Monday, January 25, 2010
make that, two bishops!!!
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!
[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
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
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
My response to the commons select committee report.
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.
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.
Friday, December 11, 2009
select committee report
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."
"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."
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
What might autonomous education look like?
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
orwellian double speak
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.
"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
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
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
Saturday, October 17, 2009
home educated, not hidden
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."
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."
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Get your responses in, everyone!
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.
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.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Children’s Rights Ignored By Select Committee - HEYC Press Release
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/
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/
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
select committe witnesses next week
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.
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
Draft answers. Feel free to extract bits you like for your own response. Criticism welcome.
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
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).
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.
No. THere should be no register.
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)
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.
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.
No. The current laws are adequate if LAs act within them. The DCSF should instead transform the 2007 Guidelines into statutory guidance.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
I think I want to work in a critique of the background...
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)
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?
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?
you are conflating educational provision with welfare. This is reprehensible.
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.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
keeping the pressure up
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,
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,
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Ed Balls on Mumsnet
"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
Can we use this somehow?
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_live_events/820977?msgid=16729623
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Unfooding
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
every cloud has a silver lining
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.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
grist to the mill
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!
Children, Schools and Families Committee
Select Committee have announced an
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 :-)
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 :-)
Saturday, July 18, 2009
know your enemy - dealing with the LA
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.
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.
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