children are people

Some random food thoughts

2011-05-02T13:10:00.002Z

Personally, I tend to eat in blocks. So for months and months, I'll have exactly the same breakfast every day and then, suddenly, I shift to something else. Or I'll eat exactly the same lunch every day for a week, and then shift.

There's a lot to be said for eating what we feel like eating (isn't that what you do? It's what I do) and learning to listen to what our bodies are suggesting we eat. A child keen to eat sausages may be in need of a protein fix, not the response that "lunch today is pasta and tomato sauce".

Also - we have completely de-coupled puddings from mealtimes in my house. At some times of day, everyone is tucking into bananas or apples; at other times of day we are mainlining sausages or beefburgers or roast chicken. Sometimes it's a vegetable meal, with a plate of peas or sweetcorn or lots of carrots or whatever. Or sometimes it is a whole bowl of pasta or rice or oven chips, or a mound of bread and butter. We eat very simply - a roast chicken, with optional gravy for anyone who wants it and a veg on the side might well translate either into just chicken or just veg for somebody. We eat a lot of eggs (takes only moments to fry one up), smoked salmon (even if it's in the freezer it takes no time to defrost enough to eat), cheese...

I am a big fan of having lots of food types available that will be attractive to the intended clientele, and am also NOT a fan of big set piece cookery when noone but me actually wants to eat the results. (My mother tends to do the set piece cookery and fill my freezer with individual portions for me when she visits, which is glorious - it means I get whatever sophisticated stews she's been making, without anyone else having it imposed on them, and with almost no effort on my part)

Worth thinking in terms of your children having a balanced diet over a week or a month, but certainly not within every single day.

the result of this sort of free-for-all fooding is NOT that I am cooking multiple different meals all the time. I cook what I want to eat, and other people are very welcome to join in. If they don't want to join in, I have lots of good and nutritious food that takes little or no preparation. (anyone can have a carrot at any point, or a bowl of grated cheese, yk?)

the result of this sort of lifestyle is NOT that no-one eats meals, or is capable of sitting down for a meal. Those who are capable of social meal times tend to join in with social mealtimes. Those who are not at this point in their life, for whatever reasons, would just be suffering hellishly if mealtimes were imposed on them every day. Time enough to learn about the value of a fixed social mealtime when that becomes a necessary part of their social repertoire.

the result of this sort of free-for-all is NOT that my children eat nothing but chips and icecream. They are perfectly capable of looking at the chocolate we just bought, and tucking into a satsuma instead. They get really good at listening to their bodies and following their nutritional needs which, after all, is what we are hoping our offspring will get good at by the time they are leaving home. If you are a talky talky sort of house you can talk about how eating too much chocolate makes you feel sick. If not, then it only takes a day or two of eating nothing but chocolate buttons for a child to work out what's happening. Blech. (btdt)

"My Child Just Wants to Play Little Blue Planet All Day Long And It Is Driving Me Crazy"

2011-01-17T19:36:00.003Z

...said the home educating lady on the messageboard.

I'd be going in two directions

1. Have some absolutely FAB activities on offer. Swimming, season ticket at local petting farm, season ticket at local soft play, all that stuff that other people do at the weekends. Offer something FAB every single morning, but not even really as an offer, but matter of fact. "we have to eat breakfast, put on our shoes, and then go to THE MOON!!!!" (or whatever slightly less amazing activity you have on offer).

That is your learning time. None of it is likely to happen through writing or reading, but your child will be out there, in the community, interacting with a really exciting environment and (with luck) with various people in that environment. It's quite likely that she will love doing the same thing day after day for quite a long while, so be ready to go with that. I do know a family who went to one local attraction every single day for 3 months. They certainly got their money's worth out of the season ticket that year...

2. When you get home, it's Little Big Planet time. Give her some time alone, and some time where you are watching with her. If she's receptive, it's an opportunity for conversation, for story telling. If she likes, she could freeze the screen and you sellotape a piece of paper over the screen and trace through the picture for her to colour in. Is there any way of having subtitles on while she is playing? And let the Little Big Planet obsession run its course. In a few months, she'll be ready to move on - perhaps to another computer game, or perhaps to something else entirely.

Are there Little Big Planet videos on Youtube (for lots of games people put them playing the game up as a video), or are there spin off cartoons or comics or anything? Just go with it, wholeheartedly

If she is telling you a long boring narrative about Little Big Planet, write it down in clear handwriting and then when she pauses, READ IT BACK TO HER. that is such a good game!

A message for Ed

2010-05-13T19:37:00.002Z

'You - will - never - touch - our - children - again'

(as Mrs Weasley said to Bellatrix L'Estrange)

Local Authority muscle flexing

2010-05-09T14:09:00.002Z

I have come across several examples recently where local authorities are jumping ahead of their actual role and responsibility with respect to Elective Home Education. They were hoping that, by now, the new powers of the heinous Children, Schools and Families bill would be theirs. But instead, of course, the CSF bill ran out of time and Is Not And Will Never Be Law. [pause for loud cheers]

There is another reason, of course, why the EHE teams are busily sending out letters demanding visits and information that they have no right to demand. In a week or two, the conservatives will get their hands on the account books and (shock) will be announcing that the UK is pretty much bankrupt and they will be cutting back massively on all public spending. Cue EHE running around frantically visiting people they have no business visiting. "You can't make us redundant. Look how buuuuuuuuuuuuuusy we are monitoring the chiiiiiiiildren".

This month, more than any other month in history, is the month to be sending, or advising people to send, letters like this:

Dear subcontracted agency busybody,

We deregistered Child from school on DATE, and since then have been providing her with an education suitable to her age, ability and aptitude. I provided you with written information about our educational provision on DATE at the request of your colleague X. We have had no response from the LA about the education we are providing.

Please explain, in writing:

1) In what way the educational provision as communicated to the LA on DATE was deemed to be unsuitable if, indeed, it was considered unsuitable

2) Why we were not informed in a timely manner of this judgement (if it took place) and why no dialogue with us was entered into in order to support us in developing the educational provision to meet legal requirements

3) why, if the education was judged suitable on DATE, you have sent the letter of DATE, requiring more information/ a visit.

If, indeed, the information we sent you on DATE has raised concerns, please let me know what those concerns are, and I will be happy to write to you again in order to allay them; since I am awaiting information from you about the nature of your concern with the educational provision as it was communicated to you on DATE, and information about what evidence you now need, it is not, of course, possible for me to provide the evidence within 14 days as you asked. I expect you to provide me with the information I require, or to write a letter of apology for mistakenly sending your form letter of DATE, within 7 days of receiving this letter.

I am copying this letter, together with your letter of DATE and the information I provided on DATE 2009 to the Head of Childrens Services at XXXXX Council in the hope that action will be taken to prevent this sort of communications failure on the part of the EHE team in future.

Yours sincerely,

Or even a letter like this:

Dear Mrs LA Numpty,

Thank you for your letter of DATE.

You wrote to me claiming that your "department has a duty to monitor arrangements where parents have decided to educate children 'other than at school'". Please would you tell me which part of the law you are referring to? In the 2007 elective Home Education Guidelines for LAs, available here: http://ahed.pbworks.com/f/7373-dcsf-elective-home-education.pdf it clearly states (paragraph 2.7) that "Local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis." Has this been superceded? If not, please would you explain why you have made the statement quoted above?

We received a visit from you/your colleague X on DATE. We have never received your report from that visit. Please explain, in writing:

1) why the LA staff member's opinion of our educational provision on that occasion has not yet been communicated to us
2) Why, if the education was judged suitable at the visit on DATE, you wish to evaluate it again.

If, indeed, the visit of DATE raised concerns, please let me know what those concerns are, and I will be happy to write to you again in order to allay them.

We will not be available to meet you on the date you requested, and would prefer to keep all future contact in writing, as per paragraph 3.6 of the 2007 EHE guidelines.

Yours sincerely

Enough is enough.

Classic schoolboy error, Ed.

2010-02-06T11:47:00.000Z

Imagine this.

January 2009. The DSCF announces a splendid new support package for home educators. £400 a year per child for parents to spend on exams, ballet lessons, the educational financial outgoings of our choice. Craft materials, broadband internet, you name it.

Obviously, the government needs to know how the taxpayers' money is being spent, so in return, HEers subscribing to the scheme agree to go through an annual process of licensing and monitoring. It's all completely voluntary. Witness the undignified scramble, with lone voices - Techla, Grit, Lisa, Carlotta, Firebird, Maire - drowned out in the glad cries of home educators being given some of the money they feel entitled to. Maybe 85 or 90% of HEers sign up.

January 2010, the government announces that ALL HEers are now required to register and be monitored. In return they will get their money. Grit, Maire, Carlotta and co look a bit, well, _paranoid_ as they start trying to protest against the loss of civil liberties. Autonomous HE is stamped out within 2 years.

I just don't understand why, of all the minority groups in the country, Ed chose the ONE LOT who were least likely to respond in the time honoured way to the tactics of a bully. Smear us, cast aspersions, lie to the other kids and teachers about our activities and motivations - why was this ever going to be the winning strategy?

We are the parents for whom zero tolerance DOES mean zero tolerance - our children have freedom of association, we do not expect them to submit to bullies, to stand up to bullies, to engage with bullies. We expect our children to treat bullies with the contempt they deserve, and not to have anything to do with them if they don't want to. Why would Ed think we would be cowed by him? What kind of an example would that have set for our children?

I am, in an odd way, delighted that we have been dealing with Ed this last year rather than with a Dan level Go player.

make that, two bishops!!!

2010-01-25T17:45:00.002Z

I just remembered. I know a bishop personally. So I wrote to him as well. Friends in high places, wink wink.

Time to write to your bishop!

2010-01-25T17:28:00.002Z

[mostly cribbed from Dani Ahrens]

Dear Bishop XXXXX,

I am writing to let you know of serious shortcomings with the Home Education-related aspects of the Children, Schools and Families Bill currently on its way through parliament, and to ask for your support in amending or removing Schedule 1.

The process began with a report commissioned by the DCSF into whether Home Education might be used as a cover for child abuse. The CofE's education division submission to Graham Badman's review concluded: "We have seen no evidence to show that the majority of home educated children do not achieve the five Every Child Matters outcomes, and are therefore not convinced of the need to change the current system of monitoring the standard of home education. Where there are particular concerns about the children who are home-educating, this should be a matter for Children's services." (1) The education division was very concerned about the selective quoting of their submission in the Badman report, which entirely misrepresented their position, (2) and this misrepresentation formed a small part of the CSF select committee's strong criticism of the report's contents and the conduct of those involved in writing it. (3)

The government's Children's Plan says that 'Parents bring up children, not Government', but the bill fundamentally undermines this.

If the proposals in the Bill become law:

• Every year, parents would have to ask permission from the Local Authority to home educate. The Government is calling this a ‘register’, but a more accurate word would be ‘licence’. Local authorities would have the power to refuse ‘registration’ or to remove children from the ‘register’ if their parents do not cooperate with the system. ‘Registration’ would have to be renewed every year.

• 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. “In determining for the purposes of subsection (3A)(b) whether it is expedient that a child should attend school, an authority shall disregard any education being provided to the child as a home-educated child”. The proposals are not about making sure children receive an education. Instead, they are about taking control of educational choices away from families and placing it in the hands of the state.

• 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. The power to decide what constitutes a suitable education for an individual child would be taken out of the hands of that child’s parents and given to a local council officer,
who may have met the child only once.

• 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. While Ed Balls said in the House of Commons "“The Bill makes it clear that there is no right for a local authority to see the child of a home-educating family on their own, without the parents there,” the bill actually says “A local authority in England may revoke the registration of a child’s details on their home education register if it appears to them that ... by reason of a failure to co-operate with the authority in arrangements made by them [to monitor the home education], or an objection to a meeting [with the child alone] the authority have not had an adequate opportunity to ascertain the matters referred to in section 19E(1)”

Clause 26 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill gives this or any future government the power to issue guidance to local authorities about what they may demand of parents as part of this new ‘registration’, monitoring and inspection regime. You are being asked to approve the Bill without having sight of this guidance.

Clause 26 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill was presented to Parliament before the results of a public consultation on the proposals were released. Over 5000 people responded to the consultation but their views have been completely ignored in the drafting of the Bill. In the House of Commons, Ed Balls said that "a minority of home educators... do not like the provisions in the bill" when in fact a clear majority of the 5,000 consultation responses (over 75% for 8 of the 10 questions) disagreed with the proposals.

Of particular concern, the "Impact Assessment" for the bill completely failed to address the potentially disastrous impact of the new regime on children with special needs and their families. (4)

As the CofE education division concluded, there is no need to change the law regarding home education. Home educated children are at no more risk of abuse than any other group of children. Local authorities already have powers to take action if parents are not educating or caring for their children properly.

Please oppose the bill in the House of Lords, mirroring the strong cross-party opposition in the Commons at the second reading. If it would be helpful, I would be delighted to come and visit you to discuss it further, or to put you in contact with others who can advise you about the bill.

Yours sincerely,

Emma XXXX

(1) The whole submission is here: http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/church-of-englands-response-to.html

(2) http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmchilsch/memo/elehomed/ucm5902.htm

(3) http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmchilsch.htm

(4) for a home educator's informal assessment of the potential impact on children with special needs, see http://sometimesitspeaceful.blogspot.com/2009/12/csf-bill-equality-impact-assessment.html

My response to the commons select committee report.

2009-12-16T14:50:00.001Z

Written ten mins after skim reading it.

I'm actually really happy with the report. It criticizes Badman's evidence base and, because of the unsafety of the evidence, the report backs off from the really problematic parts of the proposals - interviewing the child alone, access to family house, being measured on a detailed curriculum plan. It says clearly that the DCSF need to think out how any legislation will impact on SEN children before bringing it forward and it also says that the registration=licensing proposals are crazy. It says none of it is workable without properly costed and carried out LA staff training. It says a lot about autonomous HE. Mostly that they don't understand it - I think there is a clear acknowledgment that the report writers feel a tad out of their depth - but also that the DCSF should blooming well have done that research properly before bringing forward legislation that affects AE.

So now Graham Stuart and our other allies take that lot to conservative HQ, and they draft 2562 amendments to the proposed education bill - just the HE related bits, before they even start in on the rest of the bill - and if anyone says "steady on old chap, why not just let it go through?", Graham Stuart says "well, have you not seen the hiiiiighly critical select committee report on the Badman review? We can't just leave it be, you know, we have a responsibility" "good point, good point" they say. "pass the port".

And with the 2562 proposed amendments, the bill can't just go through, it will get stuck either in a committee somewhere or in the Lords and there's no way it can get included in the wash up - I mean, sorry Ed, but no way Jose in the light of such a critical select committee finding for part of the bill.

And then - oopsie - it'll run out of time as the general election is announced, and there's no way a conservative government is going to want to proceed with Ed Balls's fag ends, they'll want their own bright shiny new education legislations.

So yes, the battle goes on, but this should be enough to prevent the Balls nightmare going through (unless we get another labour government - not that I've met anyone anywhere in the last 6 months inclined to vote for them, so God knows who their constituency would be) and then once the conservatives arrive, well, they know about us, they are broadly sympathetic to us, and we make sure that we are right in there talking to michael gove and his chums from the get go. We no longer need to persuade balls and co of the problems of registration and defining suitable education, we have no hope of persuading them and it doesn't matter. We just need to be poised and ready to explain the issues clearly to Gove and co once they are elected.

The select committee enquiry had three purposes from our point of view. 1. to buy us time; 2. to bring HE to the attention of as many MPs as possible so they wouldn't nod through legislation concerning us in ignorance; 3. to place on public record the shoddiness of the Badman process, and the culpability of both Badman and the DCSF in that. How many times does the report say "this data was not in the Badman report, but HEers have acquired it through FOI requests..." Egg meet face.

We have a positive result on all three counts. We should be ready for a very merry Christmas.

select committee report

2009-12-11T16:09:00.001Z

Email I just got:

"The Children, Schools and Families Committee publishes its Second Report (HC 39-I and -II) at 00.01 am on Wednesday 16 December 2009: The Review of Elective Home Education.

Hard copies of the Report and evidence will be posted to witnesses on Tuesday 15 December 2009. Electronic embargoed copies can be supplied to Government departments, media and witnesses and will be available from 12.00 noon on Tuesday 15 December 2009. These should be requested in advance by emailing csfcom@parliament.uk.

Embargoed hard copies of the Report will be placed in the Press Gallery, House of Commons, by 12.00 noon on Tuesday 15 December. All media enquiries should be addressed to Rebecca Jones, on 020 7219 5693/07917 488549, (jonesbl@parliament.uk).

The report can also be ordered from The Stationery Office (tel: 0845 702 3474) or from the Parliamentary Bookshop (020 7219 3890), or can be viewed on the Committees' website from 00.01 am on Wednesday 16 December 2009."

What might autonomous education look like?

2009-12-08T18:11:00.001Z

The most important thing is finding a style that suits both parents and children. Some people buy a curriculum "in a box". Some people use workbooks. Some people follow the national curriculum. And I think those things are fine as long as the child is up for it - and it can be very reassuring for the parents to see obvious "educational product" on a regular basis.

But it doesn't have to be like that!

Some families would say that their main educational activities are those they undertake in various HE groups and other group activities.

Some families don't do anything that looks like a schoolroom at all.

Everything happens through play in our house, with parents trying to run with what the children are interested in anyway, following their lead, maybe offering alternatives or next steps, maybe just washing the paint brushes when requested.

People thinking of trying out an autonomous approach could just spend a few days or weeks where the only "education" they undertake is to try to answer all of the children's questions, or help them find answers. Or they could stand back and observe what the children are wanting to do left to their own devices, and see if they can recognise the educational value of it. Or see what the children are doing and help as desired.

The interests shift over time - maybe it's all crafty things one week, or it's all about cooking, or the children are desperate to go to the local city farm 4 times a week for a month or who knows what else - some children often like to concentrate on one activity to the exclusion of pretty much everything else.

Our neighbour said the other day "you're going to sainsburys AGAIN???" with an incredulous smile, but we had a little chat about the sorts of things that can happen in sainsburys at appropriate level for my children - and I think he began to grasp the concept of the world being a classroom.

Depending on a child's age and stage, there are all sorts of literacy things in making lists and finding items, maths in counting items or doing a running total of the shop, or doing times tables with those massive multipacks of crisps, the social skills of explaining to the store staff why there is a heap of multipacks of crisps all over aisle 8 which you are in the process of reshelving [ahem]. Or for children at a suitable age and stage, they can make the list themselves, with a budget, and take responsibility for the whole thing. Or it might be a conversation about why this packet of tuna not the other sort, or why you're buying the veges that are in season, or why the whole place is full of pumpkins this week, or whatever it is - there can be conversations about your values and about politics and geography and history and who knows what all else.

I am praying that Brave Sir Ralph will save our bacon with his conservative chums but, if he doesn't, I might just invite the LEA numpty to come and do his compulsory annual interview and welfare check in the supermarket. And I'll buy him a packet of jammy dodgers if he's civilized about the whole thing.

orwellian double speak

2009-10-28T13:07:00.001Z

Can I suggest that in ALL our dealings with the PTB, the media etc, we refer not to "proposals for registration" but to "proposals for annual licensing (which the DCSF for some odd reason are calling registration)".

"registration" sounds fine to your average Joe. It just sounds like a list of who's HEdding. Who could object to that? Says Joe. [yes, I would even object to a list, but it gets quickly into a teasy weasy argument about the relationship between the State and the individual and we've lost Joe]

But "licensing", having to ask permission every year, at the whim of some numpty in the LA - yes, Joe is going to see the problem with that even if he reads the Independent. :-D

Balls and the DCSF are Owellian-doublespeaking us. We have to refuse to accept that.

Letter to a sympathetic friend

2009-10-28T12:58:00.001Z

Dear xxx,

There have been cases of child abuse involving HE families, but they are very very few and far between. "There has never been a case of HE abuse" is a bad line to go down.

Of course there will be abuse among the HE population, although the stats coming out now (google AHEd lies, damned lies and statistics - I think that'd give you the links - HEers have done hundreds of FOI requests to get the actual comparative figures) indicate that the rate is very much lower than in the general population.

But the point of principle to hold onto is:

the current law as relates to child abuse is FIT FOR PURPOSE. Children's Services have the legal powers they need. The fact that they so abjectly fail to use their existing powers with good judgement in cases like Kyra Ishaq is not a good reason to give them more power - quite the opposite. Let them stop acting ulta vires before anyone considers widening the remit of the LA children's services.

PLUS

of course

Even if 25% of HE families were under investigation by children's services for suspected abuse, that would still not be grounds for demanding access to the home and to the child alone for the other 75% of HE families. Otherwise we lose the principle that the State does not interfere in private life without probable cause.

More than happy to keep discussing any of these issues :-)

Emma

home educated, not hidden

2009-10-17T22:25:00.003Z

Walking along with old college friends today in a part of town miiiiiles away from where I live.

Random man in sainsbury's uniform walks by.

"Hello Emma!"

"Hello Tim! How are you?"

"fine. How are you all?"

My college friend "what is this, do you live in Eastenders?".

"No. This is what happens when you home educate. You are on first name terms with the check out staff at the local supermarket. Home educated; not hidden."

Get your responses in, everyone!

2009-10-14T17:03:00.001Z

Thank you for responding to Home Education - registration and monitoring proposals.

If you have requested an acknowledgement we will send one to you as soon as your response has been processed.

Your response identifier is 1808.

Children’s Rights Ignored By Select Committee - HEYC Press Release

2009-10-10T20:07:00.000Z

A Youth Council Has Found That The Views Of Home Educated Children Have Been Ignored, By A Government Proposing New Laws Supposedly ‘Supporting’ Home Educated Children’s Rights.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 9 Oct. 2009 – PDF version

Contact: Chloe Watson
Phone: 07870 104 216
Email: press@heyc.org.uk

The Home Educated Youth Council today discovered that absolutely no home educated children have been invited to give oral evidence to the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee(1), who are holding an inquiry into a report on elective home education published earlier this year(2), after challenges to the report’s integrity. In fact, the majority of the parties called as witnesses are non-home educating adults whom either work for government or local authorities.

The only people invited who speak for home education in any way are Jane Lowe, trustee of the Home Education Advisory Service, Fiona Nicholson, trustee of Education Otherwise, and Simon Webb and David Wright. The rest of the participants are composed of people from government and NGOs who have no real engagement with home education, such as the NSPCC.

The Home Educated Youth Council (HEYC) is an organisation created and run by children, to support the rights of home educated children and young people, and to provide an independent voice for those children educated at home. HEYC sent a written submission to the select committee, and also requested to give oral evidence to the inquiry, citing their rights under article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child(3), which states that:

1. States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.

2. For this purpose, the child shall in particular be provided the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting the child, either directly, or through a representative or an appropriate body, in a manner consistent with the procedural rules of national law.

When Chloe Watson, Chair of HEYC, called the committee to inquire as to why no home educated children had been invited to give evidence, she was told that the committee chose who should give oral evidence by selecting those they felt would answer the questions they wanted to pose best.

HEYC would like to know why the committee has chosen to ask questions that can not be answered by home educated children, especially since one of the criticisms of the report the Select Committee is investigating, is that it contravenes children’s rights. HEYC is also confused as to how the committee would know who would answer a question best, if they are not predisposed to hear a certain answer, and do not already know what the answer will be.

“If the committee already has answers in mind, as was implied to me, it surely can’t be impartial, and I don’t see how the outcomes of a partial inquiry can have any credibility.” says Miss Watson.

The report that this inquiry stems from claims to redress the balance between the rights of parents to educate as they wish, and the rights of children to receive a good education. However, the views of home educated children overwhelmingly support the status-quo(4), and disagree with the report’s intrusive proposals, leading HEYC to question whether the report, or the inquiry into it, truly does support the rights of children after all.

HEYC believes that in the current climate of suspicion at the government’s behaviour among home educators and the wider population – with a report full of misleading quotes and shaky evidence, written by an author whose independence is questionable(5), a disproportionate response to un-proven risks, erosion of civil liberties throughout society, and current guidance on home education mysteriously disappearing from the DCSF website – such behavior will only reduce the confidence adults and children alike have in the government.

HEYC calls for the government to make moves to regain that confidence, and begin to take account of the views of children in the home educating community.

For more information, or to arrange an interview with HEYC personnel, please contact press@heyc.org.uk, or call Chloe Watson on 07870 104 216
NOTES FOR EDITORS

* 1) The Children Schools and Families Committee Oral Evidence Sessions – http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/csf/meetings.cfm
* 2) The Report to the Secretary of State on Elective Home Education – http://publications.everychildmatters.gov.uk/eOrderingDownload/HC-610_Home-ed.PDF
* 3) UNCRC Article 12 – http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm#art12
* 4) Results of the public questionnaire used to gather evidence for the report – http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/14635/response/41721/attach/html/3/Responses%20to%20the%20Consultation%20-%20Statistics%20-%20Annex%20A.doc.html
* 5) Letter to Local Authorities by Graham Badman, author of the report, requesting supplementary evidence after publishing the report, to use as evidence in the inquiry – http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/publications/documents/laeelectivehomeeducation/

select committe witnesses next week

2009-10-07T16:00:00.002Z

sent to the select committee email address

Dear Sir/Madam,

Please would you reconsider the choice of Simon Webb as a witness to the commons select committee? Simon Webb is well known in online home educating circles and, it is fair to say, would not be a good choice for representing any sort of collective (or widely accepted) view. There is widespread shock and distress that he has been selected to speak for home education, given the views he expressed in the Independent earlier this year: here
A more unfortunate choice could hardly have been made.

I am also terribly concerned that so few of the widely representative and well informed HE groups appear on the list - how can there be no representatives from AHEd (the South of the Border sister group to Schoolhouse, who were key in making representations to the Scottish parliament when home education came under review there in recent years) or the Facebook "Stop the UK Government Stigmatising Home Educators" group, which currently has over 2300 members? Please reconsider.

the consultation questions

2009-10-07T09:40:00.012Z

Draft answers. Feel free to extract bits you like for your own response. Criticism welcome.

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?

No. This rhetoric of balancing parents’ rights to home educate with children’s rights to be safe and to receive an education is false. There are no opposing rights to be balanced. Parents have no right to cause their children to receive an education – they have a legal duty to ensure their children receive an education, and the State has the duty to provide facilities such as schools where invited, and to intervene where there is reason to suppose that parents are failing in their duty.

The recommendations involve a fundamental shift in the relationship between the State and the family, together with routine intrusive surveillance of innocent families in order to attempt to address a statistically undefined problem. There is no guarantee (or even likelihood) that the recommendations will prevent or detect harm, but certainty that they will cause harm through the monitoring process and through the inevitable false positive identifications of abuse.

Under the recommendations, LA staffers will have right of entry to home educating families’ homes, together with the right to detain (forcibly interview) parents and children separately without probable cause. Even the police do not have these powers!

LAs already have the powers to intervene where there are education or welfare concerns; too often, they fail to use them with proper judgment. Indeed, as regards HE, LAs seem almost universally incapable of following the existing 2007 Elective Home Education guidelines. These are not safe hands in which to put increased powers.

Home Educated children OVERWHELMINGLY reject the proposals: http://www.ukhome-educators.co.uk/Survey/childsurvey0609.htm

Question 2 Do you agree that a register should be kept?

No.
The proposed requirement annually to seek permission from the LA to home educate by 'registering' (NB it is not a register but a licence that you are proposing) removes responsibility for providing children with an education ‘at school or otherwise’ from the parents, instead placing that duty in the hands of LA staff, who will delegate it to parents who they deem suitable (Recommendation 23).

Question 3 Do you agree with the information to be provided for registration?

No. There should be no register.

The proposals make home educators vulnerable to LA prejudice about different educational and lifestyle philosophies.

The requirement that parents complete plans and submit to visits within weeks of beginning to home educate will be an intimidating and discriminatory barrier to entry; many families take some time to establish the educational philosophy and style which will suit them. Further, the well-documented necessity for a ‘deschooling’ period after removing a child from school is not accommodated.

The requirement to provide detailed plans of what our children will be learning in the next year, plans against which our children’s attainment will be measured at the end of the year, is inimical to the well established and effective practice among home educators of child-centred, personalised, responsive, informal learning. Since Autonomous home education – a venerable and effective educational style – follows the interests of the children, long term planning (as required by the registration proposals) is either counter productive or impossible.

Home educators whose patterns are more formal, following curricula and regularly producing ‘educational product’, are also unhappy at the lack of flexibility and responsiveness permitted by such a requirement.

Question 4 Do you agree that home educating parents should be required to keep the register up to date?

No. THere should be no register.

Question 5 Do you agree that it should be a criminal offence to fail to register or to provide inadequate or false information?

No. There should be no register.

(hint: when designing questionnaires, it is best to avoid asking questions which assume a particular answer was given to a preceding question)

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. Schools are provided with taxpayers' money as a resource for parents to use if this is the most convenient and appropriate way to cause their children to receive an education. If parents choose not to avail themselves of the state-provided service, that is their business.

The 20-day notice period would provide school staff and LA staffers with the opportunity to place undue pressure on parents to keep their children on the school roll, pressure which they have no business placing on the parents. The current arrangements for deregistration recognise the responsibility of the parent in causing the child to receive an education at school or otherwise; this proposal changes the balance of power so that the approved and default setting is school and parents must apply for permission to educate their children themselves.

It is unclear whether a child deeply unhappy at school would be forced to endure a further 20 days of it, or whether caring parents removing their children from a traumatic situation would be vulnerable to truancy prosecution. Either of these is a completely unnecessary punitive measure.

The 20-day notice period would also be a discriminatory barrier to entry.

Question 6b Do you agree that the school should provide the local authority with achievement and future attainment data?

No. The school should provide the PARENTS, who are now going to be providing the education, with the data. Quite apart from the potential for schools to provide false or misleading information (a common complaint among those beginning to home educate children with SEN), it is the parents, meeting their duty to educate their child, who should be provided with all school records, not the State.

Question 7 Do you agree that DCSF should take powers to issue statutory guidance in relation to the registration and monitoring of home education?

No. The current laws are adequate if LAs act within them. The DCSF should instead transform the 2007 Guidelines into statutory guidance.

Question 8 Do you agree that children about whom there are substantial safeguarding concerns should not be home educated?

No. I think that children about whom there are substantial safeguarding concerns should be in close contact with Children's Services, where social workers are properly trained to deal with such concerns, and there is an established legal framework within which they should act.

The place of education is irrelevant. If there is reason to believe that a child is not safe at home with their parents then they should not be left in the unsupervised care of their parents for any hours a day - the place of education is a complete red herring.

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. State employees should not have right of entry to private homes without probable cause. This proposal fundamentally shifts the relationship between the State and the home, and between the State and the family.

Educational provision can be ascertained through written correspondence; the explicit purpose of these compulsory visits would be to check for abuse. Proposed annual safe-and-well checks for all home educated children is disproportionate to the perceived problem and will be ineffective.

The danger of false positives is large, particularly in families with unconventional lifestyles (for example, Attachment Parenting, living according to Alfie Kohn’s Unconditional Parenting method, or Unschooling and similar philosophies of consensual family living), and in families where children have additional needs of various kinds (families with a selectively mute child, or one on the autistic spectrum, say, may have chosen not to seek diagnosis; to a hostile stranger their behaviour may well appear suspicious).

An abused child is highly unlikely to confide in a complete stranger on a short annual visit. For many abused children, their suffering goes unnoticed at school for years, despite familiar adults seeing them regularly. Before moving towards legislation which treats a minority group as particularly dangerous to children and which infringes their civil liberties in a fundamental way, it would behove the DCSF to produce evidence that their proposed regime of surveillance would uncover such abuse. Someone who has been horribly abusing their child since birth is hardly going to pause to register them as home educated. Someone who deregisters their child from school under suspicious circumstances should be referred to Social Services by the school.

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. If there are safeguarding concerns about a child, then social workers should be involved.

The Badman recommendations threaten to work AGAINST rather than FOR safeguarding. They will massively divert limited resources from where they are needed – the resources to finance the costly registration and monitoring procedures would have to come from LA Children’s Services budgets, which are often already struggling to cope with the at risk children in their areas. The proposed annual safe-and-well visits would be highly unlikely to detect abuse, but would certainly risk throwing up false positives, with the attendant trauma for the families affected. The visits would also cause stress and anxiety for families, by the intrusion of an authority figure searching for abuse into their safe haven (this would be particularly acute for children who have been taken out of school because of bullying – especially bullying by teachers – and also for those with special needs or school phobia, but has been raised as a concern by other home educated children as well).

Police do not have the right to detain (forcibly interview) without probable cause, and the power should not be given to LA staffers. This proposal fundamentally shifts the relationship between the State and the home, and between the State and the family.

Children learning informally would have their learning restricted (and thus damaged) by being forced to ‘exhibit’ to LA staffers (who, at present, are almost all ex-teachers or ex-OFSTED inspectors, and thus are heavily invested in school-style learning). Production of educational artefacts and the child ‘exhibiting’ to LA staffers would also depend on the interests and activities of the child, and their willingness to share their achievements with judgemental and potentially hostile strangers. Producing material for assessment always interferes with learning, as every trained teacher has learned in their training!

The plan to interview individual children to measure their attainment is inconsistent with the treatment of children in the population at large: in school settings, the provision is inspected rather than the attainment of individual children. Neither are schooled children taken aside by state officials and asked if they wouldn't rather be home educated.

The proposed compulsory visits will themselves be damaging to children – not only those with special needs, but any children who would prefer not to be scrutinised alone by strangers with the power to force them to attend school. It is often easy for those in the child protection industry to forget how much harm they do simply by investigating and invading the lives of innocent families.

These invasive powers will not be applied to the families of schooled children or to pre-schoolers, despite abuse being statistically much more common in these groups. The proposals are thus discriminatory.

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. Police do not have the right to detain (forcibly interview) without probable cause, and the power should not be given to LA staffers. This proposal fundamentally shifts the relationship between the State and the home, and between the State and the family.

It is also inconsistent and disproportionate: state schools do not endure annual inspections, despite being answerable to the taxpayer.

here we go - the consultation

2009-10-07T09:17:00.003Z

I think I want to work in a critique of the background...

1. Background and Context
1.1
The Review of Home Education in England published on 11 June (click here) took evidence from a large number of home educators, many local authorities and other groups who work with home educating families. The terms of reference recognised that parents have a well established right to educate their children at home and that the government respects that right, and has no plans to change that position. They also set out the Department's commitment to ensuring that systems for keeping children safe and receiving a suitable education, are as robust as possible. They recognised that where local authorities have concerns about the safety and welfare, or education, of a home educated child, effective systems must be in place to deal with those concerns.

Those systems are already in place. Before changing the law, you need to clearly lay out what the existing systems are and why they are inadequate (hint: they are not)

1.2
The review's recommendations set out specific proposals for improving the capacity of local authorities and other public services to support home educators. The government, in its initial response (click here), is considering carefully the best way to implement them: a significant amount of further development work will be needed with local authorities, home educators and other organisations. We will publish a full response to the review's recommendations by the end of September.

You should not be consulting on the recommendations before you have responded to them fully - how do you know that this consultation is asking the right questions?

1.3
The review found no evidence that home education was used to cover forced marriage, servitude, or trafficking other than in isolated cases. However, the reviewer was provided with evidence showing that the number of home educated children known to Children's Social Services in some LAs was disproportionately high relative to the size of their home educating population. There are well established procedures for supporting children known to a local authority where there are safeguarding concerns. However, the review notes that without knowledge of, or access to, a child, such powers are meaningless. HMCI, in her response to the call for evidence, noted that ‘schools have an important responsibility to monitor children's safety and welfare but this safety net is missing for children educated at home.'

the statistical basis for "disproportionately high" has been blown out of the water. All that remains is the vague fear that there may be unknown numbers of entirely hidden children not known to anyone outside their family. Where is the evidence that school attendance is an effective safety net? Where is the evidence that the proposed powers will be proportionate and effective?

1.4

For these reasons the government has decided to take immediate steps to reduce the risk that home education can be used as a cover for child abuse or neglect. The response to the review records our commitment to tighten up safeguarding procedures by:
Establishing a register of home educated children in each local authority;
Giving local authorities discretion to prohibit children from being home educated in circumstances where there are safeguarding concerns;
Introducing tougher monitoring arrangements which will require local authorities to interview home educated children and visit the premises where home education is taking place to ensure that a suitable and efficient education is being provided and the children are safe and well.

you are conflating educational provision with welfare. This is reprehensible.

keeping the pressure up

2009-10-01T11:13:00.000Z

rebecca.godar@adcs.org.uk

Dear Ms Godar,

I was interested to read this quote:

'However, the Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS) regards the introduction of more stringent measures as invaluable. Badman's proposals, it argues, will allow local authorities to help ensure home educated children get the same opportunities as those that attend school, which include being safe and achieving academically.' in CYPNow (http://www.cypnow.co.uk/news/941902)

Are you claiming that the opportunities children get at school include being safe and achieving academically? Are you aware that 450,000 children are bullied in schools every week, at least 16 children in the UK commit suicide every year as a result of school bullying, 1 in 6 children leave school every year unable to read, write or add up (http://ahed.pbworks.com/Anomaly-Figures), and the government's own benchmark is for '30% of pupils getting 5 good GCSEs including English and Maths' (Ed Balls here: http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_live_events/820977?msgid=16729623 at 13:18:42) - hardly what one can trumpet as 'achieving academically'.

Home Educated children outperform schooled children statistically on both academic and well being measures. Please do your research before trotting out the usual smears.

Yours sincerely,

Ed Balls on Mumsnet

2009-09-09T14:14:00.000Z

"LouThorn and others. I know that many of you feel very strongly about the Badman Review and are passionate about Home Education. My job is to support home educators and that's what I am going to do including by responding to Graham Badman's call for extra support for home educators, especially where a child has SEN. But it is also my job to do everything I can to make sure children are safe, including from abuse or neglect. And that includes home educated children too. There have been high profile cases of 'home educated' children who have been very badly neglected. Graham makes clear that this is a small minority, though disproportionately larger among home educated children. Every child has a right to have a happy and safe childhood."

Can we use this somehow?

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_live_events/820977?msgid=16729623

Unfooding

2009-08-18T14:32:00.002Z

I'm very much enjoying some posts here at muddy bare feet about relaxing food controls. Such an exciting path.

I was delighted to jump in a taxi home from the supermarket today and find ourselves in the company of a friendly driver we've seen a few times before. I gave him a stamped postcard to send to his MP and he made very approving noises about jumping off the conveyor belt of automatically sending children to school at 4.

every cloud has a silver lining

2009-07-28T15:52:00.000Z

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/swine-flu/5924342/BBC-may-screen-education-programmes-if-swine-flu-shuts-schools.html this could be fun for HEers! Or it could be for those who have a TV, but unfortunately we can't own one because of being opposed to paying the Biased Broadcasting Corporation levy.

grist to the mill

2009-07-22T18:29:00.003Z

I'm actually somewhat pleased that the dcsf have gone loop-de-loo and are apparently refusing all FOI requests related to the review. This is not going to look good to the select committee at. all. :-D

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

2009-07-22T15:40:00.002Z

Children, Schools and Families Committee
Select Committee have announced an

Inquiry into the DCSF-commissioned review of elective home education

Leave a comment if you want me to tell you what's in the email - it's one of those "don't pass this on" official ones and I am anxious to do things by the book :-)

know your enemy - dealing with the LA

2009-07-18T14:21:00.001Z

http://www.hupfield.com/matt/index.php

This is spine chilling. But also really good - that the EHEers in the case kept their cool, kept records, and acted lawfully throughout. Unlike the LA staffers. Gasp, shock, horror.

Shooting from the hip

2009-07-17T16:18:00.002Z

I'm really beyond composing carefully worded and nuanced letters.

So here's a 10 minute rant for the draft legislative programme people. It doesn't have in it everything it should, but I am coming to the conclusion that as long as I say SOME of the important things, other people will cover the other bits.

dlp@commonsleader.x.gsi.gov.uk

“improving monitoring arrangements for children educated at home;”

I am very concerned about this clause.

The current legal position is perfectly adequate to ensure that all children receive a suitable education (as defined in case law). If you want to improve matters in this area, then a good start would be to turn the 2007 elective Home Education Guidelines for LAs into statutory Guidance. The next step would be to support families in seeking legal redress against LA employees who act ultra vires.

I understand that there are “safeguarding concerns” over home educated children in general, a concern that they may be "hidden". The recommendations of the Badman review are absolutely not the answer to the concerns of the DCSF, since his review has been widely condemned as partial, disproportionate, ill-researched, and lacking in expertise. It quotes selectively and thus misleadingly from the CofE submission to the review, as well as from a home educator's submission. It misuses statistics (where it uses them at all), perhaps because the actual figures do not help him come to his prejudged conclusions. Badman's report was supposed to be concerned with welfare, but steps WAY outside his remit (and the remit on which he consulted), and outside his expertise, conflating welfare issues with educational issues. His conclusions and recommendations are aligned neither with his stated brief nor with his findings.

As soon as the Badman review was published, a consultation was opened. Ed Balls may have accepted the review, but the primary stakeholders, Home Educating families, most certainly have not. Nor have social workers (http://www.radical.org.uk/barefoot/heducation.htm). Consultations are supposed to be held when there is the chance of affecting the outcome. But Ed Balls has already accepted the Badman recommendations, and promises to respond in more detail in September, over half way through the consultation period. And now we see ‘monitoring arrangements’ in the draft legislation before the consultation (supposed to explore whether there should be any new legislation) has closed, let alone been reported on. Is this really how the legislative process is supposed to operate?

The proposed legislation is also uncosted, not having been subjected to an impact assessment (which should have taken place before the consultation opened, surely?).

What should the government be doing instead? Rather than concentrating its efforts on disproportionate, inconsistent and uncosted legislation whose consequence (intended or unintended) will be to control the perfectly valid educational and lifestyle choices of innocent families, and to shift the primary responsibility both for the education and welfare of children from parents to the state (brace yourselves for the law suits when state employees fail to educate children or keep them safe in schools), the government should concentrate on making sure that LA staff are fully aware of and act in accordance with current welfare and education legislation, both of which are perfectly adequate if properly applied.

Whatever draconian legislation you introduce will impact negatively on law-abiding families, and on the educational freedom they currently enjoy. The hypothetical vicious child abusers hiding their children from society from birth onwards are not going to be affected at all - a £1000 fine (or whatever) for failure to register as a home educator with the LA is hardly going to be the top priority for our hypothetical sweat-shop dad or get-her-on-the-game-young mum, is it?

Top Tip for Bureaucrats

2009-07-15T21:20:00.002Z

Badman wants all HEers to be required to register so that child abusers will be found.

But the people who will register if required are the law abiding.

If I were abusing my children so horrifically that keeping them hidden at home rather than sending them off to school seemed like the best option, would I be losing sleep at night over the possible £1000 fine for failure to register them, and a possible S.A.O. for failing to provide a suitable education? Would I heck as like. I'd be more worried about the multiple life sentences awaiting me, surely.

I'm really failing to see how the registration proposal would be the slightest bit effective. Why would child abusers register their children? What would they have to lose, in the grand scheme of things, by failing to comply?

This is all in the context, of course, that the Badman report in its entirety would be best used to line a cat litter tray rather than to inform government policy.

Why I am optimistic

2009-07-05T16:03:00.002Z

I believe that there is a governmental campaign afoot to completely change the relationship between the State and the Family, starting with home educators.

But I believe that they will fail.

I know that there is a great deal of doom and gloom around, and of course I am having my days of despair too, but here is what gives me hope:

When we can explain what is happening in terms which relate our plight to the lives of more conventional families, they are starting to wake up and get it. Slowly, but they really are (spot the brilliantly articulate non-HEer in that second link).

We have a power which Mr Macho Bully Boy Balls did not anticipate in his wildest dreams. That power is female. It is the power of the mama tiger seeing a threat to her cubs (Hear me ROOOOAAAAARRRRR) combined with the power more often seen in women than men, IME, to network and share ideas and actually get on with 45 things at once. How many ideas have you seen in the last month of ways to fight the proposed legislation? And maybe half of them are damp squibs, but there are just so many of us on the blogs and the boards and the lists and at the local HE meetings who are fired up with ideas and fury and goddammit with right against might.

It's not samizdat now it is teh internetz. We are connected. We are a many headed hydra. We are going to be a thorn in the side of the State. And if they do pass their evil legislation, we will, legally and politely, find ways of making it just too horrible for anyone to be prepared to do the HomeEducationStaziInspector job.

And, in a year's time, Ed Balls will be out of a job, and Graham Badman will still have to be Graham Badman every morning when he wakes up.

Petition template for marginals

2009-07-04T15:23:00.000Z

Declaration: At the next general election I intend to vote for a candidate who opposes the DCSF’s proposed legislation relating to intrusive educational monitoring and welfare surveillance of Home Educators. This proposed legislation would:
- give Local Authority staff right of access to our homes without reason to suspect any wrong doing (even the police do not have this power!)
- give Local Authority staff the right to interview our children whether they are willing to be interviewed or not, without anyone supportive present, and without reason to suspect that any harm is being done to them (even social services do not have this power!)
- give Local Authority staff power of veto over who is allowed to register as a home educator, placing those who home educate in unconventional yet effective ways (Christian curriculum? Waldorf- or Steiner-inspired? Summerhill-inspired? Autonomous?) or in unconventional circumstances (Family on benefits? Single parent family? Wrong religion? Roma or travellers? Child with special needs? Parent with illness or disability?) at the mercy of what the LA staffer considers to be an appropriate approach and suitable family circumstances.

The proposed legislation is disproportionate, uncosted and inconsistent.

[insert pretty table with following columns:]

NAME
POSTCODE
HAVE YOU VOTED IN A UK GENERAL ELECTION BEFORE?
HAVE YOU VOTED LABOUR IN THE PAST?
SIGNATURE

You can signal your opposition by
- signing Early Day Motion 1785 if you are a sitting MP
- issuing a press statement
- writing to your party HQ to register your opposition to the proposed legislation.

Marginal constituencies

2009-07-04T15:10:00.001Z

Place sitting Lab MP 2nd in 2005 size of majority
Oxford East Andrew Smith LD 963
Chester, City of Christine Russell CON 915
Finchley & Golders Green Rudi Vis CON 741
South Thanet Stephen Ladyman CON 664
Islington South & Finsbury Emily Thornberry LD 484
Dartford Howard Stoate CON 706
(Ochil & South Perthshire Gordon Banks SNP 688)
High Peak Tom Levitt CON 735
Stourbridge Lynda Waltho CON 407
(Edinburgh South Nigel Griffiths LD 405)
Hove Celia Barlow CON 420
Selby John Grogan CON 467
Stroud David Drew CON 350
Gillingham Paul Clark CON 254
Medway Robert Marshall-Andrews CON 213
Warwick & Leamington James Plaskitt CON 266
Battersea Martin Linton CON 163
Harlow Bill Rammell CON 97
Sittingbourne & Sheppey Derek Wyatt CON 79
Crawley Laura Moffatt CON 37

Place sitting LD MP 2nd in 2005 size of majority

Hereford Keetch, P.S. CON 962
Manchester, Withington Leech, J. LAB 667
Somerton & Frome Heath, D.W.St.J. CON 812
Eastleigh Huhne, C.M.P. CON 568
Rochdale Rowen, P.J. LAB 442
Taunton Browne, J.R. CON 573
Ceredigion Williams, M.F. PC 219
Westmorland & Lonsdale Farron, T.J. CON 267
Solihull Burt, L.J. CON 279
Romsey Gidley, S.J. CON 125

Place sitting CON MP 2nd in 2005 size of majority

Wrekin, The Pritchard, M.A. LAB 942
Harwich Carswell, J.D.W. LAB 920
Preseli Pembrokeshire Crabb, S. LAB 607
Gravesham Holloway, A.J.H. LAB 654
Wellingborough Bone, P.W. LAB 687
Hornchurch Brokenshire, J.P. LAB 480
Reading East Wilson, R. LAB 475
Hemel Hempstead Penning, M.A. LAB 499
Shipley Davies, P.A. LAB 422
Guildford Milton, A.F. LD 347
Clwyd West Jones, D.I. LAB 133
Croydon Central Pelling, A.J. LAB 75

Do you live in a marginal constituency????

2009-07-04T15:05:00.003Z

The Badman issue could make the difference between a sitting MP losing or retaining his/her seat at the next election. I believe we need to tell them so.

1. Do you live in a marginal constituency?

a) The marginal Labour constituencies, with majorities of less than 1000 are:

Oxford East; Chester, City of; Finchley & Golders Green; South Thanet ; Islington South & Finsbury; Dartford; High Peak, Stourbridge; Hove; Selby ; Stroud; Gillingham; Medway ; Warwick & Leamington; Battersea; Harlow; Sittingbourne & Sheppey; Crawley.

The further along the list you go, the more vulnerable the MP (the MP for Crawley has a majority of only 37!!!)

I can post a list of marginal lib dem and conservative MPs if wanted, but I personally think the labour ones near the end of the list above are the ones to focus on for now.

I have a word document with full details of the majorities. Post a comment if you want me to send it to you.

b) I have made a petition document. I will post it in a minute, and you can leave a comment if you want me to email you the Word document. If you like my wording go straight ahead and use it. If not, change at will, of course. NB note that noone is being asked to reveal what they voted in 2005, just whether they’ve voted labour in the past. Also that noone is signing up to vote in a particular way next time, just signalling their intentions at this point.

c) Are you prepared to coordinate the local petition? If not, please think of an efficient type who might be able to!

2. What the petition organiser could do:

a) Add your address at the bottom of the petition as the place to send signed copies to.

b) send the petition around the local HE lists and get copies of it to all the local HE meet ups in the next week or so.

c) get as many HEers as possible not only to sign it but also to take copies, or get you to forward the Word document by email so that they can ask friends, family and colleagues in the constituency to sign it. If you have a big number to aim at, then get them to take the petition along to all their clubs, societies, and other regular places they go, to get as many people to sign as possible – mums and dads, Akela, the vicar, the man at the Sainsbury’s checkout – everyone.

d) email the national lists to ask if anyone has friends or relations in these marginal constituencies. Get them to print off a copy of the petition and force said friends and relations to sign it and return to you.

e) here comes the maths part. If the signatory has not voted before, then a guaranteed vote away from the sitting MP is – 1 from their majority. If the signatory has voted before and has voted Labour before, then a vote away counts – 2 from their majority (minus one for them and plus one for the person in second place last time, who you may well be planning to vote for if they make the right supportive noises). If someone has voted before but has never voted labour then their signature will be nice and supportive, but won’t make any difference to the sitting MP and won’t scare them. If it’s manageable (I’d say Gillingham onwards in the list above), try to get enough signatures that the petition sheets themselves say “if you do not support us in this, you are going to guarantee to lose 155 votes in the next election. Your current majority is 154”. You don’t need to rub it in. They’ll do the maths themselves.

f) once you have the majority-killing signatures, or as many as you think you can get, photocopy all the petition sheets. Keep the originals. Send the copies to: the MP, the local constituency office of whoever was 2nd last time, the DCSF, and maybe the local and national papers. When you get near to that stage, I am happy to help draft a press release and a covering letter. I’m happy to do it and then you can alter it, if the idea of writing it from scratch is scary. Just post a comment somewhere on my blog to ask for help.

Oh, and please spread the word about this plan! Linkage much appreciated.

another route - commons select committee on children schools and families

2009-07-03T17:24:00.002Z

sent to csfcom@parliament.uk

I was interested to read in the Independent today that Barry Sheerman "said it was important not to have a knee-jerk reaction following a case like Baby P. Mr Sheerman told MPs: "There is sometimes a danger that all the resources, after a tragic death, are rushed into child protection and can actually starve the resources for the support of families and good quality social work." "

Is the committee aware that just such a knee-jerk reaction appears to be under way with regard to Elective Home Education?

Graham Badman's report, welcomed by Ed Balls, has been greeted with shock and fury by the Home Educating community. The report itself is enormously problematic - selective and misleading quotation, failure to represent or reflect the views of Home Educators, acknowledgement that there is no evidence that Home Education is used as a cover for child abuse, and then putting forward a series of proposals which are already under consultation that not only call for the imposition of an intrusive monitoring regime, but also (unjustifiably) conflate the question of educational provision with the question of safeguarding.

The process of the report, consultation and proposed legislation falls short of the standards the electorate expects. How can a plan to "improve monitoring of Home Education" be in a white paper when the public consultation about whether such monitoring should be introduced - NB you can't 'improve' something before you've introduced it - is still under way? Does this not break the code of practice on consultations? e.g. criterion 1: "Consultation should take place at a stage when there is scope to influence the policy outcome." If Government policy is that monitoring arrangements for children educated at home should be 'improved', then what scope do the stakeholders - home educating families - have to influence the policy outcome, please?

The proposed legislation stems from a concern that HEed children are more at risk of abuse than those who attend school. It is hardly surprising that Badman did not publish the relevant figures since they seem to show that the converse is the case... here

Given the lack of figures supporting the central premise of the Badman review, the proposed legislation as outlined in the consultation here

and already predetermined outcome at least to some extent, as evidenced by the draft improving schools and safeguarding children bill here

I consider the government's policy and proposed legislation on this matter to be disproportionate - compulsory safe-and-well checks and vastly increased powers to LA staff to approve (or not) the educational provision of families where the responsibility for the education of a child has, until now, rested with the parents.

I am also concerned about the lack of an impact assessment of this area of proposed legislation: here

If LA staff are to be given powers of intrusion into private homes without probable cause, and the power to demand interviews alone with children without probable cause (neither of these are powers which either the police or Social Services have), then what will be the costs of the new regime? Staff training in different forms of elective home education (continuation of the current situation, where the LA staff are usually retired teachers or OFSTED inspectors would obviously not be acceptable - those assessing EHE provision would have to be expert practitioners themselves)? Staff training in recognising abuse on a single annual meeting with uncooperative and unwelcoming children (you might be interested in this extensive survey of Home Educated children's opinions - would that Mr Badman had listened to them so carefully - here )? Increased budgets for training, recruiting and retaining social workers to cope with the flood of false positives referred by anxious LA education workers? Proper training for the LA staff in communicating with children with complex special needs of many different kinds?

Can any price be put on the cost in anxiety for the Home Educating parents and children? Our families are frightened that our - perfectly valid - ways of living and educating our children are about to be the hostage of LA staff who, in a perfect world would be rational and reasonable and open minded. But we do not live in a perfect world, and LA staff already fail to follow the law as it stands - we do not trust them with more power. Our children are frightened that some person from the council will have the power to come and see what they have been doing and judge it wanting, send them back to the school which failed them and where they failed, where they were bullied, perhaps, and were certainly failing to achieve the five outcomes.

If it would be helpful for the committee to hear from home educating families, I would be delighted to help set that up, or travel to London myself to make a representation to the committee. The proposed legislation is wrong headed on so many counts, and the DCSF are showing themselves committed to a course which possibly breaks various codes of conduct (for consultation and for drafting legislation) and completely fails to listen to the concerns of stakeholders.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours sincerely,

hear the children

2009-07-03T16:18:00.001Z

survey of HE children.

It will be interesting to see whether the DCSF, to whom this has been sent, disregard this entirely and steamroller on.

And all that My Children Aren't Hidden Stuff?

2009-06-30T14:09:00.001Z

Thank you, Leo, for the wake up in comments. It's sort of comforting to be able to say look look look my children are not hidden, and to be able to think of ways that one might demonstrate that to LA jobsworths if push came to shove.

But after this morning's underhand government bastardliness, I am not going to put the energy into lengthy self-justification. My children are not hidden, Mr Balls. Your proposals are disproportionate. Oh, and I think you are a devious, smearing, disrespectful, nasty stalinist who, I pray, will have his Portillo moment within the year. The end.

[and yes, I deleted an extremely rude word or two before posting]

Back in the Saddle Again

2009-06-30T14:04:00.003Z

Letter sent to

enquiries@bis.gsi.gov.uk

dlp@commonsleader.x.gsi.gov.uk

and to my MP

and to Michael Gove c/o

Dear Whoever,

I am astonished to read the draft "improving schools and safeguarding children bill": here

The surprising clause is:

"improving monitoring arrangements for children educated at home".

Please would you investigate this URGENTLY? The DCSF is currently engaged in a consultation process about the law relating to Elective Home Education, a consultation which does not end until October: here

How, then, can legislation relating to this consultation be in progress? Does this not break the code of practice on consultations? e.g. criterion 1: "Consultation should take place at a stage when there is scope to influence the policy outcome." If Government policy is that monitoring arrangements for children educated at home should be improved, then what scope do the stakeholders - home educating families - have to influence the policy outcome, please?

Should the process not be that the consultation takes place, then a report on that consultation is written (I understand that it is expected to be completed in January 2010) and THEN a legislative programme can be planned if appropriate. The phrase "stitch up" comes to mind.

You doubtless know this already, but I would remind you that Elective Home Education has been the subject of consultation after consultation in the last five years. The recent bout is the worst yet: a consultation announced in January which swiftly turned into a "review" once it was pointed out to the DCSF that the code of practice was being broken; a so-called "independent" review undertaken by the anything-but-independent Graham Badman; and, worst of all, a smear campaign in which educational practice and government concerns about safeguarding have been conflated with no justification beyond political expediency.

I protest against this draft legislation in the strongest terms. Please tell me what the procedure is for halting this presumptive draft legislation until the proper consulting process has taken place (and for ever, if the findings of the consultation are that no change to the law is needed).

Yours sincerely,

Our "Hidden" children

2009-06-29T15:54:00.003Z

I am wondering, seriously, whether we might be able to offer community testimonials as proof to the LAs, in the worst-case Badman-prevails scenario, that our children are not hidden, but are instead highly visible in the community and, therefore, that safe-and-well checks are disproportionate (ah yes, word of the month).

I do not usually blog about my family. But I think it is worth experimenting with ways of illustrating how seen we are, without compromising privacy. Perhaps I will keep this up for a week.

A friend visited this morning with her 18 month old, but they couldn't stay long because they had to go for a haircut. So I got my offspring out of the cupboard [joke] and we went too, with a bag of junk to drop off at the charity shop.

The children played "catch" all along the pavements to get to the shops. Cue indulgent smiles from passers by.

It was a big, busy, child friendly salon (a training salon with very cheap prices and friendly staff), and it was fascinating to explore everything in the salon, and see people having their hair washed, and people with curlers in, and people with their heads covered in kitchen foil (what's that all about?!), and children having haircuts. A big contrast to our usual post-bath-cheapskate parental trimming (and yes, that's how my haur gets cut too - what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander).

We watched closely while our small friend had a hair cut and then we said goodbye (because we were keen to go and do other things rather than watching my friend have her hair cut) and went to the charity shop where we gave them a bag of stuff and bought a bag of new stuff (for minimal £££age). The lady in the shop welcomed us most warmly and asked how we'd been because she hadn't seen us for a while, and pointed out various items of merchandise in which we might be interested.

Then I walked home with my dangerously "hidden" offspring, now safely locked back in the cupboard [joke] till the next occasion.

a friend in politics

2009-06-28T18:14:00.002Z

I just spoke with a friend who has many years' experience in government circles (and wishes to remain completely anonymous, of course).

This friend says that lobbying is definitely the way forward as far as the EHE consultation is concerned. And that we need to focus mostly on PROPORTIONALITY. We need to keep asking: How many EHEers have been shown to be child abusers? Are the government's plans a sledgehammer to crack a nut? (to which the answer is yes...). we have to put the onus on the politicians and DCSF to demonstrate that the intrusion into private family life is proportionate to the problem.

If we focus only on the point of principle - that we shouldn't be interfered with - the friend thinks we will LOSE. The friend thinks that we may have to suggest something to say "yes, school children are seen by lots of people outside their families and that is a place where obvious obvious abuse might be spotted. Despite our children not being at school, we are prepared to demonstrate that they have points of contact outside the family". Don't shoot the messenger, and don't take it as gospel, this was just the advice of one person - that maybe a letter from Akela, or maybe a note saying that we are regulars at church X and child is in the sunday school class, or that we have season tickets at this attraction and go once a month and here are some pictures showing us there with the staff or SOMETHING which shows that we aren't hiding our children in cupboards.

And I said "don't we lose the presumption of innocence here?" and the friend said that 'safeguarding' is such a hot topic that although we have to keep saying, and keep saying loudly, that our children are no more at risk than anyone else's, and that we are entitled to the presumption of innocence, the State considers itself responsible for safeguarding all children, and has already given itself the powers and the responsibility for that, and so it wants to be assured that ours are getting their slice of the safeguarding pie.

So. PROPORTIONALITY as the tactical focus, with the principle unswervingly behind it. And keep badgering our MPs.

more material for Michael Gove

2009-06-28T15:13:00.000Z

Dear Emma,

Thank you for your email to Michael Gove regarding Home education and
the Badman report. He is away visiting schools at the moment, but he has
asked me to forward you this reply.

Parental choice is a driving principle of Conservative education policy.
I can assure you that this includes the choice to educate your children
at home, and that a future Conservative government would fully respect
your rights in this area.

We want children to enjoy the highest possible level of protection, and
recognise there need to be safeguards. But we do not want to grant
Government intrusive or unnecessarily authoritarian powers.

We will aim to keep this balance at the forefront of our thinking as we
develop policy in this area.

Thank you again for taking the time to email.

Yours
Jamie Martin

Office of Michael Gove MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families
0207 219 4829
martinja@parliament.uk

Thank you for this. Please would you pass my response on to Michael Gove? I'm sure that as this issue hots up, he's receiving all kinds of representations (and my goodness me, there are opportunities to distance yourselves from the Ed Balls approach every five minutes at the moment!), so I'll be brief.

When the Conservatives are developing policy in this area, please bear in mind:

HE children are NOT hidden. They need no more safeguarding than any other child - in fact, perhaps less, since many HE children spend a considerable amount of time out and about during the school day - learning in the community rather than in a classroom - they are conspicuously visible and, not being in school when most children are, are subjected to much more watchful (and kindly) scrutiny by the general public. Social services and LA education departments absolutely do not need extra powers - they need to learn to use competently the ones they have. Please remember that this whole thing stems from a smear campaign, using government funded "charities" such as the NSPCC to invent a fake concern (over which they apologised in an obscure specialist magazine, although the smears had been all over the national press), and then an "expert" labour crony to cobble together the (just embarrassingly badly researched and argued) report.

If you want to demonstrate your concern for HEed children, you could take a stance along the lines of "trusting communities: respecting family life" (if slogans appeal). We are the experts on our children. We are the experts on their education. We are the experts on their welfare needs. If there is reason to believe that we are not caring parents, determined to give our children the best chances in life, then there are already procedures in place to investigate and prosecute us.

"trusting communities: respecting family life" in HE terms could go along with undoing the centralisation and standardisation of state schools, devolving decisions about curricula and budgets back to governing bodies, parents, teachers and the children themselves. The whole thing could be an unclasping of the NuLabour centralising grasp on our children's educations. If communities want grammar schools, let 'em have them... (or is that a bridge too far?!)

There can be no "balance" about whether families are presumed innocent or not. Either agents of the state are not permitted to detain (=interview) civilians or enter their houses without probable cause or they are. If they are, we live in a police state.

As far as NuLabour are concerned, making the unconventional decision that our children will be happier, better socialised and better educated with us, their parents, ourselves explicitly shouldering our legal responsibility for their welfare and education, seems to be "probable cause" for concern that we are, or might be, abusing our children. Please distance yourselves from this - I find it hard to imagine why anyone wouldn't want to.

I am sure you are swamped by offers of this kind, but if it would be helpful for me to come to London to meet with you and discuss how the Conservatives might be able to protect the wellbeing, diversity and richness of the HE community by leaving us alone as far as possible (very cheap...) I would be delighted to travel up from Little Wittering.

Yours sincerely,

Send a message to Dawn Primarola

2009-06-20T20:43:00.003Z

http://community.cypnow.co.uk/forums/p/1272/3337.aspx#3337

she's taking questions. What a golden opportunity!

Dawn: Please urgently investigate the flawed Badman report into Elective Home Education.

It is hard even to know where to begin with its faults: The report itself goes way beyond its brief, and the recommendations bear no logical relationship to the report findings (there is no evidence that EHE is used as a cover for child abuse, but let's legislate as though it were...). The report is poorly researched - the author clearly has NO understanding of educational philosophies and approaches beyond the conventional, and what he does not understand he has disregarded. The report uses selective misquoting in spinning a particular viewpoint (please compare the CofE quotation in the report with their full submission to the review - I suspect more than a few CofE representatives are not best pleased by the way their views have been misrepresented). It is not evidence-based (hardly can be, given that the phrase "I believe..." 16 times!), is prejudiced, does not represent the responses to the review, and was partially pre-judged, since Badman said publically before he had finished gathering information that the status quo could not remain. It is hardly independent, authored as it is by a chair of BECTA and previuos head of Kent Children's Services, and almost every member of his "expert" panel is also government employed in one way or another. Not even a token HEer among them... (quite how they were regarded as "expert" I do not know).

The recommendations of the report are massively problematic. To mention only the largest problems:

- Badman suggests giving powers to LA employees to detain (ie insist on interviewing) HEing families without probable cause. Compulsory interviews are contrary to the basic principle of innocent until proven guilty. There are other, well established, ways for EHEers to provide evidence that an education is taking place according to the law, and they are contained in the 2007 guidance for LAs. And, in a recent survey, 77% of HEed children said they do not want to be interviewed by LA staff (http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/results-of-poll.html) - are their preferences to be entirely disregarded? Apparently so.

- Badman suggests giving powers to LA employees to enter private homes without probable cause. As you know, even the police do not have this power.

- Badman suggests giving power of veto over HE provision (its style or it happening at all) to LA employees. Rather than them having power to gather evidence and take a HE family to court, they would now have the power to act as prosecutor, judge and jury if they were in charge of granting or withholding registration. To have the final decision about whether an education provided is within the law or not resting with the courts, as now, grants us a level of protection from the ex-school teachers and ex-OFSTED inspectors who tend to populate LA education departments. There is no reason why they would be able to recognise or appreciate an education which doesn't look like school-at-home, and they absolutely must not be given power over those of us who choose to educate in unconventional, but perfectly reasonable, ways.

Underpinning all of this is the potential overturning of the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

I understand that all of this stems from a level of hysteria about child protection. Please, as you formulate policy, keep reciting the mantra that we are innocent until proven guilty, or should be. And that HEed children are MASSIVELY more likely to be known to social services (twice as likely, as Badman says, although he remains curiously silent about the reasons...) than the general population - often because of having a SN and therefore having a case worker, or because of malicious referrals by the LA (standard procedure on learning of a HEing family in some areas - and they wonder why we don't voluntarily engage with them!), by neighbours who do not understand that HE is legal etc etc. There are already responsibilities within the community to report child protection concerns.

Given all this, why on EARTH did Mr Balls accept the report and immediately open a consultation? I suggest that you put pressure on him to withdraw his acceptance of the report and to urgently reconsider the labour party's priorities. Do you really believe that the State should be parent of first rather than last resort? Please talk to your department lawyers about how the proposals fundamentally reconfigure the relationship between the state and the family, and ask yourselves whether going down the route of 1930s Germany (as proudly trumpeted in Badman's report as a precedent!!!) is really something for which your party wishes to be remembered.

Dear Mr Gove

2009-06-19T18:51:00.004Z

Dear Mr Gove,

I am writing to express to you my concerns over the Badman review of Home Education and the subsequent consultation.

I am sure you have received many other messages detailing the bias, prejudice, poor level of argument, smearing, spin, ill-researched and apparently pre-determined findings of the report, the findings which follow neither from the evidence of the report nor from its brief ('I find no evidence that HE is used as a cover for abuse, but let's pretend I did and legislate accordingly', as it were) lack of independence from the State not only of Badman but of his entire "expert" panel and so on. If there is any way the report can be discredited and the consultation halted because of the poor conduct and poor quality of the review, please let the Home Education community know what we should to do to help!

There are three aspects which I regard as the crux of the report, aspects which should be complete deal breakers for conservatives (and, I hope, Conservatives):

- Badman suggests giving powers to LA employees to detain (ie insist on interviewing) HEing families without probable cause. Compulsory interviews are contrary to the basic principle of innocent until proven guilty. There are other, well established, ways for EHEers to provide evidence that an education is taking place according to the law, and they are contained in the 2007 guidance for LAs. And, in a recent survey, 77% of HEed children said they do not want to be interviewed by LA staff (http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/results-of-poll.html) - are their preferences to be entirely disregarded? Apparently so.

- Badman suggests giving powers to LA employees to enter private homes without probable cause. As you know, even the police do not have this power.

- Badman suggests giving power of veto over HE provision (its style or it happening at all) to LA employees. Rather than them having power to gather evidence and take a HE family to court, they would now have the power to act as prosecutor, judge and jury if they were in charge of granting or withholding registration. This is a very bad idea because of what I think of as the "numpty" factor. To have the final decision about whether an education provided is within the law or not resting with the courts, as now, grants us a level of protection from the ex-school teachers and ex-OFSTED inspectors who tend to populate LA education departments. There is no reason why they would be able to recognise or appreciate an education which doesn't look like school-at-home, and they absolutely must not be given power over those of us who choose to educate in unconventional ways.

Underpinning all of this is the potential overturning of the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

I understand that all of this stems from a level of hysteria about child protection. Please, as you formulate policy, keep reciting the mantra that we are innocent until proven guilty, or should be. And that HEed children are MASSIVELY more likely to be known to social services (twice as likely, as Badman says, although he remains curiously silent about the reasons...) than the general population - often because of having a SN and therefore having a case worker, or because of malicious referrals by the LA (standard procedure on learning of a HEing family in some areas - and they wonder why we don't voluntarily engage with them!), by neighbours who do not understand that HE is legal etc etc. There are already responsibilities within the community to report child protection concerns.

HEers might be prepared to accept making it compulsory to inform the LA of one's intention to HE (very different from registration!) but the rest is and should be in a free country, frankly, unacceptable.

I hope this is helpful to you. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on it soon.

Yours sincerely,

The worst things about the badman recommendations

2009-06-19T10:28:00.002Z

...apart from the report being prejudiced, ill researched, ill informed, poorly argued, way outside its brief and all the rest.

- suggests giving powers to LA employees to detain (ie insist on interviewing) or enter private homes without probable cause. Massive. Surely should be an immediate deal breaker.

- suggests giving power of veto over HE provision (its style or it happening at all) to LA employees. Rather than them having power to gather evidence and take a HE family to court, they would now have the power to act as prosecutor, judge and jury.

Underpinning both is the overturning of the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

These seem to me to be massive enough that all the rest - the smears, the lack of appreciation of Autonomous HE, the spinning, the complete disregard for the views of HEers - is just the cherry on the iced bun.

Letter to Mr Balls

2009-06-16T14:15:00.001Z

Review of Elective Home Education

I am writing to express my concern about the reforms to current practice proposed by Graham Badman in his “Report to the Secretary of State on the Review of Elective Home Education in England” and about your acceptance of the report.

The report is flawed on many levels. It is not evidence based or impartial. It in no way reflects the views of the home educators who responded to the review. It is not based on expert opinion – Mr Badman has no personal experience at all of home educating and has either failed to read, or has failed to understand, the academic literature on the subject. It lacks moral rigour also – appointing a previous head of Kent Childrens’ Services and current chair of the government-funded BECTA hardly inspires one with trust in its claimed independence. Since Badman publicly stated that the status quo could not remain long before the review was completed, the findings were partially pre-judged. The on-line questionnaire used to gather home educators and others’ views was badly designed involving leading and poorly constructed questions. The LA questionnaire had ten times as many questions as that for the general public.

The review was explicitly set up to find out whether Home Education can be used as a cover for child abuse. It is curious, then, that the report does not offer any analysis of the actual number of suspected and found child abuse cases involving home educators. The claim that ‘the number of children known to children’s social care in some local authorities is disproportionately high relative to their home educating population’ gives the impression of skeletons rattling in cupboards. Badman fails, however, to mention the common but ultra vires practice in some LAs of routinely referring HEing families to Social Services as soon as they come to the LA’s attention, the prevalence of referrals by neighbours concerned to see children not in school but not understanding that Home Education is legal, and the number of HE families where there are SN of one kind or another (and this certainly IS disproportionately high with relation to the total number of HEers, reflecting the woefully inadequate SEN provision offered within many schools), and therefore, automatically, a case worker within children’s services. There is no reason to suspect that any of these Home Educating families known to Social Services have given a single social worker a moment’s pause for concern about safeguarding, without Badman producing evidence. For Badman to produce no evidence, but to spin it this way is surely dangerously close to defamation?

The recommendations do not follow either from the clearly stated remit of the review or from the evidence (such as it is) presented within the review. The review says that many LAs are not performing adequately, but then recommends they have more powers. Without an analysis of why they are failing it would seem inappropriate to give them more powers; this would simply create problems and maladministration claims for the future. The review does not find evidence that Home Education is being used as a cover for child abuse, but proceeds to recommend the urgent provision of laws which intrude on the private lives of innocent families in order, supposedly, to protect against child abuse.

The review recognises the diversity of home educators, but fails to take this in to account in its ‘one size fits all’ recommendations. Those families who practice “autonomous home education”, following the interests of the child rather than a parentally-imposed curriculum or plan, are particularly vulnerable under the proposals, which demand that LAs should see plans for the year ahead. I cannot plan what my children will be interested in in 5 minutes, let alone in 6 months! But I can guarantee that, following their own interests and facilitated by their parents, they will be learning effectively and efficiently, in line with their ages, ability, aptitude and any SEN they may have, as per the existing Home Education legislation. The freedom to pursue such an effective child-led education will be a hostage to the prejudices of the LA employees under the proposed new legislation.

The most outrageous of the recommendations is that LA employees should have the power to insist on interviewing HEed children alone, with the caveat that they could be with a trusted adult (not the parent) if their SEN or communication difficulties deemed that appropriate. In a recent poll, 77% of Home Educated children said they did not want to meet with LA personnel. http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/results-of-poll.html Are their preferences to be completely disregarded? Who deems the SEN or communication difficulties of a child to be sufficiently severe that a trusted adult be permitted to be present? Are we really expected to accept the proposal that LA staff should have unsupervised access to our children when there are no grounds for welfare concerns? Badman has advocated extending powers to LA staff which not even the police or social services have – the power to interview children alone when there are no grounds for suspicion.

This is the statement of opposition currently doing the rounds. I endorse every word of it:

It is NOT acceptable for the state to have ultimate control of the education of our children

It is NOT acceptable for the state to make ultra vires judgements about the welfare of our children and then act in loco parentis

It is NOT acceptable for the state to operate on a presumption of guilt

It is NOT acceptable for the state to demand access to our homes without reasonable suspicion that an actual offence has been or is about to be committed

It is NOT acceptable for the state to demand access to our children without reasonable suspicion that an actual offence has been or is about to be committed

It is NOT acceptable for the state to demand unsupervised access to our children

These are all contained within the recommendations of Badman's review document, which you have accepted in full as "proportionate and reasonable".

I have a vision for the future. It involves an immediate and unequivocal withdrawal of your support for the review and a cancellation of the consultation process which, presumably will lead to legislation (although it is hard to see why you are consulting us, yet again, given that Badman so signally failed to listen to us earlier this year, given that we have been consulted on EHE-related legislation repeatedly in the last 5 years and you know perfectly well that public opinion does not support your legislative agenda, and given that you have already given your public support to Badman’s heinous recommendations and will presumably do your level best to put them into action, however well argued and sensible the consultation responses are). It then involves you publicly stating that you will not tolerate LA staff acting in an ultra vires manner towards Home Educators, and that you will look urgently at the practices within Children’s Services which have led to children known to be at risk – Baby P, Kyra Ishaq, Eunice Spry’s foster children and Victoria Climbie, to name but a few – being so abjectly failed by those who had a duty of care for them.

The final part of my dream involves you treating the EHE community with the respect we deserve. Rather than saying that the only proposals in Badman’s report which are problematic are those which involve providing services, please remember how much money we save you every year by not taking up the school places to which our children are entitled. Just a fraction of that money would provide access to exam centres, free swimming lessons and the like, for those HEers who choose to avail themselves of those opportunities. Insist on the LA EHE staff being those with sympathy for and understanding of the area – retired Home Educators rather than ex-teachers, for goodness’ sake.

Statistically, EHE children out perform their schooled counterparts on every measure (and if you haven’t read any of Paula Rothermel’s research then it is about time you did). We are a beacon of excellence. Why are you alienating us (and losing Labour thousands of votes into the bargain) when you should be sending researchers to find out from us what it is that we are doing so successfully, so that you can do something to address the pitiful literacy figures and the pitiful GCSE results that your schools achieve every year?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

A long letter to my MP...

2009-06-15T16:06:00.001Z

Review of Elective Home Education

I am writing to seek your support in opposing the reforms to current practice proposed by Graham Badman in his “Report to the Secretary of State on the Review of Elective Home Education in England” for the following reasons:

1. Although the Secretary of State says it contains strong arguments, the review is not evidence based, instead consisting largely of unfounded assertions (the phrase ‘I believe …’ appears 16 times…). It lacks impartiality (hardly surprising, given that it was carried out by a previous head of Kent Childrens’ Services and current chair of the government-funded BECTA) and is in no way a fair reflection of the views and information presented to the review panel by the home educating community.

2. The review was explicitly set up to find out whether Home Education can be used as a cover for child abuse. It is curious, then, that the report does not offer any analysis of the actual number of suspected and found child abuse cases involving home educators. The claim that ‘the number of children known to children’s social care in some local authorities is disproportionately high relative to their home educating population’ gives the impression of skeletons rattling in cupboards. Badman fails, however, to mention the common but ultra vires practice in some LAs of routinely referring HEing families to Social Services as soon as they come to the LA’s attention, the prevalence of referrals by neighbours concerned to see children not in school but not understanding that Home Education is legal, and the number of HE families where there are SN of one kind or another (and this certainly IS disproportionately high with relation to the total number of HEers, reflecting the woefully inadequate SEN provision offered within many schools), and therefore, automatically, a case worker within children’s services. There is no reason to suspect that any of the Home Educating families known to Social Services have given a single social worker a moment’s pause for concern about safeguarding, without Badman producing evidence. For Badman to produce no evidence, but to spin it this way is surely dangerously close to defamation?

3. The recommendations do not follow either from the clearly stated remit of the review or from the evidence (such as it is) presented within the review. The review says that many LAs are not performing adequately, but then recommends they have more powers. Without an analysis of why they are failing it would seem inappropriate to give them more powers; this would simply create problems and maladministration claims for the future. The review does not find evidence that Home Education is being used as a cover for child abuse, but proceeds to recommend the urgent provision of laws which intrude on the private lives of innocent families in order, supposedly, to protect against child abuse.

4. The review recognises the diversity of home educators, but fails to take this in to account in its ‘one size fits all’ recommendations. Those families who practice “autonomous home education”, following the interests of the child rather than a parentally-imposed curriculum or plan, are particularly vulnerable under the proposals, which demand that LAs should see plans for the year ahead. I cannot plan what my children will be interested in in 5 minutes, let alone in 6 months! But I can guarantee that, following their own interests and facilitated by their parents, they will be learning effectively and efficiently, in line with their ages, ability, aptitude and any SEN they may have, as per the existing Home Education legislation. The freedom to pursue such an effective child-led education will be a hostage to the prejudices of the LA employees under the proposed new legislation.

5. Indeed, the recommendations call for LA staff to have the power to approve or deny a family’s HE provision, with no right of appeal. Where presently an LA, if they believe a family is not providing a suitable education, can take the family to court, the onus is on the LA to make their case. Those who educate in unconventional but valid ways – a traditional Christian education, maybe, or Steiner-, Summerhill- or Montessori-inspired methods – will no longer have the protection of the courts but will be subject to the whim of the employee prejudices within a particular LA. Those whose family demographic does not seem to the LA to be suitable for HEing can also be prevented from doing so, and who knows what grounds a particular LA employee might have for refusing permission – but again, we become subject to the whim of an LA employee.

6. The most outrageous of the recommendations is that LA employees should have the power to insist on interviewing HEed children alone, with the caveat that they could be with a trusted adult (not the parent) if their SEN or communication difficulties deemed that appropriate. In a recent poll, 77% of Home Educated children said they did not want to meet with LA personnel. http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/results-of-poll.html Are their preferences to be completely disregarded? Who deems the SEN or communication difficulties of a child to be sufficiently severe that a trusted adult be permitted to be present? Are we really expected to accept the proposal that LA staff should have unsupervised access to our children when there are no grounds for welfare concerns? If there ARE grounds for welfare concerns, then they should be referring the family to Social Services, who already have the legal powers (and appropriate training) to interview children. Here, Badman has advocated extending powers to LA staff which not even the police or social services have – the power to interview children alone when there are no grounds for suspicion.

7. You should be aware that this review and the consultation, which went live on the internet the same day the review was published, has turned many Home Educators and their families into single issue voters. If the Liberal Democrats were able to publicly pledge to oppose any ensuing legislation and to revoke it in the next parliament, then you would guarantee many Lib Dem votes in marginal constituencies. (Estimates of the number of HEed children vary wildly; 80,000 is fairly conservative. That is a lot of parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, and we are politically active in this defence of our civil liberties.)

The review was poorly conducted – for example:

• It was announced as a consultation on the consultation website but, when it was pointed out that it was not compliant with the Consultation Code of Practice, it suddenly became a review;
• The review outcome was partially pre-judged in advance, Graham Badman, author of the review, publicly said as much when he asserted the status quo could not remain long before the review was completed; and
• The on-line questionnaire used to gather home educators and others’ views was badly designed involving leading and poorly constructed questions. The LA questionnaire had ten times as many questions as that for the general public.

The review report can be found at:

http://www.freedomforchildrentogrow.org/8318-DCSF-HomeEdReviewBMK.PDF

Now I have to ask for your help, not only in putting pressure on the party leaders to publically reject this flawed review and any legislation ensuing from it, but also to ask whether you think there might be grounds here for some sort of legal challenge to the review and subsequent consultation through the courts?

This is the statement of opposition currently doing the rounds. I endorse every word of it:

This morally corrupt government has already caused too much damage with its ever-expanding, power-seeking, controlling agenda. For the government to target our children in this way is the beginning of the end unless we just say NO:

It is NOT acceptable for the state to have ultimate control of the education of our children

It is NOT acceptable for the state to make ultra vires judgements about the welfare of our children and then act in loco parentis

It is NOT acceptable for the state to operate on a presumption of guilt

It is NOT acceptable for the state to demand access to our homes without reasonable suspicion that an actual offence has been or is about to be committed

It is NOT acceptable for the state to demand access to our children without reasonable suspicion that an actual offence has been or is about to be committed

It is NOT acceptable for the state to demand unsupervised access to our children

These are all contained within the recommendations of Badman's review document. The government has accepted them in full as "proportionate and reasonable".

If you require more information or details of sources, or if it would be helpful for you to meet me at one of the regular HE meet ups in the city or (perhaps with other Home Educators) at your constituency surgery, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

Just a thought

2009-06-14T15:31:00.002Z

Date: sometime in 2010

Dear Mr LA Official,

Thank you for your letter informing us, under the new 2010 legislation following the Badman review that you intend to come and visit my family to assess our educational provision and the welfare of our child(ren). We will be delighted to welcome you into our home once a few necessary conditions have been met.

1. We understand that you may wish to interview our child(ren) alone and, to this end, we must ask you to supply an enhanced CRB disclosure for all LA staff to be present.

2. It is of course vital that anyone assessing our educational provision is genuinely familiar with, and sympathetic to, our chosen educational approach. To that end, please supply us with full CVs of any LA staff who will visit, including full details of their experience as autonomous home educators.

3. [optional paragraph] Since our child(ren) have/has unique needs, it is also important that anyone visiting is familiar with their type of behaviour and learning patterns. On the CVs of your staff, please detail the training which they have received in communicating with children with [put in whatever is relevant here]

We very much look forward to discussing in person our educational provision with a suitably qualified LA employee at a mutually convenient time and place. In the meantime, and for your records, I enclose a copy of our educational philosophy together with 3/6/47 letters from [pillars of the local community] confirming that they are in regular contact with our family and that they have no concerns about the welfare of our child[ren].

Yours very sincerely,

This took me about three minutes to draft and of course I'm looking for criticism. No personal investment in any of the particular things I said here. The main thing is: I think that if the worst case scenario happens and Badman'd recommendations do become law, then I feel morally in a position to require public servants to be, well, servants, and that involves me, their tax paying employer, demanding that they should be suitably qualified before I engage with them. The last paragraph, with the letters from friends, is to ensure that, while they are trying to get the right sort of employees, they don't send SS round...

So, what do you all think?

Daydreamin'

2009-06-12T17:18:00.003Z

I know I should be doing more constructive things, but I keep seeing myself clutching a wand and hurtling across the dining hall of Hogwarts castle towards Ed Balls screaming "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!!!!"

call to action...

2009-06-12T14:21:00.002Z

In the next week or two, I intend to send that message about all vegetarians being inspected etc to my MP, and ask him whether the lib dems would promise to revoke any law leading from this report. They have a whole thing going on about [[http://www.takebackpower.org/100_days_to_save_democracy.html take back power]] and I think if we phrase it right we might be able to get then to see this attack on civil liberties as something they should loudly oppose

I have a feeling the conservatives are on our side. Isn't it shocking when the labour lot are clearly the fascists? But I might write to Mark Field and ask if I can do anything to help him spread the word.

I think I will write to Camilla Cavendish. This seems to me to have a kinship with the horrors of the closed family courts, which she has campaigned against. To have the Times on our side would be good.

Ditto Daniel Hannan (is that his name?) at the Telegraph. He's definitely a libertarian type and, again, might well move the DT to help.

And that makes me wonder if there's anyone at the Mail - because they would have a field day with this if we span it the right way.

The Guardian has that splendid HEing journalist who is I am sure doing what he can

In any news report I read, if I read a rentaquote saying something wrong or ill informed, I am writing to them waving all my titles and asking what basis they said that on since, oddly enough, I haven't come across it in the educational literature or in personal experience, and I'd be very interested to learn what evidence they have. Not demanding anything from them, just politely asking what expertise they have which leads them to make that statement. If 100 other people do that, the rentaquotes might think twice.

I'm quite close to exploring whether any of Balls or Badman's stuff might count as defamation. I was having a dream last night in which Balls found himself agreeing to an out-of-court settlement in which he immediately resigned his parliamentary seat, but not before cancelling the consultation and any planned legislation. It was only a dream.

I want to find out from lawyers if there is any way that the populace can, en masse, opt out of a piece of unwelcome statute law. If there is no consent of the governed, how do we tell them so?

And I will not, I repeat not being reading either the review or the consultation document until I can do so in a suitably zen frame of mind.

Oh, and I make a prediction that house prices within 15 miles of glasgow and edinburgh airports will sky rocket in teh next year, as those of us with difficult-to-leave jobs find ways of commuting from notb... am wondering whether I should buy a house up there quick while there are any left to be had for love or money...

Dear Ms Johnson

2009-06-10T16:27:00.006Z

Dear Ms Diana R. Johnson,

I was interested to read your contribution to the commons debate on Home Education. I appreciate that you have only just taken on this ministerial portfolio, and wanted to give you my feedback.

"That system must be built on the highest standards of teaching, real choice for parents and pupils, and rigorous accountability. Home education is a vital part of that system."

In law, parents are responsible for the education of their children either at school or otherwise. Those who provide that education using money raised through taxation are doubly accountable, firstly to the children for whose benefit the education is provided, and secondly to the tax payer who has funded it. Home educating parents are only accountable to their children not to the tax payer and, while it is the duty of the LA to investigate on behalf of the children if they have reason to suppose that an education is not taking place, the parents are not and should not be accountable to the State or the tax payer in the way that tax-funded schools are and should be. Home education is NOT part of the state system of schooling.

"One is the right of parents to decide what is best for their children in their education and development. The other is the right of every child to receive a high standard of education in a safe, secure environment."

If you are going to invoke children's rights, you would do well to remember Lord Adonis's remarks about children's rights and education: http://www.freedomforchildrentogrow.org/Adonis_Judd_Oct13_2006_copiable.pdf and you would also do well to actually ask the children concerned what their preferences are, and then respect them. For example, 77% of them do not want compulsory LA monitoring or intrusion into their homes: http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/results-of-poll.html

"It would be a very small number of parents who did not want their children to be educated. It would be a very extreme belief or philosophy that made them follow that path, and the state would, rightly, have to take a view."

Would you be able to expand on how this might play out in reality, especially given the extensive literature outlining the efficiency and efficacy of autonomous home education? (I have sent you copies of Thomas and Pattison, "How Children Learn at Home" and Dowty, "Free Range Education" which may help to widen your understanding of the ways in which children can become educated; I hope and assume that you are referring to hypothetical evil parents who keep their children locked in cupboards for 14 years rather than to those who choose to educate their children in ways which are highly successful despite looking nothing like conventional education. And the legal framework is already in place to act where there is reason to believe that parents do not want their children to be educated).

"There can be no question but that we need to ensure that every child receives a good and safe education"

If that is the case then there is serious work to be done in the institutions for which you have responsibility -

"More than 360,000 children injured in schools each year

450,000 children bullied in school last year

At least 16 children commit suicide each year as a result of school bullying

An estimated 1 million children truant every year

Treasury statistics show more than 1 in 6 children leave school each year unable to read, write or add up"

http://ahed.pbworks.com/Anomaly+Figures

- before you consider violating the right to a private family life of a minority group whose dissatisfaction with the standards of safety and effective education offered by State schools has led them to reject the State institutions altogether.

"On the review, the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster is wrong to say that home education has been consistently under scrutiny since 2004. "

With respect, "In 2004 the DfES consulted on draft Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities. These guidelines were shelved and in December 2006 the DfES told EO that they were introducing "light touch changes to monitoring". However in May 2007 the DfES reverted to its original plan and re-issued the 2005 draft guidelines to full public consultation. The revised guidelines, incorporating references to the Children Act 2004 and the Education and Inspection Act 2006, were finally published in November 2007" http://www.education-otherwise.org/Legal/Consultations/2007.htm

"In November 2007, we issued guidance on home education to local authorities, but clarity about roles and responsibilities has still not been achieved."

The clarity is there. The legal framework is in place. Now LA staff need to learn to act effectively within it. They say it is unclear because they don't like the law. That doesn't mean they are right morally or pragmatically.

"It is clear that further clarity is needed."

Perhaps a clear message to LA staff that they are expected to know the law pertaining to home education and to act within it? With full support of HEers prosecuting those employees who do not act within the law?

"They are also intended to achieve greater national consistency in providing suitable full-time education for all children"

Where is the legal, ethical or pragmatic basis for supposing that a nationally consistent education is something the government has any business imposing on all its citizens? You've tried this. It's called the National Curriculum. And it is in order to escape such consistency that many of us have rejected the State schooling system - because we can do better for our children. Consistency would be a splendid ideal if children were consistent in their ability, aptitude and SEN. They aren't. Each child thrives best on a truly personalised education and no government dictat is going to be able to encompass the needs of every child. Please leave us to educate our children as is best for them, not in a "consistent" form which enables LA staff to tick boxes easily.

This is a difficult area for those with little experience of education outside the schooling model. I urge you to make contact with home educating groups, as Graham Badman has done, and begin to understand how different from the conventional norm, but also how joyful and educational our lives are "through the looking glass". EHE is a very precious part of our culture - if you tread too heavily, you will destroy it.

Yours sincerely,

A present for the new schools minister

2009-06-10T14:38:00.002Z

I just ordered copies of

How Children Learn at Home (Thomas and Pattison)

and

Free Range Education (Terri Dowty)

to be sent to the house of commons fao Diana Johnson. She's only just taken the job on, but I'm not massively impressed by how she's been briefed so far...

Hansard (and the beginning of the debate with our knight-on-white-charger hero is on the previous page of hansard)

Trying to explain TCS in public...

2009-05-21T14:20:00.000Z

I would prefer a certain course of action. Someone else in my family would prefer another one. What do we do?

Child-rules parenting (ick) goes with the child's preference until parents totally burn out and the monster they have created has to go and learn to navigate around others' needs, but starting aged 21 rather than aged 2. Nice one, laissez faire parents.

Totally authoritarian parenting always goes with the parent's preference, keeping child locked in cupbard under the stairs in between times until child leaves home aged 16 and doesn't invite the parents to their wedding. Nice one, parents.

Most of us live much more in a way that sometimes the children get what they prefer and sometimes we get what we prefer and everyone is pretty easy going, so family life bumbles along pretty much smoothly, with occasional child melt downs when we, for whatever reason, feel we have to put our foot down. Even UP keeps the authoritarian trump card that sometimes, says Mum, it's just got to be how it's got to be.

TCS is none of the above. The crux of TCS is that parents are fallible. Not just parents - all of us. TCS is an application of critical rationalism (of which Karl Popper is the most famous exponent) to family life. It's not a method, it's not a how-to guide, it is a philosophy.

So in just about everything where I want my child to do something they don't want to do, I have to stop and say "but I could be wrong". Every parent could make a list of absolute non-negotiables where sometimes, says Mum, it's just got to be how it's got to be. But that list completely varies from parent to parent. Jill might have tooth cleaning, sitting at the table for meals and bed times as non-negotiable, while Mary is unbothered by those but insists on baths every night and always wearing shoes outside. So, if Jill says toothcleaning twice a day is vital but Mary is happy to trust to good diet, plenty of water and breastmilk rather than juice or fizzy drinks, and regular hard-cheese snacks, and providing info and equipment to encourage tooth cleaning rather than forcing it... how do you know that your personal take on it is right? Sure enough to hold your child down kicking and screaming to inflict twice-daily brushing on them? Sure enough that you refuse to buy your child a desired toothbrush because all that is a waste of time? TCS is about being aware of one's fallibility within the parent-child relationship.

Because we are writing on t'internet, it all looks very wordy, but really it isn't about endless discussion - a lot of it is non-verbal.

Time is a big factor. The idea that something must happen NOW is a big trigger for conflict in many families, where if one was able to give up the agenda, one might well find that what one was hoping for (walk the dog?) happened anyway, in a completely happy way just because one let go of the idea and went with the flow. Or sometimes, one might find that something else is happening (playing in the garden with dog jumping around?) which is fine for everyone too. I think a lot of TCS families find life best if they build quite a lot of unscheduled time into their lives, but I may be projecting from what happens to work best for me and mine.

Something else within critical rationalism is the idea that, in an area where we have previously been coerced, it is harder for us to respond creatively another time. If someone forces me into an unwanted coat then, next time we go out, my rage and humiliation at that previous experience might well lead to me resisting the coat again. Or my learning to comply with wearing the coat might interfere with my ability to recognise my own cues of warmth or chilliness. Forcing someone to do something constrains their learning in that area (this is something unschoolers know well. You can lead a horse to the educational water all you want, but it's only when they are thirsty that they'll drink it and, when they are thirsty, they'll walk to the water themselves without needing any top-down leading whatsoever). So forcing our children to do things against their will, however sugar-coated, is counter productive to their learning. If we can't persuade them (verbally or non-verbally) we are better to suggest something else or listen to their suggestions rather than forcing them.

Another crucial thing is that one doesn't practise TCS because it produces a better product. One practises it because one has been persuaded that it is the morally right thing to do. My impression of TCS families is that their children do tend to be just wonderfully good company and free-range children in the very best sense. But there are some children who, by nature of their personalities or SN, almost demand to be Taken Seriously or parented Unconditionally. They don't respond to rewards and punishment because they just don't get those social cues, and so their parents have either become massively coercive in order to attempt to contain the energy of their wild children, or else they have turned to some form of TCS or UP as the only way they can live relatively peacefully with the SN whirlwind of their child. And that child probably won't be doing brilliantly well at sleepovers, but that doesn't mean the parents have misjudged things by following the UP method or by assimilating the TCS philosophy.

thoughts about state surveillance of families

2009-05-20T16:15:00.002Z

Questions we should be asking the State:

Are all parents are to be viewed as potentially guilty of child abuse until proven innocent by having their children inspected by state employees?

Would this have saved baby P/Victoria Climbie/the Eunice Spry children?

Is regularly seeing adults outside the family, be they state employees or not, an effective way for child abuse to be spotted or prevented?

Is having a state-run universal child surveillance system effective? legal? ethical?

What understanding of the relationship between State and family is implicit in the idea that all children need to be seen by state employees to safeguard them from their parents?

Is the best way to ensure that all children are safe and well to ensure that they are all seen by "child professionals"? Should every child have regular safe and well checks, or only the ones who do not come unto contact with state-employed and state-trained child professionals on a regular basis through state school, NHS or similar?

If children are at private schools, or seen by private health practitioners, or members of some sort of community group (guides, church, ballet/music classes, whatever) is that sufficient for safeguarding purposes?

Of [i] course [/i] most children see adults outside the family lots, whether they go to school or not. But not all. And if someone has a child whose SN mean, by definition, that they are going to be best off being quietly at home with their family a lot of the time, should those families be subjected to preventative surveillance (which would, on its own, be distressing to the child as well as contravening whichever thingy it is about the right to a private family life unless there's reason to believe that wrong doing is occuring)?

My rant:

I'm all in favour of living in a society where we care for others and offer support, I'm less in favour of living in a society where the right to private family life is bulldozed because of some idea that a safe and well check will prevent child abuse. I need more evidence that such checks do more good than harm before being happy to consider giving up a fundamental civil liberty.

I think it is often easy for those in Children's Services to forget how much harm they do simply by investigating and invading the lives of innocent families.

comparative thoughts about school and HE

2009-04-20T13:05:00.001Z

in some areas, children do NOT need tuition from someone who has made academic study of that area, or even from someone with expertise in that area (eg computer games, and of course this is a well duh point to make). they will reach excellence on their own.

in other areas, and the one which came to my mind was skateboarding, children seek out for themselves the expertise to help them get as good at the activity as they want to. they will happily spend 3 hours a day for years and years trying and failing to do that thing where you jump up and spin the board under your feet, land on it and keep going. They hang out with older skateboarders watching what they do, they take tips from the more expert ones when offered. And they don't need parents to find them a skateboarding tutor or school teachers to timetable a NC skateboarding hour every day in order to make sure they devote enough time to it. They themselves seek the help and tuition they need from older experts.

Self motivation is the key not only to learning but also to finding the advice and expertise and, yes, teaching you might need in order to learn as much about an area as you want to. A big advantage of schools is that they gather the advice, expertise and teaching provision in a fairly wide range of areas of human knowledge under the one roof. A big disadvantage of schools is that children have to access the advice, expertise and teaching provision on other people's terms as far as timetables and curriculum and so on are concerned. Schools just can't, by their nature, be as good at just-in-time personalised self-motivated learning for a child as the freedom to chase their current interests with support and advice from parents and the contacts of their friends and relations would be. And all those museum/zoo/national trust type staff just waiting for a persistent child to come along with questions. The world is full of trainspotters who love nothing better than to talk about their passion.

I can see that some think that it's important for children to be prepared to learn what other people think is important, and not to be expecting people to be prepared to help with their current passion at the drop of a hat. But the law says I should be providing an efficient education for my children, and I can't think of anything more efficient than educating them by helping them learn what they want to learn when they want it. Good schools do a splendid job of persuading children to learn what's on the agenda for today but I'm after maximum educational efficiency

so a reason to send a child to school would be about accessing, under one roof, all sorts of expertise and experience at communicating ideas to children.

And a reason not to be would be about maximising the efficiency with which a child accesses the knowledge and understanding and expertise they are interested in at any particular time.

There are good reasons why a lot of HE children go to FE colleges for GCSEs and A levels and diplomas - they consider it a way of getting the best of both worlds.

Mr Vijay Patel of the NSPCC

2009-02-26T13:15:00.003Z

... because, really, his attempts to keep slinging mud in the hopes that eventually some of it will stick Have To Stop.

Emailed to SupporterCare@NSPCC.org.uk

I was horrified to read in today's Independent a quote from Vijay Patel linking the horrific Victoria Climbie with home education. As I am sure you know, Victoria Climbie was not home educated, and "home education" playeed no part in the failure of government agencies and indeed your own organisation in failing to safeguard her.

I look forward to reading a full retraction from Mr Patel, together with an apology for the unfounded slur he has attempted to cast on a minority group within society.

I am sure Mr Patel is sick of being reminded that, when pressed, he had to admit on national radio regardimg his claims that HE could be used to hide abuse "We.. the inf.. We don’t have the evidence there statistically, no." Please, the NSPCC MUST stop circulating vicious and unfounded allegations about links between the home educating community and child abuse, and you must stop employing people who persist in such malicious beaviour. After learning of Mr Patel's full retraction and apology, I look forward to reading of his resignation.

Yours faithfully,

Splat

2009-02-19T14:15:00.001Z

Dear Mr Badman,

I am writing to express my concern about the constitution of the panel of "experts" attached to the Home Education review. While I am delighted to see Paula Rothermel on the team, I am flabbergasted that the rest of the panel seems to be made up of people with no experience of elective home education. How can this be considered a panel of experts?

I would have expected to see a lawyer with understanding of the law as it pertains to elective home education, particularly given the apparent lack of understanding of the law demonstrated both by the 6-questions open to the general public and by the 60-question survey offered only to LAs. Ian Dowty is the most notable expert - why on earth is he not on the list?

I would have expected at least one if not more representatives of the major elective home education organisations - drawn perhaps from the Education Otherwise policy group, or from the groups AHEd or THEN-UK.

I would have expected not only a university researcher on elective home education, but also researchers and writers with practical, personal, in the field experience. There are several names to choose from here, but the instant ones springing to mind are Jan Fortune-Wood, Mike Fortune-Wood, Roland Meighan, Harriet Pattison (co-author with Alan Thomas - who would have been another obvious choice! - of How Children Learn at Home, which I assume all your panel members will have read).

I would have expected representatives of the minority groups likely to be particularly impacted by any changes to the existing legislative framework - at the very least, representatives of SEN home educators and religious minority groups.

Please could you explain your rationale for choosing a team of people largely without expertise in and experience of elective home education? Will this not have a negative impact on the validity of any findings of the review?

Yours sincerely,

(signed with all my most impressive titles. You know, CBE, OBE, Victoria Cross, Dip SMELL etc)

John Taylor Gatto - "Dumbing Us Down"

2009-02-10T17:17:00.002Z

The solutions that Gatto comes up with to the problem of school:

1. Put less money into schools, give children time for independent study, give children more family time. Makes sense to me - school has a big influence of children, and it is hidden under the guise of being a Good Thing when actually a lot of it is to do with free-at-point-of-delivery childcare, increasingly wrap around, with breakfast clubs and twilight clubs and everything else. This child care makes it possible for both parents to work. Quite why two full-time working parents is seen as the golden chalice I do not know, but society seems to have got brainwashed into thinking that this is progress. So yes, I agree with all of this.

2. Introduce free-market education rather than government-monopoly education. Refund all the relevant taxes and leave communities to find their own solutions. What can I say except "yeah, baby!".

The last two essays in the book are about networks and congregations, and I confess that I understood less what he was trying to get at in these.

The networks idea is that a network of people is efficient in the pursuit of a limited aim, but it doesn't embrace the whole person. If you want to solve a problem, you might make a network to solve it, but you wouldn't then ask your collaborator to join you for Christmas. And he sees schools as networks, where only parts of a child's personality can be expressed and only parts of it are appreciated, rather than as communities, although schools probably usually see themselves as communities. He says that communities have people of all ages in them. But I'm not exactly clear what stops schools, necessarily, from being communities. And actually, I'm not sure that networks are as evil as he says they are.

The congregations idea is about a community having the right to freedom of association, and that people within a community can leave it and find another one if that one doesn't suit them, like church congregations (and his model is the early colonial era congregationalists). And yes, that kind of makes sense, although again, I'm not quite seeing how it could translate to mass schooling.

"The Psychopathic School" by John Taylor Gatto

2009-02-10T17:09:00.004Z

This is essay 2 in Dumbing Us Down.

Here, Gatto lists lots of evils which, he claims, are the result of TV watching or schooling, since that's what takes up most of most children's time. The short list of evils includes suicide, depression, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse... and, since he doesn't explain the causal link in any case, might just as well include ingrowing toenails, water on the knee, and the prevalence of cadbury's creme eggs next to the check out in Tesco.

He says that schooling makes children

- indifferent to the adult world
- lacking in curiosity
- have no sense of their future
- have no sense of their past, and how it shapes their present
- cruel to each other
- uneasy with intimacy and candour, since they have to develop protectivelayers of fake personalities to survive in school
- materialistic (since teachers materialistically grade everything, and because of TV advertising)
- dependent, passive and timid in the presence of new challenges.

This was odd to read. I think Gatto is more astute about what he is doing to children (as described in the 7-lesson school teacher) than in this description of what the impact is on the children in question. Not all schooled children are cruel, materialistic etc etc. And it's not immediately clear to me how the institution of school has these effects on people.

I also think his anti-TV stance is based on the bucket theory of learning - the idea that children sit passively and uncritically while the culture of TV is poured into them for hours a day. I suppose this is more likely to be the case if a child is schooled into the passivity of scheduling being done for them by teachers for most of the day and then TV watching is just an extension of it, but active use of TV is a wonderful resource and it's just the usual fearmongering about the evil of the TV set here I think.

I can see that if one had a child in school who was beginning to display these characteristics, one might be persuaded to remove them by reading this essay, but otherwise I was less impressed by the argument here.

The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher by John Taylor Gatto

2009-02-10T16:53:00.003Z

This is the first essay in Dumbing Us Down

The central message in this essay is that, contrary to what educators might claim they are doing, the national curriculum (and he's talking about the USA, but it applies equally here in the UK) consists of teaching children:

1. Confusion. Everything is taught out of context. Rather than following a child's pace and interests, we present children with all sorts of things but never help children connect them or build up a coherent picture of the universe (which is much easier to do if the person trying to make the coherent picture chooses what to look at next)

2. Class position. He conflates two things in here. First, that in a school, you have to be in the assigned class, like it or not. If all your friends are 11 years old or 6 years old, but you are 9, then tough luck, you have to spend most of the day in a room with the other 9 year olds. No freedom of association. Second, that exam results and grading are seen to be very very important, even though actually future employers, or future customers if you are going to set up a business, are probably considerably less interested in your portfolio of exam results than the schools claim they will be. I was feeling quite resistant to this one, thinking "surely nowadays teachers aren't constantly grading children's work?" and then I remembered the SATS tests. So I guess it is still operational, though I'm certain that all teacher trainees nowadays read the stuff about how summative assessment is a demotivator (well, duh).

3. Indifference. Schools teach children to be indifferent to everything because of the constant interruptions of lesson change and bells ringing. We teach them that it is never worth while to spend the length of time on a task that the task requires, but instead that external factors like bells ringing are more important than finishing a train of thought.

4. emotional dependency. Teachers mostly operate through carrot andstick, punishment and rewards, however sugar coated. The way a child is treated is conditional on the way (s)he behaves in school. Teachers have huge power over a child's happiness - they can prevent a child from going to the loo, even. Children have to learn to keep the teacher happy in order to be treated kindly.

5. Intellectual dependency. School children don't often go into the building and get going on learning. They enter the classroom and a teacher tells them what to do. The teacher then judges whether or not they did it adequately. There is little space for self-motivation and self-criticism when someone else controls the timetable.

6. provisional self esteem. This is the one I am still struggling with. Gatto says that the self-respect of a school child depends on the judgement of the teacher, who tells people (usually implicitly, I imagine) what they are worth. I am thinking that this is just a summary of points 4 and 5.

7. no hiding place. In school, a child is under constant surveillance - and privacy is vital for creativity (have none of them read Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own?!). The surveillance continues at a distance, through homework - some of a child's "free" time at home is tied up with tasks for school.

THe vital thing, he says, is that schools are not about education at all, they are about schooling. And THIS is what schooling is - it teaches all these things so that society is kept filled with people to take up the most common professions (in the USA in the 1990s, it was Walmart sales clerk, McDonald's burger flipper and Burger King burger flipper, in that order) - professions which need people whose creativity and self worth has been squashed out of them. And also that schooling is a big job creation scheme for "educators". There is no way any educational reform led by educators would say "what we need is less school, less money, less hours of education..."

I could see this essay persuading people not to send their children to school.

Lest you think I am completely uncritical of Gatto, I now have to do a Mr Bennett: "Read on, Lizzy, read on".

THe government consultation

2009-01-26T13:36:00.004Z

I just submitted my response - thank you for the feedback on the draft! It was number 523.

And for my next trick, I intend to complain about the consultation process.

This is what I have in mind to complain about - additions and suggestions very welcome:

These are the areas I am ready to complain about, and would be delighted to add more to the list before I write my Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells letter.

1) The short time lapsed between the CME consultation and this one. There has scarcely been time for LAs and indeed members of the public to read and assimilate the new CME guidance let alone find out how it meshes in practical and legal terms with the previous 2007 EHE guidelines and we are asked, yet again, to enter into a consultation process in the area of EHE.

2) The lack of an open process of consultation. The DCSF should have made it publically known at the outset exactly what the purpose of this latest consultation is. They should be equally engaging with all stake holders (and a 6-question questionnaire for the public compared to a 60-question one for LAs is hardly even handed, plus the fact that many of the questions for the LAs are not based in law [can anyone link me to someone else's analysis of just what is so wrong with the LA questionnaire?]). The full mechanics of the consultation process should be openly available and they are not. What is the purpose of the 6-question questionnaire? Who will it be used by and to what purpose?

3) the answers to the 6-question questionnaire will have to be assessed qualitatively rather than quantitatively. In questions 1, 4 and 5, respondents are asked whether they think the "current system" is adequate to various purposes. If one takes "the current system" to mean "the current legal position", one might well answer "YES, the system is adequate, although application of that system by LAs is woefully inadequate". If one takes "the current system" to mean "the current procedures and practices of LAs with regard to EHE", one might, from exactly the same viewpoint, answer "NO, the current system is terribly inadequate because many LAs seem to have practices and procedures in place which are directly counter to the law". Someone with less confidence in their ability to double-guess what the drafter of the questionnaire had in mind when they used the ambiguous terminology will asnwer "don't know" or "no response". This means that all responses to these questions must be carefully analysed to establish what the respondent took the drafter to mean by "the current system" and any attempt to quantitatively analyse the data will be fatally flawed.

4) Why does the public EHER consultation last only four weeks (rather
than the standard 12)?

5) Why does the public EHER consultation only invite online responses, thusd disenfranchising any stakeholders without internet access?

6) Why has the code of practice been broken in terms of alerting stakeholders to the process and fully engaging them in it?

7) Why are LAs invited to respond to a different consultation from the
public? and how is the report going to ensure appropriate weight is given to
answers to both sets of questions?

8) why are the questions phrased in loaded ways whcih imply that duties and responsibilities for LAs are in place which are in fact not present in the current legal framework? (this applies both to the 6-question and 60-question versions of the questionnaire)

9) why is there an assurance in the LA questionnaire that responses will be treated confidentially? How is this in line with the freedom of information act, let alone principles of open government?

10) Is this an appropriate use of taxpayers' money?

The DCSF address is complaints@dfes.gsi.gov.uk but there is also
http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/bre/code/page46954.html.

A relevant contact is Martin Dannhauser on 020 7215 0824.

for the external complaints lot.

What else should one put in a complaint to the DCSF at this point? My point 3 is the one which has been interfering with my ability to sleep. They absolutely must not be allowed to get away with any sleight of hand as far as their ambiguous terminology goes.

The latest government consultation - draft response

2009-01-25T16:34:00.002Z

I am probably too angry to have made much sense here. Criticism very gratefully received.

1
Do you think the current system for safeguarding children who are educated at home is adequate? Please let us know why you think that.

Yes

By "system" I am assuming that you are referring to the law, rather than the organisational State apparatus which seeks to enforce it. The law is certainly adequate; the workings of the State apparatus are not (see below).

By "safeguarding" I assume that you are referring to the welfare of children educated at home. They are safeguarded by the same laws as every other child in the country.

If there are concerns about the welfare of a child, then members of the community are expected to raise those concerns with social services, who are legally obliged to investigate and act if necessary.

The law as it stands is perfectly robust enough. The implementation of that law is not. There are too many cases where the "system" (i.e. Childrens Services) has failed - that is, not that the law was not sufficiently robust to safeguard children, but that children known to be at risk of harm, children about whom many concerns had been raised were NOT protected by the State. Just to cite the very most obvious and high profile cases: Victoria Climbie, Baby P, the Doncaster case and the Eunice Spry case spring to mind. Not a failure of the law, but a failure of those charged with implementing it.

It is also vital to note that we are here talking about WELFARE not EDUCATION. There have been several attempts by the DCSF in recent years to conflate the question of welfare with the question of education. With respect, these two areas are separately provided for by law and, whatever the bureaucratic conveniences of LA Childrens Services, they either need to be dealt with separately, or the primary legislation needs to be changed, after proper consultation.

The defining feature of children educated at home, for the purpose of this somewhat loaded question is, I believe, that these are children who, at least in theory, might never be seen by anyone outside their immediate family and for whom, therefore, the layers of protection offered by teachers within schools (who might notice abuse) are not present. If you are going to go down this route, you must, in order to avoid being discriminatory, also include all children who are cared for entirely by their families rather than in state registered childcare - not only those who are not in the state registered childcare of schools (because of being home educated), but also those of pre-school age who are not in childcare at all. All children must be protected equally, and any proposal to increase the remit of Childrens Services with regard to routine inspection of Home Educated children must also be extended to all families who choose not to use nurseries or childminders for their pre=schoolers. And this would also have to go through a proper consultation process.

2. Do you think that home educated children are able to achieve the following five Every Child Matters outcomes? Please let us know why you think that.

2 a) Be healthy
2 b) Stay safe
2 c) Enjoy and achieve
2 d) Make a positive contribution
2 e) achieve economic well-being

I answer all of these questions together.

There is no reason why a home educated child would be any less able to achieve these Every Child Matters outcomes than any child who spends six hours a day in school. On the contrary, there are thousands of cases where children have a greatly increased chance of achieving those outcomes at home than at school. Let's turn the questions around: how likely is it that those five outcomes will be met by a child who is being severely bullied in school, or one whose SEN are not being adequately met within the State school system, or one who has fallen behind academically, or one whose interests and abilities are beyond the skills of their teachers to integrate into the classroom situations? These are precisely the categories of children whose parents are increasing voting with their feet, out of the schools which are failing to meet their needs and into Home Education. The potential of these children is not being met in schools, but it is at home.

The Every Child Matters agenda is a lovely aspiration. You should be grateful that so many parents are prepared to pick up the pieces within their private family lives when the State Agencies so signally fail to meet their self-imposed aspirations in this regard.

3
Do you think that Government and local authorities have an obligation to ensure that all children in this country are able to achieve the five outcomes? If you answered yes, how do you think Government should ensure this?.

NO

Do you need to be reminded of the legal status of the ECM five outcomes? You might want to return to the 2004 Childrens Act. The five outcomes are, as I said above, aspirations to which State Agencies should be working in their interactions with each other. They are not, and were not, ever intended to be a check list to be applied to individual children, or to the actions of either individual children or of a group of children within private life.

This, from the point of view of the State Agencies is a good thing since, if individual children were to be measured against the outcomes, a large number of children who spend either some or all of their time in the care of schools or other State agencies would be found to be failing in one or more of them and the State would then be vulnerable to prosection for its failure to provide the circumstances in which a particular child could be happy, healthy etc.

How, precisely, do you think the government is going to ensure that every child in the country is healthy? And if the government takes that responsibility upon itself, how will it defend itself against prosecution by the families of children with cancer, say, or leukemia? How will the government defend itself against prosecution by the families of severely disabled children who will never achieve independent economic well being?

4
Do you think there should be any changes made to the current system for supporting home educating families? If you answered yes, what should they be? If you answered no, why do you think that?

NO

Once again, I take "system" to refer to the current legal position, rather than to the implementation of those laws by State Agencies. The current legal position is perfectly adequate to support home education, although launching this consultation so soon after the 2007 Guidance for LAs and before many people have even had a chance to read the 2008 ECM Guidelines does mean that neither LAs nor private individuals have had much chance to see how the current legislation works in practice.

Should there be changes to the actions of the State Agencies? Undoubtedly, yes. Those interacting with Home Educators should be properly trained in the laws relating to Home Education, and should abide by them. They should be properly trained in the varied and equally valid styles of home education, from School-at-home models to entirely autonomous and child-led education. They should be properly trained in understanding the forms of evidence which families may provide to show that an education is taking place, and should make families aware of those forms of evidence rather than attempting to insist on home visits, curricula, samples of work etc (and the 2007 Guidance would be a good place for them to start). They should be sympathetic to Home Education and, indeed, local stakeholders - Home Educators of varying hues, from school-at-home to autonomous, should ALWAYS be involved in the training, appointment and annual review processes of LA staff with responsibilities relating to Home Education. It is time that they became accountable to those of us for whom they ostensibly work.

State Agencies should be finding ways of making life easier for home educators rather than harder. They should stop throwing time consuming consultations at us every few months and instead accept that they do not have the same control over the way we educate our children as they do over the way that children are educated in State schools. They should stop spreading slanderous and unsubstantiated slurs about the likelihood that children who are home educated are less likely to receive an adequate education and are more likely to be at risk of abuse than those in schools. They should make it much easier for children to access whatever parts of the State education system they choose, rather than the norm being 100% immersion. If children want to attend school part time, then this should be strongly supported by the State agencies. If HE children want to use a school as an exam centre then they should be able to do so without charge, just as any State educated child can.

5
Do you think there should be any changes made to the current system for monitoring home educating families? If you answered yes, what should they be? If you answered no, why do you think that?

No. The legal position with regard to monitoring home educating families was the subject of two recent extensive consultations.

Once again, there is no clear distinction in the question between educational monitoring and welfare monitoring, a distinction which needs to be carefully maintained.

EDUCATIONAL MONITORING

The present (and historical) position is that parents are legally responsible for ensuring that their children are educated AT SCHOOL OR OTHERWISE. The State is responsible for acting if there are good grounds for supposing that this education is not taking place.

When the existence of a home educating family comes to the attention of the State there are well established ways in which the family can respond to provide evidence that an education suitable to the age, aptitude, ability and any SEN of the child is taking place. But LAs currently have NO responsibility for routine monitoring of Home Educators.

There is a need to routinely monitor the education which takes place in schools because the State needs to be accountable to the tax payer for how it is spending tax payers money. But there is no need for the State to routinely monitor privately provided educational provision. If you intend to change the law in this regard you must also, in order to avoid being discriminatory, introduce routine State monitoring of all privately provided education, including that provided by independent schools.

WELFARE MONITORING
For the implied welfare agenda, see my answer to question 6, below.

IMPACT OF ROUTINE MONITORING
It is also important that the impact of routine monitoring be properly and compassionately considered before it is implemented. There are thousands of children who suffered various forms of abuse, bullying and destruction of their self-confidence within State schools. For those children, a visit by a State inspector with the power to send them back to the place in which they suffered so much can be enough to retrigger the trauma or at least interfere with their recovery. For children who have suffered from being academic failures, either with or without SEN, the prospect of a State inspector visiting can be enough to freeze their learning potential in fear once again. For various children on the Autistic Spectrum or with Aspergers syndrome or other SN, the presence of strangers in the home can be intensely distressing, with long term consequences. The government needs to consider carefully how much damage it would do to these vulnerable children - the very children whose experience of school was so traumatic that their families finally took the step of removing them from school (not something people undergo lightly - it is, to put it mildly, a counterculteral action) - if it insisted on them being routinely monitored, either for educational or welfare purposes.

6
Some people have expressed concern that home education could be used as a cover for child abuse, forced marriage, domestic servitude or other forms of child neglect. What do you think Government should do to ensure this does not happen?

Firstly, I think that the Government should ensure that such people are held to careful account for what they say. What precisely are the grounds for such concerns? Are there figures to back them up? Or is this simply people indulging in scaremongering conspiracy theory scenarios, designed to further different agendas?

What should the government do to ensure that Home Education is not used as a cover for abuse? They should use their existing legal powers to investigate when grounds for concern are brought to their attention. The failure in the Eunice Spry case (to name only the most obvious one) lay not with the existing law but in the State employees' failure to meet their professional and legal obligations. To minimise the likelihood of abused children falling through the cracks, the government should train more social workers, pay social workers better, make sure that Social Services is transparent and open so that their work is more widely respected and appreciated, and review policy and procedure within Social Services.

The government should also acknowledge, distressing as this is, that they are no more going to be able to eradicate potential abuse of all kinds within the Home Education community than within the wider community. Plenty of children attend school five days a week and are seen every day by State employed adults trained in spotting abuse but their abuse goes unnoticed. The State would be better spending its energy introducing fail safe procedures for child protection for (in order of priority) 1) "looked after" children 2) children within State custody or other State institutions 3) children in State schools. The constant stream of newspaper reports about child abuse perpetrated by State employees in foster care, schools and elsewhere does not inspire confidence in the ability of the State to clean up the parts of society for which it has direct responsibility, and suggests that this should be the policy priority rather than an attempt to extend the remit of the State into routine surveillance of the private lives of innocent families.

The government should also realise that, again, distressing as this is, evil people will find ways to work evil. If you introduce routine and regular welfare checks on home educated children in the hope of preventing cases where you fear that children may be forced into poverty, domestic servitude, prostitution or forced marriage, then those who wish to prey upon those children will simply find alternative ways to achieve their goals. They will send the child(ren) to live with a childless conspirator and report the child(ren) missing. They will set things up to look like school at home and start the domestic servitude after the inspector has left. They will simply book a plane ticket to Pakistan and take the child to be married without going through the motion of deregistering her from school first.

If you really want to prevent forced marriages then you need to deny passports to all girls of the relevant ethnic origin, religion and age. This would be discriminatory, and would result in an outcry. It would be just as discriminatory, offensive and outrageous as suggesting that all Home Educated children should be subjected to routine state surveillance in case their parents are abusive, although it would probably be considerably more effective.

This whole consultation document betrays a lack of appreciation for the law, a knee-jerk reaction to headline-grabbing scaremongering, a lack of appreciation for and understanding of the motivations, aspirations and culture of the minority community under attack (home educators), a covert attempt by LAs to increase their powers over the private lives of that minority group, and a shocking waste of public funds.

Defending ourselves from the State, yet again

2009-01-20T17:13:00.003Z

The UK government has announced YET ANOTHER inquiry into Elective Home Education.

This reminds me so strongly of those referendums where politicians keep asking the same question until they get the answer they wanted. Unfortunately for the government, I think they continue to underestimate the connectedness, articulateness and legal and procedural savvy of the home education community. And how important it is to us to protect our way of life.

We only have four weeks to respond.

To do list:

1) write to your MP to protest against the length of the consultation time, the waste of public money implied in having yet another consultation on this topic - what, not getting the right answer yet? - and perhaps also wondering gently why the Forced Marriage red herring (surely a welfare issue not an education one) and why the LAs have a quite different set of consultation questions to answer from the hoi polloi. There is a splendid form letter on the Facebook group here.

2) Join said facebook group and invite all your facebook friends to join it too. Time to get the word out.

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me -
and by then there was no one left to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

3) Think of anyone you know who might be able to spread the word. Newspaper or media journalists? It's really time for this story to run. I've emailed Sarah Ebner at the Times Schoolgate blog, so we'll see if she picks it up. At least two of my facebook friends are journos. I'm hoping one or other of these people will smell a story.

4) and then, well, respond, yet again, to a bunch of statists who have no respect for family life

Many a true word is spoken in jest

2008-12-13T19:00:00.002Z

The asonishing thing about this clip is quite how accurate a prediction it is of government bureacracy in NuLabour Britain. Don't know whether to laugh or cry. Or both. Only in this skit the prime minister is on the side of the angels.

"Do we really need 2000 civil servants to funnel money from A to B????"

Upsetting the normal hierarchies

2008-12-10T18:36:00.002Z

I've always rather admired the medieval practice of appointing a boy bishop for the Christmas season. Somewhat holds back the abuses of the powers-that-be when they know that for a month the lowliest of their underlings will be in charge. There's a modern take on it here

Although, actually, I'm not sure exactly how much power the medieval boy bishops really wielded - probably more symbolic than anything. Still, a symbol can be a useful reminder that the hierarchies of human society have an arbitrariness to them. Am wondering how it would be in a conventional family if the roles were reversed for a few weeks a year. There's definitely a Channel 5 reality TV show in that...

Computer games can be really engrossing

2008-11-28T18:22:00.001Z

video here

Well duh, of course they can. But does this make them bad for children?

home education among the safari animals

2008-11-13T13:25:00.002Z

This is an absolutely glorious story about a girl whose first decade was spent with her parents (wildlife photographers) in the wilds of Africa.

After this decidedly unconventional start, she passed her baccalaureate and is starting university - formal schooling essential from age 4? I think not...

random thoughts about UP and TCS

2008-10-31T09:32:00.003Z

In Alfie Kohn's UC parenting method, my understanding is that when children want to do something which challenges your notion of what is "normal" or "right", you have a really good think about whether it really is a problem or not. And if it is a problem, then you make it clear that while that thing is not ok to do, you still love them unconditionally. So the mode of discourse isn't the kind of rewards and punishment thing where parental approval and love is connected, either explicitly or implicitly, to the child's behaviour.

I may be confusing the matter somewhat because I am not a UP parent, but I see that whole authoritarian trump card as making the whole method just a touchier feelier version of the conventional discipline paradigm, which I don't buy into.

Me, I think that when our children want to do something that we initially think "NO!" to, the best options are

1) to persuade the child, verbally or non verbally, that they'd rather do the thing you had in mind

2) to re-examine that "NO!!!" and see whether it really needs to stand and, if not, to back down

3) to work with the child to find alternative possibilities that both they, and we, and whoever else is affected by the action, are happy with.

4) and if inspiration fails, either the child wins or the parent loses, or the parent wins and the child loses, and both those outcomes suck - there isn't anything to choose between them morally.

It sounds all so convoluted written down like this, when what I'm really talking about is something like

Mum: "D'you want an apple?"
Child: "no. Chocolate".
Mum: "Hmmm. We don't have any. Banana?"
Child: "oh ok". or maybe "let's go to the shop and get some chocolate"
Mum: "Hmmm. It's only 6am and the shops aren't open yet. Shall we make chocolate cake instead with cocoa powder in?"
Child: "oh yeah"

and everyone is happy. Covered in flour and cocoa powder but happy.

I also believe fervently that the more our children get accustomed to the fact that we are not trying to thwart them, that we are trying to help both them and us and the people we encounter to be happy in our interactions, the more they trust that on those occasions when we say "I'm sorry, I just can't get you the moon on a stick" that we really cannot alter the laws of physics for them, and that we understand their disappointment and that we will do our best to help them find other cool things on sticks, also that we aren't stopping them from reaching for the moon, it's just that we can't reachc it for them, and not because we don't think that's an "appropriate" thing to do, or it's just "not ok" or it's "bad" or "naughty" or "silly".

Although I do think that the UP method might have a lot of merit, I still think there's so much leeway for someone to say "ah well, I'm UP but X is absolutely out of the question" when X might well be something which needn't be out of the question necessarily, like going out of the house in pyjamas. There is an escape clause for us parents not to re-examine our entrenched theories. I think one of AK's examples was that children simply mustn't have cake before supper. To which the answer from some might well be "er.... why is that a self-evident given, Mr Alfie? Why can't supper be cake on certain occasions? Will the world stop spinning? Will the FTSE fall to a record low? Will our children's legs fall off?"

I totally agree that "children need to be able to engage with society in a way that is acceptable", and that's all part of the guidance that we should be offering (and do offer, of course) our children. I think to say to a very small child "oh no, we just don't do that, let's think of something better" is perfectly acceptable - it's not that the behaviour is wrong in the abstract necessarily, but in the current context it is going to make all sorts of people uncomfortable, so let's not do it. And doing it might well mean we don't get invited back or we don't feel comfortable coming to this place again. I also think it's important when we are complicit in stopping (or attempting to stop) a child do something because that's the rules of that particular place, to make it very clear where the rule is coming from. "That's not our china cabinet, and Aunty Mavis says no thankyou, please do something else". Or "the librarians say no thankyou to children ripping up all the books" or "Gran says please don't draw on the walls of her house, but we can draw with chalk on the walls outside if we want, or we can wait till we get home". Ownership is an important concept to be learning early.

It can all be done without being set boundaries, just the circumstances in which we find ourselves - exactly the same as the moon on a stick e.g. I gave before. And if the child is determined to go ahead and do it anyway, well then the parent has the choice of going with that and dealing with the fall out, or stopping the child and dealing with the fallout, or suggesting something everyone would prefer.

I think the big distinction between TCS and the UP method is more one of mental approach than necessarily of how it looks from the outside. This is kind of duh, but if a family are walking happily chatting along the street talking about what they see and not running into the road, as you pass by them, you have no idea whether the children are not running into the road because it has been drummed into them that running into the road Is Bad, or whether the parent just had to say once "no running into the road rodney!" or whether they did the whole science experiment bit around it, with watching cars go by and feeling the big wind, and seeing how big they are, and seeing how they totally mash up the coke can someone else dropped in the street, and being aware of how much they could hurt you. Or whether the children are about to step out idiotically into the path of a juggernaut because their parents have neglected to guide them in this matter. You just can't tell from the outside.

But there's a deep moral and philosophical difference between a parent who sees themself as a trusted advisor to their child, and one who sees themself as just a pal, and one who sees themself as needing to Teach Their Child Right Behaviour by force, threats and punishment if necessary, and one who sees their child as a little prince who can do no wrong etc etc. And I haven't even touched on the ways that I'm sure most people would conceptualise their roles with their children because silly stereotypes are much easier to categorise.

There also is a huge difference between the kinds of things one does in one's own home and the kinds of things one imposes on people outside the nuclear family, and children are very very quick to pick up the idea that different actions are appreciated in different places. In one place, the chalks are used only on a blackboard. In another place, they can be used on paving stones. In another, they can be used on external house walls or in the bath or internal house walls or wherever it might be. But when our children are very very keen to do something and it is only OUR judgement that that's not the right thing to do - noone else is involved and noone else's property is involved, then those are the moments to be thinking really carefully about the likelihood of us parents being wrong.

With very small children, I see a lot of the parental role as being to guide children in multi-person interactions so that everyone stays happy - running a lot of interference - and then as they get older, they get the confidence to manage more and more complex social interactions without an interpreter and assistant (as if they are learning a foreign language, which much social discourse is, of course, when you are 0 years old)

random thoughts about consentual living

2008-10-31T08:53:00.002Z

I believe that there are mutually agreeable solutions to family conflicts, which often involve everyone involved changing their minds about what outcomes they would like as whatever situation goes on. That good ideas for problem solving are good ideas whether they come from the adult or a child or through the actions of a pre-verbal child or from a completely anonymous stranger on an email list. That we are all fallible so that parents laying down the law might well be wrong, and in knowedge of that potential wrongness it's imperative to take our children's ideas into account just as much as our own.

And I also believe that such a non-coercive and optimistic family dynamic is in a positive feedback spiral - as families get more practice at consent-based living, they get better and better at it.

And I also believe that sometimes the people involved can't find a solution to a particular problem in real time and someone gets hurt. But everyone knows that it wasn't because anyone was being Wrong or Naughty necessarily, it's just that the people involved couldn't think fast enough that time. Which gives one the optimism for next time to a) [shrug] and b) have a think about non-coercive ways out of similar situations in the future.

I'd much rather expend my energies with my family on finding mutually agreeable ways to act than on laying down the law.

"My Child Refuses to Put Their Clothes on in the Morning, What Do I Do?"

IMO, every time one forces clothes onto a child who does not want them, it makes it harder next time. Maybe some people have children who easily cave under being forced to do something, but my experience of human interaction is that forcing someone to do something is a great way of ensuring that they don't cooperate well with you in the future. For sure, you win today's battle but at what cost to your future interactions?

There's also a problem with a parent saying "this is a boundary which simply must not be crossed. Children must wear clothes and the matter is not up for discussion". The problem is that for that parent, going out semi-dressed or not at all dressed until child is willing to put clothes on is a complete nono, but this opinion is not universally accepted by other adults, let alone necessarily by the person's children. For pretty much any moment where a particular parent says "but what if they want to do X [insert unspeakable taboo here]???" another parent somewhere will be able to say "oh yeah, we had that. We resolved it amicably by doing X, or by doing Y, or by going to the cake shop or whatever".

Every time a parent is saying "NO! That goes beyond the pale", they need to be aware that they could be wrong and their child could be right. Even if they plough on and force the child into snow suit and gloves against their will, they should have the humility to realise that they may be imposing this suffering out of their own entrenched theories about the world rather than because they are correct in their interpretation of what is possible. Even "child wants to walk on narrow wall over 8 foot drop onto concrete" could be possible with foresight and the right equipment. It might not be possible today, but it might be possible to come back later with the right kit (and yes, I am descended from mountaineers :-D)

My child wants to write on all the walls and windows

Might be quite important not to keep permanent markers in the house for a while then.

Pen on walls is not self-evidently wrong, although a lot of people are uncomfortable with it. It might be seen as a muralling opportunity, or the child's own choice about how to decorate certain areas of the shared living space, or as not really different from covering the walls higher up with children's art work and stuff.

But if parent is uncomfortable with the idea, for whatever reason, then there are highly attractive alternatives. Pen on windows and wipe off with a cloth is a great game. Another good one is going to one of those print and colour pages on a children's website, and do the colouring with felt tip on the computer screen, then wipe off with a damp cloth. Drawing on white bed sheets is also really fun. That's a biiiiiig canvas. And it all comes off in the wash. Colouring in a frozen screen on a DVD, or attempting to colour as it goes along is fun too, and cloths work equally well for cleaning the screen later. (heck, how often do many of us clean our screens or windows without such motivations?!)

Crayola washable pens are your friend :-)

I think the question at root of all this is whether you want your house to look like a civilised adult centred house or a child centred space. If the latter, then have at it with the drawing implements. If the former, then you need to work out carefully which aspects of the house you'd rather weren't written on, and how to make the ok bits really attractive for colouring, so that the chippendale furniture just isn't an issue in the "where shall we draw next?" stakes.

days of the week

2008-10-30T23:37:00.002Z

My friend says "can we come to play on Tuesday?"

I don't really want her to.

In scenario 1, I say "yes ok", and resent it a little.

In scenario 2, I say "no. That's impossible. We don't socialise on Tuesdays. You must come round on Thursday or not at all"

In scenario 3, I say "hmm. How about Thursday" She says "not so good for me." one of us says "hey how about wednesday?" the other says "oh wow, that would be even better because our mutual friend Mattie will be in town".

scenario 1 is the self-sacrificing parent, raising a child who is not learning about taking others needs into account.

scenario 2 is the authoritarian parent, sure that their way is right

Consent based family life is scenario 3. I want my life to be all about finding Wednesdays, and getting better and better at it.

most British 5 year olds are "failing"

2008-09-23T21:17:00.001Z

Well, either children are being desperately let down by parents, teachers, society in general and, most of all, themselves (linky: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7623095.stm )

or, possibly, these early years targets are misguided...

The Children Missing Education Consultation

2008-09-18T16:08:00.002Z

I have done my response. It is a right old muddle, but then the consultation itself is a right old muddle and so are the consultation questions, so I feel fully in unity with the style of the consultation as presented to me.

The consultation is here:

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations/conDetails.cfm?consultationId=1569

My response identifier was only 25, so the HE troops need to get their loins girded to respond! (I remember this from the last consultation, that many of us did last minute responses to it... let's hope that happens again this time).

Please feel free to take anything useful from my response and use it yourself.

The short version of the response, for those without the patience to read the whole darn document and respond to each question:

"This proposed guidance is discriminatory, internally contradictory and out of step with previous education-related legislation and guidance. It is unpublishable without extensive redrafting and consultation with stakeholders and lawyers".

1 Based on your experience of local authorities implementing this duty since it was introduced in 2007, does the guidance make clear the actions which local authorities are expected to take to help them comply with the duty?

NO

Before making any further comments, I should say that this guidance in its current form is so contradictory and muddled that it is hard to provide a coherent response to it.

It is not at all clear how LAs should comply with the Education Act 1996, s436A, and there seems to be a conflation of their duties under that section with their duties under S437, which adds to the confusion.

My local LA does not seem to be following the 2007 EHE guidelines at all. In this document: (deleted to maintain my incognito haha) we see several mentions of visits, either annually or more frequently, despite there being NO legal basis for this assumption; we also see undue emphasis on potential drawbacks of home education (the level of responsibility, the financial implications, possible social drawbacks).

There is an undercurrent in the draft guidance of suspicion of those who choose to discharge their legal responsibility to educate their children themselves rather than delegating it to a school.

2 Does the guidance make clear the role that implementation of this duty has in the wider programme of work led by local authorities to improve outcomes for children and young people, including promoting their safety and well-being?

NO

As the law stands, it is parents rather than LAs who are responsible for outcomes for children and young people. The safety and well-being of children and young people needs to be carefully disentangled in the guidance from their educational needs.

If LAs wish to take on responsibility for educational outcomes of children and young people, then of course the law can be changed to reflect that. Are they ready, however, to be held legally accountable for failures to provide education suitable to the age, ability and aptitude of every child in the country? The bill will be large.

There is nothing here about supporting and helping EHE families, simply suggestions of how they might be policed.

Why are HEed children being included in these "vulnerable" groups? It is massively offensive not only to home educating families, but also to so many minority communities! It might even border on discriminatory - you will want to have your lawyers check very very carefully before publishing such a list. (and you may recall that the references to traveller/gypsy/roma families were massively toned down before publication of the 2007 EHE guidelines)

3 Does the guidance accurately describe the range of circumstances that put children's safety at risk and puts them at risk of not receiving a suitable education?

No

Children are not at risk because they are home educated! It's clearly stated in the law (it's even in your draft at one point) that EHE is NOT a welfare issue. And yet, on every other page of the guidance, EHE so clearly IS being regarded as a welfare issue.

If you want to describe the range of circs which puts children at risk of not receiving a fulltime education suitable to their age, ability, aptitude and any SEN they may have (and please, what is this "suitable" which keeps cropping up? Who is defining "suitable"? You might have been able to come up with a more ambiguous term, but you would have had to work hard at it. Sticking to the law would be better), then you need to look at children in ALL educational settings: private schools, state schools, HE and alternative provision. Look for the failing schools, for the children being bullied, for the children whose SEN are not being adequately met. It is pretty offensive to those HEing families who have, with great financial and personal sacrifice, removed their children from state schools in which their safety was so clearly being put at risk and their educational needs so abjectly unmet, to start HEing, and now to discover that, in the eyes of the State, it is their children who are now particularly "vulnerable"!

EHE really does not belong in this list (a list which reflects the prejudices of the drafters) - surely State officials would be better concentrating on the needs of individual vulnerable children rather than resorting to this check box approach, particularly when several of those boxes are disriminatory.

4 Does the guidance show effectively what steps local authorities should take when children are living in difficult circumstances that put them at more risk of not receiving a suitable education?

No.

Firstly, how is being EHEed a "difficult circumstance"?! WHY are home educated children seen to be particularly vulnerable? Is there any reason to suppose that they are more at risk than schooled children of forced marriage or abuse? Why has forced marriage become integrated into this guidance? There are surely already powers in place to prevent forced marriages? What do they have to do with where children are educated? Similarly, Social Services already have powers to investigate suspected abuse and to take action to prevent it further occuring. What has suspected abuse to do with place of education?

Authorities get no clear guidance here about their statutory duties. If they follow this guidance, they will inevitably fall foul of the 2007 EHE guidlines. In fact, if they follow parts of this guidance they will, by definition, be contradicting other parts of it...

There is an invitation here to the LAs to practice high levels of intrusion into the private lives of lawfully EHEing families. Are we expected simply to surrender our right to privacy (European Convention on human rights Article 8) when there is NO reason for the State to believe that anything untoward is occuring in our homes except for the fact that we are educating our children ourselves rather than trusting the State to do it for us?

There is currently no duty or power for LAs to routinely monitor elective home educators. I am aware that many LA officials are unhappy about this. This guidance opens the door to abuses of their current powers - unless the intention is to change the law by an underhand route. But if changing the law is the intention - are LA officials aware of the responsibility they will hold if they become responsible (rather than the courts) for determining a child's educational needs? This would override the 1996 Education Act (section 9) and will inevitably make the State vulnerable to litigation when their assessment of a child's educational needs is mistaken.

5 What are the key challenges local authorities could face to implementing these guidelines effectively?

The fact that this guidance is in complete contradiction to the 2007 EHE guidelines, published after a full consultation process with over 900 responses is one massive problem.

The question of how ContactPoint works with CME, especially given that ContactPoint isn't even in operation yet.

The fact that this guidance apparently overrides the legal rights of parents to educate their children as they see fit, and indeed, overrides the legal responsibility of parents for ensuring that their children receive an education suitable to their age, ability, aptitude and any SEN, at school or otherwise.

6 Does the guidance make clear the duties and powers that local authorities have in relation to home educated children when parents are not providing them with a suitable education?

No

How can any authority follow both this guidance and the 2007 guidelines, which DID make clear the duties and powers of LAs (much to their chagrin, I understand).

Again, what is a "suitable" education? This guidance really should stick to the legally accepted terminology, however distasteful that is to the LA officials.

The guidance does not summarise clearly the law as it stands

7 Does the guidance contain all the 'signposts' to other relevant guidance; sources of support and advice for local authorities that will enable them to implement this duty effectively?

No

The guidance is not built on the current legislation and guidance, but is apparently an attempt to massively increase the duties and powers of LAs. The signposts to the 2007 EHE guidelines are particularly laughable since, as I have already mentioned, there is no way that an LA could be in harmony with both.

There are no signposts here to the experts in the area of EHE. The HE support and information organisations, for example.

There are also massive and under-considered data protection issues in this proposed bonanza of data sharing. They are going to need careful advice on that.

8 Beyond the publication of the guidance, what would be the most effective means of communicating the importance of implementing the new duty, and the processes that will help its implementation, to professionals working with children?

LA officials need training in EHE. They are mostly inexperienced and massively ignorant. As an absolute minimum, they should be expected to read the most recent research on UK-based EHE (Paula Rothermel, the recent Alan Thomas book "How Children Learn at Home", for example). They should be introduced to the different educational philosophies and learning styles of home educating families, and it should be absolutely impressed upon them that EHE is legally, educationally, socially and morally the equivalent of school-based education. They should approach their work with humility. Here, the experts and professionals are the families who home educate their children, and those experts and professionals should be treated with the respect they deserve, unless they give good reason to indicate that they are NOT educating their children.

The attention of LA officials should be particularly drawn to the research of Paula Rothermel which shows that educational outcomes for working class children are better at home than at school. There are discriminatory assumptions underlying so much of the proposed guidance which reflects the prejudices of LA staff.

In my opinion, the proposed guidance is completely unworkable in its current form, so that publication of the guidance would be a most ineffective means of communicating the importance of implementing any new duties. (when you say “new duties”, are we to understand that this does indeed constitute a change to the law?)

9 Have you any details of good practice that would be useful to include in the final version of the 'guidance'?

Yes Hey! A yes! Not entirely a negative response then!

LAs could try following the existing Education-related legislation, perhaps including the 2007 CME guidance and the non-statutory 2007 EHE guidelines? Perhaps the final version could summarise the law accurately rather than this hysterical conflating hodge-podge of educational and child-protection issues?

10 Did you find the draft guidance clear, unambiguous and easy to follow?

On the contrary, I found it contradictory, disorganised, ambiguous, discriminatory and bordering on ultra vires.

Truly, this needs to go back to the drawing board, and needs the eagle eye of a legal team before it goes anywhere near publication.

Full consultation with stakeholders is also essential before this goes to publication, and that means proper consultation with the ethnic minority groups, groups of immigrants, Home Education groups, religious minotiries, travellers, gypsy and roma communities and so on, who are seen as particularly "vulnerable". This certainly has not happened yet with the Home Education community.

11 a) We have developed standard data definitions at Appendix 1 of the guidance. These were developed in consultation with several local authorities. Do you agree with these definitions?

Disagree

Disciminatory against EHEed children. If the quality of education is to be part of the CME remit, then that must apply to all settings - state schools, private schools, EHE and alternative provision.

And where was the consultation with other stakeholders?

11 b) If not, what amendments would you suggest and why?

The CME team needs to have a field in its database which says

"place of education known/unknown".

If unknown, then they make enquiries about the location of the education.

If known, then the duty of the SME team is discharged.

Then the EHE team on the LA look at any children noted on the database as being educated at home, and follow the existing 2007 guidelines in any further action (which may well be none, if they have no reason to suspect that an education is not taking place)

Reluctant to read and write?

2008-09-02T16:17:00.003Z

I feel so sorry for children where the school is "worried" about their progress in reading and writing, and sends them home with extra work books and flash cards and lord knows what else for the summer holidays. So the pressure never drops off.

The parents feel under pressure because their 5/6/7/whatever year old is not at the same stage in literacy as the rest of the class. First assumption: We Have Done Something Wrong As Parents. Second assumption: There is Something Wrong With Our Child (whether that is disciplinary or developmental or what). I wish more would jump to a third assumption: Our Child is Fine. He/She is Just Not on Exactly The Same Tram Tracks as the National Average.

But that's a hard business, backing off, when schools are, by definition, places in which reading and writing are so central to the daily functioning of the institution from a really early stage.

Here's what I wrote somewhere else:

Reading and writing are the most glorious human tools. I mean, really. They make so much possible in terms of knowledge creation and storage. And we can access beautiful language and stories by people who aren't living in the same place and time as us.

But different children are ready to embrace that tool at different times. Some are ready at 4. Some are ready at 5 (they are the lucky ones, because that's when the UK schools are assuming they are up for it too) and some aren't ready till 7 or 8 or 10 or even later. Nothing to do with intelligence, just to do with being ready to begin using this particular tool of human communication.

We can force our children to learn to read and write before they are ready, we can even try to persuade them that it's a marvellous tool, but until they themselves are wanting to read a particular story THEMSELF or access a certain type of information INDEPENDENTLY, or communicate in writing to someone THEMSELF, then it's all just a rather pointless circus trick really, isn't it?

The old Unschooler's 5-step method of teaching a child to read is:

1. read to them
2. read to them
3. read to them
4. read to them
5. read to them

and it sounds like you're doing that. So I'd back off, take off the pressure, try to persuade school to take off the pressure, and let your child take it at their own pace. when she's ready, you won't see her for dust.

[climbs off soap box and puts it into backpack]

The Sandra Dodd page on reading begins: "You can't make her read or write. But you can make her not want to"

Don't let your child eat too much

2008-08-16T12:28:00.002Z

... or they'll get taken into care.

Times article here

I become more and more persuaded that the State in the UK sees itself as responsible for the well being of all the children within its borders, with parents only allowed to play a role in the children's upbringing as long as they do not step out of the State Approved line.

I'm not saying that serious childhood obesity is a good thing. But removing children from their families as the solution???

Linkage

2008-08-13T13:12:00.001Z

I just posted links to all sorts of UK Home Education groups/information sites/ campaigning organisations, because I am sick and tired of forgetting what is out there.

Are there others I should know about?

Moving away from being the constant presence

2008-08-12T16:17:00.002Z

This was a messageboard conversation. A mother of a 16 month old who co-sleeps and still breastfeeds a lot is feeling the classic attachment mama burnout.

Without judging whether she was right or wrong to get into the position of being burned-out AP mother, what advice would you give her? (I'm sure at least one of my regular commenters will have something to say!!!)

This is what I said so far (criticism welcome)

If you want a longer gap between day-time feeds, and less of an assumption that breastfeeding is the default I'm-bored activity, try pushing the envelope so you are away a little longer than 3-4 hours in the daytime but the child isn't distressed. Beginn to find more interesting things to do than breastfeeding a lot in the day time - it might take a lot of some favourite food to be more attractive than the breast (chocolate mini milks?! Lots of good calcium in there!)

And then for the night time, if you are wanting to escape from being the only parent who will do at night time, I would think first in terms of giving a huge feed about an hour before bed time, and then disappearing to a cafe around the corner with a book so that your Dh can help your child go to bed. I'd recommend him lying down with the baby, and reading lots of favourite stories and then singing lots and lots of lullabies, giving as many cuddles as needed. No pressure on the little one to fall asleep, but just Daddy being there to help. And if it goes wrong, you can be called home to help, and try it another day! It would be a lot of work for your Dh to start with, but needn't be distressing for your child.

Same with the mornings - do whatever normal feeding happens at night and then any morning when you wake before your child, you just slip away, leaving water and biscuits or something even nicer to eat, and Daddy snuggled next to the baby, and see how Daddy does. Are there any foods which your child would take in preference to milk? Chocolate buttons? (this is at breakfast time, after all, you can always clean their teeth afterwards) And something to help them get out of dozy dozy mode really fast (a favourite DVD on a portable DVD player, maybe?)

All of this requires a lot of creativity on your husband's part. It might be that daytime naps would be a better place for him to start learning how to help your child to sleep rather than the night - get together with your husband and brainstorm like mad about things which are really comforting which aren't your breasts.

And Attachment Mama burn-out is really really classic. The big thing is to learn how to absent yourself so the Daddy can learn how to do some comforting and soothing.

I think the I-am-the-only-parent-who-can-comfort trap is particularly dangerous for SAHMs with WOHDs, because the breasts become the be-all and end-all so easily. It's much easier for those of us whose circumstances have meant that other care givers (the father, or a grandmother, or whoever) have been an accepted part of the comfort-giving landscape from the start.

Does anyone have any other wisdom about ways in which other care-givers learned to offer comfort without the magic breasts (while I still think that breastfeeding is the best possible start for a child, and that it should continue as long as both the mother and child are happy, I do think it's important to develop those other comfort options, and it can be harder for the wearer of the magic breasts to think of those options, since the magic breasts are always there in times of stress)

Here we are - linkage about opting out of EYFS

2008-08-09T11:15:00.001Z

Spread the word among those with concerns...

nursery/preschool settings and childminders can apply for a temporary exemption (not sure what kind of timescale)

Parents can apply for an exemption on grounds of religious or philosophical conflict

the government site where you can get details

the EYFS lot, who are somewhat unimpressed

I think that concerned parents of children who are going to be affected by this need to start deluging Beverly Hughes and her Whitehall mandarins with requests for exemption...

An important Youtube from OpenEYE

2008-08-08T13:24:00.002Z

here

The only bit I didn't like was when they wheeled out wossname Sigman to tell us that TV, DVDs and computer use are harmful for small children and stop them being able to concentrate for extended periods of time (has he never watched small children playing video games?)

But it's a professionally made film.

People in the mainstream seem to be just now waking up to the threat of EYFS, which is the new compulsory curriculum for under-5s in the UK, which must be followed by all nurseries, childminders and pre-schools. Montessori, Steiner/Waldorf and other "alternative" pre-schools are completely up in arms about it, of course, and there is growing discontent about the compulsory nature of EYFS among childminders and early years practitioners (I think they call themselves) more widely.

By the age of 5, did you know, British children should be writing simple sentences using punctuation.

Sheesh.

Recent encounters with "potty training"

2008-08-08T10:03:00.002Z

I recently encountered two stories.

1. Child, aged almost 4 I think, is "potty trained" and has been out of nappies for 6 months. But pees themself, every single day, several times a day, and the mother was wanting to get ideas about getting the smell of old urine out of the child's nice shoes. Mother did not want to go back into nappies because the child's pre-school setting is not supportive of children of this age not being "potty trained"

2. Child, aged 4 and a bit, I think it was, is also "potty trained" and has been for a long time, but every day hides themself in a corner of the house/pre-school in order to do a poo in their underpants. Fine to use the toilet for peeing, but not for pooing. Mother wanted advice about stopping it happening.

My apologies if these stories are somewhat TMI. I was horrified to encounter them. What would either of these children have to do to persuade their parents and carers that they are not in fact ready to use the toilet? The competitive agenda which seems among some parents to begin at birth (oh, what did (s)he weigh? Our little Jimmy was 8.8lb!!!) moves on, in matters like elimination, to extreme coercion and presumably humiliation for the children who just aren't ready at the "average" age, or the "competitive mum's moment of thinking it's time" age. Or maybe these are parents who are overwhelmed by What Will People Think.

It seems to me that having pull-ups either full time or to put on when needing to pee/poo would be a much more respectful solution. And taking the whole process at the child's pace rather than rushing them, since these particular children clearly aren't doing brilliantly well with the rushed approach.

It also struck me as very interesting that when people say confidently "ah yes, little Billy was completely potty trained at 18 months", they might not mean by that what I think they mean. I always thought that "completely potty trained" meant that a child knew when they needed the toilet, and would take themselves off to the toilet/potty, and then would shout for loo paper assistance if necessary. But actually, it is becoming clear to me now that a mainstream "potty trained" child is simply one whose parents have removed their nappies. Some of them are indeed "completely potty trained" in my sense of the word, and others are absolutely not. *deep shuddering sigh*

"Shouldn't (s)he be weaned by now?"

2008-08-07T15:52:00.002Z

I hear of people having this conversation with mothers of nursing 3 month olds, let alone mothers of nursing three year olds.

I've recently worked out a potentially wonderful response which I am calling the Mona Lisa response.

When people say challenging things about breastfeeding, I think it is worth quietly continuing to breastfeed, and breathe calmly, and just feel the tension. Because the person challenging you is the one with issues, and they are trying to tranfer their anxieties to you. So take time just to feel their tension, not to act on it, but being aware and conscious and fully present in the moment. It's not your tension, it's just crackling around in the atmosphere of the room. You don't have to engage with it in any way.

And when they have finished their rant, smile, like the Mona Lisa, and say "ah well, horses for courses, it's what suits us for now" in the tone of voice which signals clearly that the conversation is now over.

A messagebaord post of which I am feeling proud

2008-07-12T16:33:00.001Z

I'm not sure it's ok to say

"HEing is fine but you are HEing for reason X, and I don't think X is a valid reason for HEing"

because in conversation one has to simplify, and reason X might just be the thing which is uppermost in one's mind at this precise moment

and

because reason X might just have been the thing which incensed the person in their conversation with grumpy old Life is Tough git

and

because you don't HAVE to have a "valid reason" to HE any more than you have to have a valid reason to send your child to school. They are equal before the law in the UK

No-one gets to decide about whether or not a family should or should not be home educating their children except for, ultimately, a court of law. Not me. Not you. Not even an LEA. They can put a case in court if they have good reason to believe that a particular family is failing to educate a child, but it's still up to the court to decide.

"Life is tough and children need to learn how to deal with it"

2008-07-11T17:49:00.002Z

I really really hate that sentiment. It's not even so much the "Life is tough" bit because, indeed, life does throw challenges at people and those challenges are sometimes difficult. It's the "Children need to learn" sentiment which has my hackles rising.

Because behind "they have to learn" is an implied "and it's going to hurt them" and somehow the speaker is just RELISHING the fact that they are going to suffer, and that suffering is Good For Them. Whenever I have encountered it, there is an edge to the tone of voice, an entire world view which believes that That Which Does Not Destroy Us Makes Us Stronger, and You Have To Suffer To Be Beautiful. The person saying it subscribes that well known magazine The School of Hard Knocks Weekly.

But I believe that they are wrong. People learn least well through suffering because the brain does not function as well under stress. The things people learn in stressful situations are not necessarily at all what those trying to teach them (parents, teachers, peers, whoever) are trying to teach.

Not all people who send their children to school are "Life is Tough and you have to learn to deal" people, and not all HEers are the opposite. Although the quote was brought to my attention by a HEer being criticised for her family's choice because "Life is Tough blah blah", I don't actually think the quote got anything particularly to do with school vs. HE at all.

The kind of person who says "You have to send your child to school because life is tough blah blah" is just as likely IMO to say "you have to leave your child to scream themself to sleep because life is tough blah blah" or "the rot set in when they stopped national service because life is tough blah blah" or whatever they happen to think you are being too "soft" with your child about. In the context of this original quote it happened to be school/HE. If the child in question was going to school, the criticism would be of helping the child make their sandwiches which was not teaching them that "Life is tough", or allowing them to wear a coat on a chilly day even if the clocks have already changed. The problem is with the Life is Tougher, not with whether anyone's children go to school or not.

By the way, I think that if school is horribly stressful for a child, they'll be better off out of it educationally and socially, long and short term, rather than self-harming or committing suicide or anorexic or waiting to see if the last lot of bruises heals before the next lot arrives or weeping every Sunday night as the new week begins.

Going all political - a letter to my MP

2008-07-06T20:15:00.003Z

Dear XXX,

I note that you have signed Early Day Motion 1886 about
Breastfeeding in Public.

While I applaud your support for mothers feeding their infants, I feel
very strongly that this proposed law does not go far enough.

As I am sure you know, the WHO recommends breastfeeding exclusively
until 6 months, and then mixed breastfeeding and solid foods until at
least two years old. What precisely is proposed in this Early Day
Motion for babies and small children over the 6 month limit?
Putting the age limit on tends to lend validity to the prurience with
which women's breasts being used for their naturally intended purpose
is viewed in this country. Women whose breastfeeding children are over
six months, or appear to be, will be at increased risk of being
challenged, bullied, and asked to leave public places, since the law,
if it passes, will clearly state that breastfeeding in public is only
alright up to this magic limit.

Before you contribute to the house of commons debate on this matter, I
would urge you to get in touch with breastfeeding women in your
constituency - La Leche League or NCT coffee mornings are the most
obvious place - and consult breastfeeding women about this. I believe
you will find that they would prefer no law to a law with an age limit,
and that they would prefer a law with no age limit to no law at all
[Parliament could always just lift the Scottish wording...]. Further,
just because weaning begins at 6 months doesn't mean that babies show
very much interest in solid food for a long time after that;
exclusively breastfed babies will often have absolutely NOTHING to do
with a bottle either of expressed breast milk or of formula; and few
mothers find it preferable to deny a screaming baby or child breastmilk
just because they are not safely behind closed doors.

As it stands, this early day motion really isn't going to do any
favours to the people for whose benefit it seems to have been drafted.

Yours sincerely,

Inspired by this petition http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/breastfedright/

Sharing (that old chestnut)

2008-06-07T20:05:00.001Z

Child screams if other children tries to play with her toys. Holds as many as she can.

I might actually try it the other way around. Pass her lots of toys if she wants toys. As many as she can hold. Make it a game. Balance one on her head. Make it so there are so many toys floating around that there is room for someone else to use one without her even noticing.

Having doubles of favourites can be a good ploy - not expensive things, just soft toys or cars or whatever ("there's one for you to play with and one for Freddie.")

Suggest that visitors bring toys with them, to act as collateral, or as things for them to play with if she'd prefer not to share hers.

Make sure that her favourite toys are put carefully out of sight when people are visiting - of course she can ask for them if she wants them, but it means the visitors don't even know those toys exist and avoids the conflict.

Make activities for visiting children which don't involve sharing against anyone's will. Bubbles. Paddling pool. Lots of balloons to blow up and bat around. A mattress or cushions to jump on.

Remember - the toys at your house are her toys. You don't lend books unless you feel like lending them. She shouldn't have to lend her toys. I think respecting our children's property is an important starting point, personally.

It will pass, but it is so so so much easier to talk about lending and the concept of X playing with a toy and then they'll give it back and in general the concept of ownership when her language is more developed - around 2.5 or 3 I guess. I'd be finding ways of managing things as they are at her developmental stage just now rather than trying to get sharing to be ok (it's like this magic word isn't it? the adults say "share share share" and the children hear "give away your toys, give away your toys". They just don't understand it as an ok thing at this age. We have to wait for them to be ready)

My parents always sent me to bed at 9pm, whether I liked it or not, and I turned out fine.

2008-06-04T15:30:00.002Z

I think this idea can be summarised as "Adults know better than children what is best for them"? That message is completely counter to TCS philosophy.

I assume instead that children will work out how best to live in society, with parents offering guidance where tolerated. What are the alternatives? That a child is incapable of learning how to interact successfully with the world around him unless someone forces them to? Or that a child must be forced to comply with societal norms because they won't see them as worth while in their own right. Child as stupid? Child as wrong headed? Child as insufficiently provided with information? (then provide the information for them to make their own reasoned decisions, don't keep making the decisions on their behalf!!)

One cannot assume that all children of certain ages need the same amount of sleep. Or even that the same child will always need the same amount of sleep - it's going to depend on what sort of day they've had. In fact, the only person with sufficient information to know that a child needs to go to sleep is that child themself, and the very best gift their parents can give them is to read their own cues of tiredness. And you don't do that by overriding those cues and sending someone to bed at your own parental convenience.

The lucky children have parents who have let them sleep whenever they want from a very young age. When tired, they lie down and go to sleep. Those parents who have forced bedtimes over the years have to step back at some point in order for their children to learn for themselves what their cues are. And parents can do that stepping back when their children leave home, perhaps to go to college. That's the classic where students stay up really late and miss classes, not because they don't want to be at the classes ,but because this, aged 19, is the first time in their entire life when the only thing telling them to go to bed is their own cues of tiredness, and they are having to learn to read those cues. The bedtime imposing parents have done a pretty rubbish preparation for life course for their children there, wouldn't you say?

The "you have to go to bed because you have to get up for school" argument doesn't wash. If one's own activities at home in the evening are much more interesting and engrossing than school, then it should be a question of finding ways not to have to go to school, or not to have to go to school full time, rather than curtailing those activities. It is quite common, I believe, for children of TCS families not to go to school - because so much learning on someone else's agenda is simply not effective or efficient. And there is no freedom of association in a school. If there are better things to do tonight than go to school tomorrow, then the problem to solve is how to get your parents to allow you to be home educated, not how to motivate yourself to get into bed and shut your eyes.

"I turned out fine" boils down to "I was coerced and it never did me any harm", which is the same in spirit, though of course not in seriousness, as "my father beat me with a belt strap every Friday night and I turned out ok". It's not a question of "how much can we coerce our children and still have them turn out ok?". It's a question of "what is the morally right way to interact with our children?". Respecting their wishes about when to go to bed, and taking them as seriously as our own, is a good starting point.

It all comes down to parental limits, with bed time as one of the classic boundaries not-to-be-pushed. But parental "limits" are parental blind spots, where there is no acknowledgement of parental fallibility, and are thus inimical to consentual family living.

How exciting

2008-05-28T11:47:00.002Z

One of the wisest women I know

Ask Nawny

The Independence Agenda

2008-05-27T09:10:00.000Z

The ideal: for children to take independence rather than to be pushed into it

#1 challenge: the aspects of life that the parent has baggage about with independence. For one parent it might be wanting child to be in own bed asap, for another it might be wanting child to start using toilet asap, for another it might be wanting to stop breastfeeding asap or send child to school asap etc etc. How to step back from the irrationality of one's response to a particular area of offspring dependence? Advice please.

#2 challenge: advice wanted for when an area in #1 correlates with an area that friends or relatives are concerned about. Not only is a parent anxious about child not doing X yet, but others are communicating their anxiety about it too. What to do? Easy to deflect such anxiety in others when it is in an area about which the parent is not anxious for independence asap themselves.

#3 challenge: how to balance making opportunities avaiable to a child versus pushing them into something before they are ready. If a child never sees a bike, they'll never know they might want to ride one. But if parent tries to push them onto a bike before they feel happy to try it, they'll put the process back by days/weeks/months. This is not about bicycles, they are a silly hypothetical. How to judge the difference between making something available and pressuring someone? How to find ways of making something (which has been a pressure point in the past) available without pressure?

Just another ordinary day

2008-04-05T16:24:00.002Z

I just read this short story

here

Go read - it's just a story about an ordinary school day...

Hairdressing without tantrums. Or at Tantrum. Or something.

2008-03-31T12:52:00.002Z

Nice video here

I just wish they hadn't called the shop "Tantrum" since the whole point, surely, is that this is a place one can take a child to have a haircut which they will really enjoy.

The revolving door of school exclusion

2008-03-27T14:15:00.002Z

this article caught my eye.

The solutions I see to this problem are certainly too out there for our society.

Stop having schools being compulsory (to all intents and purposes) to the majority of children.

Stop having state funded schools. If people want to run schools, and children want to attend them, let them reach their own arrangements as to the financial recompense and the code of behaviour to be accepted by all parties concerned.

what did you do today?

2008-02-06T13:56:00.000Z

I enjoy reading examples of things HE families do. Sometimes it is presented as "what subjects did we cover today?" (I'm thinking of a Mumsnet thread, where this is crossposted)

But there are a couple of things which bother me, so I thought I'd put them out there to be gunned down or mulled over.

There might be a danger in cataloguing the "subjects" our children cover that we buy into the mythology that activities have to be cataloguable in terms of school subjects to be worth doing, to be educational. For school-at-home HE, it's kind of easy and obvious: "well, we did 30 minutes of our reading scheme and then 30 minutes of maths worksheets, a bit of our history project and then off to the HE science group after lunch" (I am oversimplifying just to make the point).

But for autonomous home educators, the activities of our children may well not at all look like school subject-specific activities.

1) there is the danger of focusing on, emphasising, noticing the activities which fit the boxes. Of breathing a sigh of relief when a child does something which we can present to the in-laws as educational and within the realm of what they'll recognise as such. Of interacting with the expectations of wider schooled society on their terms rather than ours.

2) we don't know when our children are learning or in what form. Someone recently said something about their children spending all day playing computer games. And it's accepted generally in society that that would Not Be Educational. But there is a stage in a person's life when they first learn to use a mouse alone. In what universe is that not a major thing to have learned? There is a stage when they first learn to navigate icons to their favourite games and activities. Again, how are they not, gloriously, learning? And the learning continues; computers are just a medium like any other, which can be educational depending on what is going on inside someone's head.

It might be in the "down-time" computer games that our children learn the most in a day. Or in the building of a large lego structure. Or in who knows what - it needn't look like school, it needn't be good LEA-report fodder, and maybe we as parents will never know what our children learned from colouring in 47 pictures of the Teletubbies one day aged 2 (that's a hypothetical).

There's a wonderful HE video on Youtube called "Learning all the time" which portrays some of that - that you can even make a video of unschooled children doing their thing, and there are glimpses of all sorts of wondrous learning going on, but it still can't be grasped and quantified. Poor old OFSTED, maybe that's why they tried so hard to shut down Summerhill.

Does (s)he sleep through the night yet?

2008-01-29T17:56:00.000Z

I have always thought this a very odd question.

I do not sleep through the night myself. Sometimes I wake to go to the loo, or I wake because I am thirsty or need to blow my nose. Sometimes a particularly vivid dream will wake me, and I have to waken enough to realise it was only a dream before I can sleep again. I am aware that some people are deeply, log-like, unconscious right through the night, but most are not (just about any men over about the age of 50, for example, with their prostate-related need to pee)

So really the question is

"Does your child still disturb you when they wake in the night?", with the implication that being independent at night time is something to strive for as quickly as possible, with sleep training manuals to assist one in achieving the glorious goal of not being disturbed by one's offspring for a solid 11 hours every night.

And my response to this would be: at what times of day is it acceptable to ignore a child's needs and desires? If they want comfort or company or nourishment or help, is there a time after which a parent should be thinking "nope, that's your lot till 8 a.m."?

I would always help a child in the night if they needed help. In that help, I would be hoping gradually to give them the skills, knowledge and confidence to manage whatever the thing is - going to the loo, having a drink, whatever - on their own. But that would occur when they were ready, not when I suddenly decided on their first birthday that that's it, no more broken nights thank you. As I have said before, being a parent is a 24-hour job.

And just to put this in context. I have several recurring dreams, which I generally get if under stress for some reason. They might occur several times a year, or may disappear for two years at a time. When I awake from these dreams - which are frightening, involving precipices or poisonous snakes or similar - I continue to hallucinate. It can take up to an hour for the hallucinations to subside entirely, and it is very much helped if someone is with me, holding me, comforting me, turning the light on, reassuring me that I am not actually on the edge of a cliff.

When we refuse to help our children if they cry at night, how can we be sure that their dreams are not as vivid and terrifying as mine?

THe old "I don't home educate but I know exactly how it should be done" conversation

2008-01-12T17:27:00.001Z

A child I know who is HE educated is 10 and has the unformed writing of a 5
yr old, he is a bright boy,he simply doesn't have the practise because he hardly
ever writes!

How important is beautiful handwriting in adult life? How often do any of us write nowadays?

And if the answer is yes, it's important, then a person will want to learn when it is important.

My handwriting was terrible as a child, but one year I decided to enter a Post Office handwriting competition (back of a cereal packet or something) and learned calligraphy and GOT A CERTIFICATE. Nothing to do with school.

And if handwriting becomes important in adult life? You learn to write beautifully then.

He had finally learned to read, but he has missed hours of joy with all the
books that he has outgrown and missed because he couldn't access the code
earlier.He had to have someone read to him or a story tape which is not the
same.

I know children who can read but prefer to be read to, children who don't yet read and are exploring it, running their fingers along the words as a parent reads, children who can't yet read but tell themselves the story, word perfectly, because they know it so well.

I am gloriously happy when I see a child learn to read, but I am also weirdly sad - because they can never see a picture with caption through just their own eyes again, because they will never again truly appreciate the shape qua shape of an A or an H - because interpreting it as a signifier always intervenes. I'm not saying I would stop a child reading, but saying it has to be done fast and young for the best value childhood is an unsubstantiated assertion.

I am also much much happier when I see a late-reading HE child than a late-reading schooled one. The schooled one has been a failure since the age of 5. School is a literate culture. HE needn't be.

There is just so much of oral-culture value that we lose when we become literate aged 5, whether ready or not, on the conveyor belt of broiler eduation. (some children are ready at 5 or earlier. fine. But don't assume it's right for everyone)

Maths needs to be every day, unless you are mathematically gifted, purely
for the practise in dealing with numbers.

formal sit down maths? pffft. Numeracy is a way of life, and it needn't involve pens, pencils, paper, workbooks or lesson plans. I actually find it hard to believe that any parent gets through a whole day with their children without doing heaps of age-appropriate maths aloud or through gesture or by using objects. But legislating for it?

And if there's a day when noone happens to have mentioned anything to do with maths, that would be a disaster?!

IMO the 3rd most important thing to give a child ( after love and security)is a
good education.

I agree entirely. THat's why I have no intention of devolving my responsibility to educate my family onto overworked, underpaid teachers who are bullied and browbeaten by politicians and their cronies and who can never give a child the one-to-one personalised education their parent can.

Things need to be taught

Actually, you are wrong. Read some John Holt or other autonomous eduation literature and we'll talk again.

People are not buckets. Knowledge cannot be poured into them, however diligent the learner and however enthused and enthusing the pourer.

How is a child challenged?

define "challenge". a 2 year old learning to jump is challenged. They are frustrated. They might ask for help. they learn to jump, you don't teach them.

Skills like scan reading and note taking need to be taught.

Nonsense. The idea of teaching them in schools is relatively recent. anyone my age taught themself, when they needed the skills.

What do you do with the lazy child who doesn't want to make an effort?

Define "lazy".

And... if a child is in charge of their own mind, their own learning, their own life, then they make an effort at what matters to them (and however mcuh you try to force children to learn, they'll only remember and understand and retain that which is important to them at that time).

Are you thinking that these naughty HE children will just lie around all the time?

Or is this the protestant work ethic/the devil makes work for idle hands meme?

Life is hard-everyone has to do things they don't want to

You only have to do things you don't want to if you accept other people trying to force you to do things you don't want to.

Really - I'd much rather raise children who DON'T think it's normal and acceptable to do something they hate, or to do something just because an authority figure has told them to. I'd much rather raise children who will pursue their happiness whole heartedly and never settle for doing things which make them unhappy because "life is hard".

Yuck.I hate that philosophy. It is so Dementor.

the real world is tough

Oh - that's ok. I beat my children every day just to prepare them for when they get mugged. (er... not really...)

No. The real world is what you make it.

The whole point about HE is that you can sidestep that whole schooling culture, that whole Doing To thing of the educational establishment, you can essentially bypass your way to the intellectual freedom most people only gain in adulthood and, weirdly enough, children revel in it, are happy, interested, motivated, self-directed.

this is maybe coming across quite aggressive, but I'm sharing the frustration of other posters, that someone who has no idea what HE is about either practically or philosophically is quite so sure of how it should be done.

Mothers and ancient child birth memes

2008-01-12T16:35:00.001Z

I've been thinking about Candlemas. This is because the Mexican mother-in-law of a friend of mine made an epiphany cake, and I got the little plastic baby Jesus in my slice, and the forfeit is that I have to bake it in to my Candlemas cake. Ah yes, the Candlemas cake which I make every year (except not.)

Candlemas is of course the celebration of Mary taking Jesus to the Temple for her ritual cleansing after the impurifying act of childbirth. And it's when Simeon says the Nunc Dimittis, because now he's seen the Messiah he can die in peace. Oh, and Baby Jesus meets Baby John the Baptist. (Not that I'm buying into the narrative, but that's the story)

Anyway. So I was thinking about this ritual purifying of women after childbirth, 40 days after a son; 80 days after a daughter.

My immediate response was the knee jerk feminist "how dare They have decided that childbirth makes women impure?" but I've been thinking a bit more.

The period before the purifying was called the "gander" month, and the husband was responsible for everything domestic until the ritual purifying. It was a way of making sure women were able to rest and focus on bonding with the baby in the first 6 weeks.

They wouldn't be expected to go out in public - again, a way of ritualising the babymoon (and does anyone else get really distressed at seeing a tiny tiny baby still furled up but out in noisy surroundings?)

And then the practical things: postpartum bleeding takes about 6 weeks to stop, so it would be just about over when the purification ceremony would take place - and that post partum bleeding does take it out of you, and you don't want to be too far from home.

And 6 weeks is just about when milk supply calms down, so again, women stop being likely to spray milk all over everyone (I could hit people on the other side of the room if I wasn't careful in those first weeks). And they'll have got latch sorted.

There used to be the old adage about not having sex for 6 weeks after childbirth - is that still in operation? I can't remember - so it might also have been a way of getting men to leave their women alone for those first weeks.

And actually, there are still resonances. Statutory maternity leave in this country is 8 weeks. Even if you're only on the State maternity pay (200 pounds a week or something) you aren't allowed to go back to work until 8 weeks post partum, whether you want to or not. So there's an interesting secularisation of the same thing.

Yet again, it's one of those things which at first glance is patriarchal and despicable, but beneath the surface are subtle and woman-centred machinations.

Impatient

2008-01-02T15:43:00.000Z

When you got pregnant, did you sign a contract with the universe guaranteeing you unbroken nights' sleep when the child hit 6 months/1 year/ 3 weeks (delete as appropriate)?

If no, then stop considering leaving your poor child to scream alone and BE THE PARENT. It's a 24 hour job.

Thank you.

That is all.

on authority and fallibility

2007-12-24T18:03:00.000Z

Here were the poster's options when a child was ignoring, back-chatting or refusing to do what she told him to:

"1. Ignore even though this means you don't get what you want done.
2. Physically make him - by picking up etc, not by smacking.
3. Keep repeating until they eventually do do as you have asked."

All of these options assume that what the parent wants is what is going to happen and what should happen.

1. Is it possible that what the parent wants is simply wrong?

2. Is it possible that there is an alternative course of action for parent and child which everyone will prefer to their original preference and be genuinely happy with?

3. What do children learn from being ignored/physically made to do things/having someone repeating instructions at them ad nauseam? That Mum is boss, right? What is that authority based on and how long is it going to last? If the power struggles are bad with 6 year olds or 3 year olds, the teen years are going to be nuclear meltdown. We can't control our children for ever, and the sooner we establish a relationship of mutual respect and trust, the better.

Me, I'd always try to negotiate something everyone is happy with rather than setting myself up as the authority figure.stop asking them to do things they don't want to do.

Positive alternatives:

1) suggest things with actions not words (e.g. not "put your coat on!!" but just get the coat ready to put on if they want it). It's like those Calvin and Hobbes cartoons where what the parents say is just blah blah blah.

2) acknowlege that you might be wrong (maybe they just aren't cold)

3) be ready to save the day later (by tucking the coat in your rucksack).

4) think of something even better for everyone, the more playful the better

No need for conflict :-)

Astonishingly, these ideas were flamed only by the original poster, and two other commenters on the thread were supportive. That must be a less-mainstream mainstream message board...

contact point questions

2007-11-30T18:15:00.001Z

questions to those who aren't signing the petition:

Do you think your children have the same right to privacy as you do? (I am assuming that most of you are as furious as me at the State bureaucracy posting your bank details to gawd knows where)

Are you anxious about the potential for violent ex's to trace their ex-families through such a database? (I am assuming that security will not be fail safe. There are simply too many people who will have access to the database for it to be secure)

If this database was applied to adults (full name, DoB, address, work place, previous employment, salary, any contact with any state agencies, including health care, counselling, maybe arrests (whether or not charges were brought), social services), would you feel comfortable?

You may be happy with your 6 year old being monitored in this way. How do you think your 18-year old is going to feel? Any differently from a 19-year old who is supposedly beyond the age to be included? And yet, do you think the government will simply delete them from the database when they reach 19? How would you feel about being on such a government database as an adult?

ContactPoint database

2007-11-30T17:43:00.001Z

The internetz are full of British outrage about the loss of personal information in the child tax credit data loss scandal. how dare they? thunder all the Mumsnet and NetMums mums. The Conservative opposition is opening up a hiiiiuge lead in the opinion polls.

But the ContactPoint database, delayed rather than cancelled by the government in the light of the data loss scandal, isn't getting half the outrage. This petition still has less than a thousand signatures.

So many personal details will be on this database (name, DoB, address, school, GP, health visitor, any other professionals having contact with them)

I finally worked out why so few parents mind the prospect of their children having their information shared in this way. It is because people don't think of children as having a right to privacy. Those Netmums and Mumsnet sites are full of anecdotes about children, in extruciating personal detail, and that's why.

I would be interested to ask them, however: you may be happy with your 6 year old being monitored in this way. How is your 18-year old going to feel? And do you think the government will simply delete them from the database when they reach adulthood? How would you feel about being on a massive government database as an adult?

was school necessary or conducive to my learning?

2007-11-28T23:51:00.000Z

(from a post over at the frog pond)

not necessary.

one set of important things to me was languages, and i learned more by visiting friends in those countries and by being penpals between visits than I did in school. i finally have an understanding of grammar having taught myself Latin in adulthood (don't ask why. It was important to me as part of a creative project)

other important thing: maths. school maths sucked. I had private tuition with a friend of my parents, leading to a qualification beyond what school offered.

most important thing: music. school music was always a joke. I went to a private music centre on saturdays where i got both practical and theoretical training to a very high standard (i could have gone to a conservatoire at 18 if I'd chosen that route)

the sport i love(d) is/was swimming, and my school to 16 didn't even have a pool, so I had to flail around with hockey sticks rather than doing what i actually enjoyed. the closest i have got to a hockey stick since leaving school is playing ice hockey on frozen ponds using ice axes as sticks and a terry's chocolate orange as a puck. but i digress.

so... school was peripheral.

school friends - i am in good contact with two people from school. we have shared interests which have nothing to do with school. several of my closest childhood friends were not at school with me, including my very oldest friends who i have knwn since babyhood and was never at school with.

it was just such a waste of TIME, and the really exciting learning was happening elsewhere

How bad just normal can be

2007-11-17T18:45:00.000Z

On the bus today there were three mums with their children, all "nice middle class white well spoken". You get the picture - neat haircuts every one of them, and smart clothes.

Mums in the middle of the bus, chatting; two children at the front, the rest at the back.

Mum number 1 only engaged with her children when one told tales on another "Mum, Ben is standing up" "BEN!!!" (in warning tones, turns round and finds child is sitting down - tale bearer laughs a lot, and who can blame her. Mum is a fool).

Mum number 2 kept turning round and telling child (at other end of the bus) not to take things out of her bag because "they'll get left behind if we have to get off the bus in a hurry." Child said "I'm not taking them out, I've just opened the bag to look at them". Mum said "If they fall out, you aren't allowed to cry". Only other interaction of this mum and children was her telling them repeatedly not to use more than one crayon at a time, and then to put it away before getting the next one out. All at 90 decibels across acres of bus.

Mum number 3 was being horrible to her daughter. Daughter cried, mum didn't go to her. Daughter eventually went to mum. Daughter then headed back towards the back of the bus, bus started moving, mum caught daughter to sit her down - fair enough since the bus was lurching. The next exchange was weird. The mum kind of grimaced at daughter, daughter grimaced back, and then the mum gave her a right going over for looking at her in a disrespectful way. The child burst into floods of tears. It struck me as an interaction where the child is desperate for love and affection, but has no idea what it is she is supposed to be in order to earn it. And the parent is inconsistent and just plain unkind.

Mum number 4 (me) got off the bus many stops before she had intended, and waited for the next bus, musing on the glories of the teenage years these women have ahead of them, and on the likelihood of them being invited to play an active role as grandparents in due course.

learning all the time

2007-11-09T17:35:00.001Z

Has everyone seen this yet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ToSYQSrUVM&eurl=http://www.activeboard.com/forum.spark?forumID=98210&p=3&topicID=14175616

Public transport musings

2007-10-21T18:49:00.000Z

I was on a train recently, and the child in the seat in front was sitting with her aunt (the mother was sitting with the baby further up the carriage). The aunt started listening to her iPod and reading a book. Nothing for child to do - aged 3 or 4.

I started passing objects through the gap between the seats, and she started passing them back. When that palled, I passed over a sheet of stickers and a colouring book with a couple of pencils. The aunt looked really surprised. the child coloured and stuck happily for about 20 minutes. I couldn't understand why child was expected just to sit quietly for a long journey.

In such a situation, I often wouldn't make any contact with the adult at all, just invite the child to join in with our play, or offer little objects which are age appropriate, if I have any. I can't bear the way people expect their children to go into neutral in those in-betweeny times on buses and trains.

For myself, and for any children travelling with me, I always have activities in my bag. If I am taking children for several hours in a constricted public space, it is my responsibility to make that a pleasant experience for my own family and for us not to make everyone around us unhappy, as far as possible.

What about the mothers who try to stop their bored children kicking off their shoes or making finger drawings on misted windows? I usually try to exchange conspiratorial glances with the beleagured child - I hate the way that all adults are assumed to be part of the adult conspiracy by default. But I find it very difficult to find cheerful liberating things to say to the mother - mostly leading by example, I guess, in trying to keep travelling children occupied and happy with whatever objects are available. I love seeing a family on one of those 4-seater tables on a train with all their books and colouring and games and snacks spread across the surface, obviously settled in all the way to Glasgow.

Happy Endings

2007-10-06T17:23:00.000Z

Me I much prefer a story with a happy ending. I'll take As You Like It over Hamlet any day of the week.

I have always preferred children's books, into adult life, and a considerable part of the reason is that they (together with the best heroic fantasy) have a moral clarity. Good and evil, while often complex, can be differentiated, and good wins in the end. Actually, I think this is, in the end, true to life. In the end, evil fails on its own terms.

I knew Harry Potter 7 would come out right - because I trusted that JK Rowling would not have forgotten her target demographic demands closure and a morally satisfactory outcome.

But mounting a campaign http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/content/News/story.aspx?brand=ENOnline&category=News&tBrand=enonline&tCategory=news&itemid=NOED04%20Oct%202007%2011%3A05%3A44%3A830 against unhappy endings? I really don't think that's necessary. Make it clear to children that the endings aren't happy (or even make it clear it's not a very good book - at least, I hated the first and haven't bothered with any more) but BURNING BAD BOOKS? wtf?

The consequences of being openly judgmental

2007-09-26T19:10:00.000Z

Because when people feel criticised they won’t hear the good ideas anyway.

Most people don’t like to be criticised, especially if they feel an element of guilt about their actions.

I’ve been on the receiving end of it. One shuts down, emotionally and mentally, and just tries to get the criticiser to shut up, however right they are.

There is an art in offering advice/criticism/suggestions - and it often involves saying nothing at all when one judges that it will not be well received. If people want one's advice, they'll ask for it (and even then the best response might be to say nothing at all)

So many people mistreat their children. They complain about them, they send them to school against their wills. They leave them crying in the night. They complain that they cannot sufficiently control them, as if they were radio cars, not autonomous humans.

But what they want to hear is not “apologise, pick yourself up, strive to do better by yourself and by your child.” Instead they want to hear “you’re doing your best, girl. It’s a really hard thing being a Mum. You have to be cruel to be kind. They’ve got to learn. They all go through it. (S)he'll be fine soon, tears all forgotten”

There’s a part of me screaming “those children have to have someone advocating for them” but maybe it does more harm than good – maybe it sets the mothers on a self-defensive path of following the consistency principle. It certainly gets one seriously flamed. And being flamed is good for getting the adrenilin flowing, but less good at stomach-ulcer-avoidance.

I wish I’d read this:

“To so many parents, stopping a child crying by cuddling it will spoil them and
no research will persuade them otherwise unless they repeatedly see
real-life examples. I wish I could package up all that I’ve been lucky
enough to learn and experience and hand it to other parents, but I
can’t. All parents have to make their journey themselves and I have
to just hope that the small exposure they may have to how we do things, and
to how our children turn out, might add to any other exposure they have to
similar families and might, just might, give them the confidence to trust their
children.”

before setting off on yet another doomed crusade on the mainstream boards. It’s right. Small steps, Ellie, small steps. Just live your life, and treat the children you meet yourself as fully human, and let the ripples spread in their own time.

Better to look to learn rather than to convince or teach. Whether others are doing the same or not is their responsibility. If there are spaces where one learns little of value, avoid them. There is an arrogance in going to those of different beliefs and values and saying "here, try mine, they are much better". One will always be convinced of the moral superiority of one's own position, or one wouldn't hold that position, but that does not mean that it is infallibly better, and nor does it mean that explaining it to someone else is going to be helpful to them. Much better to find spaces in which one can challenge and refine one's own ideas than to attempt to teach others.

'Sfunny, I've taken to the idea of unschooling as the ideal for children like a duck to water, but have had this big blind spot in my dealings with other adults...