And all that My Children Aren't Hidden Stuff?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...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

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...

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

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'

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...

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

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

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...

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

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

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

... 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

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)