response initially came from Raquel of AEUK. It's a very good thing for home educators that Raquel is so on-the-ball, with her excellent memory, logical thinking and constant willingness to engage where it counts and I know this isn't the first time she's made a big difference to outcomes in a very quiet way.

Tameside metropolitan borough council’s elective home education guidelines say:

“It is up to parents to show the local education authority that they have a programme of work in place that is helping their child to develop according to his/her age, ability and aptitude and any special educational needs he/she may have.”

But it is not up to parents to justify that to the local authority; all too often, it is the local authority that has let down that family and those children through its failure to provide proper education. The local authority should be the servant of the family; the family should not have to answer to the needs of the local authority.

This was exactly what needed to be said. Mr Stuart has surpassed all of my hopes and expectations; I was expecting a dry debate about the 20-day deregistration clause and I think that's because we're so used, after many years of Ed Balls, his party and the compliant education department that seemed to evolve around them, to politicians just completely ignoring the key issues which negatively affected our families in favour of their own high-handed agenda for us. Graham Stuart certainly can't be accused of that.

A Labour MP intervened to talk about abuse, and Mr Stuart rounded on her and dealt with this magnificently:

She has done what Badman did, and what the former Secretary of State did under the previous Government, which is to conflate child abuse with home education. Education and welfare are two separate things. Contrary to what Graham Badman stated in his report, and failed to substantiate in the Select Committee, there is no evidence that home-educated children are more subject to abuse than children in general. When there is a risk, local authorities have all due powers to intervene, and so they should. When such evidence arises, the authorities can and should go in to ensure the protection of the child. However, we cannot have the suggestion that home-educating families are linked to a problem of abuse. Nothing could be further from the truth, and it is important to nail that fact. We must not do as the previous Home Secretary did, which was to smear the reputation of home-educating families by suggesting that there is a problem, because there is no evidence for that.

In that moment, for possibly the first time since the election, I felt very glad I'd voted Conservative. My vote was for home education, and mainly for this man - one of the very few politicians in which I still have faith. As home educating families, we suffered abuse under Ed Balls and Graham Badman. Graham Stuart brings us healing.

After a challenge from Barry Sheerman, he responded:

Local authorities must honour and observe the law as it stands and not overstate it because they happen to agree with the hon. Gentleman. They cannot make the law up as they go along because they do not like the current settlement. The current settlement is clear: local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education.

Exactly what needed to be said.

And here is that glorious "Who do these people think they are?" moment:

I have already dealt with Tameside, so let me touch quickly on Barnsley. Its elective home education information leaflet says that

“the law allows parents to educate their children at home instead of sending them to school, if they fulfil certain conditions.”

That is subtly done. I am not sure whether it is strictly inaccurate, but it is suggestive enough to make it sound as though the council decides whether those conditions are fulfilled. It goes on to make it clear that that is precisely its conclusion:

“Barnsley MBC will need to be satisfied”—

in other words, the council will need to be satisfied—

“that a child is receiving suitable education at home, and the Assessor”

- these people are even called assessors; who do they think they are? -

“will ask to meet with the family in order to talk to the parents and to look at examples of work and learning.”

That is beyond the law. I want the Minister to confirm that he will make sure that local authorities no longer produce misinformation like that and use it in order to abuse their power over families.

It really needs to be watched to convey the full effect though. Hearing his outrage expressed so powerfully and eloquently is empowering and uplifting, after years of being worn down by attitudes like this local authority's and many others.

This next is possibly the best of all:

The Lancashire local authority, in one of the most egregious examples, states:

“Lancashire Officers will take the lead on this because they have the responsibility to ensure the safety of all children as well as to monitor the quality of education received by children educated at home.”

That is a nice one, neatly conflating the issues of safety and home education. No one has yet arrived at my house during the summer holidays just to check up on the safety of my children, who are, after all, spending months at home with me. Who knows what my wife and I might get up to, or what the younger or older sister might do? Who knows what visiting relatives might do? What we need are visitors from the local authority, just to make sure. I do not want people such as the director of children’s services in my local authority to lose a moment’s sleep because they feel that they are not pursuing every possibility of intervention to cover their own backsides and telling me how I should run things in my own home. That is precisely what the local authority suggests should be done in the case of home-educating parents, who deserve its intervention no more than the rest of us.

Quite.

Labour's Ian Mearns then intervened (and it's to be noted that Mr Stuart, unlike our observations of so many other politicians, gives way with generosity and good manners) in part to say:

There is a problem with what the hon. Gentleman is saying. If a child becomes unwell or is injured at the hands of parents or other relatives, the focus of attention is often not on the family but on the director of children’s services in the local borough. Will the hon. Gentleman reflect on that? Will he also reflect on the rights of the child who, despite the wishes of their own parents, may or may not receive a good level of education at the hands of those parents? I know that the hon. Gentleman inhabits a middle-class, or possibly upper-middle-class, ideal in which his own children will be extremely well catered for, but that is not always the case. As policy makers, we must provide for the rights of every child in the country, no matter what their circumstances.

And again, I loved Graham Stuart's reply:

I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Gentleman, who is a distinguished member of the Select Committee and who brings years of experience of education to it, so I hesitate to say what I am about to say. However, he is suggesting, as a Labour Member of Parliament, that working-class families involved in home education should be treated with more suspicion than those in better-off areas, that they are not to be trusted with the education of their children, and that inspectors and assessors and all those other people with acronyms should be wandering into their homes, because of — my God — what they might do to their children.

Of course working class families are no less able to keep their children safe and well educated than other families, and to suggest they might be was a scurrilous, contemptible marker for the hidden truth behind the traditional Labour dislike of home education.

Barry Sheerman made a quiet comment which I don't think made it to the Hansard transcript, about people having a vested interest in the education of children. My dad is an 'Old Labour' man too, who shares a lot of Mr Sheerman's philosophy - one that seems alien to me, but which I think runs fundamentally through that brand of idealism. The best way to explain it might be to repeat my dad's immediate, instinctive response when I told him thirteen years ago that I'd deregistered my children from school to educate them at home.

"But you can't do that! It's not your decision to make! They belong to the state, not to you!"

In my view, they belong to themselves but when they're very young, parents are their guardians precisely because - unlike the state - we have a natural, instinctive, loving bond with our children. We know them from birth, we spend the most time with them and we are therefore best placed to make decisions with them and on their behalf. The cold, impersonal, self-serving machine of state should be a parent of last, not first resort and the law properly reflects this.

I think over the years, having seen the many positive results of my decision, my dad has changed his view somewhat. At least, I hope so. Sadly, I'd have much less confidence in my ability to convince the likes of Barry Sheerman whose grandchildren I did not raise - but luckily I don't have to. That philosophy has had its time, and we now seem to be moving into a new and enlightened era in terms of educational policy.

More on Pupil Registration Regulations

2011-03-30T16:25:00.002+01:00

The following is by Mike Fortune-Wood, of the long-established and newly-redesigned Home Education UK website, reproduced here with his permission:

The government are proposing to introduce changes to the Pupil Registration Regulations which govern the registration of pupils at state school in England.

One of the changes being introduced (probably in September) will create a 20 day delay between a parent informing a school that they are home educating and the school actually removing the child from the register. It will also introduce a new registration code (Z) which will allow the child not to attend while still formally registered.

This proposal is intended to create a cooling off period for the parents so should they change their minds, a place will be kept for the child at their former school so that a return can be guaranteed. This was a proposal originally suggested by Mr Badman.

However, As was pointed out at the time of Mr Badman's review in 2009-10, such a change to the regulations would open what is known by some as the 'Ibiza loophole'. This is where a parent books a holiday in term time, de-registers the child for the duration of the holiday and then re-registers the child upon return, thus circumventing the anti truancy rules.

This not only makes a mockery of the governments anti truancy policies but also raises the concern among home educators that such abuse of the system will bring authentic law abiding home educators, who do sometimes take holidays during school terms (choosing to study instead during school holidays), into disrepute.

This regulation change is ill thought out and badly formulated. The education department will come to regret the change as news of how it can be used by feckless parents spreads.

Deregistration [from school] on demand - a vital civil liberty

2011-03-29T14:30:00.006+01:00

... and one which successive UK governments have tried to chip away at with typically Fabian strategy for years.

Why is it of interest to home educators that the right of parents to deregister their children from school on demand be maintained?

Elaine Greenwood-Hyde says it better than I can:

Deregistration on demand is an incredibly important law for home educators and any tinkering will produce problems. It’s a very slippery slope. It is parents who are legally responsible, so when we deregister it should not be up to the government to say: "No, no … you have to wait 20 days." That’s not in accordance with section 7, for one thing.

It will mean 20 days of harassment that can be used to try to stop a family home educating. In particular I think families with children with SEN will be singled out. Ask any parent what it was like before deregistration on demand. There are horror stories.

It also leaves a loop hole for term time holidays for school pupils which might later be all-too-easily closed by government. The obvious next step is for them to decide that deregistration on demand itself is a nuisance.

Add to this that home educators have neither been informed or consulted about this and you know this doesn’t bode well for the future. Sneaky is as sneaky does. Beware the frog boiling...

Here's the latest, and here's the schedule for these changes:

By 21 March - responses received
W/c 28 March* - regulations to be signed
By 1 April* - regulations laid in parliament
6 April - House rises for recess
......On 1 September* - regulations come into force
* these timings depend on nature and content of the comments received from this letter.

So the new regulations are due to be signed this week!

Home educators were not informed - I gather someone came across the letter by accident this week. Ofsted - which has no role in home education - was informed, as was something called The Education Forum, which I've just joined but can't find any discussion about this.

People are emailing the letter's author (address in the heading) to make their views known, and some people are also emailing their MPs.

I think if this proposed change goes through, the general public will be even more reluctant to enroll their children in school in the first place.

Edit:

Letter from Greg Midcalf, Policy Manager, School Attendance Safety Team:
http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/p/pupil%20registration%20regulations%20-%20handout.pdf

Questions questions...

2011-03-23T06:20:00.002Z

I think most of us recognise the pattern by now. A set of staged questions like this, followed by an announcement of a consultation like this.

I'd like to know how the system works, and who drives it. Paid lobbyists, obviously, but paid for by whom? And the Culture Secretary this time, not Michael Gove? Could this be because of Gove's words in Parliament of the 11th January 2010? He said then:

I am deeply concerned about the additional bureaucratic burden that will now potentially be placed on thousands of our fellow citizens whose only crime is to want to devote themselves as fully as possible to their children's education.

It is a basic right of parents to be able to educate their children in accordance with their own wishes, and to educate them at home if they so wish. There may be many reasons why parents take that decision: they might be dissatisfied with local provision; their child might have a specific educational need that they feel can be better supported at home; or they might have philosophical objections to the style of education on offer at the local state schools that are easily accessible.

Each of these decisions can sometimes be illuminating, in that they can tell us what is wrong with current provision-there might be a lack of diversity, for instance. Ultimately however, this is a basic human right that every parent should have, and I feel the Bill erodes that right, because, as I read it, it allows the state to terminate the right of a family to educate a child at home if the education offered is not deemed suitable according to regulations that the Secretary of State writes.

I wonder if there's a way of finding out who is doing the lobbying.

It won't stop there though, will it? CME -> ECM, invalid guidance and mission creep

2010-10-14T15:39:00.007+01:00

"If we can set out how often the provision should be checked..."

"Perhaps we can send in a report every five years or so..."

"Maybe not even that. They could just phone us or something..."

- are some of the things I've been reading in discussions about these new, non statutory draft guidelines.

It's just that there are two very real phenomena we shouldn't be forgetting about. The first one is mission creep, which is what happens when, for example, the government comes up with a scheme to track down all of the Children Missing Education (CME) and makes this a legal requirement for local authorities. "But isn't this going to affect us?" asked home educators anxiously. "No no," we were told. "This isn't about you."

They even wrote it into our non-statutory (advisory) 2007 guidelines for local authorities:

The guidance issued makes it clear that the duty does not apply to children who are being educated at home.

Look fondly on those words, because once we have new non-statutory (advisory, as opposed to the compulsory CME) guidelines, they'll be gone forever, and the mission creep gap between "It's not about you," and "Oops! It's all about you. Did we not say?" will be neatly sealed over, lost without trace. They can't be used in the new version, because they're no longer correct: the statutory (compulsory) CME guidance was amended in 2009 - in the same month the Badman review was launched - to say nothing of the sort.

So now we have a problem that needs a solution: the EHE guidelines disagree with the current CME guidance. The first says our provision doesn't have to be checked for suitability, because back in 2007 a parent's word was trusted unless there was good reason to doubt it. The second says it does, because by 2009 it was not. That's one version of events anyway. The best solution for us to that problem would be amended CME guidance, not a replacement of the EHE guidelines which are advisory only. Given that these two disagree with each other, which do you think local authority officers follow? The compulsory ones, or the advisory ones? The compulsory ones, of course.

Changing statutory guidance is apparently quite a straightforward procedure, which has been managed twice for home educators in Scotland. I've been reading about it, and first point I discovered was this:

1.2.5 Provisions in subordinate legislation must be intra vires, that is they must be within the scope of the enabling power. If they are ultra vires they are invalid.

In my previous post, I set out the bits of the enabling power (section 436A of the education act) and the subordinate legislation (Sections 87 and 92 of the 2009 CME guidance)which concern us the most. Are those sections of the CME guidance within the scope of section 436A? I don't think they are. What do you think? Because if they're not, they're

ultra vires

and therefore

invalid.

The other thing we should always remember is the elephant in the room called ECM (Every Child Matters), which provides local authorities with five outcomes that every child in its authority is supposed to meet. The five outcomes are: Be healthy; Stay safe; Enjoy and achieve; Make a positive contribution; and Achieve economic wellbeing. They all sound quite nice on the face of it, but are actually linked to a complicated system of tick-boxed measures and checks, intended for each and every child in every local authority. Home educating parents in Oldham have been falling foul of the first one already: we hear that some of their children are being weighed every six months and that three school attendance orders have already been issued there. I can't imagine what kind of breakdown in communications between home educators and local authorities has brought this state of affairs about, but the problem is that the CME guidance "gets their foot in the door", as it were, and once there, officers are obliged to check that all five outcomes are being met, not just the educational ones.

So it's really important that home educators are not the target of the CME guidance and that this is set out clearly in that guidance. Once parents say they are home educating, then unless there is good reason not to, officers should take their word for it.

New Labour did not trust parents to tell the truth about their own children, or even to make decisions about them. Does the present government? It remains to be seen.

No new guidance for HE, until you've fixed the CME.

No new guidance for HE, until you've fixed the CME

2010-10-10T06:53:00.003+01:00

"The CME" is the Statutory guidance (revised) for local authorities in England to identify children not receiving a suitable education and the parts of this that need to be fixed before we can safely and effectively move forward with new and correct guidance for Local Authorities on Home Education are as follows:

87. Section 436A of the Education Act 1996 requires local authorities to make arrangements to establish (so far as it is possible to do so) the identities of children who are not pupils at schools and who are not otherwise receiving suitable education. In order to comply with this duty local authorities need to make arrangements which will as far as possible enable them to determine whether any children who are not pupils at schools, such as those being educated at home, are receiving suitable education. In order to do this local authorities should make inquiries with parents educating children at home about the educational provision being made for them. The procedures to be followed with respect to such investigations are set out in the EHE Guidelines, 2.7-2.11 and 3.4-3.6. [My emphasis.]

But the EHE guidelines say:

2.6 Local authorities have a statutory duty under section 436A of the Education Act 1996, inserted by the Education and Inspections Act 2006, to make arrangements to enable them to establish the identities, so far as it is possible to do so, of children in their area who are not receiving a suitable 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. [My emphasis]

This makes it very clear that the CME guidance was not originally intended to provide a tool for Local Authorities to seek to monitor home education provision, and yet the 2009 CME guidance was cited by my Local Authority later in 2009 for that very reason.

Next, from the 2009 CME guidance:

92. In order to discharge their duties in relation to children not receiving an education, local authorities should make inquiries with parents about whether their home educated children are receiving a suitable education. The Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities make clear that parents who home educate may take a number of equally valid approaches to educational provision for their children.

I think this is supposed to interpret section 436A of the Education Act, which says:

436A Duty to make arrangements to identify children not receiving education

(1)A local education authority must make arrangements to enable them to establish (so far as it is possible to do so) the identities of children in their area who are of compulsory school age but—

(a)are not registered pupils at a school, and

(b)are not receiving suitable education otherwise than at a school.

(2)In exercising their functions under this section a local education authority must have regard to any guidance given from time to time by the Secretary of State.

(3)In this Chapter, “suitable education”, in relation to a child, means efficient full-time education suitable to his age, ability and aptitude and to any special educational needs he may have.”

- but that's not an interpretation I would agree with, and nor is it one that preserves the principle set out in Section 7 of that act: that parents are responsible for their children's educational provision, not local authorities. Point 92 goes a step too far and urgently needs to be rewritten.

I can't understand why new guidance for local authorities on home education is being proposed, while the damaging 2009 CME guidance - which will have the effect of bringing in compulsory registration of home educators by the back door - is presumably to remain unchanged.

New guidance?

2010-10-05T10:55:00.008+01:00

I'm hearing strange rumours that a group of people have been tasked with the job of rewriting some guidance for local authorities about home education.

It's a while since I blogged properly here and so I'm probably a bit rusty, but these persistent whispers from various quarters have brought me back with something to say. For one thing, the names I'm hearing mentioned have not been politically active in English home education for decades, like some others I can think of. So there seems to be a certain amount of re-covering of old ground and reinventing the wheel going on.

I can understand why the civil servants at the Department for Education and possibly certain Local Authority officers and so on might be pushing for new guidance. Carlotta set out the problem very clearly nearly two years ago and there's no need for me to repeat what she said there.

Kelly Green in Canada has also been grappling with the issue on her blog, where she was expertly and quite adequately answered by Barbara Stark in comment number 9 on that post. There are some other good answers in the comments there besides that one, but that comment of Barbara's in particular is worth a read because it provides such a clear explanation of the situation. Barbara is one of those people who have been politically active in English home education for decades. I read everything she has to say: she's a positive wealth of knowledge, experience, information and wisdom.

Between three and four years ago, many of us were involved in a government consultation which resulted in the 2007 [non-statutory] Guidelines for Local Authorities and which I - with my relative inexperience - quite liked (understatement of the year) but about which Barbara and AHEd were less happy.

And then as Kelly set out recently here, along came section 436A of the Education Act, creating the moot point, conflict and confusion over the issue of whether Local Authorities must ask for information about provision from parents who say they are home educating, or whether they only may ask for such information, which is the situation that was set out in a judgment by Lord Justice Donaldson some thirty years ago.

This has been further complicated, as Carlotta explained, by the Revised statutory guidance for local authorities in England to identify children not receiving a suitable education, which included the words:

87. Section 436A of the Education Act 1996 requires local authorities to make arrangements to establish (so far as it is possible to do so) the identities of children who are not pupils at schools and who are not otherwise receiving suitable education. In order to comply with this duty local authorities need to make arrangements which will as far as possible enable them to determine whether any children who are not pupils at schools, such as those being educated at home, are receiving suitable education. In order to do this local authorities should make inquiries with parents educating children at home about the educational provision being made for them. The procedures to be followed with respect to such investigations are set out in the EHE Guidelines, 2.7-2.11 and 3.4-3.6.

- stating that Local Authorities should make such inquiries of home educating parents, but then directing them back to the 2007 Guidance... which says:

2.6 Local authorities have a statutory duty under section 436A of the Education Act 1996, inserted by the Education and Inspections Act 2006, to make arrangements to enable them to establish the identities, so far as it is possible to do so, of children in their area who are not receiving a suitable 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.

- and then directs officers to the old, 2007 CME guidance which, as Carlotta points out, used to say:

3.3.16. If it becomes known that a child identified as not receiving education is being home educated, this should be recorded on the local authority's database and no further action should be taken unless there is cause for concern about the child's safety and welfare. Monitoring arrangements already exist for children being educated at home. Where there are concerns about the child's safety and welfare, Local Safeguarding Children Board procedures must be followed.

Muddy waters indeed, in which some further clarification probably would be useful, but I understand that the current government does not want to change primary legislation. So we're stuck with section 436A, though not necessarily with the precise wording of the 2009 CME guidance, which constitutes secondary legislation. Before the publication of that document, we still had a workable situation.

This makes me feel perplexed about the talk of new statutory guidance about elective home education, when really - I might be seeing this in terms that are too simplistic, or missing a crucial point somewhere - it would be much easier and less controversial to alter the faulty interpretation of Section 436A in the 2009 CME guidance instead and let the 2007 guidelines stand. Because that wording really is just somebody's interpretation of the primary legislation. I'd be very interested to know who wrote it.

Looking again at what section 436A actually says:

436A Duty to make arrangements to identify children not receiving education

(1)A local education authority must make arrangements to enable them to establish (so far as it is possible to do so) the identities of children in their area who are of compulsory school age but—

(a)are not registered pupils at a school, and

(b)are not receiving suitable education otherwise than at a school.

(2)In exercising their functions under this section a local education authority must have regard to any guidance given from time to time by the Secretary of State.

(3)In this Chapter, “suitable education”, in relation to a child, means efficient full-time education suitable to his age, ability and aptitude and to any special educational needs he may have.”

In my view, this does not preclude the option of taking the parent's word for it unless there is good reason not to. As section 2.1 of the 2007 guidelines clearly state:

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

And I agree with those people who are saying that, taking all of the above into account, attempts to create a brand new piece of statutory guidance can only make things worse. You can't give ground in an argument when it's not your ground to give. If you put yourself forward for such a position as to negotiate new terms with government, you're morally obliged not to yield one inch of ground that was hard fought for by those who came before you. If you don't understand this properly (and I might not myself, but I'm not negotiating anything!) then you need to go and talk to those people exhaustively, until you really do.

Ultimate state control

2010-06-29T11:44:00.002+01:00

I think this kind of unfolding horror story is what some of us have in mind in being so determined not to compromise and "meet the authorities half-way" in regulating home education.

It seems to be nothing other than a universal ganging-up by the officials and the courts against this family. The implicit message is: conform with the system, or lose your child. What are the lessons to be learned? Don't ever seek help for depression? Don't leave it too late to get on the plane? Don't emigrate? Don't live in Sweden? Don't let the UK go that way.

Or is it already? Do things like that happen to people here? I know that Family Court hearings are secret and parents often ordered not to speak out about what's happening to their families.

Also, it doesn't matter where in the world they are: we're all people. We all hurt. We'd all be in agony if our children were stolen from us like that.

RESULT

2010-04-07T18:19:00.004+01:00

Home education as we know it is safe, for the time being.

However, Ed Balls has said that he "will be campaigning to ensure that this Government is returned and that these measures do make it on the statute book in the first session of the new Parliament," so we really need Labour to LOSE the General Election.

Then, we'll see what the Conservatives have in store for us. Here are Michael Gove's words in the House of Commons on the 11th January this year:

I am deeply concerned about the additional bureaucratic burden that will now potentially be placed on thousands of our fellow citizens whose only crime is to want to devote themselves as fully as possible to their children's education.

It is a basic right of parents to be able to educate their children in accordance with their own wishes, and to educate them at home if they so wish. There may be many reasons why parents take that decision: they might be dissatisfied with local provision; their child might have a specific educational need that they feel can be better supported at home; or they might have philosophical objections to the style of education on offer at the local state schools that are easily accessible.

Each of these decisions can sometimes be illuminating, in that they can tell us what is wrong with current provision-there might be a lack of diversity, for instance. Ultimately however, this is a basic human right that every parent should have, and I feel the Bill erodes that right, because, as I read it, it allows the state to terminate the right of a family to educate a child at home if the education offered is not deemed suitable according to regulations that the Secretary of State writes.

.....

I believe that the report on which their recommendations are based was described by one member of the expert group called in to help us as one of the most rushed, flawed and populist exercises with which he had ever been involved. I know that the Secretary of State bears no malice towards home education, so I hope that in Committee he and the Minister for Schools and Learners will do their best to address the many legitimate concerns.

I do not know of any home educating parent who supports these provisions. I, like almost every Member of this House, have been inundated by correspondence, telephone calls and e-mails from, and had private meetings with, home educating parents who are deeply concerned about this legislation, because it undermines the right of a family who have broken no laws and placed no child in danger to decide what is in the interests of their child.

As the debate on home education has developed, I have become particularly worried about the way in which various issues have been conflated; I am especially worried about the conflation of safeguarding and child protection with quality of education. I deeply regret the way statistics have been used to suggest somehow that children are intrinsically at greater risk if they are being home educated; I believe I am right in saying that not a single home-educated child has had to be taken into care as a result of a child protection plan, yet there are those who have sedulously spread the myth that somehow children are at greater risk through being home educated.

.....

Many of those who sacrifice not only earnings but time make a commitment of love towards their children in order to home educate them, and that should be celebrated and applauded, not denigrated and undermined.

One of my specific concerns is that this legislation means the state will take it upon itself to regulate what may or may not be taught in the home. Proposed new section 19C in schedule 1 provides that parents will have to produce a report in accordance with regulations laid down by the Secretary of State explaining what they propose to include in the education programme for their child. They will then have to allow an inspector in at an appropriate point, and that inspector will have to be satisfied that the education being provided is suitable, according to the regulations laid down by the Secretary of State. If that education is not considered suitable by that local authority employee, the right of that individual to be home educated can be revoked. So this is not about safeguarding or even about child protection; this is about the Secretary of State being able to say that an individual home educating parent is not providing an education that he deems appropriate and therefore they should not have the right to educate that child at home.

One of the other terrible things about this legislation is that proposed new section 19F in schedule 1 sets out that when the information provided by a parent to a local authority changes and is found to be wrong, even if it was materially right when it was given - in other words, the parent made efforts to ensure that the information was correct but the local authority finds that it has changed in some respect - the right to educate that child at home can be revoked. Even though the parent is not at fault and sought to provide the right information at the right time in the right way, they can lose the right to educate their own child. A draconian extension of state power is potentially made possible by this Bill, which is why all my hon. Friends will be working hard in Committee to ensure that we can find a consensus on this sensitive area, so that the rights of home educating parents are respected and we do not fundamentally erode their liberties.

David Laws then said, crucially:

I share some of the concerns that the hon. Gentleman has outlined. Is it his party's position that the existing regulation of home education should be left unchanged, or does he foresee the need to make some changes?

And Gove replied:

I do foresee the need to make some changes. I do not believe that the current system is perfect, but it is fundamentally important that we respect the rights of home educators first and that we ensure that any change to legislation is conducted in accordance with their wishes and interests - they have made it crystal clear that the approach that has been taken so far runs counter to those.

"Ability to set up and maintain Virtual Learning Environments." ?

2010-03-28T14:08:00.008+01:00

I happened upon this job advertisement yesterday, for a full-time Elective Home Education Officer in the city of Wakefield, which is about 15 miles away from where we live. Wakefield has a population of nearly 80,000 of which 88 (according to these figures) are children who are currently being electively home educated. If the new full-time officer spent one day officiating for each of those children (a very generous allowance, considering most registered families are currently visited for about an hour a year, regardless of the number of children, assuming they agree to be visited at all, which is not mandatory) he or she would still only be busy for a quarter of their time. Unless Wakefield LA suspects the unregistered number of home educated children, soon to be flushed out by the new regulations, to be much higher than that. On our local email list - obviously not a conclusive statistical source - I think there are about three.

So, what exactly is Wakefield's incoming full-time EHE officer going to be doing with the other 75% of his or her working week? That's a lot of thumb-twiddling.

Until you start reading the attached 'job specification' in which the required competence:

- sticks out like a sore thumb.

It immediately reminded me of some meetings we had in our town at the end of last year with LA staff, about home education liaison. One of the ideas repeatedly raised there by the resident 'EHE officer' or equivalent (certainly not full-time!) was the setting up by them of a virtual school for electively home educated children.

Now, I know that there are regular regional conferences run by Capita, with the ostensible aim of "providing practical advice and guidance on how to reduce the number of children missing education", all of which are attended by our local LA relevant staff - and, I assume, those in Wakefield. They seem to be very well attended affairs. I notice in the one I just linked, booked for next month in Manchester, that one of the 'benefits of attending' is to:

Understand how to execute the recommendations of the Badman Review on elective home education

But wait a minute: the Badman recommendations are just that! They're not supposed to be executed at this point, are they? This is when the inner conspiracy theorist in me wonders again about the hidden agenda: the precise nature of the links between Badman, the DCSF and organisations like Capita. Who is driving the process? What is their brief? From where does this originate?

Going back to the issue of virtual schools, perhaps the best-known of these is Notschool.net, about which my younger son Al wrote a critique some time ago. He wasn't particularly impressed, considering the project to be superfluous, costly and inefficient, but then Alix is a particularly self-driven and highly motivated young man, and I think we both concluded that some students might find that kind of structure to be useful.

Our local EHE officer put it to me that the setting up of virtual school was one way for local authorities to access funding for home educators. Again, I can understand why some families might be interested in this (although why we can't just apply for and be given a share of the AWPU is beyond me) and wouldn't wish to prevent anyone from accessing such a resource, if that was their wish. My worry is, again, that of hidden agenda. Is the concept of virtual schools one that's being quietly discussed across the board at the Capita conferences and/or elsewhere? If so, where did it come from and where is it intended to go? At this stage, it wouldn't be overly paranoid of me to imagine a point in time when registration with a virtual school might be deemed the only officially acceptable kind of home education, any dissenting families to be written off as having the dreaded CME: Children Missing Education. The framework for such a future scenario could be said to be appearing to slide smoothly into place.

So, what do virtual schools do? They provide structure, direction, guidance, funding and tuition to their pupils. All useful services without which some home educating families no doubt feel to be floundering, or at least missing out on something. But it's crucially important for the sake of educational diversity that the alternative options are maintained. There's something really precious and valuable about a completely autodidactic education, such as the one enjoyed by my sons, aged 21 and 19 and both now well able to support themselves financially without need of official qualifications. It flies in the face of what is nowadays the 'normal' way of doing things, but unlike Ali's opinion of Notschool, it is cheap, efficient and extremely effective.

Self-directed learners become self-directed workers and from what I can gather, these are very useful kinds of people in any situation.

Some thoughts on parenthood, children's rights and Maslow

2010-03-15T06:57:00.005Z

I've always admired Heidi DeWet's writing, and her opinions never fail to resonate with and educate me. She's kindly given her permission for us to reproduce the following:

Reading some of the commentary on home education in the past few days joined some dots in my head. I don't have a blog to publish this on, and I don't have the gift of writing incisive, well-rounded commentary that some of my awesome friends have, but I'm hoping this will help inform the debate in some small way.

Baroness Deech: “… home educators who have flooded their MPs, and my blog site, with their views … cannot amount to more than 6 or 7 per cent, but the rage and resentment they express, their mishmash of ideological views, their rejection of state interference, their indifference to the rights of the child, their accusations of totalitarianism and their superiority over those who would like to help the child do not paint a good picture of home educators. They made me determined to speak up for the rights of the child, when I had taken hardly any notice of home education until recently.” [my emphasis]
[Link]

Chris & Ophelia de Serres: “A number of comments questioned why we would want to change the existing system to ’save a few kids’. In our organization, every child counts, and we are committed to saving every one.” [Link]

These people, among others who’ve published their commentary recently, have a perception that home educators are opposed to children’s rights and/or unconcerned about children’s welfare.

As a group, we are no less concerned than most adults with children’s rights – probably more, as all of us are fully engaged with the upbringing of our own children in a way that parents who utilise schools for a significant portion of their children’s waking hours don't have to be. And all of us who take the time to contact our MPs and comment on ill-informed and prejudicial blogs do so precisely out of our concern for the rights and welfare of children – predominantly, but not solely, our own children.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs describes five types/levels of need which motivate people: physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs and self-actualisation. He proposed that it is necessary to fulfil all needs at a lower or more fundamental level before it’s possible to move on to the higher-level needs. Interestingly, “family” appears under Safety needs and Social needs, in both cases in terms of the family satisfying the needs of the person in question; there is no mention of the desire to protect and nurture one’s children, which is a very fundamental drive indeed. There’s a lot of evidence that child-nurturing is influenced by hormones in the parent’s body, particularly the mother’s, and in my opinion it would be no stretch to define this need as a physiological need; if not, it certainly qualifies as a safety need.

A parent is biologically and psychologically designed, programmed, conditioned – call it what you will – to care deeply about the wellbeing of their child. If the child is threatened, or the parent’s ability to nurture the child to the best of their ability is threatened, the parent cannot help but defend themselves, their children and family. Moreover, the parent is unable to be motivated by, and give a normal response to, needs that come higher up the hierarchy until this fundamental need has been satisfied.

Baroness Deech is concerned about the rights of children in an altruistic fashion, that is in the abstract. Perhaps for her it’s at the fifth level of self-actualisation (morality) or perhaps it extends down to the fourth level, esteem (achievement, wanting to make a difference, wanting to be respected). As an abuse survivor, perhaps Ms de Serres’s own second-level safety needs are bound up in her desire to make all other children safe from abuse. I think these observers expect us to respond to the perceived needs or rights of the Abstract Child in the same way they do, and they’re taken aback when we don’t. But it’s not because we don’t care – it’s because as parents we are blocked from responding to the issue of the Abstract Child until our far more basic need to protect our own, absolutely Real Children has been satisfied.

And we are simply not biologically capable of putting the theoretical needs of theoretical children before the concrete needs of our own children, and saying “yes, we’ll open our homes and expose our children to the abuse of educational bigots and potential paedophiles in the tenuous hope that some day, somewhere, it will allow the authorities to detect, and possibly even do something useful about, the abuse of a home-educated child who otherwise would have remained hidden.”

By Heidi DeWet

What are you doing here?

2010-03-06T03:47:00.001Z

You should be over there, reading this.

Outcomes and the factors that affect them

2010-03-01T09:34:00.008Z

The wonderful Grit, who keeps one of my favourite home ed blogs, has exhorted me to keep posting here, although for some reason I'm finding it very difficult to do so these days. But for Grit (and anyone else who wanted it) I will try.

First, I hate the word 'outcomes'. It speaks about the end result of a process: feed this in and in the end, you get that out, which will be why it's so well-used by conventional educationalists. But I think of education as a self-motivated thing, based on seeking knowledge. When this is a healthy, natural process it doesn't stop at the age of 16 or 18 or 21, or whenever a particular set course finishes, or when the government decides it should. It's a lifelong thing and I think this is another reason why I struggle to think in terms of educational 'outcomes'.

But this seems to be, politically, a momentous time for home education. We're in the news this week and we're being debated in the House of Lords. Two of my children are now over the age of 18, so I thought I'd say something here about their educational 'outcomes' and how I think these have been achieved.

Tom's business is still going well, although it's had its ups and downs over the year since he set it up. Crucially, it answers both the requirements he always had of it:

It allows him lots of spare time to do other things: he works for about 10 hours a week; and
It pays for his keep. Just about, usually. Although he knows full well, having proved it to himself time and again, that his input determines his output.

He enjoys the work because it takes him around the neighbourhood, meeting and enjoying discussions with lots of other people. He also derives great satisfaction from being able to resolve whatever problem was preventing them from getting the best use from their technical equipment. But fixing computers isn't his true vocation in life, good as he is at it. His real passion is CGI, which he's teaching himself to do and from which he might one day earn his living.

Ali is still enjoying his home educated status, which officially ends this June, on his 20th birthday which is the last day for which I can claim Child Benefit for him. He has to pay for his keep after that, as they all will: I don't have extra income for funding my adult children and even though I've had to claim single parent benefits as they've grown up, living off the state isn't something any of us have considered for them as adults. If they claimed unemployment benefits, they'd be compelled to take whatever jobs they were offered and they've never wanted to be employees, as such.

The thing is, they've had so much freedom as children that the concept of full-time employment in the same place doing the same kind of thing all day every day is unpalatable to them. They'd do it if their lives depended on it, but I don't think it's ever going to be their preference, now that they know what the alternatives are. They are not at all institutionalised.

Ali has options in the pipeline for the second half of this year and thereafter, for funding his keep. He really wants to do some interpreting and/or translation work, languages having always been his main line of interest and activity and this seems quite likely to come to pass for him, but if not he will join his brother in business, working to bring in enough extra custom to pay for them both. In the event, a combination of the two will probably happen - at least to start with.

The conventional 'grow up, move away' pattern hasn't happened for us and still might not. It's not an ethos I'd sign up to because extended family living makes more sense to me. This way, we share our resources and we all benefit: I make living cheaper and easier for them by providing a living environment which is bigger, nicer, more efficiently-run and friendlier than anything they'd be able to afford on their own and they make living cheaper and easier for me by helping out with jobs and tasks, providing a free baby-sitting service and saving me the expense of using tradesmen etc.

This is bad for the national and global economy. Not as bad as it could be though: in a few years' time, only the younger children will be living on benefits [child tax credits] and even they might not be. We might not reach the income threshold for paying income tax, but we will all pay our own way and provide what we need for ourselves. It's a cheap, wholesome, happy way of living, in which we still have that priceless and sanity-saving luxury of waking up in the morning thinking: "What do I want to do today?" - and then doing it.

"But this isn't feasible for everyone," some people say. "So it can't be promoted as a general ideal. Most people will have to go and get a full-time job." I can't quite see the logic of this though. I know it might be hard to believe in this day and age, but I still think we all have some saleable skill, gift or talent which - even if it doesn't make us rich, will provide enough for us to get by.

The differentiating factor is probably the nature of the family home, which underpins my sons' whole lives and their way of life. When I was their age, I was married with children but younger than them I remember working three jobs to pay my rent and bills because I was living away from the family home, having been 'encouraged' to move out. I didn't want them to feel trapped into either one of those outcomes before they felt truly ready for them.

We don't live in each others' pockets though. They have their own lives and their own friends and interests. Their bedrooms are very much their own territory and there are sometimes issues about who's doing the washing up and so on, but the longer we live like this and the older we all get, the easier it becomes. Things have settled down. We are each others' mutual support network and this is something I cherish more than all the money and shiny new things in the world.

The younger children sort of have four parents, because of the age gap, and I feel like they need them! It was the nearest I could get to having a whole village to raise the child. (Perhaps my grandchildren - or even their children - will have the village.) And it's much easier, this time around, to the feeling of isolation I had when the first three were little, even though I was married then. Perhaps especially because I was married then.

And the older children still have their parent when they need one, which they sometimes still do. I like to be able to help them and to facilitate their lives to the relatively small extent that I now do.

It's not always easy and there are sometimes problems, but I've looked at a lot of different living arrangements in my life - experienced quite a few myself - and so far this one is by far the best of all, for all concerned. It will no doubt change as and when other people join the mix and one or more of our own leave it - they might even all choose to leave it - but the key priority for me is that people should have the choice: to be free to make their own decisions and not pressured or persuaded into positions they don't want to take.

I think extended family living and self employment might be the natural outcomes to autonomous home education and I don't see anything wrong with them in principle, if everyone involved is happy and doing what they want to do. Yes, the nation's current economy would collapse if everyone did it, but we're hardly going to start a revolution, are we? I don't think it's ever going to be a mainstream way of life and there is room for pockets of people living in more flexible ways than the norm, although it seems that there are some forces who would prefer us to keep quiet about the whole thing. But really, I don't know why they feel so threatened.

In general, I love the fact that Tom and Ali have achieved their current positions without the need for conventional qualifications and/or college courses. At various times they looked into both, but found them wanting in terms of enthusiasm, inclusivity and focus. The main problem was the lack of enthusiasm exhibited by tutors, to be honest. I don't think either of them met anyone who sounded like he really wanted to be there, doing that job and so they baulked at signing to do courses with them, in case the gloom might be contagious. In the end, it wasn't a problem and they both say that any other kind of education than the self-driven one they had would have wasted their time and probably side-tracked them from what they really wanted to do.

They're both very satisfied with the education they had at home, which was autonomous but with support. I wanted them to find their own motivation and to enable this I had to stop trying to motivate them myself, but having done that, there was no stopping them. Yes, they've had fun, they've played computer games and messed around (they still do. Don't we all, to some extent?) But they're still choosing to learn and improve their marketable skills, I'm noticing, for most of their waking hours.

Their autonomous home education has been an unmitigated success: they are able and willing to earn as much money as they need or want, always dependent on their chosen level of input. They are healthy, happy, solvent, creative, stable and secure and they provide a useful service for the local community.

Outcomes for home educated children do vary, as they do for every other kind of education and section of society. Every family is different: every child is different. There's no reason for all outcomes to be the same or even similar, and probably no way to ensure they can be. I'm trying to think what I've done for the boys to help to bring them to this point, and I think it was to keep having faith in them and to respect their choices and wishes throughout as much as was humanly possible: a respect they seem happy to return in their treatment of me, without being asked. I don't know what factors affect other autonomously home educated children's 'outcomes', but I do know that these will be many and varied.

If we'd have been forced to home educate according to the Badman recommendations and/or the requirements contained in the CSF bill, Tom and Ali's outcomes would have been very different, because the amount of autonomy and freedom in education they enjoyed would have been impossible. It saddens us all greatly that we're having to prepare their seven year-old and even their three year-old sister for annual education inspections instead of relying only on their self-motivation to learn. I will do everything I can to ensure that as much of their freedom and curiosity can be protected as legally possible, but under the proposed new regime which allows for trust of neither child nor parent, this will be difficult and I anticipate that their 'outcomes' will be negatively affected to some degree because of it.

If anyone in government or the DCSF cares. Which, it seems, they don't.

The thing is, Mr Badman...

2010-02-25T21:09:00.003Z

I've got the 'flu ATM and I think it must have weakened my resolve, because I wasn't going to be provoked by any more of this kind of nonsense from people of his ilk, but Graham Badman has been talking to the BBC about home education, in the context of the death of Khyra Ishaq, and this is a snatch of what he said. (A snatch is enough: I'm not seeking out any more of it):

There are a tiny minority of people who use the home education system as a mask for sometimes horrific abuse of their children.

This 'tiny minority' being the total sum of one, we assume, according to his ill-briefed and almost (if it were a laughing matter, which it is not) comical, clumsily attempted obfuscation of the statistic to the Commons Select Committee recently. This one.

It's very convenient for Mr Badman and the DCSF to try to blame Khyra's death on her 'home education status', therefore her lack of daily supervision by school staff, but in fact if the law had been properly adhered to by the local authority in question, as home educators have been tirelessly been requesting it be for years now, her mother's attempts to deregister her from school wouldn't have been recognised. She informed the local authority in writing, instead of the school's headteacher. A minor detail perhaps, but I think it underlines the reasons for our pedanticism in such respects: a clear-thinking, well-researched deregistration from school would have followed the correct legal procedure and this didn't - which, instead of leading to Khyra's case being passed around and not properly addressed, should have rung at least some small alarm bells, somewhere.

But that's not the point I want to make, through my fluey bleariness. It's the bewildering Badmanesque confusion between education and welfare that jars in the mind so discordantly. The point is this:

If Kyhra's death could have been prevented by the relevant authorities having regular sight of her, giving rise to these calls for us to be regulated - why do the resulting proposals require us to jump through so many educational hoops for the state as well?

It doesn't make sense at all, and this gives the lie to the purported motivation behind our persecution. As any home educated child could tell, it just doesn't add up. I'm not asking for regular welfare checks (on the basis of one single case, incorrectly processed by the LA?) but the problem is that the goal posts move all the time. Khyra was abused, obviously, reprehensively, due to the mental illness or evil or whatever of her parents - a terrible tragedy which would, in a sane world, have been prevented by the actions of a healthy neighbourhood, never mind the education system which bizarrely seeks to replace it.

But aside from deliberate starvation, exposure to the elements, physical beatings and other obvious manifestations of it, what exactly does constitute *child abuse* nowadays? That's quite a question. 'Inappropriate' clothing? 'Inadequate' discipline? Distress at seeing one's parents upset by officials? All of these and many more made it into the consultation about the NICE guidelines for identifying child abuse, about which I blogged last year. I daren't read the resulting document: I don't think I can face it.

To some local authority home education inspectors, failure to force one's child to learn its nine times table by the age of seven will, no doubt, constitute 'abuse', even if said child is quite happy, healthy, well cared-for and learning at what he and his parents think is the optimal level for his age, aptitude and ability. In the crazy Kafkaesque world created by Graham Badman, it no longer matters what the family thinks. All education must be dictated by the state.

It's dressed up as a process of negotiation and registration, but in reality it will amount to nothing more than permission to home educate being requested by the parents and then either granted or denied by the local authority. Denial can be on the most spurious grounds. "Oh, but of course there's an appeals procedure..." Yes. Do you know how those work at the Benefits Agency? Someone who works there told me that the procedure is as follows: the harshest decision possible is routinely made, and if the claimant fails to appeal, it's assumed they didn't really need the money.

Nothing is what it seems. What we're presented with is not the truth. (This is The Truth in relation to Schedule 1 of the CSF bill and the DCSF's excuses for it.)

We need:

the present law to be properly and strictly adhered to;
local authorities to understand their existing powers and make proper use of them instead of bleating for more when they don't; and
for the state to otherwise back off from normal family life in all its manifestations instead of using the extremely rare death of children from parental abuse as an excuse for yet another power-grab.

I'd also like to see the real reasons for this kind of abuse properly examined. Because it doesn't happen due to the failure of officials to prevent it, it really doesn't. It happens because some people in positions of power over children are just sick. And if we really want to understand what's going wrong, we need to find out why. That's going to be an uncomfortable process for us all, and it's not one that will lead to a firming up of the present national/global power structures and the further weakening of families and organic local communities (are they not all quite demolished yet?) so I'm not holding my breath for it to happen, but I'd love to see and perhaps take part in a parallel dialogue in this sort of area.

I'm not reading Twitter or Facebook or other blogs or lists posts at the moment (except for the fascinating thread alluded to somewhere above, which you might have spotted) but I think many of them will have covered this and made the same points. My next job here will probably be to extend and update the sidebar: we're a bit short of links to the best, most informative blogs but I've been busy and am now ill. (Is it 'abusive' to be ill in the presence of one's child? Hey, there's one they haven't thought of... have they? Hmm, that's not a safe assumption to make, I suppose.)

Meanwhile, I've been keeping an eye on the worryingly fast progress of the bill through parliament, but feeling somewhat reassured by Graham Stuart's repeated assertions that the home education element will definitely not survive the wash-up. I was chatting to a primary school teacher about it yesterday, a lady who deregistered her child from school only a few weeks ago. She was outraged when she heard about the bill's contents and straight away said: "But that's just like school! And I deregistered him to avoid all that bureaucracy - so that I could just concentrate my time on giving him the education he actually needs!"

There, she summed up the position perfectly - without even needing to stop and think about it.

The Truth

2010-01-26T08:25:00.003Z

It's lucky for home educators that we have people like Dani Ahrens on our side, although I think she might say that luck doesn't come into it. She's compiled this document, which will be invaluable to us in clearly demonstrating the attempted, slanderous manipulation of statistics that's been taking place.

"We really won't stand for it. I cannot put it any better."

2010-01-22T04:02:00.010Z

The unassailable logic of HEYC's Chloe Watson has brought me back to my blog editor, after last week's despicable show by Ed Balls in the Commons. She is the heroine of the UK home education movement at the moment. She cuts through parliamentary and third sector doublespeak like a knife through butter or, to be dramatic, a stake through a vampire's heart. She is a shining example of the benefits of home education. I've been wanting to blog about what I watched there on Tuesday's Parliament TV ever since, but we've had some birthday celebrations to attend to, as well as home ed meetings, other children's activities and, you know, things like sleep(!) so there hasn't been time until now.

Anyway, here is just one key part of that inspiring speech, from Tuesday's session of the Public Bill Committee (CSF Bill), still watchable in its entirety here.

If you counted them, you'll know there were fully four seconds of complete silence when she'd finished speaking, in a hearing that was otherwise full of noise. Tick.. tick.. tick.. tick. They were speechless. On our extreme left there is Graham Badman, visibly shielding his face from the shining truth of her words! Actually, his body language when she was speaking - as someone else commented to me - was fascinating to watch. In fact, throughout the whole session, he never once looks at Chloe, even when he's directly addressing her or she him. He completely denies her any eye contact, as if he can't bring himself to acknowledge her presence. This particular section started at around 2 hours and 30 minutes into the hearing, if you want to see it in a slightly wider context.

But we must be careful what we say about Mr Badman and, it seems, about Sir Paul Ennals and others "working in the field of children" (Where is this field of children? Is it being harvested?) - such delicate flowers they apparently are. Here's Sir Paul explaining why:

I don't know who's been sending those abusive emails, but I wish you wouldn't, although it seems that what's in the public domain causes at least as much distress to the poor souls.

I really like Nick Gibb's response to this though. (And ah, I see he's a Leeds man!):

In case you missed some of his words there, he said:

"Sir Paul, I think that this indicates how badly the whole measure has been handled from start to finish. You cannot blame members of the public who are unhappy with the things that emanate from the House of Commons. We have to blame the Government and, I am afraid to say, Graham Badman, for how the whole matter has been handled. People’s views about our legislation and proposals are very valid, and need to be taken very seriously when we legislate."

Music to my ears - and, it seems, to the ears of many people in that room as well. I don't think the Graham Badmans and the Paul Ennals of this world are at all used to being challenged by the general public on what they do, much less mere parents, whose position in the lives of their 'field of children' is usually relegated to something like that of chambermaid - until there's some blaming to be done.

But I don't think we've been particularly harsh, have we? I ran a quick search through this blog and I see that I devoted a post to Sir Ennals back in April last year, when he was first appointed to Mr Badman's panel of 'experts'. (Though come to think of it, Sir Ennals' specific expertise on the issue of elective home education never was made clear, was it?) Reading back over that post, I'm reminded of his position on the DCSF 'Stakeholders Board' and also about that particular phenomenon known as 'Stakeholder mapping'. So I think we can assume from that link that Sir Paul has been duly "identified [as a stakeholder] at the beginning and involved throughout the change project", that he will have been "communicated to and consulted with throughout the change process," in order to keep him "motivated," "delivering wide buy-in and commitment" and "helping to ensure [that] sign-off procedures are clear".

I hope you realise that we've been going through a specifically preplanned 'change project'. (Echoes of Common Purpose? Which, I see from that Wikipedia entry there, has been allowed rent-free use of office accomodation inside a government Department for Children, Schools and Families building in Sheffield since 1997. "The DCSF admits it has no formal record of the decision being made and no rental or tenancy agreement of any kind." "The DCSF paid for contracts worth a total of nearly £52,000 between 2004 and 2005 and a total of £11,600 between 2006 and 2007 to send officials on training courses." What a strange and curious coincidence. Hmmm! Although I see that Ed Balls was not a CP graduate as at June 2008.)

According to the insouciant Mr Badman, though, this whole process is comparable to.. say, the imposition of a new speed limit or something. Really, what are we all making such a fuss about?

(Notice the removal of spectacles and usage of eye contact at that point, for added impact.)

Paul Ennals backs this up with his quick: "I am not sure whether it is normal practice for the Committee to take such factors into account when deciding the best legislation for meeting the needs of the population that it is concerned about. I do not think that it should be either," in response to Fiona Nicholson's excellent:

"I cannot overstate the fear and apprehension that home educators are experiencing over the Bill. If it were to pass into legislation, it would be two years before we will see any of it. But there are people right now who are hardly sleeping and hardly able to eat. That has been the case for a whole year, because they are in dread of what will happen. Whether that would lead to mass civil disobedience, I have absolutely no idea.
I really believe that you will not find home-education support organisations that will deliver training on how to implement the Bill, so in respect of all those plans for softening the edges and making it palatable and home-education friendly, I cannot see where you will find such people. There are two home-education support charities: Education Otherwise and the Home Education Advisory Service. They are both registered charities. They are membership subscription organisations. They get their funding entirely from member subscriptions. Our members are not paying ours to help the Government to implement the Bill, so unless you set up your own home-education support organisation, I do not really see how you will find home educators to train local authorities to deliver the Bill, even with substantial amendments. It will be very difficult."

(Although I notice she left AHEd out of her list, perhaps deeming it more of a campaigning than a support org, which would perhaps be fair comment.)

But let's hear that again:

And once more, for the tape:

Thank you, Fiona.

And then, there was the issue of civil disobedience, although I'm not quite sure where this sprang from - the committee's private debates (at the request of Mr Vernon Coaker, seen on the right on the trio featured in my previous post) perhaps, or some other discussion.

But it's mentioned by..

Graham Badman: "My claim about other nations is simply to make the point that, where there is a registration process, there is not the sort of civil disobedience that you fear."

Fiona Nicholson: "But there are people right now who are hardly sleeping and hardly able to eat. That has been the case for a whole year, because they are in dread of what will happen. Whether that would lead to mass civil disobedience, I have absolutely no idea."

And touched on (though not by name) by Chloe Watson: "Ever since the proposal came out, it has caused great friction in my area between families and the local authority. I have had reports from home-education kids across the country about children and parents refusing to talk to the local authority. Indeed, in my area, three families within a mile radius refuse to have any contact with the local authority, because they believe that it will not follow good practice."

Interesting that Mr Badman thinks someone fears our civil disobedience, to the extent that he is anxious to reassure them that it won't happen.

He also, on being asked about support for his recommendations from amongst home educators, said:

But I wonder what made Chloe and Fiona smile so much in Graham Stuart's direction on his mention of "One who gave evidence to the Select Committee, who said he welcomed registration.." Perhaps there was some sign language in evidence off-camera on which one of them might be able to enlighten us!

Mr Badman was conflating the two very different and separate positions of those home educators who would like some more public resources, and the few (most of us only know of that one) who actually supports the plan wholesale. He also tried to suggest that "the voice of home educators may not yet have been heard," but as Chloe later pointed out very clearly:

"Nobody has been silenced." And I think we have an average response to consultations etc, of about 5,000 - which, if the rumours of there being 20,000 home educating families are true - is an outstanding response rate of around 25%! So let's have no more talk about a 'vociferous minority' please. The Department for Children, Schools and Families Public Consultation Response
Home Education – registration and monitoring proposals, for example, explains in some 5,800 plus weasel words its excuses for ignoring the stark facts laid out in this consultation response chart [click to enlarge]:

I mean, they might all have been to better schools than me, but that looks to me like between 5 and 10 times the numbers in disagreement, as in agreement with DCSF's proposals, and I'm guessing that the 200 or so 'in agreement' will be mostly workers from that 'field of children' and not actual home educators. As Chloe went on to say, on this:

Yes, Sir Paul, Mr Badman, Mr Coaker, Mr Balls et al. Why not "listen to the people who know what they are talking about — the people who are doing the home educating, who live it, who live with the consequences of what they do?" I don't think Chloe - or any of us - received a proper answer to her perfectly justified question, but I can guess that the answer is simply that it wouldn't suit your political purposes to do so.

Before we finish here, I just want to mention autonomous learning and the extent to which Graham Badman still does not get it, as in:

"It would be of little point to have a totally monolinear education. I do not mind if a child is going to be a chess grand master—that would be terrific—but I would also expect them to know other things about the world. It is that broad spectrum that I am concerned about." (Without the option of a monolinear education, I contend that we would have had no Einstein, no Newton, no Van Gogh and so on. Autonomously home education children can and often do enjoy a broad and balanced range of study, but there are some whose aptitude is more inclined towards a certain specialism or other. This is a good and necessary thing for society!)

"I was maintaining that even within the loosest definition of “autonomous”, it should be possible for any parent to say, “Over the next 12 months, this is what I wish my child to achieve, and this is what I wish to see them do.”
I can cite, if you wish, an example of an 18-month-old grandchild who I guess psychologists would argue is at the key autonomous stage. I can tell you that in the next 12 months, although she is completely autonomous in her education because she chooses, her vocabulary will grow from about 10 words to about 1,000. She will go from monosyllabic babbling to sentences. I know that there are things that she will be able to do, because I have some form of prediction and a duty of care, albeit as a grandparent. I expect no less of her parents."

Yes, well I could probably do it for an 18-month old child. Such young children don't usually vary so much in their natural learning processes from one child to the next at certain stages - although they can. But older children need more flexibility. For me to set out something like "In the next twelve months I expect that my 7 year-old child will develop a fundamental understanding of human biology," would be abusive in my opinion, because her unique personality might lend itself better to spending that time getting to grips with the issues of perspective and scale in fine art instead and she might lack the time, energy or capacity to do both. I'm her mother, and even I don't know for sure what she's going to want to be learning about in six months time. Why do we have to be nailed down on this by someone whose whole working life has been spent with school children within the school system, where such amazingly beneficial flexibility is unheard of? I can see no benefit for us. As Fiona said: "The carrots are not there."

"When the child is much older, as a teenager, would it not be remiss of any parent, for example, not to ensure that they have access to information enabling them to judge environmental issues such as climate change? There should be something within the structure of an education allowing a parent to say, “These are the things that are important to us, which is why we are home educators, and these are the things that we therefore want for our child.”

Yes, it would be remiss of a parent to deny a teenager - or a child of any age - access to information. But hasn't Mr Badman ever heard the adage about leading horses to water? To structure a sentence like that in terms of autonomous learning, he'd have to not have a clue how it works. “These are the things that are important to us, which is why we are home educators, and these are the things that we therefore want for our child.” I want my children to each find their respective niches in life. That's their niche, not my niche. And not some niche I might like or want them to have. I was brought up by someone who didn't understand that and I can vouch for it not being the optimum upbringing for anyone other than a performing seal.

"Determining whether a child is benefiting from the sort of environment that you would get in certain homes might be quite appropriate in relation to the suitability of the education. Equally, to ascertain the child’s feelings about what education they are receiving is also important, and determining whether it accords with what the parents set out to do is crucial. There would be little point in parents submitting a registration saying, “By the age of 14, my child will have a full understanding of calculus”, if they had no intention of doing anything about it. Checking that what the parents say in their registration is the truth and that they are achieving milestones on their way to their major objectives seems appropriate and important."

Exactly. So don't try to force parents to dictate such plans for their children. What's wrong with facilitating curiosity? I assume Mr Badman still knows what that is.

And there was the usual camouflaged conflation between 'registration' and 'licensing' coming from Mr Badman, Sir Paul and Mr Coaker throughout, despite the best efforts of various committee members (Hats off to Tim Loughton) to untangle the threads:

Graham Badman: "The process of regulation simply enables local authorities to determine first of all, how many of these young people we are dealing with." How many of them makes up a tiny proportion of the information required.

Paul Ennals (in response to the question: "Would a pure requirement for notification actually act as the first filter that you require?"): "Well, it might provide some use, but it is a matter of what comes behind it. If what you are saying is compulsory notification as opposed to compulsory registration, there would still need to be something that would follow from that, unless part of the notification was completing something that set out your understanding as a parent of the needs of the child and something about your approach. Unless that was the case, I cannot see how compulsory notification would act as that first hurdle that would be required." So there has to be a judgment attached, in his opinion. Permission, in essence.

Vernon Coaker: "We were not trying to outlaw people or say that things were draconian or terrible; we were simply conducting a review to find out what was going on and analyse the numbers and some of the issues.
As a consequence of that and some of the things that have been said, none of us here would question the desire to ensure that we understand who is missing. There may be people outside the system whom we know nothing about and who may be suffering in some way that we do not understand or know. Alongside that are quality issues and, for a very small number, issues of safeguarding. If the Government step back from that, my question is whether it would not be an abrogation of Government’s responsibility to say, “Isn’t this something that we should try to understand and do something about?”
While accepting people’s right to educate their children—we respect that and do not want to undermine it—do not we as a state also have a right to ask whether we are doing all that we should to protect young people, understand who is missing and look at the quality of what is going on? We recognise the right of people such as you to be home educated and of the people whom Fiona represents to be home educators."

Conflate, conflate, conflate, conflate. You're not "trying to understand something about it" at all, so it seems. You know quite enough about it to know you don't want it to happen outside of the government's control. What is this, the politics of envy? Hmm. No, I'm more inclined to agree with Neil T actually, when he describes it as follows: "This degrading, downgrading and debasement of parenthood is itself an elite project in order to establish tight control over the lives of a subject people."

Graham Badman again: "The registration process is the first step in making an inroad into dialogue with the local authority, which has responsibilities that it cannot necessarily discharge because the current laws do not give it the power." It's the first, second and last steps (and the ones in the middle) in a process of the parents being forced to beg for their Local Authority's permission to teach their own children.

The Liberal Democrats' David Laws actually said something good for us at this point:

"You accept that in practice it is a lot more than that. We as a party have no objections with notifying, but on page 8 we see what the statement will involve. Admittedly, it is fairly brief but it is nevertheless a substantive statement setting out the educational needs of the individual child, talking about educational philosophy and outlining plans for the current year. I am not saying that those issues are not relevant to the local authority, but the provision is turning what at present is a right into something for which individuals will have to apply to the state; they will have to apply for permission to do something that does not require permission at present. Do you understand why there should have been strong feelings about it, and why people should feel that the state is intruding not only by requiring notification but by requiring registration?"

And the completely nonsensical reply?

"I think I understand their feelings. I simply don’t share them. I see them as someone who has looked in from the outside. The sort of information that the note issued today offers is not that complicated. I would almost turn your question on its head. Proper and responsible parents make that decision, often for very good reason. I acknowledge that there are many good reasons why people should decide on home education."

Proper and responsible parents make the decision to focus their energy, time and resources on their children's education, not on drawing up a series of plans and proof for their local council.

Finally, I want to include my favourite clip of the session, which just says it all, really. But first to express my gratitude to everyone who's working so hard to fight our corner for us. I appreciate every minute that everyone spends in so doing, and if Schedule 1 does somehow manage to get bulldozed through in the wash up, it won't be for the lack of decent people using all of their resources to try to prevent it.

And now for that final, most fitting clip of all:

"Upsetting both sides of the argument.."

2010-01-12T15:12:00.007Z

Well, I watched most of the second reading debate of the CSF bill, was duly disgusted by Balls, impressed by Gove, disappointed by Laws and amazed by the tireless, dogged perseverance of Stuart. Hats off to that man. You can watch the whole debate here, from about 2 hours in.

On the whole, the issue of home education was represented well I thought, reflecting the many hours of hard work spent by home educators in patiently educating their MPs and in generally raising awareness. (Here's a good example of part of that work.)

But it was a throwaway, largely unconnected remark made by Mr Balls in another part of the debate that particularly attracted my attention:

Did you get that? He said:

"I think, um.. upsetting both sides of the argument is often the best way to get to the right outcome."

And the men on either side of him (that's Iain Wright to our left there, and Vernon Coaker to the right) are highly amused. Mr Coaker guffaws loudly, while Mr Wright smirks over his folded arms, triumphant, openly and gleefully leering throughout the rest of Mr Balls' response.

(This exchange occurred at 2:29:26 in the video if you're interested in seeing it in context.)

This - his lazily boastful choice of words and their crowingly sycophantic reaction was a more telling moment than any other I've seen in the Commons for a long time. These men do not care about our children. At least, not with anything approaching benevolence. We can all bust a gut, work around the clock, tire ourselves out trying to convince them that we're good parents really, our children are happy and learning and not being isolated or abused and it will be a complete waste of time and energy, because they're not interested in that. They want to upset us. In fact, the more upset they make us, the happier they are.

It's a game to them: we're just another pawn on their chessboard. I don't even think they care whether they win or lose. It's all winning to them. A point here, a concession there. So what? They still think they are the crème de la crème and we are the dregs. I don't think they rate the happiness and genuine wellbeing of children as having any importance at all. Obedience, maybe. The ability to fight rough, be competitive, get to the top, take it on the chin - these things will all be prized by them, but contentment? Security? A healthy, flourishing, properly-facilitated curiosity? No, I don't think so. I think a child living in that kind of a protected environment will be seen as soft and overprotected at best, and potentially dangerous at worst. I mean, what if it spread? What would the world come to if the plebs got too big for their boots and resisted the schooling process en masse? What a nightmare, for the Balls and the Coakers and the Wrights of this world. (Not to mention the Goves and the Laws, a man who is anything but liberal and democratic according to his performance of yesterday.)

So I'm going to remember that moment, when it comes to choosing my battles in 2010. With five children (even though some have grown up, they're all still here and I still want to chat with them etc.) there are many demands on my time and energy and I'm not going to throw any of it away on Mr Balls.

They can get on with their light touches, soft touches and whatever else they want to get on with. They can count us, register us, check and measure us. We may comply, or we may not, depending on what we feel like and how we weigh the odds. But they can't take the essence of us: the family unity and the unassailable truth that we've got and they haven't. They wouldn't know it if it stared them in the face and even if they do recognise it, they don't have the power to damage it.

I hope the likes of:

Mark Field ("Does he not see that the Badman report effectively takes a one-size-fits-all approach, which is directly opposed to the fact that there is a whole variety of different reasons why home educators keep their children at home and educate them there?");

Kate Hoey ("If such registration happens, should it not be about the education of the child? Is that not where the real problem lies? People fear local authority bureaucrats, many of whom they would not want to look after their children, coming into their homes and telling them what to do about something they know nothing about," and "In reality, what starts out as light-touch, particularly when a local authority does not necessarily operate in the best possible way, can easily turn into something more than that-something that becomes another burden and is about controlling and changing what home educating parents do. I very much resent that, and I wish that it did not happen.");

Michael Gove ("I am deeply concerned about the additional bureaucratic burden that will now potentially be placed on thousands of our fellow citizens whose only crime is to want to devote themselves as fully as possible to their children's education.");

Graham Stuart ("I wonder whether my hon. Friend is aware that New Zealand introduced a similar licensing and monitoring system a number of years ago but last year gave it up on the grounds that it was a waste of time and money. Have the Government learned nothing from the foreign experience of this system?" and "I wonder whether my hon. Friend finds it bizarre, as I do, that this Bill, unlike any piece of legislation to deal with children going back to 1989, fails to make the interests of the child paramount in any consideration. Instead, the Bill considers any administrative failures on the part of parents as being an open and shut case for the revocation of home education, regardless of the interests of the child, and that is simply wrong." and much, much more);

Andrew Turner ("Though some may disagree, I argue that home educators understand the responsibility placed on them. They understand that the responsibility for a child's schooling falls on nobody but the parents. Unfortunately, in yet another example of a Government obsessed with conformity, the independence that home educators currently enjoy is to be placed under threat. The plans in clause 26 to ensure that home educators conform with the requirements of the national syllabus will stamp out the individuality that many home educated children cherish. Is not the whole point of home schooling the provision of an alternative channel for education?");

- and others who spoke so well for us really are conviction politicians and if so, that they really do manage to wield some parliamentary power in the coming months and years. Sadly, on being faced with a Mr Balls at the dispatch box, the temptation is to tar them all with the same brush, but I try to keep an open mind.

Meanwhile, I'm planning to continue focusing on maintaining my strong and happy family, and feeling privileged to have the time to spend happily so doing.

AHEd press release:

2009-12-17T09:22:00.003Z

Radical rethink in Education policy needed following government inquiry

Following criticism published today by the Children, Schools and Families Committee exposing yet another government policy-based evidence-making activity, AHEd calls for a radical rethink on education policy. The cross party group of MPs were heavily critical of the Badman report into Home Education, which recommended new home education regulations, and urged Government to learn lessons from its "unfortunate" handling of the review. AHEd agree with the findings of the report that the evidence base for the proposals is "less than robust" and that current safeguarding mechanisms are appropriate.

"The Badman review launched a vicious attack on families that has left relationships with local authorities at an all time low, with some parents withdrawing contact where relations were previously tolerable or good. We certainly hope that the government will learn from this disastrous review and that attacks will not be repeated. The DCSF has done untold damage in local areas by their authoritarian recommendations" said Barbara Stark, Chair of AHEd.

"Families have had to invest disproportionate time and energy into fighting off the proposals in order to protect their children; we do not know how long it will be before we can say that the damage has been repaired.

Our members are very concerned that the government, in continuing to push for registration, dictating what families should teach their children, insisting on the right of access to families and children in their own homes, is authorising illegitimate monitoring procedures that are designed to undermine parental responsibility for children and are a pre-amble to increased state interference in the upbringing of all children, not just those who are educated at home."

The Select Committee is unhappy with the government's "drafting of legislation prior to publication of the related consultation findings" and we agree. AHEd is calling for the part of the Children, Schools and Families bill dealing with Elective Home Education, to be scrapped in its entirety. It is an ill-considered, unnecessary and wastefully expensive last ditch attempt of a dying government to impose unjustified draconian measures, the consequences of which they would not have to deal with.

Barbara Stark

(Chair, AHEd)

For the committee and membership of AHEd

That select committee report..

2009-12-16T06:17:00.005Z

.. is finally here [opens pdf].

It has already been reported (quite favourably) and blogged and blogged and blogged and Twittered (Tweeted... whatever..) and - wow, expertly satirised and will no doubt be blogged and Twittered (Tweeted) and Facebooked and emailed some more.

I've read a bit of it, in and amongst our festive dashing about this week (Isn't the timing of these things masterful?! A whole month after the Queen's Speech, as well! A person could be forgiven for suspecting that the government couldn't care less what the thinking of its Select Committees might be, even when their reports are so carefully phrased as to try to placate all parties and upset none!) and will no doubt be reading it in more detail as and when I get chance. I might even blog something more about it, if anything comes to mind that doesn't seem to have already been said.

But let's face it, even if it had been 100% anti-Badman and pro-us, it wouldn't have made much difference, would it? Says she, pessimistically. As someone else has just Twit/Tweet/Twooted, "Democracy is about being overruled by those voted into power. Not about having your say, facts, or being listened to." H/T: you know who you are, and you speak very good sense IMO :-)

Oh go on then, I've got to say one grumpy thing about one thing I did catch sight of:

29. All but one of the home educators and home education organisations who contacted us were highly critical of the Badman Report and were very resistant to the idea that local authorities should be given new powers in relation to the regulation and monitoring of home education. This viewpoint has dominated debate surrounding the Badman Report more generally. On this matter we would note our unease at the reluctance of some to speak publicly on the Badman Report due to fear of harassment from sections of the home educating population.

Whaaat?? What's all that about?! Shades of Badman, or what? "All but one of the home educators and home education organisations who contacted us were highly critical of the Badman Report and were very resistant to the idea that local authorities should be given new powers in relation to the regulation and monitoring of home education," - therefore the rest of them must be being bullied into silence?! When you consider the scope for making anonymous submissions, that doesn't really add up, does it?

I'm wrong, of course. Two hundred of us are vehemently opposed to the changes whilst the other 15-45,000 are all quietly busy tying on their own blindfolds and rushing to join the queue for the scaffolding. It couldn't possibly be that they're all getting on with the home education of their children, in blissful ignorance of whatever is to come, or feeling already too besieged and/or battle-weary to care or notice much difference. No, they're all calling for more inspections! More controls! Tighter shackles, please! We are a nation of masochists.

I'd better finish this post before I start straying into the realms of sarcasm.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

CSF bill: Equality Impact Assessment. "Just a paper exercise"?

2009-12-11T12:06:00.002Z

This post couldn't have been written without the invaluable help of three other home educating mothers: Elaine Kirk, Carole Rutherford and Ruth Gray. I'd like to express my gratitude to all three.

Ever since the publication of the bill, Elaine has been sending me information about its probable effects on children with special educational needs. One of the many things she's pointed me at is a link to the Equality Impact Assessment [opens pdf] of the bill, which begins its 3-page section on EHE (chapter 19) at page 73.

I must say I wholeheartedly agree with Elaine, and with Carole Rutherford at AIM, who has also been involved with our discussions, that this Equality Impact Assessment bears no relation to the actual impact of clause 26 on many home educated children with special needs.

It breezily asserts that:

An adverse impact is unlikely, and on the contrary the policy has the clear potential to have a positive impact by reducing and removing barriers and inequalities that currently exist.

An adverse impact is unlikely?? Carole describes the likely impact on a typical child with autism (if there is such a thing!) as follows:

An autistic child follows a script in their head and has clear expectations of what to expect from people, places and activities. For the vast majority of autistic children their home is the one place where they feel comfortable and safe. It is not only the environment that they are used to, home tends to meet all of their complex sensory needs because parents make not only reasonable adjustments but also unreasonable adjustments to ensure that their children do feel comfortable and safe. Not only is the home of an autistic child the only place that they feel safe they also have clear expectations as to who lives in that home with them and who visits them.

Principle 7 of this DCSF workbook on equality impact assessments [opens Word.doc] says:

Policy development should involve widespread consultation and involvement

People affected by a policy or programme should be consulted and involved in the design of new policies, and the review of existing ones. Such consultation should be both direct and through representative organisations, and should be based on principles of transparency and accountability.

- and yet AIM was not consulted on the development of the CSF bill's EQUIA. AIM has made the DCSF aware that they are far from happy with the home education part of Equalities Impact Assessment and their reasons why. They are currently awaiting a response from the DCSF and have now also written to Graham Stewart as Chair of the APPG and Liz Blackman MP who is chair of the All Party Group for Autism outlining their concerns about the EQUIA.

The workbook contains a table of questions for which quantitative and qualitative evidence is required when current policies are being reviewed, which includes the following:

Is due account made of the specific needs and experiences of disabled people? Or is a 'one size fits all' approach adopted?

Ruth Gray, home educating mother of twins with Asperger's, describes their 'specific needs and experiences' in relation to home visits as follows:

Even a trained person would be pushed to assess an ASD child. All ASD children present differently. There is no one size fits all, so no yardstick for "where they should be at". Also ASD kids are masters at giving an answer they think the person wants to hear, to get them off their backs.

B would say he wants to go to school to avoid a confrontation and would appear very sincere. He is very literal. He would not understand if the person was leading him or putting words in his mouth. He uses the ‘wrong’ words to describe his emotions. For example, if B says he is bored he means he is unhappy or stressed. B would clam up or say “I don't mind,” to everything. B also doesn’t talk that well if under stress (he was non verbal until he was 4.5 and on a SALT waiting list until he was 9 so his speech is not great under pressure.)

If B was asked questions about his home education, he would refuse to answer (or say “I don't know,”) because he would only talk about whatever he was obsessing over at the time of interrogation (not what he’d learned months before) or if it is specifically interesting to him for a reason at the time - not if he is asked about it. The assessor would get the idea he knows nothing from that, so we’d get a School Attendance Order straight away.

B says he can't read because he can't read everything. He can read Harry Potter but to him that isn't good enough, so his answer to “Can you read?” would be “No.” B rarely shows me what he can do, so no way would he show a stranger, no matter how well trained they were. B would cry if pushed and D would shout. Do you see where this would lead? It is scary.

And to think, the rest of us have been worried about the effects on our non-SEN children of clause 26, if it becomes law! (Well, I have at least, as you can see from the comments at that link.) Parenting a child with very special needs is a completely different kettle of fish. At least the rest of us home educating parents have some time and space in which to think and write and campaign for ourselves while our children are happily occupied with things, however limited that may be. But when I read more about what Carole Rutherford has to say:

Autistic Children tend very much to live by what I call scripted performance. By that I mean that they pretty much compartmentalise not only people, but also places and activities, in fact their lives. Everything has to have a beginning, middle and end. Change the format and you have a massive problems on your hands. I once wrote an article for a paper called ‘Ground Hog Day Everyday’ and that pretty much sums up life with autism.

- I realise that some children must need constant input, reassurance and interaction from their parents and that these families really need to be spoken out for, because they don't have much chance to do so for themselves.

The official definition of the term 'impact assessment' is:

The process of identifying, predicting, evaluating and mitigating the biophysical, social and other relevant effects of development proposals prior to major decisions being taken and commitments made.

So let's look in detail at the biophysical, social and other relevant effects of the development proposals already set out and presented to parliament in clause 26 of the CSF bill for children with disabilities and special education needs. (Bear in mind this should have been done already - it's precisely what the EQUIA is supposed to be for.) To quote from Dani's excellent leaflet:

Unregistered home educated children would be ordered to attend school

Local authorities would not be allowed to consider whether the education of unregistered children is suitable for their needs. The only consideration would be whether the child was ‘registered’ or not.

So there will be children on the autistic spectrum who have been removed from the schools that didn't cater for their needs - after great trauma in many cases, I suspect - who are now being well looked after at home by their devoted parents and given the best possible focused educational provision, but if they're not registered, then according to section 26 of the CSF bill, like children without SENs, they will have to be returned to school. Such an unwelcome and sudden lifestyle change would be very difficult for any child to cope with, but for a child on the autistic spectrum for whom, remembering Carole's words, their home is the one place where they feel comfortable and safe, the impact will be disastrous. And yet there is no mention of this in the Equality Impact Assessment whatsoever!

Back to Dani's leaflet:

Parents would be required to supply an advance plan for their children’s education every year in order to remain on the ‘register’

Local authorities would be given the power to decide whether the education provided is suitable, and whether it measures up to the plan.

Here's what Ruth Gray has to say about this:

The 12 month plan is laughable. I can't give a 12 hour plan. I am not even going to try. The boys learn on the hoof and as an example: I took them to a museum in Edinburgh (Dynamic Earth) expecting them to learn about.. well, the earth. But no, B spent weeks after getting home learning how the photography and filming of the various areas of the museum was done. The astronomy, geology etc. of it was lost on him. So if I had put on the 12 month plan "going to Dynamic Earth to learn about geology" we would have failed. However, they were still learning.

Dani's leaflet again:

Local authorities would have to reassess home educated children and parents every year

If home educated children, or their parents, do not give consent for a child to be interviewed alone, the local authorities would not have the right to insist. But they would have the right to remove that child’s name from the ‘register’ as a punishment for this refusal to cooperate. Loving parents would be forced to override their children’s wishes in order to protect their freedom to be educated outside the school system.

But from what Ruth and Carole have said above, we know full well what the likely impact of this would be on autistic children. Certainly not "reducing and removing barriers and inequalities that currently exist". Why is it that I can have a few conversations with two mothers of autistic children over a period of a couple of weeks, and come up with a more realistic impact assessment than people whose job it's supposed to be to consult with such parents and hence to properly assess the impact of their policies?

Here's how bad the impact can be. Carole pulls no punches - quite rightly. We need to know this kind of thing:

M was diagnosed with cyclical vomiting syndrome when he was only 5 years old and that is one of the reasons that we took him out of school because school was quite literally making him sick, and I do mean sick. When M has one of those attacks he can vomit 60 times an hour and we have ended up in A&E because of this. Now Graham Badman knows this, because I told him why home visits for autistic kids were not a good idea and Barry Sheerman knows this, because I told the Select Committee the same thing. M is not unique. His vomiting syndrome might be extreme and other autistic kids might not suffer the same syndrome, although it is not as rare as you might think, but other kids will react in other ways. Some will self harm. That might only be picking at their flesh but if the stress loads increases then so will the picking. This issue is actually massive and I am so sorry to have gone on for so long but even so I have only scratched the surface.

Please don't apologise, Carole. We need to know, so we can know exactly what we're protesting about, beyond our own personal situations.

AIM and NAS (the National Autistic Society) tried to put these points across to both Graham Badman and the Select Committee, but to no avail. Carole says:

Graham Badman added the NAS to his expert group and, given their vast knowledge wrapped around autism, we wonder if he actually heard what was said to him. Which is pretty much what they are all doing: listening but not hearing. Ignorance is not bliss when your kids are going to be on the cutting edge of all of these changes.

Somebody, in the process of all of these discussions made the comment that "Impact assessments are just a paper exercise." This might provide some insight into the reason it seems to have been scribbled out as a last-minute sort of afterthought. A cursory process: "Ah, we'll just say this.."

The DCSF workbook on equality impact assessments [opens Word.doc] poses two basic questions, in its 'Introduction and overview', firstly:

Could this policy, or does this policy, have a negative impact on one or more of the dimensions of equality? If so, how can we change or modify it, or minimise its impact, or justify it?

It could and it does. It cannot be justified. And secondly:

Could this policy, or does this policy, have the potential to have a positive impact on equality, by reducing and removing inequalities and barriers that already exist? If so, how can we maximise this potential?

I can't see how it could possibly have such a potential, and nor can Carole Rutherford, Elaine Kirk or Ruth Gray. We'd all be interested in discovering whether anyone reading here thinks it could.

I contend that the Equality Impact Assessment, like the main document (further analysed this week here and here), as a paper exercise, is not worth the paper it's written on.

I'll finish with a final quote from Ruth, which I think sums up this clause for all home educating families:

It's a farce, because they do not know my children (and because of all above) and so have no idea if they are reaching their full potential. Only I know that. It is not their responsibility to know that. It is mine. Unless they want to take responsibility for education off us it is not their remit to decide. What possible use is an assessment or interview unless that is the intended outcome? Do they really want that?

"It is really time that we started demanding an end to compulsion in education altogether."

2009-12-01T11:48:00.006Z

This post is by Neil Taylor. It first appeared as part of a conversation on the UKHE support list and is reproduced here with his permission because I think that, like so much else Neil writes, it deserves a wider audience.

The whole point is to place education entirely in the gift of government to licence, just as driving a car is. Demonstrable competence of the driver and roadworthiness of the car is no defence against not possessing a valid driving licence or valid MOT certificate. A restaurant cooking wholesome hygienic food is no defence against not having a licence to sell food, and so on. Licensing anything is handing a previous freedom over to government to grant or refuse.

Government is essentially bidding to take over from the courts the right to determine what a suitable education is. If they can get away with writing law that allows them to do this, then that will be the law.

It is inescapably totalitarian for government to monopolise what may be considered or not considered to be suitable education, because there never has and never can be consensus on the question, and this is probably our best argument against it, but then it was inescapably totalitarian for it to make education compulsory, and appropriate the budget for it by force back in 1870. It is really time that we started demanding an end to compulsion in education altogether, because the institution is simply getting totally out of hand and an instrument of enslavement and indoctrination. We need to withdraw consent IMO not only from this further turn of the rack, but to the whole imposition.

It is one thing to regulate the selling of food, or the driving of cars by licensing, because we know that without that, there will be unscrupulous kitchen owners that will poison us by being negligent of food hygiene, and that there will be incompetents driving dangerously unroadworthy vehicles. There is some natural justice, some compelling common good to licencing in these and similar circumstances which persuades us that it is in our best interests to keep dodgy drivers and vehicles off the road for own safety etc. But education is of an entirely different order, and is at the heart of personal meanings and purposes of life itself, and owning and directing ones own life, raising ones children in accordance with ones own personal beliefs and values. To take that away, which these proposed measures do, is simply to enslave, and rob individuals of the potential to live their own lives by those personal values and purposes. It is to enslave.

If we don't make the moral argument, and bid for self ownership of our own lives, I'm not sure what other grounds might be equally fatal for this totalitarian rule.

The least you can say about this bill is that it is treasonable, since it removes any meaningful content to the freedom that is our supposed free country, that we fought to preserve with two world wars. How much worse would it have been to simply let Hitler rule us instead, since these measures head straight towards the same restrictions on educational freedom he imposed ? It must surely be unconstitutional, and I think we should argue that it is.

Please don't be surveyed by OFSTEd

2009-11-29T12:42:00.002Z

It is clear from recent exchanges with OFSTEd as well as their track record, that their recent attempt to try out a dry run of the kind of inspection regime of home educators, that they would like to take on as new work for themselves, would be to the detriment of home educators, and that there is nothing to be gained from assisting OFSTEd in their ambitions over us by supplying them with vital intelligence useful in creating this new role for themselves. As with the government, their interest is clearly predatory upon us, and the exercise assumes a change in the law mandating such inspections, which home educators are currently vigorously fighting to prevent.

Collaborating with this unwanted and illegitimate exercise in any way cannot be in home educator's best interests. It is therefore respectfully suggested to the local home education groups in the 15 designated LEAs, that they decline to meet with OFSTEd, or complete their questionnare, stating their reasons if they wish.

****Please feel free to cross post this message freely to all lists, blogs and social media - especially to local lists within the 15 designated counties.****

Neil Taylor Moore,
Barbara Stark
Julie Gilbert
Lizelle Denton
Kevin Denton
Louisa Herbs
Gill Kilner
Sarita Goacher
---------------------------
Background Information:
Ofsted memorandum in response to the Badman consultation :
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/
cm200809/cmselect/cmchilsch/memo/elehomed/me16502.htm

Letter to Christine Gilbert, Head of Ofsted, sent by the Badman Review Action Group
http://homeschooler.org.uk/document/letter-christine-gilbert-head-ofsted-badman-review-action-group-sent-21st-november-2009

Lord Lucas speaks, and the one political dividing line between home educators

2009-11-29T08:03:00.004Z

I barely seem to have time to blog, these days: the children currently seem to be sleeping in the same hours as I do, which for a single parent leaves not much time for anything else. Either I'm getting older, or they are. Hmm. Actually, we all are, aren't we?

Well, I was very pleased to watch Lord Lucas's speech on Clause 26 (Schedule 1) on Thursday. You can watch it here if you like, at 5:08:30.

("Why are the chairs red in this one, and green in the one we were watching last week?" asked Lyddie. This led to an autonomous, impromptu lesson [see, we do have them!] in British politics, the like of which your average seven year-old school child isn't likely to see and I'd have never been able to plan in advance.)

Here's a taste of his speech:

This part of the Bill is ill thought-out and unjustified, and I hope very much that we will delete it. In its current form it is a skeleton exposing home educators and their children to the unknown because so much will depend on how the regulations are written. Nothing in it secures their rights as home educators to look after their children in the way they see best. There is an unfortunate conflation of education and welfare which makes the business of improving or looking after the education of these children much harder.

I found "I hope very much that we will delete it" most reassuring, after his very real suggestions of compromise from last month, although "In its current form.." worried me a bit. Like, there's another form we'd rather have? No, just the status quo please, which works quite well from our perspective and perhaps just needs a bit more guidance and training for the LAs to fully understand their part in it. Let's have reviews and inquiries to work out how to change the ECM framework [opens pdf] to fit with what we do, not to work out how to change the people to fit the new laws, please, if holding reviews and inquiries is what people want to do. Seems bizarre to me, but I suppose they must do something for a living.

There is no recognition in the Bill of the curricula and forms of education which are commonly used in home education, particularly in autonomous education. Instead, the impact assessment refers to the exemplar curricula which will be produced by the QCDA. In other words, everyone is to be corralled into state education and not allowed to go their own way. There is no reference to the training of local authority staff, which is recognised to be one of the major deficiencies in the current arrangements. There is no proper arrangement for independent appeal when a local authority decides that a person may not home educate.

He's right, and there are also some more outstanding issues regarding the impact assessment, about which more from me in a future post, I hope.

But, as a fully paid-up [ - not, 'cos it's free] member of the People's Front of Judea, I am, of course, a bit concerned about Lord Lucas's recent and ongoing fraternisation with the Judean People's Front.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, the allegory was Twittered by Graham Stuart MP, can be seen here:

- and still makes me laugh!

But there is a serious, real reason and a simple explanation (for the bewildered, with whom I have much sympathy) for the various splits and factions in the home ed community. You can basically draw a line down the middle of us: those on one side want to compromise with the powers-that-be, and those on the other side do not. Both of those links are worth following and reading for some real understanding into the situation. The second is AHEd's recently published open letter to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Home Education.

Trying to compromise when you're being robbed of your freedoms is not wise. If someone's threatening to kill you, you don't ask if they wouldn't rather just maim you a lot instead? You fight or you run, or you die honourably. You don't invite them to chop off all of your appendages and then praise them for letting you off so lightly. And if you're shoving yourself into the powerful position of negotiating other people's freedom away, you have to tread very, very carefully, and be open and transparent about what you're doing. And, yes, open to criticism. This does not seem to be what's happening. There are secret groups forming and secret discussions taking place, excluding all but the compliant. It's extremely worrying to the rest of us, because it's our children and their freedoms they're talking about so glibly, arrogantly, powerfully and confidentially. These people do not speak for me - not least because I don't know what they're saying! But if I did, I suspect they still wouldn't.

So yes, the Monty Python references are all very funny and trite and I did appreciate the light relief... but, dear politicians who want to help us, please try to understand the origins of the problem before you get lured into accidentally conspiring to make them any worse!

One of the most distressing angles of all this for me is witnessing the best of the 'new talent' that's come to home ed politics with fresh enthusiasm and surging ideas, being nimbly co-opted by the compromisers, who are obviously more politically on-the-ball than the rest of us ( - which is worrying in itself). Some of them seem to have been advised not to work with some of us, or even to talk to us. Of course, this deepens the divide and I'm not sure if these new people are fully aware of what's going on. Suffice to say, I can understand the temptation of pragmatism, but I think it's a fool's game.

Enough, from me for today. Future posts in the pipeline include more about that impact assessment as well as something about the Ofsted agenda, but for now I'm going to leave the last word to Loubeeloo, Baz Kirby and the invincible Firebird, who says what she thinks about the government reply given to Lord Lucas in that debate - and doesn't pull any punches.

I have signed this petition

2009-11-24T10:43:00.006Z

- and will be promoting it, for what good it'll do, given that this government no longer seems to be taking input.

The petition is here and the wording is as follows:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to uphold that parents have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of their child, to not undermine parents legitimately fulfilling their fundamental duties, and to assume that the best interests of their child is the basic concern of parents unless there is specific evidence to the contrary. In particular, the government should ensure :-
No right of access to the family home without evidence of a crime

No right to interview a child alone without evidence of risk of serious harm

No CRB checks or registration for parents to look after their own children, or to informally look after those of their friends, family etc

No licensing / registration / assessment / monitoring of methods by which parents fulfil their duties without evidence that they are failing to do so, and with specific recognition that education “otherwise” than at school is a perfectly legal option to fulfil their duty regarding education

No undermining of parents as being in the best position to determine how to meet their child’s needs, according to their age, ability, aptitude, and any special needs they may have

Greater focus on applying existing resources and procedures to cases of children known to be at risk, rather than dilution of these resources by routinely monitoring whole sections of the community

Compliance with the fundamental presumption of innocence unless there is specific evidence to the contrary.

I like it because it covers everything without adding any compromising, lets-meet-them-halfway sort of bits that I can't put my name to. And its author has put her name to it! I'm proud to say that Jill Harris is a Calderdale home educator, with whom I'm yet to disagree on anything.

Other things that are going on include this new wiki, about which I'm a bit less sure, though on which I need to spend some more time before I take a position I think. I'm not in favour of groups of people meeting up to work out what's to be done about us, as if we were a problem - because we're not! So if the new wiki is working along those lines, then I won't be supporting it. So far it looks like it contains the bare bones of info, in much the same way as Dani's great, one-page leaflet does (copies of which I'm printing out to take to our home ed meeting tomorrow).

Meanwhile Graham Stuart, who spoke so well for us in Parliament last week, via a lady called Leaf Lovejoy, has asked for
Twitter messages from us which set out, in 140 characters or less, our objections to the bill. I've been thinking for over a day now of how to condense all my thoughts on this down to 140 characters and am no closer to doing so! I was also introduced to a new word (for me) yesterday: e-prolixity. Hmm. The cap fits: I think I'll wear it.

Assessment has an ass in it

2009-11-21T14:26:00.009Z

First, I want to link to Dani's leaflet: “Parents bring up children, not Government” If you think this is New Labour policy, think again.

It explains the current situation for home educators, and contains some ideas regarding what we can do about it. I'll be linking to it from my sidebar: email me if you want the code for that and/or any of my other buttons there.

But today we're all talking about the impact assessment of the CSF Bill: this weekend's cat amongst the pigeons. The section on home education starts at page 83.

From this document we learn that the policy is expected to be implemented in April 2011. That gives us - and them - 17 months, if the bill goes through and everything goes according to their plan.

One question asked is: "Does enforcement comply with Hampton principles?" but I've never heard of those. Does anyone know what they are?

Costs relate to Local Authority professional and administrative officer time and also opportunity cost for parents/carers, giving a financial value to time spent with the local authority..

I wonder what is an 'opportunity cost'?

LAs estimate that 8% of 'home educated' children are receiving no education at all and 20% are not receiving a suitable education (including the 8%). Improving the educational attainment levels of these children would bring benefits in terms of increased job opportunities and salary levels.

LAs can't possibly have any idea about these figures, and - job opportunities for whom? And there is of course something deeply wrong with a system that openly measures our children's education in terms of financial output, unless we're to accept the ancient principle that only the elite can be allowed to learn for pleasure and everyone else must be trained for manual labour, which wouldn't be very Fabian of us, would it?

Page 86 contains something called the Evidence Base (for summary sheets), which is quite a hilarious title for what follows it.

There is evidence from serious case reviews and LA evidence that home educated children who are not regularly seen in the community are those where there are most likely to be child protection concerns.

That's straight from the Graham Badman school of logic, isn't it? Asinine.

While ContactPoint will lead to the right infrastructure for a registration database being in place and will prompt some follow up by local authorities, identifying electively home educated children is not its primary function.

No, but as a reason not to use it, this is weak.

We estimate that 100% of children will receive 1 in-year visit, with 50% receiving further monitoring.

There: you've got a 50% chance of being left relatively alone, if this goes through as it stands. I wonder if targets will be set.

We have not yet defined the content or rigour of a “statement of education”, but it is likely to be a short, word-processed document.

I'm lost now. Which 'statement of education' is this please, if anyone knows?

Registration will last 12 months, and will therefore be renewed every year. The intention is for this to be a light touch refresh of details, but may extend to a refreshed educational statement, which will be a short document.

Grasping at straws, but this is something we'd be able to hold them to, I guess.

Here's something about 'opportunity costs':

Opportunity costs to parents

The opportunity costs to parents of meeting with local authority officers have been factored into the costing. However, we have not included a cost for the preparation of an education plan on the basis that:

Even though parents and carers may not give it that name, it is a core part of planning ahead to deliver home education for their children. Any change will not represent additional time invested, but instead mean that parents and carers are using some of the time they devote to home education differently.

I've read this several times and I still don't understand what it's trying to say. Is it a recognition of the fact that all this malarky is going to take up our time, as parents? "using some of the time they devote to home education differently"? Is that a 'nice' way of saying that our children must sit in a corner and rot, while we compile plans and reports for the local authority? If so, I think we've just found the 'ass' in 'assessment'.

Curricula are available for immediate download from QCA and DCSF websites, and are adequate for the purposes of education planning.

*Baffled again.* Yes, but what have they got to do with us? We're not running schools. We don't do that kind of educational planning. And even if we did choose to do so, what's that statement doing in this document? It makes no sense to me.

The section on School Attendance Orders is slightly baffling too.

School attendance orders

The Badman Review makes clear that School Attendance Orders (SAOs) should be the ultimate sanction for taking a child out of elective home education and back into school. We considered including the cost of SAOs in our calculations, but have decided against it for the following reasons:
We have no direct data on the number of SAOs used by local authorities each year.

We can, however, use a proxy measure — Ministry of Justice figures on the number of adults sentenced for child truanting offences. This shows 1953 in 2003, 2072 in 2004, 2209 in 2005, 2952 in 2006, and 3,788 in 2007.

The actual number of children of 5-16 in school in 2006-07 was 7,440,000. So, the prevalence of sentencing was approximately 0.05%.
If we apply this percentage to 40,000 children, this means that around 20 children would be affected and for the (highly unlikely) prospective cohort of 80,000, this is 40 children. Divided among 150 local authorities, this is well within the margin of error.

What's the relevance of the existing truancy figures? They're nothing to do with home education at all. The section seems to be saying that there will be hardly any SAOs issued, so funding doesn't need to be allocated for the process, but I fail to see why such draconian rules and sanctions should be introduced when there are evidently no plans whatsoever to use them. It's bizarre.

Benefits

LAs tell us that home educators who avoid interaction with the local authority tend to be providing inferior education.

LAs could tell us the moon was made of green cheese, so should we put in a bulk order for cream crackers? How do they know that home educators who avoid interaction with the local authority tend to be providing inferior education, if they're avoiding interaction with the local authority? Back to 'LAs don't know what they don't know'. At least Badman admitted this, instead of trying to assert that they do, as here.

A survey of local authorities found that in the opinion of officers monitoring home education, 20% were receiving an inadequate education and within that figure, 8% are receiving no education at all. This means that if there are 20,000 home educators, 4,000 children are getting an inadequate education among them 1600 are receiving no education at all.

Right. In the opinion of officers monitoring home education. There are quite a few of those, nationally, who flatly refuse to recognise education which doesn't include timetables, desks and workbooks. These figures mean nothing.

And then we're lectured, sternly. (Did the infamous Penny Jones write this, I wonder? I can hear echoes of her "Well, want or not, I am a government official, and these five outcomes are government policy!" in this:)

The consequences of receiving a poor or inadequate education in later life are that the young people denied an adequate education are unlikely to achieve recognised qualifications and more likely to turn to crime or substance abuse.

No. The statistics are useless for this. A child out on the streets running drugs from his 13th birthday is more likely to turn to crime or substance abuse. People like my older children, in a loving and educational family environment who make a conscious and well thought-out decision to opt out of doing GCSEs, are not. These differences are profound - and completely ignored.

The document then, disgustingly, goes on to put a monetary value on our children's heads. If they get X number of GCSEs, they'll go on to earn X amount of money and if they don't, they won't. So these decisions must be taken. There can be no freedom. They must earn the money. What if they don't want to? What if they'd prefer to have less money and more freedom? That's apparently no longer a choice they're allowed to make.

One of the next sentences contains a syntax error:

Or proposals for funding this support have been set out in the Secretary of State’s full response to the Review of Home Education in England conducted by Graham Badman.

And back to the time issue:

We envisage that home educators will spend a significant time with the Local Authority early in the process of planning the delivery of home education. These meetings will address the child’s educational needs, and identify the best way to meet these which may include access to educational and support services available in the area.

And where will the children be? Will we be expected to just dump them in a Children's Centre or something, while we lounge around chatting to local authority officers? I think not. No, local authority officers will have to get used to meetings containing our breastfeeding babies and toddlers and other children - as bored and disruptive as they become in listening to all of this droning bureaucracy taking place above their heads. No wonder they're allowing 8 hours for the ordeal. It might take that long to get past the first paragraph. Cloud cuckoo land. Hugely impractical. These people obviously don't have young children and if they do, they're the farmed-out variety.

Monitoring will improve the ongoing standard of education in individual homes.

At present, although the local authority engages with some families when they deregister their children from a school, there is no structured approach that sets out how any or all local authorities maintain contact with these children to monitor their educational attainment.

Some home educators want more support and access to a fuller range of support services. Engagement from the local authority will enable the types of support the families need to be offered, including in the form of personalised services.

Educational outcomes will therefore be improved overall by more consistent identification and intervention in homes where standards are low or there is no education plan. In extreme cases, it may be in the child’s best interest to attend a school, and this will also have an impact on attainment.

However, we cannot at this time make any detailed evaluation of the quantitative or qualitative impact this has on electively home educated children. This leads us on to the next benefit.

As a justification for home visits, this is laughable. How does the amount of support parents might want relate even remotely to official sight of their homes? To find out what someone wants, you have to ask them. You can do this by snailmail, phone, email or face-to-face meeting. You don't have to invade the privacy of their homes to try to second-guess what the answer might be. Where is the logic, here? Where's the common sense?

Evaluation will be planned now to ensure that changes in outcomes and standards can be measured accurately. The quantitative data we currently hold about home educated children’s educational attainment is limited. We do know, however, that post compulsory education, home educated young people are 4 times more likely not to be in education, employment or training than other young people.

I'd definitely query this figure. Out of all of the home educated young people I know - and because I've got three of my own, that's quite a lot - none of them is NEET. Not one of them: a properly home educated child would have no need to be. So where has this "4 times more likely" come from? It's just rubbish.

The rest of the document relating to home education is about safeguarding, again trumpeting those statistics which are now well known to be faulty.

The whole thing is a sham, isn't it? Badly put together, poorly researched and just a shoddy piece of work. Has it really come to this? I can hardly believe we're in England.

I think this question is key

2009-11-20T06:48:00.007Z

From yesterday's House of Commons debate following the first reading of the CSF Bill:

Barry Sheerman: As I understand it, the hon. Gentleman has supported Every Child Matters and the five outcomes for children. Does he really believe, as he implied in response to an earlier intervention, that the five outcomes should apply to 99 per cent. of schoolchildren but not to the home educated? [link]

- because we don't and can't comply with the detail of those outcomes, as they're currently set out. [opens pdf]

I watched the whole televised debate yesterday and I agree with Carlotta and others that Graham Stuart is indeed our home ed hero.

Here he is, delivering this excellent question, if anyone's short of a pin-up:

He's said in his Tweets that we remind him of these people:

- which I think is a valid point! Watching that clip gave me a much-needed giggle of recognition yesterday.

Graham Stuart said much more in a later exchange yesterday, which has proven to be a hit with home educators, including:

As for parents who reject the Secretary of State's school system entirely and sacrifice their time and career to bring up and educate their children themselves, they are stigmatised as more likely to be child abusers than normal people. It is an absolute affront to those in the home education community, and it is baseless. The scheme is all about getting home educators in a headlock and forcing their children back into the Balls fold.

I was also cheered up by his latest Tweet, saying:

With formal Conservative opposition its chances of becoming law are slight so no need to be overly depressed.

- which, added to his previous:

I have confirmed with Michael Gove that the Conservatives will oppose compulsory registration of home educated children in the Bill.

is an encouraging thought, although I think David Laws' response to him on the issue in yesterday's debate should be noted:

I am not sure that I fully agree with the extreme position that he takes on the Badman review..

Extreme position..? Thanks, mate!

So, what will these changes, if they go through in their entirety, really mean to us? I was chatting to the father of my school-aged child earlier today, who said: "Surely it won't be too much of a problem for you? You can make the work fun, she's an intelligent girl, you've got all the resources there and she's not that far from school standards already?"

And I explained to him: "That's true, but it's not the point. These regulations would change the nature of my whole relationship with her. Instead of being her facilitator as she developed her own interests and skills in her own time, I'd have to become her educator. Every morning when we got up, we'd have to do about two hours' worth of school work. I'd have to assess her progress every few weeks and make sure she wasn't going to give any 'cause for concern', and when she'd had enough and she wanted to leave the table and do something else, I'd have to threaten her with school attendance to make her persevere until we've finished. Like her older siblings did at school, she'd gradually start seeing learning as a chore and lose all interest in it - something to be avoided whenever she could.

"It's just not what I want for her. We'd be dancing to the government's tune instead of our own. I'd never be able to deschool her and so she'd be denied even that, which was the saving of the older three. It'd be just nose to the grindstone, all the way through and my relationship with her would be strained through having to coerce her like that. She wouldn't grow up feeling like I was on her side, as the other three have, so she probably wouldn't avoid all that teenage rebellion, like they did. It would such bad news, with such profound effects, that I'm lamenting the threatened loss of my kind of parenthood, which I know from the older three works so well."

He probably wished he'd never asked, but there's her younger sister too. I ask you, how can I tame this free spirit:

and force her to the National Curriculum or anything like it? I can't and I won't. You can call that an extreme position if you like: I prefer it to Ed Balls' bawdy, spluttered "essential for a strong economy". Our children weren't born just to serve the economy! I actually cried yesterday, properly, for the first time in years.

There has to be another way.

Well, here it is

2009-11-19T14:03:00.004Z

Children, Schools and Families Bill
Schedule 1 — Home education: England

It's everything Badman threatened, before we've even had a response to the latest consultation, which only closed a month ago.

I like it when people put their names to what they write

2009-11-19T05:06:00.008Z

Then I know who they are, and I know where they're coming from. I put my name to this blog, and to everything else I publish and distribute. Neil T has put his name to this post, with which I am inclined to agree: I said in the comments on my previous one that I thought the parliamentary petition might be a trojan horse.

There are all kinds of quangos and other questionable interests sniffing around the issue of home education these days, like greedy predators around stumbling prey. Some of these interests will be funding professional political lobbyists with whom we can't possibly hope to compete. I was chatting to a friend last night and thinking out loud along these lines: "If I was looking at ironing out the anomaly of home education that is perhaps starting to impede, now, the scheduled 'rolling out' of the ECM programme, I'd be trying to find their weak points because it's obvious by now that we will coordinate quite strong resistance against any obvious moves against us."

And everybody knows the Conservatives will be in power after the next general election. Are they going to carry on rolling this thing out? It's already been said that they're planning their own review/inquiry into EHE and I personally don't think that this petition, which includes the words: "in the absence of a thorough independent inquiry into the condition and future of elective home education in England" goes far enough to refute that plan - in fact, it could be said to be supporting it. One way of getting us to accept and support a further inquiry, after all, would be to present us with one that we've "asked for" ourselves! I don't know if this is what's really going on - but I do know that it might be, so I'm going to be extremely cautious about exactly what I'll sign and promote.

Personally, I don't want any more consultations, inquiries or reviews into elective home education. I like the current status quo [opens pdf], in which a local authority can make inquiries if it has specific reason to believe the education might not be suitable (although I wish I could persuade my own local authority to fit its working practice to the letter of the law - the Badman report [opens pdf] is already hindering us there.)

I would like to say - and have already said - to my MP, the DCSF, Graham Badman and anyone else who asks or will listen, that home education needs leaving alone. We do a good job, and if we don't then there is already an effective solution [opens pdf]. I will keep saying this in my normal, non-parliamentary, non-legalese language, in my own way. I might also, if I get the chance (although the five offspring here are taking up quite a lot of my time these days and are of course my priority - apologies if you're waiting for an email reply!) look further into the ECM framework [opens pdf], scary prospect though that is, because I still think that this plan is at the bottom of our troubles. Let the reviews and inquiries look into that! It needs changing to accommodate the anomaly - not the other way round.

When people's innocent and legitimate daily lives have to be changed to fit the laws, instead of laws being changed to fit the people, we know we're in trouble. But that's what seems to be happening.

PS: UK Govt, please note: our children are not vulnerable (except to you) and do not need safeguarding (except from you).

Safeguarding the vulnerable - strengthening the powers of local authorities and others with regards to registration, inspection and intervention will mean effective systems are in place to protect those that most need it. The Bill will introduce a new home educators’ registration system and take new powers for Secretaries of State to intervene in youth offending teams that are failing and potentially putting young people and their communities at risk.

On pragmatism

2009-11-15T07:35:00.004Z

"Maintaining the status quo is out of the question," said Graham Badman to a home educator back in March.

He wasn't necessarily being truthful. He was staking a claim: marking out the territory that he had been instructed to conquer. His words were designed to have a certain effect in the minds of home educators: Get used to the idea of change, because it's coming - whether you like it or not, to make them feel powerless, as if complete resistance is futile.

If it works, it's half the battle won, isn't it? People will believe that change is inevitable and that they'd better muster their forces to try to influence the direction of change then, instead of fighting against it. Pragmatism becomes the order of the day.

It seems to have worked.

But in actual fact this is an old government, breathing its last, desperate, dying breaths. Its protagonists know that its days are numbered: some have already defected to the so-called 'other side'.

I want to try and set out, here, a brief overview of some of this government's actions regarding children and family life in an attempt to work out the direction of travel:

First we had the National Curriculum (although this was begun by the Conservatives - take note!) then the Literacy and Numeracy hours, so unpopular with at least one of my children and their teachers. The 2004 Children Act introduced the dreaded five Every Child Matters outcomes: at first supposedly as a guide for local authorities [opens pdf], but increasingly (in true frog-boiling style) seen as requirements to be imposed on all children regardless of what their own aims and objectives might be. Lord Adonis then famously identified home educators as the 'anomaly' - because so much of the ECM agenda involved a checking and monitoring regime centred around the schools and other professional childcare environments. The legal position on truancy was strengthened and then duly ratcheted up to its current, tight position over time.

And so the flexibility in education was gradually eradicated and the traditional escape routes from the new regime were systematically closed.

But news of a secret grew. A remnant of freedom; a chink of bright light beyond the closing pincers: the legal right of parents to deregister their children from school - or to never register them in the first place - and to teach them at home, themselves. In this last bastion of family life, children could still learn in freedom, largely untouchable by the claws of the State.

Their numbers swelled, enough to form a spanner in the works. Children learning in freedom?! It wouldn't do: they were at risk of finding out all kinds of dangerous things. For years now, this has been seen as a problem to be dealt with: an anomaly to be ironed out; the last loop-hole, in the end, to be closed.

But government must be seen to be open. Democracy must give the appearance of being in process. Softly softly, catchee monkey. In 2003, the process began. With the single-minded doggedness of an EU referendum, the consultations came again and again. But still the right answer was not found and could not be spun.

Next came the carefully crafted weapons of war and the review with its predicable outcome [opens pdf], ignoring the loudening clamour of rebellion. Then the Select Committee inquiry, which seemed to yield some small signs of hope, on the part of the exhausted quarry. Could it be that the enemy was divided? That some friends in high places might at last be persuaded to try to hold back the inevitable surging tide from us?

This is the time when a choice must be made. Do we believe the boldly staked claim on our territory? That maintaining the status quo is out of the question? Is our plight so absolutely desperate as some would have us think? Is it sensible, at this stage, in our current embattled, beleaguered state, for us to panic and to throw our lot indiscriminately with anyone who sounds vaguely like they might be on our side?

Surely, time is of the essence and an element of carpe diem is in order? If some change is indeed upon us then we need, at least, to take our places at the great table - the better to catch any crumbs that might fall? And now we're being flanked by the big guns. The situation looks hopeless. It seems like we have nothing to lose by being pragmatic.

But not everyone has followed the herd down this alluring but closing path of panic. There are some who still say NO. People who wait, draw breath, and take a long view. People who refuse to believe that maintaining the status quo is out of the question, just because Graham Badman said so.

I think I'll stand with them.

The voice of the child was heard by DCSF - for 45 minutes precisely. (But the child was not allowed to publish its film of the incident.)

2009-11-06T08:40:00.007Z

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading this transcript of the Home Educated Youth Council's August meeting with Penny Jones at the DCSF.

Some of my favourite highlights:

PENNY JONES: So at the moment, anything we do on home education depends on the responses to the consultation, so I can’t sit here to you today and say “We’re going to do this, we’re going to do that.” But it’s really really important to include this as part of the consultation.

CHLOE WATSON: Quite a few kids have found that they’ve been dismissed because they’re close to their parents, it’s been implied that they are only speaking for what their parents want them to say. So we’re speaking independently (I want that noted).

JASPER GOLD: There are quite a few clauses and recommendations in the Report which seem… almost naïve of the methods that home educators use. And I was wondering, will there be anyone, when the recommendations are actually being chosen and put into final… into law, who has hands-on experience with home education?

PENNY JONES: Shall I explain to you how… sort of… things, if you like, get into law?

(I think that was a 'no', don't you? )

JASPER GOLD: Yes, I know, maybe before then… but it just seems that many of the–it may ch–it will be chosen in the end by Members of Parliament who won’t have had that experience, but it seems that they are very naïve of the methods used in home education.

CHLOE WATSON: There’s a distinct, chronic misunderstanding of how home education works, all the way through the report.

PENNY JONES: Yes… are you kind of thinking about the sorts of areas that you’re concerned about, are you worried about registration, are you worried about the monitoring, or are you worried about other things…

"I said come back tomorrow! And pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" [opens YouTube - well worth reminding yourself, if you haven't seen it for a while.]

GARETT ROSS: The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child says: “No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family home, correspondence, etc.”

JONATHAN PRIOR: So how do you think it can be justified that, um, automatic access–automatic right of access to the home is not in any way a intrusion into personal family life?

PENNY JONES: If we look at human rights, the… legal basis for the way the government operates human rights is through the Human Rights Act, here, and the European Convention of Human Rights. And we’ve looked at this issue quite carefully because we think that the balance between the rights of the child and the rights of the parent is a very very very difficult one.

JONATHAN PRIOR: So why do you think it’s unbalanced?

PENNY JONES: Because–I don’t–we’re not saying that it’s unbalanced, we’re just saying that in any decision that’s made, different things have got to be weighed up. Now when we had a quick look at the ECHR, the key thing in there is the right to education. Every child has a right to education. Now, what we had to consider there was… it doesn’t have to be education in any particular form, it doesn’t have to be in private schools, it doesn’t have to be in maintained school, it doesn’t have to be at home, somehow the child has to be educated. And onto that is grafted, if you like, as a secondary thing, to the extent that it’s possible a child’s to be educated in accordance with the religious and philosophical preferences of their parents. So, the question for us there is quite a difficult one, and… go on Chloe.

CHLOE WATSON: I wanted to say that parents don’t just have a right to educate, they have a duty to educate, and those things are not in conflict. Parents have a duty to educate their children as they see fit according to their age, aptitude and ability…

PENNY JONES: Indeed.

CHLOE WATSON: …and that obviously only the parent can be the judge of that, no-one else can, because the parents know their children best. Therefore, it’s not about between the rights of the parent and the rights of the child, since the rights of the parent are only a byproduct of that responsibility. So they are not in conflict and they don’t really need ‘balancing’, because they weren’t in any way unbalanced, they follow on from one another, and it’s a non-sequitur to suggest that they are opposed, or in any way not concurrent.

PENNY JONES: Sorry, can I just carry on a bit and then… (continuing) That, sadly there are cases where things go wrong, and these things unfortunately get into the newspapers and it’s always a very very difficult judgement for the state to make, as to where is the threshold met, when the state has to intervene for the well-being of the children.

- but if they didn't get into the newspapers, they wouldn't be a problem, right? Sheesh.

Now I know the vast majority of home educated children like you, are out there, communicating, you go to clubs, you have friends. But that’s not the same–that’s not necessarily the case for every home educated child.

JONATHAN PRIOR: So why are you using a sledgehammer to crack a nut?

JASPER GOLD: This report is meant to benefit home educators, I hope, and I have not met a single home educator who has been in favour of the report, and I have met well upward of a thousand who have been strongly opposed to this report. And I just don’t see that you can put forward a report in the name of “helping home education”, where there are practically no home educators that support it.

- Brilliant. No answer forthcoming, of course.

PENNY JONES: But–I mean…It seems to me that there’s very much a role for the home educated community and [inaudible] about home educated community having a role in commissioning this service, so that the right sort of people are going out [inaudible] local authority. [pause as people arrive] [inaudible] community might be able to [inaudible] ex teachers, why could they not be suitable?

GARETT ROSS: Ah. because they don’t know a thing about it, ’cause they come from a school background.

- I just love it. I bet Penny feels like she drew the short straw when they were handing out jobs at the DCSF.

PENNY JONES: Yes, but you see you need to put forward your views, about the sort of training and background that is appropriate for these people, because, you know, Graham is very clear about the Children’s Trust commissioning these services, but, you know, it does, rely here on the commu–education community coming forward and making their contribution, and that’s why he’s suggesting to that at a local level they’re involved in the commissioning.

Take note. Their plans rely on our cooperation, admitted here by DCSF.

PENNY JONES: Yeah–I mean, that–that’s something we’re doing at the next stage, ’cause what we’re doing at the moment is just consulting on those, few specific bits. Once we’ve got the legislation, once we’ve dealt with the legislation there will be plenty of guidance, and that’s the point at which we’ll need input, from people such as you.

Her choice of words here it quite telling, I think. "Once we’ve got the legislation," - then she corrects herself. "Once we’ve dealt with the legislation,". Why did she need to correct herself? Because she gave the game away.. Transcripts are excellent for bringing out the detail of these things and the hidden clues.

PENNY JONES: I think–I think…I think we need to look at the wording of that, I think…what we’re looking at there, is that there are a number of, um [pause] children educated otherwise, who are not actually educated in the home, by and large. They might be educated in, sort of, you know, small tutorial groups, or alternative arrangements which don’t hit the threshold for registration as a school. And now this would be, you know, a question for local authorities about the best way to approach that sort of arrangement.

JONATHAN PRIOR: It’s not so much about that–

CHLOE WATSON: Why, why should it be that you need to know that, as local authorities? Why would that be necessary – if a child isn’t being educated by the state, then it is no longer the state’s responsibility, since it’s the parent’s duty to ensure their child recieves a proper education. If that fails, then the child can sue that parent; if the state intervenes, then the state has to take some of that liability.

PENNY JONES: Chloe, the concern of the state, is that, because we’ve got ECHR, the state does have a responsibility to make sure that the child–every child receives a suitable education, that’s inescapeable. And, in theory, it would be possible for a home educated child, at some point in the future, to turn round to the state and say ‘look you didn’t secure my interests, I was getting a terrible education, you were aware I was getting a terrible education, why didn’t you do something about it?’ so it’s rather a different situation than you envisage.

CHLOE WATSON: Can I argue with that point, because so many children are failed by the school system, that if they knew they could do that, and if that had happened, the state would go bust, to be frank.

- As with Penny's comment about newspapers, if they're not at risk of being sued, it's not a problem. I'm all for pragmatism, but this is heartless.

JASPER GOLD: All these things that you could never teach–

PENNY JONES: No, I mean, I’m with you, I don’t think there’s anything between us

CHLOE WATSON: No, I don’t think we’re arguing at this point, I think we’re explaining, because there is a lot of…weakness, in the system’s knowledge of these things.

GARETT ROSS: Speaking of that, can we object to the ‘Every Child Matters’ outcomes, please?

JONATHAN PRIOR: I’m not sure how they, in any way fit in with, um, not only human rights, but the suitability of education full stop.

PENNY JONES: [pause] Sorry, what, the every child matters outcomes?

JONATHAN PRIOR: Yeah, they’re mentioned in this report, they’re actually of pretty major significance in this report [crosstalk]

GARETT ROSS: Under ‘Enjoy and Achieve’, it’s all, all except for one, related to school. There’s five, under ‘enjoy and achieve’, “ready for school, attend and enjoy school, achieve stretching national educational standards at primary, achieve personal and social development and enjoy recreation, achieve stretching national educational standards at secondary.”

JONATHAN PRIOR: [crosstalk] well as you hear, it’s defining a… an age, almost, if you like, uh, where certain things should be achieved, and this is wrong, it’s wrong because–

CHLOE WATSON: Yeah, we [crosstalk] fundamentally oppose benchmarked attainment, ’cause there’s a–I can’t remember exactly what page it’s on, but it says “the individuality of home educators militates against benchmarked attainment”. And, actually we… over all, I think, disagree with the whole idea of benchmarked attainment, because people are not fitted into boxes, we are far too diverse and individual for that, and we’re not made to fit government statistics, no offence, we’re made to be ourselves, and I think that’s one of the things ‘every child matters’ doesn’t take into account.

A child should be happy, and be themselves, and be free from judgement no matter what they aspire to do, and those things aren’t mentioned. I think they are far more important than ‘enjoy and achieve’, because that doesn’t really say anything.

PENNY JONES: [pause] Can–can you just explain how that sort of, impinges on our consultation and what we’re doing, ’cause I [crosstalk]

CHLOE WATSON: ECM is a framework which is not entirely relevant [crosstalk]

PENNY JONES: [crosstalk] I mean, it doesn’t directly take account of home education, because a very small proportion of children [crosstalk]

JONATHAN PRIOR: I want to read you a section of annex C: “The review will look in particular at if and how far home educated children have access to the five Every Child Matters outcomes.”

PENNY JONES: Ahh, I see, okay.

GARETT ROSS: I don’t want them.

PENNY JONES: Well, want or not, I am a government official, and these five outcomes are government policy. [loud crosstalk from all sides]

And that says everything we need to hear. Consultation? Forget it. The voice of the child clearly said "I don’t want [the five Every Child Matters outcomes]," and the government said: "I don't care what you want. This is how it is, because I said so. Now sit down and shut up."

GARETT ROSS: Yes, and they can’t be applied to families, they aren’t for families to pay attention to, they’re for government organisations like the LAs, and the–

PENNY JONES: Exactly, because the tactic, if you think about it, all taxpayers, I’m a taxpayer (come back to you in a moment [to a raised hand]) [inaudible] we have a system which, an education system which most children attend, most taxpayers are contributing to, and [inaudible] and I think the vast majority of people in this country think you do need some kind of benchmarks as to whether your education system is performing adequately, you need some sort of targets.

There she goes again, giving the game away. "..the tactic.."

JONATHAN PRIOR: The problem is, is that we’re not an education system.

PENNY JONES: [What I was trying to say was] home education… it clearly has to relate in a different way to the Every Child Matters outcomes…

JONATHAN PRIOR: Should it?

PENNY JONES: …because it’s no good talking about ‘Enjoy and Achieve’ in terms of school if a child’s home educated.

JASPER GOLD: Which is exactly why we’re against the report…

GARETT ROSS: This report implies forcing those on us.

PENNY JONES: I don’t–I don’t think they are things that can be forced upon anyone, they are at a fairly high level of generallity.

A high level of generality?! What on earth is that supposed to mean??

JONATHAN PRIOR: Let me read you a section from the terms of reference…

[crosstalk]

PENNY JONES: Chloe, Chloe, I meant to say that there are people coming into this room at twelve o’clock, so we really need to cut it short…

Translation: "Oh no, don't start nailing me down to the terms of reference! Is it lunch time yet?"

CHLOE WATSON: I’m sure they’ll be happy to wait a minute [not seeing anybody waiting to use the room]

Ha! Brilliant.

PENNY JONES: Well, not terribly long, because they’ll be arriving in a bit with stacks of paper…

"Where have the props people gone? That was their cue!"

PENNY JONES: Yes, I mean, the-the Every Child Matters… [pause] um, the Every Child Matters outcomes, are not sort of specific in terms of, you know, we… we want to make children [inaudible] the children, [inaudible] and da da da da da–that’s not in legislation, we feel that has to be another stage, so I think I–[pause]–I think there’s a sense in which the every child matters outcomes can be directly applied in that clause of the bill to home education. It’s more at the policy level, in terms of how we approach home education, the place home education has within the broader policy framework.

JONATHAN PRIOR: Unfortunately, this doesn’t really apply to us in any real way, shape or form…

CHLOE WATSON: And it’s really just bureaucratic nonsense.

*Round of applause from the Kilner household*

PENNY JONES: Well, you have your opinion there…

..."And I couldn't care less what it is.."

CHLOE WATSON: And there have definitely been cases where children are pressured into saying things, like in the Orkney Islands scandal.

JONATHAN PRIOR: Or just plain put in care.

PENNY JONES: Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a, there’s a really–there’s a really really good point here, which keeps cropping up again and again, I mean [inaudible] you’re going to be very powerful in [inaudible] when you look at any form of guidance, whether it’s on monitoring or education statements, or whatever it is, you’ve got to make sure that there’s a–a really big emphasis placed on the child’s voice, particularly the older children of secondary school age, to make sure that their… that their feelings and wishes are taken into account.

But the feelings of younger children will continue to be ignored.

JONATHAN PRIOR: The problem is that, um, it’s not so much–it’s not really a balance between the rights of the child and the parent, it’s between the rights of the parent and the state, and the child and the state.

PENNY JONES: Yes.

*More applause.* How delicious, to read her admitting this. I wish we could see the film.

ERIC BRUYLANT: Many children I know, if–if they were forced to go to school, if they were told by the state, that they have to go; they would flatly refuse.

CHLOE WATSON: Certainly I think everyone in this room.

ERIC BRUYLANT: All those children, if you put the blame on the parents, even if the parent is neutral, and would be okay with the child going to school, you can’t get too harsh with the parent, for something which is the child’s choice.

PENNY JONES: Yeah, I mean, that’s–that’s a whole different topic, because that’s about school attendance orders, and, you know, that’s a whole area of, you know, slightly–very large, opinionated teenagers, where, you know, the balance between the parents and the child is somewhat different, and [inaudible] well it isn’t for today, because it’s a bigger topic than home education.

CHLOE WATSON: I have one last thing: can we arrange another meeting, because I feel these topics are too extensive, and we haven’t covered everything. There’s quite a lot that we all have to say.

GARETT ROSS: We’ll have a three hour one. [laughter]

PENNY JONES: I’ll have to go, but we’ll e-mail, we’ll have to e-mail about it. [crosstalk]

Thank you for coming, we’ll have to work out how to…

[crosstalk and 'thanks/you're welcome' from around the room]

[crosstalk as room is vacated]

"We'll email! Mwah mwah," is what people say when they have no intention of getting in touch again. I wonder if she did.

Gotta love the voice of the child.

Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy?!

2009-11-05T02:44:00.008Z

I thought Graham Badman could go no lower in home educators' estimation, but this takes the biscuit.

At our first interview Mr Badman was interested in what I had to say. His opening question was to ask me if home educating mothers suffered from Munchhausen's by Proxy. I thought this to be a curious starting point - that of questioning whether home education is a symptom of mental illness. I am not medically qualified, but I was able to inform Mr Badman that there is no research evidence available that I am aware of, which makes this link.

This actually makes sense of the way the whole review was carried out and written up. If he was starting from that kind of basis of supposition, there was no chance of him ever doing anything good for home educators.

Let's get one thing straight, though:

Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP), is a disorder in which a person deliberately causes injury or illness to another person (most often their child) usually to gain attention or some other benefit. [Source]

So sufferers of this so-called syndrome (probably imaginary in itself, since its inventor was struck off the doctors' register by the General Medical Council for manipulating statistics to desperately try and prove his point in his presentation of evidence as an expert witness at Sally Clarke's trial. Remind you of anyone at all?) actively seek professional help for their children all the time, as a way of getting attention for themselves.

Home educating parents tend to do the precise opposite. Many of us avoid seeking professional help like the plague, unless it's absolutely necessary, and just want to be left in peace to bring our children up outside of the school system and to therefore enjoy our family life. Many of us have campaigned long and hard to try and hold back the incoming high tide of routine professional involvement in family life.

It's laughable (or would be, if such expert postulating hadn't led to Sally Clarke's early death and the wrongful removal of many children from their loving parents) and I'm glad to see that people on Facebook are seeing the funny side. Actually, what's funny is that Badman could get it so wrong. As Paula Rothermel said, she's not medically qualified - so why would he start effecting mass diagnoses? I'm very grateful that she shared this information with the Select Committee, and hence with the rest of us. He probably thought we'd never know.

You can see the rest of the written evidence here. Of particular interest is Tech's submission, which makes some interesting - and actually well-substantiated - suggestions about Mr Badman's own motives, not least in relation to the formation of his limited company, Nektus.

Everything comes to light in the end.

Notes on the transcripts (10) - Qualifications, the UNCRC and 'a world defined by systems of knowledge'.

2009-10-28T05:49:00.009Z

We've nearly finished working through the [uncorrected] transcript of the Monday's oral evidence for the House of Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee short inquiry into The Badman Review [opens pdf], thank goodness, because I'm finding it very tedious now and would prefer to be blogging about other things! Ah well: this might be the last stretch of this section.

(Please note that the quoted sections below are excerpts from an an uncorrected transcript and therefore neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record.)

In my previous post, we'd just covered the part in which the minister was discussing how many sides of A4 we'd be required to present to our LAs by way of 'curriculum', or whatever they're planning to call it. Graham Badman spoke on this next:

Graham Badman: I'm delighted to say it won't be me doing this.

Doing what? I need to scroll back up the transcript again to find out. Ah, it was David Chaytor's question about the proposal for a statement of intended learning, how detailed that's going to be and who is going to draw it up.

We shall leave the space on Facebook for somebody else, which is a blessed relief,

The poor lamb! Sends our beloved autonomous learning into oblivion - and suffers a backlash! Shocking.

but against the background of the demands of 21st-century society,

Nasty modern people, with their new-fangled communication methods.. Oh wait. I'm chair of Becta. Um.. it should all be restricted!

I go back to the UN convention, because the UN convention actually doesn't specify just the right to education; it specifies the right to take part in society and to have that requisite level of qualifications.

WHAT?? The UNCRC specifies a certain required level of qualifications?? Where? I'm running a search through it for the word 'qualifications' and I'm finding.. nothing. I even pasted the whole thing into a Word document and searched there, in case the online version missed it. Still nothing. But I'll look in more detail, in case it's phrased differently. In fact, I'll read the whole thing through (again).

Oh, I like clause 1 of article 13!:

The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice.

And article 14:

1. States Parties shall respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

2. States Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child.

But the articles with particular relevance to education are numbered 28 and 29:

Article 28

1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to education, and with a view to achieving this right progressively and on the basis of equal opportunity, they shall, in particular:

(a) Make primary education compulsory and available free to all;

(b) Encourage the development of different forms of secondary education, including general and vocational education, make them available and accessible to every child, and take appropriate measures such as the introduction of free education and offering financial assistance in case of need;

(c) Make higher education accessible to all on the basis of capacity by every appropriate means;

(d) Make educational and vocational information and guidance available and accessible to all children;

(e) Take measures to encourage regular attendance at schools and the reduction of drop-out rates.

2. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that school discipline is administered in a manner consistent with the child's human dignity and in conformity with the present Convention.

3. States Parties shall promote and encourage international cooperation in matters relating to education, in particular with a view to contributing to the elimination of ignorance and illiteracy throughout the world and facilitating access to scientific and technical knowledge and modern teaching methods. In this regard, particular account shall be taken of the needs of developing countries.

Article 29

1. States Parties agree that the education of the child shall be directed to:

(a) The development of the child's personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential;

(b) The development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and for the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations;

(c) The development of respect for the child's parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate, and for civilizations different from his or her own;

(d) The preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin;

(e) The development of respect for the natural environment.

2. No part of the present article or article 28 shall be construed so as to interfere with the liberty of individuals and bodies to establish and direct educational institutions, subject always to the observance of the principle set forth in paragraph 1 of the present article and to the requirements that the education given in such institutions shall conform to such minimum standards as may be laid down by the State.

Do you see anything about qualifications in there? I don't, and I've just read the rest of the UNCRC - including parts II and III, and I see nothing there either.

Back to Mr Badman, then:

Although I understand why autonomous educators believe it would be difficult to outline that,

Outline what? "That requisite level of qualifications"? I don't know what he means. It is difficult for us to outline in advance our children's definite path through life, but that's no more difficult for us than it is for any other parents, or teachers, or experts. Perhaps we're just more honest about it.

equally I cannot conceive of a situation where, for example, a child of middle secondary years does not know something about oriental history, given the world as it is now;

Given the world as it is now; being a welcome addition to what was otherwise largely irrelevant. Who decides on the body of knowledge that should be imparted to all young people, even assuming they could all be persuaded to open the tops of their heads and allow such a body to be inserted without obstacle? Who should decide? Nobody, because that traditional, dictatorial brand of pedagogy belongs in the past, Victorian age where it was developed and practiced to serve the interests of the ruling classes alone. People nowadays have access to a much wider sphere of information than a predetermined curriculum can provide. Their options are wide open; they learn best when they're entirely free to follow their interests and develop expertise entirely according to their age, aptitude, ability and any special educational needs they may have. Isn't Becta and 21st Century schooling supposed to be all about that? I'm finding Mr Badman's true position in these matters increasingly difficult to ascertain, possibly due to the bewildering array of conflicts of interests he seems to so cheerfully inhabit.

does not know something about carbon sequestration, if they are interested in science;

If they are interested in that certain branch of science, I think it's likely that most home educated children of a certain age probably will know something about carbon sequestration, even if they might not know it as that. (Are we to be tested on this later? Panic! It's like being on University Challenge, isn't it?) And yet, amazingly, some people still do rate intelligence and its applicability according to which random bunch of facts from the entirety of human knowledge of which a person might seem to have understanding. The fact that its the diversity of our species rather than its conformity which has ensured our collective survival for so long seems to escape them.

and does not know something about the nature of the economy.

Everyone knows something about the nature of the economy. But, let me guess, that knowledge only counts if it happens to be the same 'something' as Graham Badman knows.

So, even if you go to the broadest spectrum of what constitutes a curriculum and an entitlement, it would not be difficult to get beyond that definition.

Beyond what definition? Is it just me, or does anyone else struggle to follow his exact meaning in this session?

I think it's intriguing that the Royal Society of Arts has defined a curriculum in about two pages. I actually tried it on home educators and said, "Well, have a look at this." They in the main rejected that as well, but there have to be some broad - brushstroke elements to what is reasonable in a statement that, as I've said in the report, gives the child choices. If you don't know about something, how can you make a choice?

Oh - weary sigh. Our children do learn about things - it's just that we don't dictate in advance for them what these things will be. They choose and then find them out for themselves, so we can't know in advance what they are, or might be. It's not a complicated concept to grasp, is it?

Going back to "Elective Home Education", I cite at the end the court judgment in the Harrison case. What was said at that time - forgive me while I find the right page - was this: "in our judgment 'education' demands at least an element of supervision; merely to allow a child to follow its own devices in the hope that it will acquire knowledge by imitation, experiment or experience in its own way and in its own good time is neither systematic nor instructive ... such a course would not be education but, at best, childminding." That was the court's judgment in the case of Harrison and Harrison.

True, and we do supervise - and help, assist and facilitate. But we are not the Encyclopædia Britannica and nor, against the background of the demands of 21st-century society, do we need to pretend to be.

Q39 Mr. Chaytor: The logic of that is that the statement of intended learning does have a requirement to conform to certain general outcomes or to work towards certain general outcomes, doesn't it? It's not simply tailored to the individual child.

That's an interesting question, especially in the light of the 1996 Education Act, which sets out the "Duty of parents of children of compulsory school age [to] 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,
either by regular attendance at school or otherwise." It doesn't say anything about "certain general outcomes".

Graham Badman: I will answer that. I am independent and I really am truly independent and it is beyond my brief, but as somebody who has spent more than 40 years in education, whether we like it or not, we have a world defined by systems of knowledge.

So we do, to an extent, but those systems are - and should be - far wider than the ones covered in a school curriculum, and they're being stretched by independent thinkers all the time. We don't just need people to be trained to accept instruction and retain key facts: we also need people to be free to specialise and to obsess on their own specific areas of interest. Orthodoxy might try to confine and preserve a body of knowledge, but it didn't - and doesn't - create it.

If you're going to take part in that world, you need to understand how those systems and knowledge developed.

My autonomously home educated son runs his own profitable business. I think that can safely be called 'taking part in the world' and yet he was never instructed by me about the development of knowledge. That's not to say he doesn't know how knowledge developed - just that the learning of this was never something we needed to plan. If we had planned and contrived to study it at a certain time - and this is key - he wouldn't have been half as interested as he was.

It doesn't mean to say you have to be equally interested in everything, but you have to know something

Dear me! Doesn't everyone know something? Why must we endlessly duplicate the same knowledge?

and so I repeat: it will not be me doing this, which I'm sure will be a great relief to all home educators,

- but that's not going to stop you telling us how it should be done:

but I would go for an education system that if it does not define the outcomes, at least defines a curriculum structure that allows that child to make choices.

So we have to impart knowledge, à l'Encyclopædia Britannica, and restrict the child to choices from within that particular chunk of knowledge. Has he thought this through? It's ridiculous. It no longer works in schools, and it won't work in the home either. Children are not complete fools.

I can't get to the end of this today: I have a home ed meeting to prepare for, but I will definitely - thankfully - now be able to finish my notes on this session in my next post.

Notes on the transcripts (9) - Funding, outcomes, sides of A4 again and yet more 'hope'.

2009-10-25T08:08:00.005Z

Before anything else, there are two very exciting blog posts I want to tell you about. The first is Consequences and conclusions (part two) on the Dark Lord Badman blog and the second is Just Say No - Neil T's response to the recent consultation, copied to the home education forums.

Again today I'm continuing with my notes on the [uncorrected] transcript of last Monday's oral evidence for the House of Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee short inquiry into The Badman Review [opens pdf]. (Please note that the quoted sections below are excerpts from an an uncorrected transcript and therefore neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record.)

My previous post ended with Lynda Waltho's question number 35:

Going on from that, I am somewhat calmed by your response, but you're talking a lot about training and its being the last resort. It seems to me that there's going to need to be a lot of resources diverted to training or provided for training. Is that not going to stymie your overall objectives? It could end up basically being a bottomless pit, because if we're going to train them so well that it is a last resort and everything's going to be-I just wonder where it's all coming from. Sorry, is that another question you didn't want?

Here's the reply from Penny Jones, Independent Schools and School Organisation, DCSF:

We have talked to local authorities, and we've made an estimate of the amount of time. When we looked at the cost of implementing these recommendations, we did explicitly consider the length of time it would take to train officials, how much it was going to cost to develop training packages and the cost of backfilling when people were off going training. We put a cost in, and that's part of the cost we've given in our full response, so it's in there. We think it's fully costed, and we have consulted, so hopefully the resources will be there. They've been earmarked.

There's that 'hope' thing again - like Graham Badman's 'hope' that all the local authority officers will act sensibly and treat us decently. They're planning to change the law and expose us all to a lot more risk than they're claiming to be trying to protect us from - on the single basis of hope. It's not enough.

A short debate about exams and 'outcomes' data then ensued:

Q36 Mr. Chaytor (Lab, Bury North): Minister, if the statistics on numbers of children are so difficult to collate, presumably there are no statistics on learning outcomes. Do we assume we have no information at all on any learning outcomes of the 20,000 to 40,000 children we're talking about?

Ms Diana R. Johnson: I think they would be incomplete, wouldn't they? Because we don't know how many children we're talking about, finding the outcomes for those children, the data we've got is incomplete. You could look at GCSE results, but obviously, that may not encompass all children who are home-educated.

Q37 Mr. Chaytor: Do GCSE stats or Key Stage 2 standard assessment tests indicate whether the child has been home-educated or not?

Penny Jones: I think the difficulty is that we don't have systematic data for the outcomes of these children. There have been a number of academic studies, both here and quite a lot in America as well, showing that generally, home-educated children attain well, but there is always a question as to how representative the sample is. Unless and until we can get a cross-section of the whole population of home-educated children, we actually can't answer the question "How do the outcomes compare with the population as a whole?" The difficulty we've got with GCSEs and the key stage examinations is that yes, the young people may take these tests, but then when we look at our statistics, those individuals aren't recognised as being home-educated, so we can't just lift up the data and look at it. I don't know if Graham wants to add anything.

Graham Badman: One positive thing. Extending examination centres in the way in which I think the report recommends was always at the top when I asked home educators to give me their shopping list. "What do you want from it?" They wanted the access. That will give us better data in terms of entry to examinations and performance, but I think the needs data is stark and needs further examination. I suspect that there's an untapped mine of information in Jobcentre Plus that also could be sought.

If I can turn the question round, if you're asking me "Do we know enough about the outcomes of a substantial number of young people?", I think quite clearly and unequivocally no. That is not to say they don't have any; we just don't know. To go back to anecdote and case study, I have met some extraordinarily accomplished young people who've done very well and sailed through university and so forth, sometimes developing very late, and others for whom the attainments are absolutely minimal. We don't know enough about that and therefore local authorities did not know when to intervene to provide something additional that could have improved their attainments.

But local authorities could have made an offer, on their website pages about home education. Each and every one of them could, within existing funding and rules, have offered home educators free access to a public exam centre. Why wasn't the fact that they chose not to examined by the review or the Select Committee?

My oldest son has 'minimal attainments' in terms of exam results, but he runs a profitable business now and has never had cause to visit a Job Centre. Nor will he either, unless he's ever struggling to hire staff in the normal way. This perfectly legitimate, successful, likely and probable outcome for elective and autonomous home education has been completely overlooked by both the review and the Select Committee. I wonder why.

Q38 Mr. Chaytor: Could you tell us a little about the proposal for a statement of intended learning? How detailed is that going to be and who is going to draw it up?

Ms Diana R. Johnson: I've asked about that and I was told - obviously, this is all very provisional at the moment-that people would be required to produce no more than two sides of A4.

You asked? Who did you ask? Who exactly is making these seemingly arbitrary decisions about us, if not the government minister responsible? Hmm.. reference to sides of A4 sounds very familiar though. I wonder to what extent these have featured as expressions of Graham Badman's dealings with people throughout the course of his career. Is it all measured in sides of A4?

There are certain issues with autonomous learning that need to be addressed.

You're not kidding!

That's why one of the recommendations is looking at putting some further research into autonomous learning and how that could be fitted into providing a statement on a yearly basis.

And is the cart going to be put before the horse, or is this going to happen before any changes are imposed? What kind of 'further research' will it be? We must hope that this is to be of a significantly higher calibre than that produced by the review. There's that hope thing again: a vain hope. A fool's hope, but the only kind we've got.

So there is work to do, including looking at the issue of what is suitable and efficient education. Some further work needs to be addressed to look at that and to flesh it out, but in terms of the statement, my view certainly is it would not be more than a few pages.

Two? A few? It's grown already over the course of the minister's reply! And what about the "opportunity to meet local authority officers to discuss the planned approach to home education and develop the plan before it is finalised" mentioned in recommendation 1 of the report? [opens pdf] We all know that in some local authorities, an 'opportunity' will soon become a requirement and that 'two' or 'a few' sides could easily become a full-blown dissertation, to every word of which we are held during the following year's inspection process. Anyone with the vaguest understanding of the term 'autonomous learning' must realise it's not going to be at all compatible with this - or any other - plan.

Graham Badman spoke about this next. I think I'll save that for my next post.

Notes on the transcripts (8) - The voice of the child. Sought, heard, but not necessarily believed.

2009-10-24T06:15:00.007+01:00

Again today I'm continuing with my notes on the [uncorrected] transcript of last Monday's oral evidence for the House of Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee short inquiry into The Badman Review [opens pdf]. (Please note that the quoted sections below are excerpts from an an uncorrected transcript and therefore neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record.)

We left it yesterday with this question from Lynda Waltho:

Q34: That is helpful. We have all been talking about the voice of the child throughout today's proceedings. What if the voice of the child is not to meet with the officer? What do we do then?

Graham Badman: That is the one question that I was dreading from this Committee.

Lynda Waltho: Oh, sorry.

Graham Badman: It is a very good question.

Chairman: As you have been dreading it, can it be repeated?

Lynda Waltho: What if the voice of the child is that he or she does not want to meet, or refuses to meet, someone from the authority?

Graham Badman: My view then would be that it is up to the sensitivity of the officer to judge whether or not that is truly what the child wishes or whether it is a view that has been given to them by the parent that they have repeated.

This is so shocking I didn't believe my ears when I heard it, and have just had to read it several times for it to sink in.

It seems that the voice of the child is valid, important and believed only when it's saying what the government wants to hear. Otherwise, not. And local authority officers are not famed for their sensitivity - even Mr Badman knows that.

That is quite difficult to determine.

Why would you even bother trying, unless you subscribed to that oft-spinned, baseless and completely made-up 'theory' that home educating parents are a nefarious bunch of child abusing brainwashers?

That being said, we are making provision that other trusted adults can be engaged, and I repeat that speaking to the child and the requirement to speak to them would have to be used after a whole range of other avenues of approach and co-operation had been explored.

This is very vague, isn't it? "A whole range of other avenues of approach and co-operation" with regard to what, exactly? If there is a suspicion of abuse, then the normal child protection procedure is enacted. If there is reason to believe the education isn't suitable, information is requested. If this information is not forthcoming or is insufficient to allay the specific concerns, a school attendance order is sought. This can then be defended by the parents in court, as they wish. Why do we need a whole range of other avenues of approach and co-operation, let alone to give LAs the power to interview the child alone (which they already have if abuse is suspected, and which should be the only reason for them to).

I go back to my first statement to the Chairman of this Committee. I don't think there is anything in the report that prevents good elective home educators from continuing to do what they have always done.

The only question, then, is which of us is 'good' - and which of us is 'bad'. It seems that this is to be for local authority officers to decide, poor things.

All we are going to do is to offer them greater services and greater protection for a minority - but a significant minority.

We already have enough services. There already is sufficient protection.

I can well understand that there may be children, particularly on the autistic spectrum, who would be completely fazed by that. I have indicated that within the section on special educational needs as well. I understand that point, but judge each case on its merits. What we cannot legislate for is every single occurrence. We have to trust to the good sense of those involved in the support of home educators, whether they be from the local authority or whether they are commissioned from the voluntary sector.

Oh my goodness. He's just throwing us to the lions. Doesn't he know that this trust is exactly what many of us are lacking? My eldest son had his confidence and self esteem destroyed by a school that refused to recognise his severe dyslexia - even after they'd received a 15-page long educational psychologist's diagnosis of it. ("We're not reading this. If you pay an ed psych to find something wrong with your child, they'll find it.") So I deregistered him and spent 6 months painstakingly rebuilding his confidence with him. Then the 'sensitive', 'trustworthy' LA inspector came round, having not bothered to read the report, demanded to see work and to hear Tom reading and scornfully lambasted both - and my son, as 'an idiot'. I said, "Um - you do know he's got dyslexia, quite badly?" and he said: "Oh! Well, I was a bit too pushed for time this morning to open the file. All the same, more work needs doing."

'Voice of the child'? 'Sensitive'? 'Trustworthy'? 'Good sense'? No. We need to retain our protection from some of these people. Some will be well-meaning and intelligent. Others will be uncaring and blasé. Still others will have a determination to enforce compliance with their own world view that borders on sadism. Why should they have unconditional access to our homes and our children?

Chairman: I don't think you should be so defensive about this, Graham.

! Yes, he should.

When we did our inquiry into looked-after children, I don't think we really got under the surface of that whole inquiry until we met children who had been in care, or were in care, on their own and talked to them.

Which is fine, if the children want to talk to someone.

We intend to talk to home-educated children on their own as a group, but I really can't see how we can evade trying to do that, even though we must do it in a sympathetic and sensitive way.

This seems to be a bewildering conflation of the Select Committee's plans to talk to politically active volunteer older children as a group, at their request, about the general situation and the Badman proposals to enable individual local authority officers to enforce private interviews with any home educated children, of any age, willing or unwilling, about their personal educational provision.

Q35 Lynda Waltho: Going on from that, I am somewhat calmed by your response,

Glad someone is.

but you're talking a lot about training and its being the last resort. It seems to me that there's going to need to be a lot of resources diverted to training or provided for training. Is that not going to stymie your overall objectives? It could end up basically being a bottomless pit, because if we're going to train them so well that it is a last resort and everything's going to be - I just wonder where it's all coming from. Sorry, is that another question you didn't want?

Another good question from Lynda Waltho, the answers to which I will look at in my next post.

Notes on the transcripts (7) - Entering the home and interviewing the child

2009-10-23T08:42:00.004+01:00

Today I'm continuing from yesterday's post, which was based on [uncorrected] transcript of last Monday's oral evidence for the House of Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee short inquiry into The Badman Review [opens pdf]. (Please note that the quoted sections below are excerpts from an an uncorrected transcript and therefore neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record.)

Q33 Lynda Waltho (Lab, Stourbridge): One of the areas on which I and my colleagues have been lobbied by many people is the proposal to interview the child and to enter the home. Many home educators have pointed out that even police officers need a suspicion or a warrant so to do. In your report, you concede that some local authorities are not making effective use of current powers. Will you spell out why local authorities need new powers rather than just a better understanding of what they can do already?

One of my favourite questions.

Graham Badman: Let me quote a local authority, which said, "Given that Local Authorities do not have the power to see the child or enter the house, we have no direct way of ensuring the safety and wellbeing of children currently being educated at home.

If they entered the home every hour on the hour, every day of the week, they still wouldn't have any direct way of ensuring the safety and wellbeing of children currently being educated at home, because ensuring someone's safety and wellbeing - unless you confine them to a plastic bubble (an action which, while it might ensure their safety, would surely damage their wellbeing) - is impossible. Normal life is, and should be, full of thrills and spills as well as the boring bits.

By submitting a report in the post, we cannot guarantee that children ARE receiving the provision identified,

This is the bit where they assume that parents will tell lies unless there's some way of trying to prove otherwise. Charming! (And no wonder most of us choose not to engage with them.)

moreover, we cannot see if the child is meeting the every child matters outcomes.

This is the one, single issue that the review should have sought to address. It's Lord Adonis's "This anomaly is at odds with Every Child Matters reforms, supported by the Children Act 2004, which set out the Government's aim to improve educational outcomes for all children, regardless of where they are educated." The ECM agenda cannot be made to accommodate home educated children and nor should it. Home educating families need to be free to opt out of that system, school-based as it is. It's impossible for us to comply with the five outcomes without breaching our Article 7 right to respect for private and family life, home and communications. Giving us two weeks' notice of a home visit goes nowhere near to solving this problem! Maybe this is what Badman was alluding to when he was talking about parental rights - but that right to privacy encompasses the whole family including the children. There is no clash between parents' and children's rights. The clash is between that specific part of the ECM agenda, and the rest of the law pertaining to home education - as Lord Adonis was perceptive enough to articulate.

There is no way knowing that they are even in the country and we cannot be certain that they are living in the address provided. This has huge implications re: the 'Children Missing from Education' guidance and procedures.

I don't think it does, does it? Does the CME guidance insist that the precise location of every child is officially registered on a constant basis? No. There has to be some trust, if only from a pragmatic point of view.

We feel as a LA that we have a duty of care to the children educated in our area and that we cannot fulfil this duty of care if we have no access to the child or the family."

Yes, and the Badman report [opens pdf] has exacerbated - not ameliorated - this position for them.

That is an accurate view of the response from local authorities, almost universally, in terms of the feedback on the report.

But he did not have to go the way of increasing surveillance. It doesn't actually solve the problems - it actually just creates a whole lot more of them. Instead the review could have been used as an opportunity to investigate the rightful place of HE within the ECM agenda.

Yes, of course, I understand the sensitivities of interviewing the child and the child alone, but I hope that, given what we have said about training, it is, in a sense, the last resort - that proper relationships are established and that it would only be in extremis that a local authority would want to use the powers. We have those powers, but it does not mean that we need to exercise them.

You hope? You hope?? You're proposing to give local authority officers, who could be anyone as far as we know, so much power over us - and you hope they will use it wisely?? ! It seems that hope is all you've left us with too, having proposed that all our other safeguards are stripped away. Thanks.

Crucially, I have also argued in the report that there should be the presence of another trusted adult. The person does not necessarily need to be an unknown officer alone with the child.

But again, you haven't specified this so all we're left with is the hope that our respective LAs will treat our children decently. It's not enough.

I understand those sensitivities and, again, I make the point in the report, in a direct quote from Jane Lowe, from whom I think you are getting evidence. She wrote a very good book full of case studies on the good practice in home education, and said that, if you educate at home, it is still first and foremost a home. Whatever training is given, officers need to respect that, and they need to caveat their approach by asking, "Have I assessed the risk appropriately? Do I need to do this?" I am arguing for a greater flow of information that would enable anyone with a quite proper regard for the safety of children to exercise the power without being draconian.

So we're working on the basis of assumption that our relationships with local authorities are always going to be good. What of the Richard Iballs of this world, who will never recognise truly autonomous learning as a valid method, come what may? What of the paedophiles who look for legitimate opportunities to get power over children and to get them on their own, scared, and separated from their parents? Where, in the Badman report, is our families' defence against these people? Nowhere. We have none. Only the 'hope' that they will act with 'the proper regard'. It's not enough.

Q34 Lynda Waltho: That is helpful. We have all been talking about the voice of the child throughout today's proceedings. What if the voice of the child is not to meet with the officer? What do we do then?

This is the best question of all. I'll look at the answers to it - such as they were - in my next post.

Notes on the transcripts (6) - 'registration' (licensing)

2009-10-22T07:45:00.005+01:00

Continuing with [uncorrected] transcript of last Monday's oral evidence for the House of Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee short inquiry into The Badman Review [opens pdf]: (Please note that the quoted sections below are excerpts from an an uncorrected transcript and therefore neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record.)

Andrew Pelling (Independent, Croydon) then asked:

Q29: Could the flexibility go so far as to drop the idea of registration and just have the approach that there should be an obligation to receive advice? Could you go that far in terms of flexibility?

An obligation to receive advice? I appreciate the well-meaning attempt at conciliation, but it's a nonsense. The only advice worth having or giving is that which is freely sought. Ditto: 'support' - and 'education', come to think of it. Anything else is just manipulative and will probably be met with resistance.

Ms Diana R. Johnson (Minister for schools): I would say on that point that the reason why local authorities need to have numbers on how many children are being home educated in their local authority area is so that they can plan services and make resources available. That would be very difficult if you did not actually know how many children were being home educated. That is part of the problem that local authorities are describing to us at the moment - they do not actually know.

This can't be the true reason, because if it was they'd be happy to just advertise their services, count the numbers of people responding and plan accordingly. Not all home educators will want or need LA services and/or resources, so counting the total numbers of home educators in the area won't give them the information they need to plan delivery.

Q30 Mr. Pelling: But there is a sanction, is there not, in terms of the local authority having gone through its registration process?

I don't really understand this question.

Ms Diana R. Johnson: Are you asking if there will be a sanction?

Seems I'm not the only one.

Mr. Pelling: Yes.

Ms Diana R. Johnson: Again, this is the consultation period, so I cannot say what will come out at the end of the consultation. Certainly, a lot of people have been writing in about the registration requirements, but it closes on 19 October and then the Government will have to look at it.

Oh, they're going to take into account our 5,200-strong opinion? Good news indeed.

Q31 Mr. Pelling: So, in terms of the open-minded approach that is being taken to the consultation, it will still be a possibility not to have registration with sanctioning.

Ms Diana R. Johnson: I don't want to pre-judge things. Clearly, in having a registration process, you would think that if you didn't register, that would have to be thought through. It seems to me silly not to be registering everyone.

"That would have to be thought through"? Ever so slightly ambiguous.

Graham Badman: I don't want to fall foul of the trap of forgetting that hard cases make bad law. It is nevertheless the case that registration is a relatively simple process. You are talking about it happening only annually. It is not a great intrusion into families that are conducting a normal process of elective home education. But there are hard cases. There are some tragedies in our country that we need to try to prevent as far as we can. Let me cite something said by Daniel Monk, an expert in the legalities of home education, in the Child and Family Law Quarterly of 2009: "Parents who home educate are not simply performing a private duty, but also a public function. For all these reasons the case for compulsory registration is logical, legitimate and compelling."

It's not registration - it's a process of licensing, because permission to register can be refused. Working for weeks with the local authority to agree next year's plan of education and being questioned on one's compliance with last year's plan - these are not relatively simple processes. I mean, relative to what? I think I'm beginning to understand Mr Pelling's question a bit better now.

Q32 Mr. Pelling: Is it not the philosophy of this approach that it is important for the state to intervene in the life of the family to ensure that the rights of the child are protected? Is that not the backbone behind this approach?

Yes! Giving the lie to Badman's "It is not a great intrusion into families that are conducting a normal process of elective home education."

Graham Badman: I interpret it in a slightly different way.

Quelle surprise.

The UN convention represents the wishes of this country for all the children in it. All I am saying is that there need to be some changes to guarantee absolutely that the rights of children to an education and freedom of speech, so that they are able to give a view about their lot in life, are met. I agree with you, but I argue the case from the point of view of the rights of the child.

Same argument. Same motivation. Greater chance of success. Please ask all school children whether they would prefer to be home educated, and act on their replies. (Enabling their parents to draw down the AWPU would help from a practical point of view.) Only then will the rights of children to an education and freedom of speech, so that they are able to give a view about their lot in life be absolutely guaranteed.

Notes on the transcripts (5) - SEN, AWPU, govt co-option of charities and the concept of 'support'

2009-10-20T08:10:00.006+01:00

Hmm. I really want to be blogging about a transcript from yesterday's round table meeting with 20 home educators and the Select Committee, but as we don't have one of those (and aren't ever likely to get one, sob! [UPDATE: I've just found a write-up of the meeting here. Thanks so much, Imran]) I'll get back to last Monday's far more boring one instead. But first, about yesterday's consultation. Over 5000 responses in the end! That's fantastic. We pulled all the stops out for the last one and only managed about 2000, if I remember correctly. Mr Badman is certainly good at winding people up, as Carlotta says most eloquently.

OK. More from [uncorrected] transcript of last Monday's oral evidence for the House of Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee short inquiry into The Badman Review [opens pdf], then. (Please note that the quoted sections below are excerpts from an an uncorrected transcript and therefore neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record.)

Annette Brooke went on to say:

One of the difficulties in making sweeping statements is that the generic term of "elective home education" covers such a wide range. As you mentioned, I am sure that there are so many cases that we should celebrate, and I would quite like to have seen some case studies of good practice, which I think would have balanced your report out a little, Graham. I take it for granted that there is all that out there.

I have certainly met a number of parents who have removed their children from school, possibly because their child is on the autism spectrum-probably a very frequent reason-and the school is not providing, or is not able to provide either protection in terms of anti-bullying or a suitable education. I think those parents must feel very threatened that they are now effectively going to be inspected on what they are doing, which may be working on confidence and self-esteem, against some unknown criteria of what a good education is. Can you comment on that particular portion of home educators?

This is an excellent question and one I've got some experience of, having deregistered Tom aged 9 and with severe dyslexia and his confidence in his own abilities on the floor. Then having a 'compulsory' home visit from the LA, after 6 months' worth of hard work trying to reinstall his faith in himself, in which the officer in question demanded he read out loud and have a sample of his writing checked and harshly criticised! Needless to say, he hadn't even opened our file before visiting and had no idea what had happened in school.

Badman replied:

Let me pick up on autism first of all. My words were sincere when I described the emotion with which some people tell me their stories, so I accept that for many young people, home education was the last resort. If these recommendations go through, the money, in terms of the age-weighted pupil units, then flows to the local authority, either because that child has been in receipt of School Action Plus, because they are in receipt of significant services, or because they are statemented. The opportunity will now exist for the local authority to commission other services to support those families.

- an opportunity that's always been there, surely?

As I make very clear in my report, within special educational needs-I have cited at length the Independent Panel for Special Education Advice's evidence, which I think is strongly supportively of home educators' views-when it comes to commissioning support for autism, it may not be the local authority that does so. I am persuaded that some in the voluntary sector, such as Autism In Mind, may offer better support and help than local authorities. Under my proposals, they would be able to do that, and could be commissioned to provide those services, with money now going for the first time to local authorities to provide the services.

What's this third sector providers nonsense all about? As I understand it, AIM is a hard-working collection of volunteer parents who do a brilliant job at supporting one another - because they want to - but would have neither the time nor the inclination to turn themselves into a professional organisation. Nice idea, on the part of government, to try co-opt the charities/support groups with the use of some well-placed complements and hinted offers of bribes, but I can't see any of them (with the possible exception of EO) going for it. Personally I wouldn't touch that kind of a 'partnership' with a barge pole. Oh look, but here's someone who will. Kerching!

To repeat a word that I have used, I think it is perverse that for many young people, for whom there are quite legitimate concerns related to welfare and education, as soon as they opt out of school, they are cut off from what they would have had in terms of value.

No, what's perverse is that you will all run around the houses trying to think up ways of avoiding just paying the AWPU straight to the parents, where it can actually be spent on the child's education - strange thought though that would be.

To go back to your first comment, Chairman, about the positive sides of this, there are recommendations in the report about access to examinations-if people have not previously had it-to flexible schooling and to better vacation provision, all of which, I think, from what I have seen of the Government's response, have been accepted. Chairman, I think you are right: there is an awful lot that has been said about safeguarding. Most of this report is about ensuring that the rights of children are met within the context of home education-not outside of it-by the better provision of services and the better engagement of home educators in the training of local authority officers and in determining what the services are.

Or you could just leave us alone, where most of us where doing perfectly fine thank you. Or even offer some services to people who want them, on a voluntary basis, if you must be seen to be doing something.

Q27 Chairman: I speak as Chairman of this Committee. Recently we have been inquiring into looked-after children and the training of social workers. The fact of the matter is that in this country, for some reason, anyone engaged, as a family, with social services seems to have a stigma about it-they feel it is a negative thing. Are we not taking the same approach here? What we need to get from the Government and from anyone involved with a local authority is a positive relationship that supports home education, if that is what a parent chooses-a positive framework. There should not be a feeling that there is inspection, and that people will come to see if you are going to do something naughty, but a feeling that if you are trying to do something good, they should help you to do it. Is that not the frame that we want?

That would indeed be a better outcome than the one suggested by Badman. But to bring it about we'd have to forget about home visits, except by invitation from the family only and compulsory registration. Local authorities instead could advertise their services through recognised groups and known home educators, who could then pass the information on to everyone else. It would make sense for such services to be advertised on local authorities' websites, for families to avail themselves thereof as they wish, with no strings attached. What's wrong with this idea? Seems perfect to me.

Ms Diana R. Johnson (DCSF Minister for schools): That is certainly the view that the Government have taken on this. It is about creating a much more positive relationship between home educators and local authority officers. You will see examples in the report of good practice, which is already happening, but of course not across the whole of England; we need to spread it.

Oh good. Hmm. Why am I not convinced..?

Q28 Annette Brooke: I welcome the recommendations of support, but I am still concerned that a parent who really understands their particular child's needs and has an alternative approach that will ultimately build up confidence and communication will never fit into the round hole of what formal schooling would advocate. I am concerned - perhaps you can reassure me - that there is not enough flexibility to allow for that approach.

Another very good question.

Graham Badman: There is certainly nothing in this report to suggest that there should not be that flexibility...

Oh, but there is! Where shall we start? With the redefining of 'suitable' and 'efficient'? With the compulsory home visits from LA officers who, no matter what they've had in terms of training, will still be human, have prejudices, come from schooly backgrounds, have their own agenda (whatever that may be) and generally still mess up? With the recommendation to refuse us registration if our annual plans aren't up to scratch, or if we're found to have not fulfilled the previous year's plan? The concept of 'flexibility' has packed its bags and left the building thanks to you, Mr Badman.

We have had a quite deliberate distinction between the way that youngsters with special educational needs and others who are electively home educated are treated.

We have? Where?

I take the view that some people have absolutely prospered through being home educated.

This isn't his view to take: it's a plain fact, though it would be even truer if the word 'most' was substituted.

Sometimes they are not home educated for the entirety of a normal school career; sometimes they do so to recoup, if you wish, and then they re-enter school, perhaps on a part-time basis. I do not think there is any suggestion that the rights of parents who are dealing with young children, sometimes with quite specific needs, will in any way be negated.

Yes they will, because where we currently have the right to be immediately responsive to our children's educational needs, this will no longer be the case under the Badman recommendations. We'll have to stick to a plan instead, whether it turns out to be right for the child or not. We will have to impose the element of compulsion on our children.

On the contrary, what we are trying to say is that it is important that the state knows what is happening to them.

The state might want to know, for its own purposes, but this should not take priority over each individual child's needs and its parent's duty to respond to those needs.

Equally, the state has responsibilities to ensure that support is given to them.

Only if such support is wanted or asked for! The take-up of support has to be a voluntary affair, otherwise it can't correctly be called support at all and must be called coercion.

I'll leave this there for today and get on with attending to my children etc.

Transcript of Barry Sheerman on Ed Balls: Today

2009-10-19T10:46:00.002+01:00

Taken from here:

Barry Sheerman: "Maggie Atkinson is a very competent woman, but we just didn't think she had the independence of mind to stand up to a Secretary of State who loves to get his own way. I mean, you know, most of us know that Ed Balls is a bit of a bully and he likes his own way and we've seen a track record of, you know, we saw the problems over Ken Boston QCA, we saw Sir Bruce Liddington the schools commissioner who was very independent: he's gone, the schools commission has been abolished. Time after time, we see the Secretary of State wanting to have people that will do his bidding."

James Naughtie (Presenter): Well that's a pretty strong way of describing the Secretary of State. I mean, you think he's a bully who wants to get his own way all the time?

Barry Sheerman: I think he's a bit of a bully who likes to get his own way.

James Naughtie: Come on. He's either a bully or he isn't. You say he's a bully.

Barry Sheerman: Well yes, if you push me, yes. He's more of an executive man rather than a parliamentary man. And I think it's a bad day for parliamentary democracy when, if we're having these pre-appointment hearings, the very first committee to say that it didn't agree with the appointment, to get it over-ridden. I think that's a bad day for parliamentary democracy.

James Naughtie: Well, you say you have competence in this matter. Of course you don't, technically, do you? I mean there's no - you know, we're in a parliamentary system, not an American-style system, the committee doesn't put forward appointees. All you're asked for is your opinion. So it's competence, but only up to a point.

Barry Sheerman: Of course, and we're - it's early days and, you know, all eight of us - there were eight of us that hearing - all agreed. We didn't have a vote, we agreed..

James Naughtie: Cross-party.

Barry Sheerman: Cross-party, all three parties.. er, that we thought someone who was keener on the campaigning role, someone who would be feistier in standing up to the Secretary of State.. I mean, he does have form in this area. You know, Ofsted is at its weakest that I've known it under six Secretaries of State.

James Naughtie: And that's partly, or perhaps wholly, in your view, because of the Secretary of State and his way of doing things?

Barry Sheerman: I think he does not like strong, independent-minded people who stand up to him and that's why Sir Bruce Liddington went and why we had all the trouble with Ken Boston, the QCA last year..

James Naughtie: So there’s a pattern?

Barry Sheerman: There is a pattern and we as a Select Committee see that pattern. I've been chair of the Committee for six Secretaries of State and I know how each of them have behaved in that time.

James Naughtie: So, I mean, this issue is not simply about Maggie Atkinson, it's about the Secretary of State?

Barry Sheerman: It's about choosing people who have got the feistiness and the independence to actually take on the Secretary of State and say: "We have the weakest Children's Commissioner in the UK. Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland have more powers and more strength. It's the weakest in Europe."

James Naughtie: What can you do about it? I mean, Mr Balls is going to go ahead. No doubt you would say that's an indication of the way he does things, so he's going to do it. What do you then do?

Barry Sheerman: He's going to do it. He's in front of my committee - our committee - on Wednesday..

James Naughtie: Well, that'll be fun!

Barry Sheerman: It'll be fun, but we'll tell.. Look. Our job is to keep track of this Secretary of State. We try to do it robustly and we try to do it well.

James Naughtie: You know what people who are listening to you who may not agree with you will say? They'll say: "Ah, here's old Sheerman. He's going for the Chairmanship of the LP. Good bit of campaigning."

Barry Sheerman: Well, first of all I haven't decided to do that.

James Naughtie: But you might?

Barry Sheerman: Yes, but this is nothing to do with it. Everyone knows that I have been chair of this committee for nearly ten years. I take it very seriously. My job is to scrutinise this department and to scrutinise it robustly is my duty to Parliament.

James Naughtie: But you'd rather you weren't dealing with a bully?

Barry Sheerman: Well - someone who always wants his own way. Let's be politer about it. But the fact is: even this commissioner, set up by Ed Balls, actually report to Ed Balls as Secretary of State not to Parliament through my committee.

James Naughtie: Barry Sheerman, thank you.

My consult response - on deadline day, as usual!

2009-10-19T05:48:00.004+01:00

Here it is. Oh, but first, check this out - a 1929 Conservative election poster. They weren't kidding, were they?! And this: "What it feels like: to be homeschooled" - oh, and the fact that there are nearly 4000 responses in to the consultation already. That's quite some vociferous minority, Mr Badman. I gather from someone who knows that most public consultations yield less than 50 responses. Are we going to be ignored again this time?

Right, down to it. (I haven't read anyone else's response by the way, so I don't know whether mine is typical, but I suspect it will be.)

1. Question 1. Do you agree that these proposals strike the right balance between the rights of parents to home educate and the rights of children to receive a suitable education?

Absolutely not. Providing one's children with a suitable education is a duty under Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act anyway, not a right. And there's no reason why the rights - or duties - of parents should clash with those of their children, the nature of families being that they're both on the same side, so they both amount to the same thing and there is therefore no balance to be struck. Home education is not a right under British law that can be allowed or not by Government - it's a parental duty, unless the parents opt to delegate this to a school. Even then, the onus is on them to ensure the provision is suitable, not on Government. In the light of this, these proposals strike quite the wrong balance, giving far more powers to local authorities than either the law allows or than is necessary.

Question 2. Do you agree that a register should be kept?

Not at all. I might not mind it so much if it meant just that, but the Badman report conflates the meaning of 'register' with the word 'licence', so I think it's a terrible idea. The education of their children is a natural function of parents and if we follow the trajectory suggested in this report, all parents will soon have to ask for permission on an annual basis to continue looking after their children, as this blog post hypothesises. The oft-repeated simplistic argument from Government that "We need to know who these people are," doesn't ring true on its own and the Badman report belies it also. The truth is that you want to know who we are so that you can claim the power to withhold permission for us to do what we do. This is nothing but another power grab on the part of government, inflicted on families.

Question 3. Do you agree with the information to be provided for registration?

No. If you only wanted to know who we were, without the intention of grabbing more power over us, you'd only need our names and addresses wouldn't you?

Question 4. Do you agree that home educating parents should be required to keep the register up to date?

No! It's your register - you keep it up to date!

Question 5. Do you agree that it should be a criminal offence to fail to register or to provide inadequate or false information?

No. What are you going to do, send parents to prison as per the Truancy Act? That's not very helpful to their children, is it?

Question 6a. Do you agree that home educated children should stay on the roll of their former school for 20 days after parents notify that they intend to home educate?

No of course not. A parent's decision to deregister should be taken seriously, not as something that they could and should be persuaded against, given enough time. According to Ahed's Anomaly figures, more than 360,000 children are injured in schools each year and at least 16 children commit suicide each year as a result of school bullying. Sometimes children need removing from school straight away, for that and many other reasons. It's obvious that this should be entirely at the parent's discretion.

Question 6b. Do you agree that the school should provide the local authority with achievement and future attainment data?

No. Once a local authority has stopped being the education provider - i.e. on deregistration - achievement and future attainment data is no longer its business. What on earth is 'future attainment data' anyway? I didn't realise crystal ball reading featured on the National Curriculum nowadays.

Question 7. Do you agree that DCSF should take powers to issue statutory guidance in relation to the registration and monitoring of home education?

Do I agree that Government should 'take powers'?! Well, at least you're honest enough to call it what it is! NO, of course I don't agree with this. Government has more than enough powers already - far more than is good for it and the British people. The 2007 EHE Guidance sets out very well the only powers necessary, in keeping with the current legal position, which already allows for concerns to be properly acted upon. There is absolutely no reason for any change, and such change will be damaging to families and to home educating children - both their wellbeing and their education. Children learn best when they're allowed to be curious, not led by the nose and put under pressure to comply with someone else's expectations. The Badman report does not understand this or take it into account. Its recommendations will render the 'autonomous' learning method almost impossible to practice in most circumstances, even though it calls for more research into this method. If the report's recommendations are enacted, the method will cease to exist and there will be nothing left to research.

Question 8. Do you agree that children about whom there are substantial safeguarding concerns should not be home educated?

No. If the concerns are so substantial that the parents are seriously not deemed safe to be with the children, then this situation still applies to evenings, weekends and school holidays. School should be a place of learning, not a substitute child welfare centre.

Question 9. Do you agree that the local authority should visit the premises where home education is taking place provided 2 weeks notice is given?

No. Why would they want to? Many home educated children are rarely at home anyway: they're usually out and about enjoying group activities and learning opportunities elsewhere. Also, we know from our collective experience that LA officers are often prejudiced about things like the addresses and appearances of home educators' houses. A lack of books on show doesn't necessarily mean that a child doesn't read, for example. And home visits are very stressful for the whole family: there is a feeling of being invaded and of one's whole life being unduly judged on the basis of one relatively short visit. The giving of two weeks' notice doesn't ameliorate this. The current freedom for parents to choose how to supply information to satisfy local authorities' concerns, as set out in the 2007 EHE Guidance should be retained.

Question 10. Do you agree that the local authority should have the power to interview the child, alone if this is judged appropriate, or if not in the presence of a trusted person who is not the parent/carer?

No. This is to conflate education with welfare, to disastrous effect. The current checks and measures regarding interviewing children alone, observed by the Police and Social Services, should be applied across the board. I can't see any reason why this would ever need to happen just because of home education, because if there were concerns about an individual child that were sufficiently serious to mandate it, then Police and/or Social Services would already be involved and be driving procedure. The only other motivation for proposing such a measure would be to attempt to find out whether parents were lying about the child's educational provision and this would be to overturn the presumption of innocence, as well as having a negative effect on the essential parent/child relationship of trust. This whole idea smacks of government wanting to insert a crowbar into healthy family life to jemmy it apart. It's barbaric and it goes against all our natural protective parental instincts.

Question 11. Do you agree that the local authority should visit the premises and interview the child within four weeks of home education starting, after 6 months has elapsed, at the anniversary of home education starting, and thereafter at least on an annual basis? This would not preclude more frequent monitoring if the local authority thought that was necessary.

No, no and no. See above re: the problems with visits and also to have so many, so soon after deregistration completely negates the possibility of any kind of a deschooling phase, which is necessary to the restoration of curiosity and the will to learn in traumatised, over-schooled children. I'm speaking from bitter experience here: my three older children (now 17, 19 and 20 and in no danger of ever becoming NEET, for your information!) all needed at least a year of absolutely no educational pressure to regain their interest in learning after deregistration 11 years ago. This is often a very important, key process of home education and I'm surprised you are as unaware of it as you seem, unless your true intent really is to destroy it as a realistic, workable alternative to school provision.

---------------------------

I think that's it. Hmm. I lost patience with the long answers around questions 4 and 5, maybe - not that any of my answers were very long. There's only so many times you can keep saying the same thing, isn't there? And.. I might have let some sarcasm creep into my answer on 6b! Just couldn't resist that - I used to answer these things very earnestly, but nowadays I like to just say what I think and not pull my punches. I was downright weary of the questions, though, by the time I got to the last one, which made me glad I hadn't read them in advance or brooded over them for longer than five minutes. Talk about consultation fatigue! I can almost sympathise with the Irish on their EU referenda.

Anyway, this response of mine is neither literary nor political genius, but I think that the effort I've put in adequately reflects the length of time they'll spend reading it. It will be interesting to see how the responses are aggregated this time, because I think the reasons for our unanimous NO will vary somewhat more than they have on previous occasions.

Notes on the transcripts (4) - statistical spaghetti and the appeals culture

2009-10-18T18:24:00.003+01:00

Step up Mr Graham Stuart, MP for Beverley and Holderness. Here is the part, in the [uncorrected] transcript of last Monday's oral evidence for the House of Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee short inquiry into The Badman Review [opens pdf] in which he nailed Graham Badman well and truly to the flagpole on child abuse statistics:

[Please note that the quoted sections below are excerpts from an an uncorrected transcript and therefore neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record.]

Q10 Mr. Stuart: You have slightly lost me there. Having gone to all the local authorities, I thought that what you were basing the doubled risk assessment on was the very hard measure of child protection plans. In other words, it wasn't anything to do with the expression that has previously been used about contact with social services. This is now very much at the hardest end-although it happened to align with your original position.

Graham Badman: Absolutely.

Q11 Mr. Stuart: Just now, you said something about other issues.

Graham Badman: What I was saying is that they were among the data set that was given to the Chairman of the Committee as well as being published. We went out to local authorities and asked other questions as well. Just to be clear, the data sample was from 74 authorities. The percentage of the population of elective home educators from those 74 authorities who are on child protection plans is 0.4%. From the same group of all children, it is 0.2%. So, it is double. It is double proportionally and not double in terms of the actual number.

Q12 Mr. Stuart: Sure. As you mentioned in those figures, it is also very important not to give the impression that there is a very high number of children in child protection plans among the home-educated community. Obviously, it did feel as if the initial publicity suggested that home educators should be viewed with suspicion.

Graham Badman: I am not arguing that at all. I am saying that proportionally there is a higher percentage. I do not regard any home educators in that way with suspicion. Indeed I met a number of home educators whose children were so accomplished I thought that they should be justly proud of them. All I am saying is that you cannot say-certainly from the view of those whom I met-that all children are safe, particularly as there is no security about the number of children who are known to us. The best estimates that have been put forward are around 20,000 or so. Most local authorities believe that it is at least double that in terms of those who are unknown and not registered. Certainly members of my reference group put that figure much higher again. All I am saying is, no, you should not treat home education in that way. You should not view it with suspicion, but you should know that the risk factor is proportionally double.

Q13 Mr. Stuart: In any case in which a child is known to be on a child protection plan, will it, by necessity, mean that that child is known to the local authorities?

Graham Badman: Yes.

Q14 Mr. Stuart: So, if the numbers that were formally known about were approximately double your best estimate, it would take us back to almost precisely where we started, at the average of the population as a whole.

Graham Badman: I'm sorry, I don't understand the question.

Q15 Mr. Stuart: Well, if there are twice as many children in home education than are formally known about, which by definition includes all those for whom there is a child protection plan, it would suggest that, roughly speaking, you were back to 0.2% of the home-educated population having a child protection plan, which would put them in line with the national average.

Graham Badman: I think that it propels the figures the other way. It would actually make the proportion higher, because they are already included in the overall population and in the subset of the population, which would mean that the percentage will be fractionally higher. It works the other way.

Q16 Mr. Stuart: I am probably being rather slow here. Take me through that again. I am obviously not understanding this.

Graham Badman: Well, if 0.2% is all population and that includes elective home educators, then that figure actually depresses the overall figure. If you have them separated out, it would make it proportionally worse. If you take out home educators from the first figure, it makes that figure 0.2% lower.

Q17 Mr. Stuart: Ignoring that, because the number of children who are home educated is statistically insignificant in the overall population, so the 0.2 per cent. can be left roughly where it is, the point is how many home-educated children have child protection plans? If those who are formally known about are only half of the number of children who are estimated by you, the leading expert on the subject, to be home educated-local authorities likewise think that they know about only half-that suggests that, roughly speaking, they are about the national average.

Graham Badman: Forgive me. It is me who is being obtuse. I understand your point absolutely now, but who is to say that they are safe? If you don't know anything about them, a high proportion of those who are unknown may be unsafe.

Q18 Mr. Stuart: Absolutely right, and people rightly worry about safety, but first one must deal with data as they are. From what you said, the data seem to be that there are no more children with child protection plans among home-educated children, if it is in fact twice as many as those that are formally known about, than in the wider population. To put in context the previous Minister's remarks about the risks, which caused a lot of offence among the home education community, unless there were very good data to back them up, they were wrongly stigmatised as having a higher incidence of child abuse, or the threat of it within their families. I am putting to you a fairly important point, not least to them, that perhaps on your own numbers a home-educated child is no more likely to be abused than anyone else in the population.

Graham Badman: You are asking me to determine a causal effect that I cannot. All I can say to you is to repeat the evidence that I have, which is that on the basis of the information provided by 74 authorities, twice the percentage of young people have child protection plans among the elective home-educated population than in the general population. What you would consider in terms of an assessment of risk about a family before you decide that you are going to bar them on safeguarding grounds, is a range of other reasons and data drawn from a strategy group, if you had gone to a section 47 inquiry, or whatever you had gained in terms of intelligence from your officers visiting. If you want me to clarify the statistical interpretation of those, I will gladly write to you afterwards.

This inquiry is proving to be nothing if not a home educating vote-winner for the Conservative Party.

Ms Diana Johnson (Minister for Schools) after more of this, a break for the members to vote and an interjection from the chairman, said:

..what the Government are interested in, in this review, is making sure that children and young people who are home educated are getting a good education at home. That is what we want to make sure. We want to know who those children and young people are, and we want to be able to say, "Yes, we are satisfied they are getting the standard of education that they need".

But - how dare they, when Treasury statistics show more than 1 in 6 children leaves school each year unable to read, write or add up?

But a lot of the recommendations that Graham has brought forward are very much about creating a positive relationship between local authorities and home educators to support home education.

They keep talking about this 'improved' relationship between HErs and LAs. It's an absolute joke to suggest that giving LAs all the power is going to improve anything at all.

And ditto, about this:

Ms Diana R. Johnson: The worrying thing for me as a Minister is that we do not have full data sets; we do not know about who is educating their children at home. The figures that we are looking at-perhaps 20,000 or 25,000-are estimates. There was work done by York Consulting a few years ago, trying to give figures, and even that body found it difficult. So, I think it would be very helpful to know who is home educating and what numbers we are actually talking about, and then as a Government we can feel confident that we know who these children are and be satisfied that they are getting a good education.

Annette Brooke is the Lib Dem MP for Mid Dorset & North Poole, who had this to say about registration:

I want to probe on registration and I will perhaps put my cards on the table: I am actually in favour of a simple registration scheme because I don't want children disappearing below the radar. I think that point is important. However, I wonder if we could just look a bit at the applications for registration. Surely it is going to be fairly clear-cut that a local authority will have a right to refuse registration on the grounds of child protection, and presumably there will be a right of appeal because that would be a British justice situation. Can I ask you about the appeals process that might have been thought of?

And Ms Johnson replied:

I think you are absolutely right in that any process that is set up needs to be fair. We all know that having a right to appeal would be part of the fairness of any procedure. These matters are out for consultation, which does not end until 19 October. Therefore, I am not at this stage able to give you any definitive view about how an appeals procedure would work. All I can say is that being fair would obviously be a key part of any procedure created.

But I've had experience of the effect on a system of the introduction of appeals: the DWP, or DSS as it was then. Here's how it suddenly started working: you asked for something to which you were probably entitled (but the sheer and increasing complexity of the various rules and regulations meant that nobody could be quite sure whether you were) and the automatic answer was 'no'. You were then tacitly expected to appeal this decision, upon which the revised answer would usually be 'yes'. This struck me as being so bizarre that for many years I refused to believe it could actually work this way, despite the evidence of my eyes and ears and I never actually launched any appeals myself. Then one day I was reading Hansard (..as you do..) and I was amazed to see that this incredible principle was actually enshrined in the department's working practice! The Parliamentary debate was to do with the rescinding of a rule about confiscating a percentage of the living allowance of single mothers who refused to divulge the names of their children's fathers. The minister in question said something to the effect of: "We confiscate the money and then wait for the mothers to appeal. If they don't appeal, we assume they're receiving money from elsewhere (presumably the absent fathers) and therefore don't need to get it from us. If they do appeal, they're probably innocent and will have had their payments restated." ! No suggestion that they might have, like myself, reluctantly and with great financial difficulty, accepted the judgement made against them as being final unless there was fresh evidence to bring to an appeal.

Home educators need to be aware of the phenomena of the appeals culture. If we are forced to request permission to home educate on an annual basis and there is an appeals process in place, will the answer automatically be 'no', pending the 'inevitable' and expected appeal by parents? If parents don't appeal, will this be assumed by everyone in power up to ministerial level to be an admittance of their unsuitability, or supposed inability or whatever, to educate their children? Probably, if the DWP is anything to go by. This is how it works.

Notes on the transcripts (3) - Child abuse and FOI requests

2009-10-18T08:03:00.004+01:00

First, I want to tell you that there's another post on the Dark Lord Badman blog, about the ghost of education past and the ghost of education present, both depicted in a startlingly realistic way! I'm really looking forward to meeting the ghost of education future in the next episode. So we've seen Badman as Fagin [opens YouTube] and now Badman as Scrooge. I hope he can manage to rise above his personal feeling of being offended and analyse the reasons why he's the subject of this kind of satire. It's not just comforting for us when we're under attack to pillory by way of defence - it's also an excellent medium for the message we need to convey: We think you'd better think it out again.

Now back to the [uncorrected] transcript of last Monday's oral evidence for the House of Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee short inquiry into The Badman Review [opens pdf]. (Please note that the quoted sections below are excerpts from an an uncorrected transcript and therefore neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record.)

After Mr Badman's initial introduction and explanations, there is a question from Paul Holmes (Lib Dem, Chesterfield) about the statistics regarding the numbers of home educated children 'known to social care', including the following:

Just to help further with the process of clarifying that and setting people's minds at rest, one of the concerns was paragraph 8.12 of your report, where you said that "the number of children known to children's social care in some local authorities is disproportionately high relative to the size of their home educating population." What home educators feel is that we need some clarification about this. Who is classified as being known to social care? Lots of children in home education-certainly lots of children I have met over the years-have left the mainstream system because they have special educational needs, and therefore would be known to the education and social care system, but not because of any danger to them. They're known to the system because they have a problem, and that problem has led to them being bullied at school or not being dealt with properly, and so they've been taken out of the system. So, how do you define "known to social care"? Who comes under that category?

- to which Mr Badman took some considerable time to say that he knew of 41 cases of home educated children who were the subjects of Child Protection Plans.

Personally I think this talk of statistics is something of a smoke screen, or, as Blogdial asserts of sections of Wednesday's hearing, a straw man. The Badman/DCSF case seems to hang on the validity (or otherwise) of the statement that home educated children are in need of extra safeguarding measures. To 'prove' this point, they evidently feel the need to demonstrate that home educated children are more at risk of abuse than others, so they've taken data from a very small number of Local Authorities and are trying to extrapolate that to apply to the wider community.

But not only is he on shaky ground statistically, the raw data is messy: there are a lot of other prevailing factors that we don't get to hear about. It wouldn't be hard, in most cases, for many caring and loving home educating families to fall foul of the NICE guidelines on When to Suspect Child Maltreatment, for example. Some of us tend to want to do 'dangerous' things like take our children's opinions into account on issues like bedtimes, dentistry, needing hugs and talking to strangers. In the present climate of insanity centred around 'child protection' it's not at all surprising that an increasing number of us might be the subjects of 'child protection plans', but this doesn't make us child abusers - far from it. I think there's a poweful agenda of enforcing compliance currently permeating the UK Children's Services sector. You only have to read Ed Balls' recent lecture to The Fabian Society to get a sense of it. It's a much bigger picture than anything to do with home education or the real abuse of children by their parents.

I'm not saying that there is no real child abuse in any home educating families - that would be a stupid thing to say. But there are already systems for identifying and dealing with child abuse: there doesn't need to be any special ones set up for children who don't go to school. School should be a place of learning, not a substitute child welfare centre!

This is interesting though. Graham Badman again:

Clearly, what my report does is to draw attention to those five key morbidities that we know are so important in terms of child protection-drugs, alcohol, substance abuse, domestic violence and learning difficulties-as possible precursors to need in regard to the child's education, not of a one-to-one relationship. We are just saying there is a risk. All my report tries to say is that local authorities must be diligent in pursuing that risk and determining whether or not it is a risk that needs action or a risk that can be managed. And so, although there will be, if this report goes through, the power of local authorities to refuse registration, they do not necessarily have to do so.

I wonder if he understands - or really cares (unlikely) - that this is exactly what we're upset about, because to date it's been parents who have evaluated the risks for their children, not government officials. For the nanny state to remove this decision-making power before there have even been any problems is [yet another] step too far.

Paul Holmes then asks another good question:

Your initial findings, and then the later September wave of requests that you made, showed huge disparities between different local authorities on what these percentages were. How would you explain that?

To which Graham Badman replies:

Graham Badman: Without going back to those local authorities, that is difficult. Not all children's social services departments work in the same way, as we have discovered. I suspect that there will be a variation in terms of the elective home education population because they are not spread universally across the country. There are concentrations of home educators. Equally, I would imagine there are some issues around deprivation that would be important. There are also issues around the quality of schooling in that if you can create a schooling system which satisfies everybody, the movement to elective home education would be probably be less. It is a question worthy of further asking.

- essentially admitting that his figures have very little real meaning.

He continues by saying:

The aggregate figure is correct and I stand by it. It is slightly in excess of double the proportion.

Home educators, of course, disagree. (Not that either position should really matter.)

But yes, if one of my recommendations is carried out, namely that local authorities reflect on why children have left, they also might want to reflect on what they don't know about them and whether they are assessing that risk adequately.

This makes three fallacious assumptions:

that it's any of the local authority's business why a parent might deregister their child;
that local authorities should gather information about innocent families; and
that deregistration from school should a time for local authorities to be assessing any 'risks'. Khyra Ishaq was one case, the full details of which have not yet emerged. As Mr Badman says himself about five minutes after this: "I don't want to fall foul of the trap of forgetting that hard cases make bad law."

Regardless, he goes on to say:

I said in my report that I had considered serious case reviews. The identification of serious case reviews was quite difficult because it is not axiomatic that serious case reviews name the place of education. It is not always known. There were, in fact, only four where elective home education was a feature. I will not go into the detail because some of it is confidential. Two of them were stark in their concerns for those young people. All of them made recommendations to make changes in regulation to provide greater powers of scrutiny. Some of the evidence, and certainly that offered by local authorities, was that they were hampered in their task. So it may well be that the disparity in local authority figures was because some local authorities don't know what they don't know.

Mr Holmes then goes on to pose a question about false reporting, which Mr Badman refutes, then Mr Holmes asks about the speed and the timing of the whole process, with particular regard to Freedom of Information requests. A fascinating little exchange then takes place about this:

Paul Holmes: Finally, one of the concerns of home educators is the speed at which all this has happened. They put in freedom of information requests so that they could look at your original data and then they have not had time to do that for the September data. Will all this data be put on the website so that home educators can go through it and come up with counter-arguments? Perhaps the Minister can answer that.

Chairman: Minister?

Ms Diana R. Johnson: Freedom of information requests are being dealt with. I think that more than 150-

Penny Jones: Yes, 150.

Ms Diana R. Johnson: More than 150 freedom of information requests have come into the Department. That is clearly a lot of work. With that volume of requests things have not happened as quickly as they need to. We are well aware of the need to get on and sort out the freedom of information requests. There has been a huge number.

Paul Holmes: Can you not just put all the responses up on the website so that people can read it directly anyway?

Ms Diana R. Johnson: As I recall, these FOI requests are all slightly different. There is no common thread.

Penny Jones: FOI requests cover quite a broad range. We have put up an analysis of the second report. That was up with a letter from Graham, so that is all up on the website for everybody to see. We go into quite lot of detail, giving graphs of the spread of findings and that sort of thing. The general line that we have taken is that we do not release the information that individual authorities have sent to us because the numbers tend to be small, and there is always the danger that an individual child can be identified, and then, of course, there are exemptions that apply for the protection of those children who are vulnerable.

- which completely and spectacularly fails to cover DCSF's flat refusal to comply with home educators' FOI requests for specific - some would say spurious - reasons.

This post is too long already. More later.

Notes on the transcripts (2) - Badman continues

2009-10-16T19:47:00.006+01:00

The transcript of Wednesday's hearing is now available (thanks again Maire) which is very good to have, but in addition to the one from Monday, it makes for a lot of points to blog. Carrying on from my first post on this, then:

(Please note that the quoted sections below are excerpts from an an uncorrected transcript and therefore neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record.)

To backtrack a few sentences, Badman said:

But in turning now, to safeguarding, I recognise that this was the most controversial element of the report.

- deliberately, I'm now thinking, because of Badman and the DCSF's determined defence of the statistics in this hearing. They did protest too much, giving the impression that the strength of their whole argument hung on those [extremely shaky] figures, when if there was a real educational issue to answer, they wouldn't do.

He continued:

In regard to safeguarding I simply ask two questions about well-being and safety. They are on page 28, paragraph 8.2. Basically, my two questions were, "Are the concerns for child protection over-represented within the elective home educators community; and if so, what could have been done through better regulation to ameliorate those effects?"

I think it's clear from the statistics that there is no higher incidence of child protection cases in home educating families than in schooling ones.

Finally, with regard to education itself I recommended further work to be done, to determine, in the context of what constitutes not 21st-century schooling, but the 21st- century education system that is required, what is suitable and efficient, now.

I think this might be an oblique reference to this: 21st Century Schools: A World-Class Education for Every Child, a Children's Plan 'vision' document, which includes such ideas as: "Schools will take responsibility for improving outcomes for children and young people in the wider community as well as those on their own roll."

The definitions that we have got are only defined by case law. They are not legal, and they are pretty woolly.

But case law is legal, isn't it? And I don't think the current definitions of 'suitable' and 'efficient', as set out in the 2007 Guidance, paragraph 2.3:

The responsibility for a child’s education rests with his or her parents. An “efficient” and “suitable” education is not defined in the Education Act 1996 but “efficient” has been broadly described in case law 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”.

- are 'woolly' at all, although apparently we're to be consulted yet again on that.

I recommended that we explore more about autonomous education. We don't know enough; we don't know enough in terms of research, particularly on what are the outcomes for young people as a consequence of that.

Well, my children have all learned autonomously and none of them is, or ever will be NEET, because autonomous home education leads naturally onto successful self-employment - but not necessarily via official qualifications, these not being necessary in order to employ oneself. So I'd like to know, what's the definition of 'outcomes', please?

I began by saying that I'd written this report in seeking to balance the rights of children with the rights of their parents. I hope that, if implemented, it gives children a voice.

I'm more than happy for children to be asked if they want to be home educated. All children, that is - not just the home educated ones. Every child matters, right?

I know that in itself is contentious.

It wouldn't be, if every child was asked. Or, wait, perhaps it would. Contentious to whom?

I believe that the EHE community has much to offer in developing our understanding of the effectiveness or otherwise of the schooling system.

Yes it has. Don't make attendance compulsory, or anything else. Get rid of classrooms and desks. Allow whole family attendance as and when people want to, in the same way as public libraries do. Re-employ teachers as 'specialist consultants' and 'star lecturers'. (You could do a lot with learning vouchers in this respect.) Read the 4th hexagram of the I Ching, which states: "It is not I who seeks the young fool; the young fool seeks me," - meaning: for proper learning to take place, the student must freely and voluntarily seek out the teacher. This is something the Chinese have known for 5000 years, though I digress slightly.

It holds a mirror up to the schooling system, and to that end, I have to say, Chairman, I have been somewhat surprised by the reaction of a vociferous minority-and I do think it is a vociferous minority; I can actually count the number of people who have done it.

Oh, really! You're very good at counting, then, because this is a minority of thousands. Just check the numbers of consultation responses. And are you really surprised that we would be so outraged by your recommendation to give local authorities so much power over us? I doubt it very much. If you are, you had your ears and eyes tightly shut throughout that whole review period. It's too late for you to try and play the victim now.

I have found the remarks of some of them offensive, but I draw comfort from an academic friend of mine who says that often personal attacks are made when logic has been defeated.

Presumably he's referring to his own logic there, not ours.

I don't regard those people as a majority.

So how many home educators are in favour of the recommendations, compared to those who are not? Presumably the current consultation [closing date: this Monday (19th Oct)] responses will demonstrate this.

I think that I have benefited enormously from learning of their experiences, but I actually think that the change in regulation and greater scrutiny is essential for the children.

- regardless of how much damage it does to them, their confidence, their family life and their learning process? Evidently so.

Chairman: Thank you Graham. We are aware that there are great passions on this subject. This Committee, indeed, decided earlier this afternoon that we would make a particular effort to meet a whole group of home educators, and that will be part of our inquiry.

Hurray! That includes Raquel, Ruth and Tech, and it's taking place this Monday. If they can't ensure that decent common sense prevails, no-one can.

Chairman: Penny, would you like to say something?
Penny Jones [Independent Schools and School Organisation, DCSF]: No.

Quite.

Haha, a transcript (1)

2009-10-16T08:41:00.007+01:00

Although it's an uncorrected version and its terms of use indicate that I should "make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record", which is an interesting protocol in itself.

Before I go on, I'd like to post a link here to Right To Reply, A Response to Graham Badman‟s Report to the Secretary of State on the Review of Elective Home Education in England. It's all we really need (though it won't stop me blethering on here!) and also to Allie's post: Honouring our children, which makes an excellent and timely point.

Anyway let the nitpicking commence, before I do my consultation response (closing date: Monday). Please note that I am quoting excerpts only from the transcript, not the whole thing.

Barry Sheerman (Chair) said:

Graham, we have chosen this topic for a short inquiry because there is great public interest in it, in terms of wanting to make sure both that every child in our country has the full possibility of a good education, and that they are protected during their childhood. On the other hand, there is a strong movement towards home education, and a significant proportion of our school-age children benefit from home education.

Carefully chosen words: "wanting to make sure both that every child in our country has the full possibility of a good education, and that they are protected during their childhood." Look to the schools first, please: put your own house in order. In my transcript he actually made a Freudian slip and said "a significant proportion of our school-age children benefit from school education"! This was corrected by the committee transcriber. Interesting protocols, again - I would have thought the moral duty of a transcriber was to remain completely faithful to what was actually said.

Barry Sheerman finished his intro by saying:

We hope that we can help at this juncture, before legislation is introduced.

- which raises the key point about the timing of this whole process. We've had the publication of the report, immediately followed by DCSF's 'welcoming' of it and the launching of a full public consultation (closing date: Monday. Did I mention..?) with which this Select Committee inquiry is running concurrently. It's a bizarre order of work which defies logic, but perhaps the most shocking element of this was the mention, in the Draft Legislative Programme 2009/10, (published months ago) in the Improving schools and safeguarding children Bill of "improving monitoring arrangements for children educated at home". This, more than anything else, gives the impression of a foregone conclusion. So I hope the Select Committee can help, but it seems that it will have its work cut out.

Diana Johnson, the Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, said:

We acknowledge that views on home education are polarised, with home educators feeling that local authorities do not understand the range of approaches that they can take, and home educators unwilling to accept that in a minority of cases home education may not be up to scratch.

Again, carefully chosen words. This is the scripted part. "Home educators unwilling to accept that in a minority of cases home education may not be up to scratch," being a thoroughly misleading and untrue statement, in my opinion.

She went on to say:

In 2007, the Government published non-statutory guidance on monitoring home education which set out the legal requirements, and the approaches that we expected local authorities and home educators to take in working together to ensure that home-educated children receive a good education. However, it became clear during 2008 that neither home educators nor local authorities felt that the guidance was working, and that is the reason for the review.

The guidelines would have worked if local authority officers had applied them. Many refused to do so, and having spent one and a half hours talking to our local officers last month on the subject I still fail to see why they did. The best remedy, therefore, would have been to solve this problem rather than holding expensive reviews, consultations and inquiries to look at changing the guidelines/legislation etc.

Home educators have repeatedly asked for additional support, and I am pleased to say that we have listened to them.

Where are these home educators who repeatedly ask for additional support? I don't know any.

Before January, we will clarify our advice to local authorities on claiming pupil funding to make it clear that they may claim funding for children with special educational needs educated at home in receipt of significant services from a local authority, or those attending college. From 2011, funding will be available for other home-educated children who use local authority services, which might be examination centres, brokering work experience or using the county music service.

The AWPU, if drawn down for home educators, should go to the place of education and the people doing the educating, as it does for school pupils. There is no reason for this not to happen - or if there is, I haven't seen anyone explain it.

Finally, if and when the recommendations of Graham's review are fully implemented, home educators will still have a considerable degree of freedom.

Oh, so kind! You're only removing some of our freedoms.

They will not be operating outside the law, as is the case in the Netherlands and Germany where home education is illegal.

- because their grandparents fought and won WWII, and therefore the Nazis never legislated here. Those same grandparents are turning in their graves right now.

England will still be one of the most liberal countries in the developed world in its approach to home education, reflecting the careful balance we have to strike between a child's right to education and a parent's right to educate their child in conformity with their beliefs and philosophies.

- the leverage point, into which a crowbar can be inserted. They've had to struggle to find it.

Graham Badman next:

.. if all the recommendations are implemented, there is nothing to stop home educators, many of whom I have met who do a thoroughly good job for their children, continuing. They would be subject to registration and to what I regard as light touch monitoring ..

But submitting a year's plan in advance, then being made to prove that the previous year's plan has been adhered to before being allowed to continue home educating is not 'light touch monitoring', by any stretch of the imagination!

I stated in my report that it seems perverse for any Government to express concerns about this group of people, yet not offer any resources to them.

- the bribe. No sticks without carrots for the donkeys.

If I were before you, Chairman, as a Director of Children's Services and you asked me, "What do you know about the 80,000 children in your care?" and I replied, "I'm awfully sorry, but I can't tell you very much about them," I suspect that I would not remain in the post for very long. That, frankly, is the situation in relation to elective home education.

No, it's not. Home educated children are in the care of their parents, not the Director of Children's Services. That the above statement could be made in front of a room full of intelligent people without challenge is a clear indictment of the dire state we're now in.

It seems timely on the 20th anniversary of the UN convention that we seek to examine whether or not this sector of the community actually honours children as expressed in the UN convention.

See Allie's response to that.

All that being said, if anything, the report is most critical of local authorities. If implemented, it will hold them to account through an audit regime for their systems of monitoring elective home education. I think it raises real questions about the support they have given and should give to statemented pupils; about their training, or the absence of it, of staff; and it crucially requires them to determine and analyse why those children left school in the first place. Ask that question: why did they leave, if indeed they ever attended?

All that needed to be asked was: why don't they adhere to the 2007 guidance? Simple question; simple answer; simple resolution.

I tried very hard to represent the views of the countless elective home educators..

No, you did not.

They had concerns about the understanding of local authority officers who did not appreciate the aims of elective home education. Elective home educators often viewed elective home education as a place of last resort where their children could escape bullying.

There's absolutely no connection between these two sentences, though he implies that there is.

Added to that, there was a whole group of parents who had a philosophical belief in educating at home. There was a clear conviction on the part of many of them that they could do it better, and I respect that belief.

He forgets the clear conviction (and free choice) that we simply don't want to delegate our children's upbringing to the state or other people. That probably makes us look far too reasonable and decent though rather than arrogant and deluded, as his version suggests.

Many parents felt that the initial press coverage of the review found them guilty, and they had to prove their innocence. I regret that, because I don't think that is true ..

What's not true? That the initial press coverage of the review found them guilty? That many parents believed it did? That they were guilty? Or that they had to prove their innocence? How much money does Graham Badman get paid to speak about us so influentially, and with such a startling lack of clarity?

More from me about this later: I've got to do other things now for a few hours.

Desperately seeking transcripts

2009-10-15T09:07:00.004+01:00

.. to the Select Committee hearings. I can't find one on Hansard yet and am wishing I'd written one on Monday evening now. Yesterday we were very busy with home ed group activities all day and visitors in the evening, so I didn't get around to watching the day's events in London until late last night. My immediate impression was that most of the home ed witnesses did very well considering the circumstances and the limited time available to them. And what on earth were those charities and other interest groups doing there, with so much time to bend the committee's ear?

Lisa has written her thoughts about some of what they said, I see, and included an updated list of relevant posts by other people. I also enjoyed reading Danae's impassioned response.

But the best news of all coming out of yesterday is that Raquel, Ruth and Tech (amongst others) have been invited to go and talk to the committee on Monday. This gives me hope that the inquiry might not end up being the whitewash that a lot of us first feared it would.

I will do some transcribing if nothing else turns up soon - I've started already. But we're out and about again today and I've got a magazine deadline tomorrow, so I don't know when I'll manage to post anything, itching though I am to get my teeth into some verbatim extracts. At the weekend, maybe.

Does anyone know who else is going on Monday?

Another thing Badman got WRONG

2009-10-13T07:21:00.004+01:00

- to add to the very long list.

He assumes that home educators have the spare, free time to spend hours with their local authorities, sitting on panels (in addition to campaigning against the likes of him) and having meetings.

My local authority, having read the Badman report [opens pdf], now assumes the same thing.

What am I supposed to do with my children? How am I supposed to educate them while I'm sitting in meetings in local authority offices? Who is supposed to look after them? (In the event, it's usually the older children - now adults - who do this for me, but this takes from their free/work/study time also. Most home educators don't usually have adult other children on hand for the childcare and education of their younger ones while they sit in meetings with the local authority. How are they supposed to manage?)

Local authority officials, DCSF officials, MPs and, oh yes - Graham Badman - all get paid money for sitting in meetings discussing home education, for writing reports, for evaluating and advising and compiling. And they can't do it without our help because they evidently don't understand the first thing about how real learning works, which is proven time and time again within the school system. They have the gall to sit there talking about how the AWPU (£5000 per year?) should be drawn down by local authorities in respect of home educated children to pay for the new recommendations, and how home educators should 'come out of the shadows' and start to influence the new developments.

Well personally I'm not in the shadows, mate. I never was. I'm just busy.

Home educating.

Helping my beloved children to make a happy success of their lives because - I don't mean to cause offence, but - your school system can't do that for them.

So 'now the spotlight has been shone on us' (gee thanks) I'm to dump my children on their older siblings (again) and go and comply with Badman's behest by influencing things at my local authority. For free.

I'll do it - I've been doing it for years. I never used to mind, before there was talk of people being in the shadows and the AWPU being given to LAs and bypassing the real educators and the real learning.

But, like my children, it's the coercion that I mind. I think that probably applies to every human being on the planet.

"There has to be something that comes from the parents."

2009-10-12T17:51:00.005+01:00

I've just been watching the live feed from the first day of the Select Committee Inquiry. Tom taped it for me and I will write a transcript later if one doesn't appear elsewhere first.

But initially, I just wanted to highlight something Graham Badman said that particularly worried me, about autonomous learning. I'm paraphrasing from memory at this stage, but it went something like this:

"Whether the child is going to be a champion chess player, or a footballer or whatever, I don't mind. But achievement and ambition are important and you have to be able to set that out. You cannot leave it laissez faire. There has to be something that comes from the parents."

- in the context of advanced planning for autonomous home educators.

Does Graham Badman really believe that:

All children and/or their parents always know what they're going to do for a living when they grow up?

Parents set their children's ambitions for them?

There's some precise way of knowing (in the absence of a crystal ball with guaranteed effectiveness) what a child's going to be or do in advance?

Because what he said indicates that he does.

It's laughable.

At no point during Tom's education could I have told anyone with confidence: "He's going to set up a successful computer repair business and therefore his education should be planned in preparation for that." In fact, depending on what stage I'd been asked, I'd have had to say something completely different. For a large chunk of time he was fascinated with buildings, so I'd have said he might end up being an architect. If I'd have then planned his education with this end in mind, it wouldn't have been right for him and I can only know that with hindsight.

Ditto with Ali - there's no way I could have known that his passion as a young adult would be Russian language and linguistics in general. Seven years ago, he was into Japanese! In the intervening years he's had a variety of passions, including climbing. Under Badman's proposals I'd have therefore educated him in preparation for a career as a mountaineer, which wasn't what he wanted in the end at all!

We cannot know in advance, what our children are going to want (or need) to learn.

To properly consider their unique and changing aptitude, as well as their age and ability according to our Section 7 duties, we need to have complete flexibility. We can't plan 12 months in advance. We can't dictate (or magically somehow predict) their ambitions, their interests - their aptitude.

Graham Badman knows about schools and school provision. What he's just said in the SCI hearing clearly demonstrates, once again, that he knows absolutely nothing about home education and how it actually works.

DCSF coughs, papers fly everywhere..

2009-10-10T15:03:00.009+01:00

Jax wonders where to start with the plethora of stuff that emanated from DCSF yesterday, presumably in a bit of frantic last-minute scene setting for this coming week's Select Committee Inquiry, which starts taking oral evidence on Monday. I know our politicians and civil servants are just human beings and all, but I still can't help expecting better from them than these kind of messy and transparently Machiavellian tactics and being disappointed when this is all we get.

Never mind. Jax's post makes a good start at hole-picking in the gaping fishing net that is Graham Badman's latest missive, but personally, I think I'm going to begin in one of my favourite places: Renegade Parent - where Lisa takes my breath away yet again with another of her brilliant summaries. I'm inclined to agree with her when she says:

We could pull the DCSF up for not thinking through the legal implications of this direction of travel.

BUT. I strongly suspect that thinking through the legal implications of their actions is exactly what they have done.

( - which is not to say that I don't appreciate the truth and clarity in Carlotta's post too, because I do.)

So. What's going on? Jax is right. It's difficult to see.

We've had a review (with its heavily biased fanfare), predictably finding (without any basis whatsoever) that we need more government controls and incursions into our family life. Then the backlash from home educators (and one wonders which aspects of this are officially monitored - this process of events logically dictates that some must be) - and then the Select Committee Inquiry, the results of which must be intended to convince us that the Badman report [opens pdf] is sound. (Except in my opinion, it's still not, no matter how many inquiries into it are held.)

In his letter to Barry Sheerman (Chair of the Select Committee) [opens pdf] Mr Badman says:

I thought it would be helpful to write to you about some further evidence I have collected to support my recommendations. In my report I said that the number of children known to children's social care in some local authorities is disproportionately high relative to the size of the home education population. The basis for this statement is sound and supported by information provided to me by a number of local authorities both through data collection and through discussions with front line local authority officers and others in organisations with relevant experience.

But it's still not sound. Home educating statisticians have been through the new figures and they still don't support his arguments - nowhere near. (Although I like the fact that he felt it necessary to try.) And according to my graphologist friend, this:

is a signature to be a bit worried about. He's very down on himself, even visibly crossing himself out. I suppose it's quite a stressful position to be in - but not quite as stressful that of a parent contemplating the end of her children's freedom to learn without a plan, according to their specific, unique and ever changing ages, abilities and aptitudes and suddenly having her family subjected to an unwelcome, unnecessary and damaging programme of local authority monitoring. It's not nice, we don't deserve it and our children certainly don't.

Oh, back to the sequence of events. So, we've had the review and we're just about to get the inquiry into the review. Still with me? Concurrently (and bizarrely not linked from the most recent DCSF page we've got the still open public consultation into the review, which closes for submissions next Monday (19th).

DCSF's 'full response' to the review [opens pdf] (also first published yesterday - has it been in someone's in tray all this time?!) refers to this as follows:

The Secretary of State's initial response warmly welcomed the report and announced that we were launching a consultation on the proposals for registering and monitoring. The consultation closes on 19 October and by 30 September we had received 655 responses, from home educators, LAs and a range of voluntary organisations.

[Yes, they really did put that comma there!]

We will consider these responses carefully before proceeding with legislation because they will help us make arrangements that support parents to provide good quality home education, while allowing LAs to take action where arrangements have serious shortcomings.

So, proceeding with legislation is a given, then, regardless of the inquiry report, the consultation results and - oh yes, the new review into what constitutes 'suitable' and 'efficient'. Presumably they'll be holding the schools to the eventual new definitions as well as home educators.

Whatever legislative plan is in process, this consultation/consultation/review/consultation/inquiry/review [etc] programme seems slick, scheduled, and anything but democratic. We dutifully respond, over again in our thousands, and our responses are consistently ignored. (It's not only us: yet another recent survey found that 58% of its respondents wants a referendum on the Europe. Chances..?)

This is not democracy. What it is, as someone's MP recently described it, is an elected dictatorship not-so-cunningly disguised as democracy. I really hope the Select Committee proves otherwise, but I wouldn't want to put money on it. Meanwhile, what to do? Well it doesn't seem like much, but speaking for myself I'm just going to carry on saying NO to the DCSF - just in case they think we're not paying attention. We might be getting bored, but I don't think we'll go away.

Two things to love about today

2009-10-05T17:46:00.001+01:00

This and this.

Thanks! (You know who you are..)