The Guardian Gets a Fail for its Reporting of the Select Committee Hearing on Home Education

If you should still happen to need another good reason why you should abandon even the broadsheets in favour of the evolving, critically-evaluated information that spills from the internet, you need go no further than this extraordinarily ill-informed, misleading and in places pure darn stupid piece in the Guardian.

Ill-informed because there is absolutely NO WAY that there is ANY SUBSTANTIAL evidence for the statement that HE children are four times more likely as young adults to be out of work, education or training than those who go to school. This figure is a NONSENSE. The fact that someone (ie: Graham Badman) has said it, and even that MPs have been told it (in the Select Committee meeting yesterday), does not make it a reality and it wouldn't take much research to realise that the statement just doesn't stand up. One's suspicions should be sufficiently aroused when one reads that two LAs report that 100% of previously HE children are NEETs! (I am yet to have visited such a place. Perhaps there is an island off the coast of England that I have somehow not heard about yet.)

The fact is that home educators have no duty to tell LAs or the Connexions service what their children are doing post 16, so half the time, the LA simply doesn't know. Teens often carry on home educating past their 16th birthdays and yet LAs have no idea what is going on and can merrily class them as NEETs in a bid to get themselves the power they think they want to invade the homes of the innocent.

Pure darn stupid because 270 is not 2.2% of 1,220! If Jessica Shepherd had actually got the figures as quoted by Mr Badman, perhaps she might have questioned them herself!

Ill-informed, because there is HUGE debate over the accuracy of the 0.4% figure, as indeed one of the MPs on the committee pointed out. This figure should not be quoted as fact and this because Mr Badman doesn't have a clue how big the HE population is, he therefore cannot say that the rate of abuse in it is twice as high as the rest of the population. His contention is that there will be an equivalent amount of undiscovered abuse in the rest of the HE population. My contention (based on considerable experience of mixing with HEors, known and unknown, gregarious and otherwise), is that the numbers of undiscovered abuse cases in the remaining population of HEors will be vanishingly small, since HEors are SO conspicuous that if there is any worry about them at all, (and often-times even when there is absolutely no concern about them, but that someone doesn't realise that HE is a real option), these families get referred to social services. HEors must be some of the most over-referred group of families in the country. Indeed, we attend an HE group where my family is the ONLY ONE which hasn't been UTTERLY SPURIOUSLY referred to SS at some stage or other!

Misleading because even if it is really true that HE children are twice as likely to be known by social services, it is still, nonetheless, a tiny proportion of the whole population of HEors. We are talking here about justifying huge amounts of intervention and invasion of privacy of completely innocent and hard-working families on the justification of there being 0.4% of children at risk. Now tell me, is that really a proper use for your hard-earned tax money?

Now here's an idea. Why not actually concentrate on dealing with the problems with children known to be at risk, staff you social work offices properly, retain experienced staff who know what they are doing, and stop interferring with tens of thousands of others who would be far better off without this intervention?

My letter to the Guardian's education editor is here.

Other bloggers on the same or closely related subjects:

Renegade Parent

The Adam Smith Institute

Critique of Badman's Testimony

...to the Select Committee yesterday to follow shortly.

There is much to say, but it will be easier to say it once the transcript is available.

Select Committee Seating Plan 12th October

numbering the chairs from the left:

1. Blank
2. Blank
3. Mr Graham Stuart MP Beverley & Holderness Conservative
4. Blank
5. Mr Edward Timpson MP Crewe and Nantwich Conservative
6. Mrs Annette Brooke MP Mid Dorset and Poole North Liberal Democrats
7. Mr Paul Holmes MP Chesterfield Liberal Democrats
8. Mr Barry Sheerman MP (Chairman) Huddersfield Labour
9. Official
10. Mr David Chaytor MP Bury North Labour
11. Helen Southworth MP Warrington South Labour
12. Lynda Waltho MP Stourbridge Labour
13. Mr Andrew Pelling MP Croydon Central Independent
14. Blank

Committee members not present:

Mr Douglas Carswell MP Harwich Conservative
Mr Andy Slaughter MP Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush Labour
Derek Twigg MP Halton Labour
Mrs Sharon Hodgson MP Gateshead East and Washington West Labour
Fiona Mactaggart MP Slough Labour

A Brief Summary of Some of the Major Flaws in Badman's Statistics

Simple factual errors, eg: incorrect reporting of the percentage of NEETs in the national population wrong. Badman said 5%. It is actually 10.3%.

Since all LAs do not record their data in the same way, it is extremely difficult to aggregate the data reliably. With such hasty data aggregation, Mr Badman could not possibly know if he was lumping different things together.

eg: in one local authority, 100% of runaways were recorded as HE! Of course, this could could be just one child. We have no way of knowing from this data, as Badman gives percentages of runaways who are HE, not numbers for individual LAs.

Also there would be a difference in a figure like this, and the NEET figures too, if the child concerned had always been HE, or if they had recently been taken out of school because of bad experiences there. After all, a high percentage of HE children will have suffered badly from bullying.

The numbers of home educated children with Child Protection Plans (CPPs) are tiny. With such small numbers, any change is going to look much more significant than it really is; if an LA has one HE child with a CPP one year, and two children the next year, their frequency of CPPs has doubled.

The histograms Badman sets out in the annexes in his letter to the Select Committee display a wide range of CPP rates in different LAs - several have none for HE children; some have several. We don't know if the high numbers are because one authority has CPPs for each of the children in several large families, or whether they have a policy of setting up CPPs at a lower threshold than other authorities.

Watch the Select Committee Live Today...Monday

here, from 3.45 pm.

UPDATE: HE section starts at 16.45 hours.

Wednesday's procedings will be viewable here.

News Update from the DCSF

It's great news in some ways. I don't feel the need to blog nearly so much nowadays, as everyone else is doing such an excellent job of it. I just have to provide the links!

Long term political HE blogger Gill is still going for it in superb fashion as ever. She provides the arguments as well as the links on the flurry of activity from the DCSF over the last few days.

The DCSF should consult its own Legal Department

...since yesterday's press release on their full reaction to the Badman report only confirms one's suspicion that the DCSF has not given due consideration to the full consequences of their suggestions. (Full response available in through link to Graham Badman's letter, near the bottom here.)

By far the worst feature of this ill-conceived diktat is the announcement of yet another review into the meaning of a "suitable" and "efficient" home education.

From the DCSF press release:

"The response also outlines that more work will be done to clarify what is ‘suitable and effective’ home education to support new guidance to local authorities on supporting and monitoring home educators. This will emphasise how local authorities can work with home educating parents to make sure that the needs of all children, including those with special educational needs, can be met in the home environment where appropriate. The guidance will take account of findings from the Lamb Inquiry, to be published later this year."

which not only potentially signals the end of the suitable education of thousands of autonomously educated children in this country, but also means that the state will transparently be responsible for failing hundreds of thousands of children in this country, since all education would then be state-determined and mandated, and since suitable educational provision is surely only that which results in suitable educational attainment, the state will be stuffed, STUFFED to high heaven, when parents whose children leave school functionally illiterate and innumerate rightly feel that they have been STUFFED.

But home educators are not impressed for plenty of other reasons too. We do not want to sacrifice educational freedom for the tidbits on offer, which are highly likely not to materialise locally whatever the government says, or which, eg: in the case of better exam access, could conceivably be supplied without any strings attached whatsoever.

It is all so desperately sad. The DCSF appear to have disengaged both ears and brains.

UPDATE: Don't suppose Ed and his mates predicted this sort of headline either, lol.

It is time to move.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8299694.stm

Why Home Educators Don't Want Registration

Home educator, Rosemary explains some of the most intimate reasons extremely vividly:

"Why don’t home educator’s want registration?

Home educators liken local authorities to the mother-in-laws from hell!

When babies are born, parents have to learn how to parent. Every baby is different. Some babies hardly ever cry, others cry all the time. Parents have to learn when crying signals hunger, a messy nappy, pain, or loneliness and they have to reconcile the baby’s needs with their own beliefs about parenting. For instance, do you leave the baby to cry it out, or do you pick the baby up? These are things parents have to work out for themselves, and sometimes they find that what they thought would work, doesn’t, and they change their ideas. Other times, they find that what worked for the first baby doesn’t for the second. Sometimes the outer circumstances of their lives have a large influence on the sort of parenting a baby receives -- a stay-at-home parent versus a working one, one parent or two. As a society, we trust parents to work these things out, and we believe that so long as the children are loved and their basic needs are cared for, then there is no need to interfere. We trust parents to ask for help when necessary -- for instance, visiting the doctor when the baby gets sick.

Now add a mother-in-law into the mix. One who was never convinced you were good enough to marry her child. One who has her own firm ideas on how children should be cared for and with enough time on her hands to come and tell you how you should be doing it. One who thinks this is being supportive.

You can imagine how irritating this would be to a parent who is confident about their choices. On the other hand, a parent who is not finding baby care easy and is still sorting out what works may lose confidence in themselves and their ability to cope. This parent may end up doing things mother-in-law’s way, and keep doing them that way even if they’re unsatisfactory simply because the parent doesn’t have faith in themselves. Short term, this can damage the bond between parent and child. Long term, parents with no confidence in their parenting choices tend to be inconsistent and wishy-washy.

When a parent withdraws a child from school to begin home education, it’s like having a new baby. The parent has ideas about what the child should be learning and what form the learning will take. These ideas may differ depending on whether the parent has has had time to read some books on home educating and/or talked with people who are already home educating. Some children are very convenient and home education works like clockwork from the start. Others have developmental difficulties or emotional traumas to deal with. Some just plain refuse to sit at the kitchen table doing workbooks. At this point, parents often need to re-adjust their ideas, and take time to sort out what works for their children and their family circumstances. This can take several months, or longer.

The local authority is the mother-in-law of home educating families. While some local authority advisors are genuinely supportive and help parents to have confidence in their abilities to home educate, many more are like the mother-in-law described above. They have not read any of the literature or research studies on home education or how children learn. They have no picture of education other than the school model; they may have a fixed idea of what children need to learn and when. They may not really believe home education is a viable option or that the parent is qualified to educate their child. Some are not even cognizant of the laws relating to home education; others ignore those laws, thinking they know better. At best, these local authority officers are an irritation, at worst they can and do create very stressful situations and bully and undermine the confidence of parents.

Parents do have questions. When my children were babies, I would canvas everyone I knew about how they handled whatever my problem was with my baby. Sooner or later someone would give me an idea, or I would use a combination of ideas that I judged would work, or I would dream up something new. I was not obliged to follow my mother-in-law’s or anyone else’s advice. I could come up with a solution that worked for me. I did the same thing when starting home education. I talked to other parents who were experienced in home educating, I read some books, and together with my children, worked out a solution that the whole family is happy with.

Current laws allow the family the autonomy necessary to create a successful home educating environment, one suitable to the child’s age, ability and aptitude and any special educational needs he/she might have. Local authorities have the power to intervene if it appears this is not happening, and parents have a right to argue their case in court.

Proposals in the Badman Review of Home Education will give local authorities the power to act like the mother-in-law from hell. The mother-in-law who has the power to say “do it my way, or else”. The mother-in-law who has your spouse saying, “we’d better do it her way and keep her happy”. The mother-in-law who undermines your authority with your children. The mother-in-law you have to dress your children up for and coach them in how to behave hoping that they pass muster. The mother-in-law there’s no escape from except emigration.

Except these mother-in-laws will be total strangers. And you may have several ‘mother-in-laws’ while home educating, all with different prejudices. What was acceptable to one may not be to the next.

The Badman proposals are intended to keep the local authorities (mother-in-laws) happy. The proposals will not be beneficial for children, parents, or quality of family life. "

A Draft Consultation Response

Sigh, now the next thing, the consultation response, due in 19th October.

Mind you, it doesn't take long since we have already reiterated these arguments till we're blue in the face. Constant repetition of the same message is one of the things they tell you to do in assertiveness training classes. Let's hope it works. Perhaps EVENTUALLY, something of what we say will be understood.

Oh and rest assured all ye who baulk at the length of the answer to the first question. I manage to answer all the rest far more succinctly.

=============================

From the Consultation documentation:

The Proposals:

2.1 Register of home educated children

The review recommends that DCSF establishes a national registration scheme, locally administered, for all children of statutory school age who are, or become, electively home educated. The scheme described in the review is one where education and safeguarding issues are both considered as part of the registration process, with an initial statement of educational intent forming the basis for subsequent educational monitoring arrangements. The review response acknowledges that ultimately the scheme would need to be underpinned by guidance and training for local authority staff in order to work effectively. We accept that it will take time to put the full scheme in place particularly where more work is needed to provide more comprehensive guidance on the practical interpretation of ‘efficient' and ‘suitable'.

2.2

Registration would be granted automatically unless there were safeguarding concerns (see next section): if at any time a LA became dissatisfied with the quality of home education provided to a child, it would - as now - serve a school attendance order.

2.3

We propose to legislate now for registration and monitoring arrangements that will focus on safeguarding but should also improve the quality of education. They will have the following features:

• Every home educated child of compulsory school age must be registered with the local authority in which the child is resident;
• Regulations will specify the information that parents must provide which is likely to be child's name, date of birth, address, the same information for adults with parental responsibility; a statement of approach to education, and the location where education is conducted if not the home;
• Scope to extend the scheme to 18 in future;
• Regulations will specify how registration should take place;
• Any changes to registration details should be notified immediately;
• Registration must be renewed annually;
• It will be a criminal offence to fail to register or to provide inadequate or false information;
• Pupils should stay on the school roll for 20 days after a notification to home educate;
• The school must provide the local authority with a record of achievement to date and predicted future attainment;
• DCSF will take powers to issue statutory guidance relating to registration and monitoring.

=============================
Consultation Questions

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?

Agree
Disagree *
Not sure
No Response

Comments: The short answer is "no".

1.1 No, because in a huge majority of home educating families, there is no conflict between these rights. Setting out to screen the entire population of home educators on the basis that a few families fail to balance these rights would actually result in the infringement of far more rights of the child than these proposals would protect. (See section 1.3 for further details.)

1.2 Further, implementation of the registration and monitoring proposals would also be a disproportionate use of the law (see section 1.7) and a waste of money (see section 1.9). It would damage families by intruding on their privacy and by removing their autonomy. It would mean that the law at s7 of the Education Act 1996 (1) would be applied inconsistently, so that home educators would be required to reach a higher standard in law than schooling families (see section 1.4) . It would over-ride principles of good practice and intent as laid out in the Children's Plan, whereby the government requires that agencies work in partnership with parents (see section 2.4) and it would damage the unwritten constitution (see section 1.8) and premises upon which education law in England has been constructed (sections 1.5 and 1.6 below).

1.3 With regard to the issue of children's rights, Graham Badman made the case for intruding upon all families on the basis of a child's right to be heard. He wrote at paragraph 3.3:

"The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) gives children and young people over forty substantive rights which include the right to express their views freely, the right to be heard in any legal or administrative matters that affect them and the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas. Article 12 makes clear the responsibility of signatories to give children a voice:

“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.”

Yet under the current legislation and guidance, local authorities have no right of access to the child to determine or ascertain such views."

However, in setting out to strike a balance between the above rights, (which in practice it would fail to do - a point to which we shall return later), his review's proposals will in fact override hugely significant UNCRC-mandated (2) rights of the child, and in the process will actually make it more difficult for parents to offer a suitable education.

• The enactment of a universal monitoring scheme involving uninvited intrusion into the home and inspection of the child and his work when there is no reason to suspect that there is a problem and yet with the vague implication that his family may be abusive will violate a child's rights under Article 16 of the UNCRC which states that "No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation. The child has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." Given that police and social workers have to argue for rights of entry to homes and have to apply for a warrant to do so in individual cases where there is a reasonable appearance of need, legal precedent suggests that the law recognises that scrutinizing an entire population on the basis that a few members of it will have committed a crime, would represent arbitary interference and thereby an infringement of Article 16.
• The proposal to monitor and inspect HE children will not respect the UNCRC-mandated right of the child to be heard. Article 12: " 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. " Polls (3) demonstrate that the majority of HE children do not want to see LA personnel. Given that they do not want to meet with a virtual stranger who has the power of judgment over their entire life, and who could put a stop to their way of life and who would offer nothing of value that they couldn't access without this assessment, the child's view does not seem irrational and therefore he should have the right to have this opinion heard and respected.
• The proposal to allow state officials to interview the child alone without any further application to establish proper need would not allow for the UNCRC-mandated right of the child to remain unseparated from his parents. Article 9: "States Parties shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will, except when competent authorities subject to judicial review determine, in accordance with applicable law and procedures, that such separation is necessary for the best interests of the child. Such determination may be necessary in a particular case such as one involving abuse or neglect of the child by the parents, or one where the parents are living separately and a decision must be made as to the child's place of residence." It is not clear from the proposals in the Home Education Review how the judgement to see the child alone by the official will be subject to any sort of judicial review process. Instead it looks as if officials are just given the de facto right to use this power as they please, without any necessary due cause, and without being subject to any judicial process such as the requirement to seek a warrant or other form of legal permission.
• The proposal to meet with the child in the process of monitoring his education will violate the child's right to freedom of association as inscribed in Article 15: . "States Parties recognize the rights of the child to freedom of association and to freedom of peaceful assembly. No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of these rights other than those imposed in conformity with the law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order (ordre public), the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others." Please note the AND here. It is necessary that the law is proven to be necessary in the interests here for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. Given that families where there is absolutely no reason to suspect problems will be intruded upon and inspected, children will be forced without due cause, to associate with people they have not freely chosen to associate with and Article 15 will therefore have been violated.
• The proposal to monitor and inspect will, in the majority of cases, override Article 3 of the UNCRC "In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration." Given that all the above rights of the child will have been violated, and given that there will be no observable benefit to the child to see an LA inspector, his best interests cannot possibly be said to have been served by this intrusion. Consideration must also be given to the fact that state-mandated education and state interference have failed a large number of home educated children, in which case, it seems extremely unlikely that the best interests of these children will be served by having to submit to it all over again.
• Article 5 of the UNCRC: "States Parties shall respect the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents...to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognized in the present Convention. " Parents will not be able to give appropriate direction in assisting their child to maintain their rights, because the state will forcibly prevent them from doing so when all the above rights are violated by the state.
  

1.4 Mr Badman's proposals don't just represent a problem for UNCRC-related law. There would be conflicts with current English law too. In English law at s7 of the Education Act 1996 (1), parents are required

"....to cause the child to receive efficient full-time education suitable—

(a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and

(b) to any special educational needs he may have,

either by regular attendance at school or otherwise."

There is some ambiguity here. Is a child's right to an education all about the parents offering a seemingly suitable education or a genuinely suitable one, a genuinely suitable one being that which means that a suitable education is actually attained?

Given that there are no proposals to subject schooling families to a judgement as to whether they provide a genuinely suitable education, it appears that in this context a "child's right to receive a suitable education" must mean that this right is all about appearances, since the societal norms dictate that by sending their children to school, schooling parents appear to be making suitable provision, whether or not a suitable education is actually attained.

This would make epistemic sense too, since parents may offer an apparently suitable education, and yet their child may resolutely refuse to accept it. Since every act of learning is learner initiated and parents thankfully cannot open up the brains of their progeny and pour knowledge into it as you would pour water into a bucket, it would be wrong for the law to hold parents to account for something over which they have no control.

However, we must accept that a judgement on the apparent suitability of provision is a poor judgement for anything useful since actual educational attainment is often very poorly correlated to apparent suitability of provision. Many children at my own private school were delivered of an education that was routinely described as excellent, and yet they failed educationally, often utterly and miserably. On the other hand, we know of someone who, as a child, was allowed to truant routinely, wandering the bomb sites of Coventry, completely neglected by his parents and who went on to become a university professor of ecology, since his boyhood wanderings resulted in an obsessive interest in the ecology of bomb-sites, then the local woodlands and beyond. Aged 19, he presented himself to a university department with no qualifications to his name, begging them to take him on as an undergraduate. He ended the day accepting the offer of a lectureship.

Between provision and attainment, there is a far greater gap than many people are prepared to countenance, and yet Mr Badman proposes that the state is capable of making the difficult and subjective judgement about suitability of provision.

We should also accept that actually no-one can be sure what "suitable" education provision should really look like, not only for every individual, with all their different quirks and requirements, but also in this age of information. It is quite conceivable, for example, that a child who watches TV all day will end up with a wider range of knowledge than a child who has sat in a classroom all day. We do not really know of what we speak, and yet Mr Badman is asking a bureaucrat who barely knows the child to make this monumentally important and yet hugely tricky call.

Many LA inspectors do not understand that provision that does not fit the schooling model can in fact be highly suitable in that a suitable education is actually attained. Autonomous education can look to the uninitiated or to the rigidly prejudiced, to resemble neglect, (it is not, and differs substantially yet often subtly) and yet it has proved efficacious over and over again. In our area, it has supplied a steady stream of motivated, skilled adults, many of whom had been or would have been woefully failed by standard schooling techniques.

But the difficulty in making subjective judgements about the quality of provision of a suitable education is by no means the end of the problems Mr Badman's proposals to monitor home educators present for English law. From recommendation 7 of his Review:

"That parents be required to allow the child through exhibition or other means to demonstrate both attainment and progress in accord with the statement of intent lodged at the time of registration."

it is clear that Mr Badman interprets a parent's duty to offer a suitable education to mean that a suitable education must be both offered and attained and thereby that home educating parents are actually to be held to a far higher account than schooling parents, being judged not merely on appearance of suitability of provision, but upon demonstration of educational attainment.

This would clearly mean that s7 of the 1996 Education Act (1) would be applied to home educating parents in a different way to schooling parents. HEing parents will be held to far higher account, since if schooling parents were also to be held to account for educational attainment of their children, there would be no end of prosecutions of parents for their children's educational failure, given that so many school children leave school functionally illiterate and innumerate.

It seems that if the review's proposals were to be enacted, s7 would simply have be applied inequitably and yet consistent application of the law is one of the tenets of good legislation. In order to solve this problem of consistent enactment of the law following implementation of the proposals, either every parent in the land should be held to similar account (ie: be shown to be offering their child a genuinely suitable education which results in educational attainment), or when local authorities begin the process of judging HEors' educational attainment, home educators will have to resort to anti-discrimination legislation in order to rectify the inconsistent application of s7, or we will all have to accept that s7 is only about the "appearance" of suitable educational provision and LAs will no longer have to assess the educational attainment of the HE child, and should therefore accept a written philosophy of intent from the HE parent.

1.5 Further on the issue of suitable education, (whether provision or attainment), we need to ask who's task it should be to determine the nature of the appearance of suitable educational provision. Should it be the state, in the form of some nameless bureaucrat who doesn't know the child from Adam, or should it be the parents, who have intimate knowledge of the child's learning style?

We hear in the DCSF's recent full response (4) to the Home Education Review that the government intends to hold a further review upon the nature of suitable education:

"The response also outlines that more work will be done to clarify what is ‘suitable and effective’ home education to support new guidance to local authorities on supporting and monitoring home educators. This will emphasise how local authorities can work with home educating parents to make sure that the needs of all children, including those with special educational needs, can be met in the home environment where appropriate. The guidance will take account of findings from the Lamb Inquiry, to be published later this year."

The DCSF must understand that if they determine the nature of a "suitable" and "effective" home education, the state will have taken over the reins for ensuring educational provision and attainment. Parents could no longer be held responsible for educational failure when they deliver that which the state determines, and the state will be held responsible for educational provision and attainment by families everywhere, in every educational setting.

The law must not be allowed to create a situation whereby a parent is held to task for something over which he has no control since it would be analogous to a general telling his men what to do, and then holding them responsible when they act upon his orders and yet his tactics fail. The general must be held responsible, and parents will go to court to prove that this is how the lines of responsibility are working.

In the real world, it would be far better to acknowledge that the judgement of educational provision and attainment is something that will forever be fraught with difficulty. We can never be certain of what we speak and an obsession with quantifying levels of attainment in the mind of another, as evidenced in school exams and league tables, is about the most pointless task that we currently undertake as a nation. Many of us have exam results that in no way reflected our educational attainment and do not accurately reflect our abilities to function. We hear how year in year out, results from public exams are improving, and yet at the same time, how we now live in a broken society where the youth of today are increasingly feral and irresponsible. The disconnect between so-called educational attainment and the reality of how well people live their lives seems all too obvious.

It would seem wise therefore, to restrict judgements in this area to judgements about the nature of provision. It would also seem wise, given that parents are in a better position to know, and given that the state would otherwise be taking on a task it couldn't possibly manage, to leave this decision to parents, with the state, as now, only stepping in at a later stage when it is very clear that there is good reason for concern.

1.6 Mr. Badman's proposal that the state rubber-stamp all educational provision in this country also has huge constitutional implications as well. Should all educational provision be state-mandated? The answer is clearly no for the foundation stone of a democracy is thereby undermined. A democracy relies for its legitimacy upon the existence of an informed, articulate and free-thinking populace which is capable of holding the state to reasonable account. If children are are only to be taught that which the state permits, the foundation for this democracy is undermined, and the government reduces its legitimacy.

1.7 On the issue of proportionality of the proposals , it is far from clear that there is a real problem that needs to be solved here with regard to the HE community. Poorly informed, subjective judgements, the desire to cover their backs and to make their jobs easier means that LAs have talked up the problems of the education of HE children with these assertions.

Indeed we have recently heard from one LA which constituted a statistical outlier in terms of having a high proportion of children at risk one way or the other that:

"The high percentage of children arose from all the data we have ever had and therefore that includes people that (sic) are now adults. This could have included involvements for other members of the family, referrals where the outcome was no further action, etc."

and when asked for numbers of HE children who do not appear to be receiving a suitable education (5), LAs routinely include families who's educational provision does not fit the school model and yet which is actually suitable, as well as families they have not been able to visit.

It is very clear that significant problems in this area have not been demonstrated in any reliable way whatsoever, and this includes Mr Badman's latest call for evidence which will contain the same problems writ even larger.

One blogger (6) comments on this latest data collection:

"According to Badman, 0.4% of home educating children have child protection plans, meaning that 99.6% are not unsafe. Does such a small proportion as this make a multimillion pound intervention proportionate or desirable, especially as it’s only point two on one percentage point lower than for all children in the 74 local authorities?"

Without there being a clearly established need for them in terms of protecting children's rights, the Badman proposals will nonetheless vitiate the rights of the parents to home educate since parents will no longer be able to determine the nature of a suitable education. They will create a situation where parents are to be judged upon something (ie: their child's educational attainment) over which they have no control, firstly because they cannot any more freely decide upon the nature of suitable provision, and secondly because they cannot do the impossible and open the brains of their children to pour knowledge into it. Judging someone for something over which they have no control is a quick way to render a person either very, very angry and litigious or utterly hopeless, a position of learned helplessness which will be hugely damaging for families. In both these situations, it is clear that the state, rather than solving the problem of abuse, is in fact perpetrating it.

1.8 The Badman proposal to monitor will also destroy another foundation of democracy: that families may be able to freely decide upon and work towards their own ambitions. The freedom to HE law springs almost as a side effect of the way legislation has been written in order to reflect the fact that the autonomy of the individual and the family unit is respected. If you destroy the autonomy of HEors to decide their ambitions for themselves and the freedom to decide upon the nature of a suitable education, you would thereby destroy the foundation stone of democracy and yet the implementation of Badman's proposals to monitor would do just that. The reason for this is that under s13A and s175 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, state employees have, in the course of their other duties to promote educational attainment and the safety and welfare, including the five ambitions of the ECM and to do this with individual families.

When the first guidance on the duty to Identify Children Missing an Education was written, home educators were explicitly excluded from its reach, which meant that HEors wouldn't routinely be subject to inspection and therefore for having their ambitions determined for them. Under Badman's recommendation to monitor, this would change. With its implementation, all families will now come into contact with state employees, and the symbolic as well as functional aspect of the law which represented the freedom for a person and family to determine their own ambitions will go. We will all have to dance to the state's tune, and woe betide anyone who doesn't. The state will have become well and truly the parent of first resort, and we will hold it responsible when it makes a balls of it.

In the previous consultation on light touch changes in 2007, Lord Adonis, after consulting with his legal department, clearly appreciated the difficulties that monitoring and inspection of home educators represents, (7) both in their practical application and in their implications for the law and the constitution. It is essential that the government revisit his remarks so that they be reminded that the problems listed above must be taken seriously by them.

At a time when many educationalists are realising the value of parental involvement in education, the authority of home educating parents will be severely undermined and the education of children will doubtlessly suffer, and indeed has done so already in some HE households where parents are already preparing for registration with LAs whose inspectors are known to prefer a schooling style of home education.

1.9 Local authorities should also be aware that they face a practical difficulty with the funding of the Review's proposals. There will not be enough money in most LAs to do this job universally, and yet given all the new powers that LAs will have delivered to them, they will be held to more, not less account. They are likely to find themselves with even fewer excuses when faced with a Serious Case Review.

(1) Education Act 1996 s7
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1996/ukpga_19960056_en_2#pt1-ch1-pb3-l1g7

(2). UNCRC: http://www.crin.org/docs/resources/treaties/uncrc.asp#

(3) Poll results on views of home educated children re local authority inspection: http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/results-of-poll.html

(4) DCSF's full response to the Home Education Review
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/news/content.cfm?landing=diana_johnson_announces_new_support_package_for_home_educating_families&type=1

(5) Figures on LAs concerns over educational provision, from FOIs:
http://tinyurl.com/mq25xg

(5) Lord Adonis on the wisdom of legislation as it is currently constructed:
http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/lord-adonis-on-fourfold-foundation.html

(6) Staffordshire.
http://maire-staffordshire.blogspot.com/2009/10/more-damned-statistics.html

(7) Figures on LAs concerns over educational provision, from FOIs:
http://tinyurl.com/mq25xg

2 Do you agree that a register should be kept?

Agree
Disagree*
Not sure
No Response

Comments:

2.1 One could ask: "what have we paid all that money for if ContactPoint isn't doing this already?" However the real argument remains that in principle a register is a useless waste of time and money, which will result in the inspection of thousands of perfectly well-functioning families, undermining familial autonomy in a way which will damage children, since it opens the door to all manner of state intrusion, subjective, prejudicial assessments and bullying.

2.2 Monitoring all families, including the large majority of successful ones, will generate a huge amount of useless and confusing statistical noise amongst which children who are genuinely at risk will be lost. Monitoring healthy families will also divert resources from dealing with genuine cases of child abuse.

2.3 The state should not fall pray to the temptation to be seen to be doing something - spin must not be allowed to trump reality, since reality will come back to bite when swamped social work departments drowning under a welter of over-cautious referrals by under trained LA HE inspectors miss the few really problematic cases.

2.4 The proposal to register all home educators would have to be imposed upon the population who would largely resist the imposition. There is no sense in which the majority of home educators would submit to this voluntarily, and Badman would therefore clearly have not sought to work on partnership with parents. This is contrary to provisions of the 2004 Children Act which requires that agencies work in partnership with families. It is also contrary to two of the fundamental principles of the Children's Plan: "Launching Brighter Futures" Dec 2007, (9) which are:

• " Government does not bring up children – parents do – so government needs to do more to back parents and families.

• Services need to be shaped by and responsive to children, young people and families, not designed around professional boundaries."

(8) Children Act 2004: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2004/ukpga_20040031_en_1

(9) Children's Plan: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/childrensplan/

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

Agree
Disagree*
Not sure
No Response

Comments: No, since I disagree with the principle of registration, I do not agree that any information should be provided.

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

Agree
Disagree*
Not sure
No Response

Comments: No. See answers to 2 and 3 above.

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

Agree
Disagree*
Not sure
No Response

Comments: No. See answers to 2 and 3 above.

Consultation Questions

6 a) 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?

Agree
Disagree*
Not sure
No Response

Comments: No, since families yet again will have the right to determine the nature of the educational provision taken away from them. In this situation, the state makes it even clearer that it is now responsible for all provision, and will be held to account when that provision fails.

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

Agree
Disagree*
Not sure
No Response

Comments: No. These judgements are so hugely subjective and irrelevant to home education setting. Again it is a way of reducing not just parental rights but children's rights as well, as LA inspectors are highly likely to require that children meet the schools predictions rather than leaving children to determine their own levels of attainment and progress.

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

Agree
Disagree*
Not sure
No Response

Comments: No. The state thereby becomes responsible for all educational provision and will be held liable for failure.

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

Agree
Disagree*
Not sure
No Response

Comments: Depends upon the nature of the safeguarding concerns, but schooling is by no means a solution for safeguarding concerns.

9 Do you agree that the local authority should visit the premises where home education is taking place provided 2 weeks notice is given?

Agree
Disagree*
Not sure
No Response

Comments: No. LAs have no reason to interfere with law-abiding, well-functioning families. We are expected to suffer this absurd level of intrusion with our children subject to interview on their own by some stranger without high levels of training, on matters incredibly close to the child's heart, with complete equanimity when social workers and the police have to go to the courts to gain similar powers of entry. Are we to have no sanctuary in any corner of our lives, or must we really suffer the all-seeing eye of the state, for all we know, in our knicker drawers when we have done absolutely NOTHING WRONG?

One of the main justifications Mr Badman uses for this intervention is that he wants to ensure that the voice of the child is heard (5). Ironically, by insisting upon such intrusion, with the large majority of home educating families, he is making listening to the voice of the child QUITE IMPOSSIBLE. Two polls (6) have found that between 77 and 78% of HE children do not want to see an LA official. I would say from talking to HE children that this figure is accurate, which is not surprising if you consider that a child is not likely to relish the idea of meeting with a complete stranger who has the power of judgement over their entire lives, and who is quite capable of making it significantly worse.

If Mr Badman is serious about listening to the voice of the child, then he will not intrude upon their privacy and will not force spurious judgements about the suitability of their education upon them.

Social services departments don't have the funds or the manpower to deal with children known to be at severe risk. Why waste tens of thousands of pounds inspecting recalcitrant but otherwise well-functioning families in what amounts to an abusive fashion when the money could be far better spent elsewhere dealing with children known to be at risk?

Peter Traves, from the Association of Directors of Children's Services said in the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee Meeting on October 14th:

"We have seen recently what happens recently to directors of children' services when things go seriously wrong - it is not only sacking, it is public humiliation and it is a very serious matter.

"I'm held to account for children's welfare, and I think not to know there are children living and being educated in my area is actually unreasonable if I'm being held to that account."

This certainly is not a good enough reason to compromise the privacy and autonomy of perfectly innocent families. The state must not be allowed to over-ride the principles of freedom and the right to privacy just to make someone's job *seem* just a little bit easier, as the police and social workers know all too well.

Another reason why this reason is insufficient is that the registration and monitoring of HEors will not prevent Directors of Children's services being hauled up in front of a Serious Case Review panel, since registration and monitoring will not be a reliable way of detecting abuse. Screening the 99.6% of healthy families will in fact create a load of statistical noise, there will be loads of spurious referrals, further over-burdening already over-stretched social workers, and in the process, some of the important stuff will be missed. Directors of Children's services will then be even more on the line for failing in their duties when they apparently had even more powers than the police to invade the homes of every home educator in the land.

And the final reason, should you need another, is that we are coming dangerously close to a situation where parents will no longer be allowed to be parents, for in the course of their other duties, all state-sponsored personnel are meant to ensure that children are working towards the five ambitions as enshrined in the Children Act 2004. This essentially means that parents everywhere will now be compelled to ensure that their children work towards these ambitions. By insisting that all HE children are seen, we symbolically for all families everywhere, but in reality for HEors, fundamentally change the way that parents can parent in this country. Families, parents and children alike, will no longer be able to freely choose their ambitions, and we must therefore accept that by this token, the state takes over in loco parentis in one of the most all subsuming sorts of ways, ie: in deciding the whole direction of a child's life.

We must avoid this consequence and return to basic principals, whereby the state only intervenes in cases of clear parental failure, for otherwise, we kiss goodbye to the possibility of responsible parenting by parents.

(5) See section 3.3 from the Home Education Review.
http://publications.everychildmatters.gov.uk/eOrderingDownload/HC-610_Home-ed.PDF

(6) Links to poll results:
http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/results-of-poll.html

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?

Agree
Disagree*
Not sure
No Response

Comments:
No. We don't know these people. How do I know if they are an abuser or not? They would be abusive anyway insofar as both my children have said that they absolutely don't want to see someone who has the power to make life-changing judgements about them on extremely flimsy evidence. In failing to prevent the LA from interviewing my children, I would be failing to protect the rights of my children to freedom of association, to privacy and to having their property rights respected.

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.

Agree
Disagree*
Not sure
No Response

Comments:

No. See arguments above. In addition it is necessary to realise that these sorts of visits are not a good way of assessing education. The LA inspector barely knows the child and may worry that he is missing something which will mean that there is a high risk that innocent families will get referred on unnecesssarily to other services in order that the undertrained inspectors may cover their backs.

If these visits are being used to assess safeguarding, they contravene both Article 16 UNCRC and Article 8 ECHR regarding unnecessary interference by the state. It is also discriminatory against home educators, since nobody else is subject to this level of invasion of privacy without reason.

Current law (s47, Children Act 1989, s437 Education Act 1996) is sufficient to the task of protecting children if enacted correctly. If there is genuine cause for concern, then families should be pursued using these laws. Otherwise leave families alone to get on with it, for state intrusion would otherwise result in more abuse and less suitable educational provision than it would ever solve.


=======================

Other consultation responses:

AHED's response
EO's response
Ian Appleby
Emma.
Merry
Jax
Dani
Jemmo
Nineteenthly
Jennifer
Ruth
Sally
Gill
Beth
Blurred Scratchings
Clare M
Neil T

Letter to the Guardian about the Select Committee Article

Dear Sir/Madam, (education.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk)

I am writing with regard to your article with the appallingly inaccurate headline: "Children educated at home at severe disadvantage, study shows".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/oct/13/home-education-badman-inquiry

The study in question (ie: some extremely hastily gathered and untested statistics which were pulled together from some biased sources in the past couple of weeks in order to bolster some other already highly questionable statistics that were due for scrutiny to the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee), reliably shows no such thing.

For example, there is no reliable evidence whatsoever for the statement that HE children are four times more likely as young adults to be out of work, education or training than those who go to school. This figure is highly likely, on further examination, to turn out to be a nonsense.

The fact is that home educators have no duty to tell LAs or the Connexions service what their children are doing post 16. HE Teens often carry on home educating past their 16th birthdays and yet LAs have no idea what is going on and can merrily class them as NEETs in a bid to get themselves the power they think they want to invade the homes of the innocent.

The article is also embarrassing on a more basic level, because 270 is not 2.2% of 1,220! If Jessica Shepherd had actually got the figures as quoted by Mr Badman, perhaps she would have questioned them herself!

Your article is ill-informed on yet another issue, because there is actually a huge debate over the accuracy of the 0.4% figure, as indeed one of the MPs on the committee pointed out. This figure should not be quoted as fact and this because Mr Badman doesn't have a clue how big the HE population is and he therefore cannot say that the rate of abuse in it is twice as high as the rest of the population. His contention is that there will be an equivalent amount of undiscovered abuse in the rest of the HE population. My contention (based on considerable experience of mixing with HEors, known and unknown, gregarious and otherwise), is that the numbers of undiscovered abuse cases in the remaining population of HEors will be vanishingly small, since HEors are so conspicuous that if there is any worry about them at all, (and often-times even when there is absolutely no concern about them, but that someone doesn't realise that HE is a real option), these families get referred to social services. HEors must be some of the most over-referred group of families in the country. Indeed, we attend an HE group where my family is the only one which hasn't been utterly spuriously referred to SS at some stage or other.

Your article is also misleading because even if it is really true that HE children are twice as likely to be known by social services, it is still, nonetheless, a tiny proportion of the whole population of HEors. We are talking here about justifying huge amounts of intervention and invasion of privacy of completely innocent and hard-working families on the justification of there being 0.4% of children at risk. Now tell me, is that really a proper use for your hard-earned tax money?

Now here's an idea. Why not get the Guardian to encourage the DCSF to actually concentrate on dealing with real problems - with children known to be at risk? Why don't your journalists urge the Department to staff social work offices properly and to create conditions conducive to the retention of experienced staff, and why not do your utmost to prevent the state from interfering in the private lives of tens of thousands of otherwise well-functioning families who would be far better off without this intervention?

Yours faithfully.

Graham Badman's Letter to the Select Committee

Below is the letter from Graham Badman to the Select Committee about his recent data collection from LAs, which is also available, in PDF form, via this link:

(For blog commentary see Maire and Bruce).

=======================

Dear Mr Sheerman,

REVIEW OF ELECTIVE HOME EDUCATION IN ENGLAND

In June, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families published the Government's initial response to the findings of the report of my review of home education in England.

The full response to the individual recommendations was published today and I understand that Diana Johnson Parliament Under Secretary of State of Schools has written to you with a copy of that response. Both Diana and I are due to appear before your committee on Monday 12 October.

I thought it would be helpful to write you about some further evidence I have collected to support my recommendations. In my report I said that the number of children known to children's social care in some local authorities is disproportionately high relative to the size of the home education population. The basis for this statement is sound and supported by information provided to me by a number of local authorities both through data collection and through discussions with front line local authority officers and others in organisations with relevent experience.

Given that your inquiry was focussing on the conduct of the revew and my recommendations, I thought it would be helpful to provide the Committee with further evidence on safeguarding and educational issues at that affect home educated children. With the agreement of the department, I therefore wrote to all local authorities in September to seek additional information from a wider range of local authorities. This new data provides additional evidence that supports the conclusions I reached in my review. I would like to add that in providing this additional information a number of local authoroities took the opportunity to remind me that they can only provide figures for those children that they are aware of and they continue to believe that there are a substantial number of home educated children who are not known to their local authority.

I am pleased to be able to enclose a copy of findings from the survey. These findings will be published on the DCSF webside alongside the full response to my report.


Yours sincerely

Graham Badman.


Elective Home Education (EHE) - results of September data collection from local authorites. (LAs).

1. The Review of Elective Home Education in England was underpinned by two data collections from local authorites (LAs). LAs responded on a voluntary basis. The results formed part of the evidence that was taken into account in shaping the conclusions set out in the report.

2. Since the Review was published there has been consderable interest from some parts of the EHE community in its conclusions, in particular concerning the data collected about safeguarding issues affecting home educated children and the quality of education they receive. The sample size of the second survey undertaken during the Review was relatively small (25) LAs and it was therefore decided that additional information be collected from more local authorities.

3. The format of the new questionnaire was discussed with a small group of local authorities and they recommended that an additional question be included in relation to missing children (runaways) as some said that they had data suggesting that home educated children might be overrepresented in this population.

4. On 17th September 2009 all English LAs were invited to provide further information on safeguarding and quality of education, using the proforma attached at Annex 1. The return date was 1 October 2009. The results are set out below.

5. 74 LAs (49% of the total sample) responded to the questionnaire provided a representative sample of all LAs in the country. Not all LAs answered all of the questions. The number of responses is noted in each section of the paper. A number of reasons were given for non responses to specific questons, as noted below:

Unable to provide
Unknown/not known
Not captured
Unavailable
Data not available in time

The figures used in this paper have been quality assured by a DCSF Statistician.

6. The total number of EHE children who were known to the 74 LAs that provided returns was 11,700. (1) As the total mid-year population estimates for 2008 for children of statutory school age in the 74 LAs is 4,303,700 (2) this gives an estimate of the total number of EHE children in England of 20,000 (3) which is consistent with previous estimates.

Information collected.

7. These questions were asked to establish:

• the proportion of child protection plans relating to EHE children comparied to overall child population;

• the proportion of EHE children who, in the LAs opinion, are thought not to be receiving a suitable education;

• the use of school attendance orders amongst the EHE population

• the proportion of EHE youngsters who became NEET (not in education, employement or training at age 16, compared with the general population;

• the proportion of missing children (runaways) who were EHE prior to their disappearance, as a proportion of the total number of missing children.

Results

8. The results from this survey are shown below, mostly in tabular form and confirm the findings of the first survey.

Data from 74 sample authorities	Number of child protection plans	Population	Children with child protection plans
EHE children	51	11,700	0.4%
All children	10,025	4,712,200 (up to age 17)	0.2%

9. This table shows that the vast majority of both home educated children and children in the "general population" do not have a CPP. In the sample of 74 LAs that responded to this survey, 54 said they had no EHE childen with CPPs. The remaining 20 LAs reported 51 CPPs for their EHE children. Annex 2 shows the extent of variation. The proportion for EHE children is approximately double that found in the population of children as a whole.

Education

10. The survey asked a number of questions about the standard of education provided to EHE children. 69 LAs completed this seciton of the survey and the results are summarsied in the following table:

Extent of Education Received	Number of Children	% of total
Not receiving any education	210	1.8%
Receiving education but not full time or suitable	609	5.3%
Not co-operating with monitoring - no assessment made	656	5.8%
Not yet assessed(5)	1063	9.3%

11. 68 (92%) LAs responded to this question and reported that 73 SAOs were issued to EHE children over the past 12 months. This suggests relatively low usage of SAOs and the graph at ANnex 3 shows that there is considerable variation between LAs.

12. Each autumn the Connexions Service carries out a survey of children who left Year 11 the previevious summer to establish whether they are in education, employment or training. The lastest available information is for the cohort of young people who had attained 16 by the end of August 2008. 47 LAs were able to provide information which is set out in the table below:

	Number NEET	Population	%NEET
EHE Children	270	1220	22%1
National Figure			5.2%

The graph at Annex 4 shows the spread of results from different LAs.


Missing Children (Runaways)

13. Missing children are defined as children who are reported to have been absent for 24 hours or more. 38 LAs reponded to this section of the questionnaire: in total 125 children whose last known educational seeting was EHE were missing. These figures appear high in some LAs, suggesting the need to further scrutinise this data. The distribution is shown in Annex 5.

-------------------------------

For Annexes see link here.



===============================


Comments upon above stats:

--------------------

From Maire:

"According to Badman 0.4% of home educating children have child protection plans, meaning that 99.6% are not unsafe. Does such a small proportion as this make a multimillion pound intervention proportionate or desirable, especially as it’s only point two on one percentage point lower than for all children in the 74 local authorities?"


---------------------

"The top LA for issuing School Attendance Orders issued 26 of them. The second-placed LA issued only 7.

Questions that arise include:

1) given that, statistically, this datum really sticks out (it's an extreme 'outlier', in the jargon), shouldn't we ask whether another variable mightn't be involved, which might make it sensible to exclude that datum from any general conclusions?

3) might a similar argument to 2) not also be applicable to the stats for child protection plans issued to EHE children?

4) how hard did Badman try to get non-responding LAs, or LAs which didn't have any data, to respond? You would have thought that *every* LA would know the number of CPPs or SAOs issued to EHE children. "

-------------------------

A self-selecting sample of 49% of a population is just as self-selecting as a self-selecting sample of 25%, and many or most of our previous criticisms of Badman's statistical incompetence still apply.

---------------------------

The listing of stated reasons for "non responses to specific questions". Why aren't actual figures given? Might the reason just possibly be because they would be inconvenient?

---------------------------

The survey question (Annex 1, Table 2) asks whether figures are actual or estimated. But the totals quoted by Badman (section 10) are all presented as if they are actual.


----------------------------------------

When a home educator enquired of the LA about the reason for the high number of children known to social care from the indepth questionnaire, the LA replied:

"The high percentage of children arose from all the data we have ever had and therefore that includes people that are now adults. This could have included involvements for other members of the family, referrals where the outcome was no further action etc. The 9% includes all children known to social care so if they are known to social care because they are disabled, then yes, it does include disabled children."


----------------------------

News from the Select Committee

...via Making it Up and Staffordshire.

Mass Lobby of Parliament on Tuesday 13 October 2009

PARENTS and their children will be attending a mass lobby of Parliament next week to protest about planned changes to the law on home education that will strip them of their rights and intrude into family life.

Nearly 200 adult supporters have confirmed with the organisers that they will be attending the rally on Tuesday 13 October, bringing with them 190 children. Many of them have firm appointments to see their MPs.

The mass lobby has been organised in the wake of a Government review into home education.

Graham Badman, former Director of Education at Kent County Council who carried out the study, recommended that local councils should have the right to enter family homes and question children alone.

He also said that parents who home educate should be forced to register every year and gave local authorities carte blanche to refuse registration.

The Review of Elective Home Education in England was accepted in full by the Government, which wants to change the law as soon as possible.

It intends to use its Improving Schools and Safeguarding Bill to introduce home education registration and monitoring legislation as early as next month.

The Badman report and the Government’s eagerness to accept it has brought an angry response from home educators.

Mass lobby organiser Claire Blades, 45, from Aylesbury, said: “No longer are parents being trusted to make decisions about their own children.

“First we had the news that 11.3 million people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland - close to one in four of the adult population – would have to have Criminal Record Bureau checks.

“Then we had the case of the two policewomen who were accused of illegal childminding because they took care of each other’s children on their days off.

“Now parents who home educate are to be forced to undergo intrusive monitoring in their own homes because they are not trusted with their own children.

“By ignoring the onward march of legislation that intrudes into family life, we are allowing ourselves to sleepwalk into a nightmare. It is time to wake up and call a halt to the ever-growing band of officials who think they know what is best for our children and our families.”

Home educators claim that the Badman report, published in June, is inaccurate and shows little understanding of the home educating community.

So many home educators complained that the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee ordered a short inquiry into the report.

There were more than 200 written submissions to that inquiry and home educators are awaiting notification of when the Select Committee hearing will be.

Mrs Blades said: “Mr Badman claimed that the ratio of home-educated children who were “known to social care” was twice that of the population at large.

“It turns out that that vague statistic came from a small sample of 25 local authorities.

“The group, Action for Home Education, has carried out its own research using Freedom of Information requests to all local education authorities in England and the picture painted is quite the reverse.

“Interestingly, even Mr Badman has come to realise that his statistics are flawed.

“On 17 September 2009, he wrote to all local authority Directors of Children’s Services to say: ‘I would like to strengthen my statistical evidence in advance of the Select Committee hearing so that it is more extensive and statistically robust.’

“He practically begged the Directors of Children’s Services to help him ‘make the strongest possible case to the Select Committee’.”

“The picture painted of home education in the Badman report is unrecognisable to the thousands of families in this country who exercise their legal right to educate their children without sending them to school.

“It is unrecognisable to the thousands of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends who share the lives of home educated children. It is unrecognisable to the children themselves.

“The mass lobby is an opportunity for us to show our MPs what home education is really about and to bring important issues like inaccuracies and bias in the Badman report to their attention.”

Michael Gove on Home Education

Via journalist Polly Curtis on Twitter, we hear that Michael Gove at the NUT Fringe event yesterday said that:

"the government review of home education put all families who educate their children out of school "in the dock". "

He's right, of course. The proposals are also an absurd waste of money, which would be better served staffing social work departments properly.

Autonomous Home Education

....in the Irish Independent.

Can't Resist

I do my best not to link to overtly satirical pieces, given that the DCSF uses this as a reason to refuse to answer our FOI requests and therefore temporarily preventing us from checking out the statistics that underpinned the Review, but my resolve has dwindled over the past weeks with the emergence of yet more and more stuff of absurdly high quality.

This one has finally broken any last remnants of self-control. I hope it can be appreciated for the genuine messages as well as the wit, in the recognition that a government should welcome criticism as Churchill gathered critics as his aides.

News of the Select Committee

Missive received today from the Select Committee:

"Details of the home education inquiry evidence sessions will be published shortly on our website . Alternatively, you could sign up to receive our press notices by emailing smithka@parliament.uk and asking to be put on the email circulation list.

Members of the public are welcome to observe our evidence sessions. Seats are available on a first-come-first-served basis - though it may be that the home education sessions will be attended by relatively large numbers and space is limited. Please note that it is also possible to watch sessions online."

Schools given permission to opt out of Early Years Curriculum

I'm no fan of Steiner Education but this is great news nonetheless.

Why we are fighting

Firebird nails it here.

If this isn't enough to annoy you, we've just heard via a letter to the Independent that a home educator is a

"part of a home education group, and we have been told by the council that all the adults will need a CRB check, though no one is in loco parentis because the parents of all the children are present."

Get to the mass lobby if you can!