Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Illegal Off-Rolling

This Guardian article reports that there are calls to fine schools for illegal off-rolling, aka illegal de-registration of a child from school.   "Illegal" in this context seems to include the exclusion of a child for insufficient reason as well as the school failing to notify the LA of a deregistration.

A fine will be yet another stick with which to beat the schooling establishment and won't actually deal with the real source of the problem which is Ofsted using poor learning theory as a way to assess schools, given that Ofsted assesses by results, when they should assess by educational provision.

Friday, December 08, 2017

Responses to Lord Soley's Blog

Clive Soley's Lords of the Blog post about the Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill naturally attracted the attention of home educators, a number of whom tried to make use of the comment section, but, as yet, to no avail - their comments appeared to be held up in the moderation process. Perhaps it was a busy day for the moderator.

In the meantime, here's a taster:

One of the many problems home educators have with an LA official coming to assess their educational provision is that they worry for the entire year that what they are doing will not be understood, appreciated or passed as acceptable, and this because the education they provide is so vastly different from school education with which most of these assessors are familiar. We wouldn’t expect the work of doctors, lawyers, nurses, financial advisers, teachers etc. to be assessed by someone who had no first hand experience or real understanding of the field and yet this is something that home educators must endure all the time.  

Then there is the problem of subjectivity of assessment. Given that most home educators do not want to jump through state determined hoops, often because they recognise them for what they are –  outdated, unnecessarily cumbersome and extremely inefficient ways of acquiring an effective education – using any sort of tool to assess learning is never going to be possible. It will all come down to whether the assessor says “yea or nay” on the day, and even if they are highly trained and experienced in the field, that may well come down to whether or not they are having 
 a bad hair day. 

Home educators feel very vulnerable when it comes to this sort of assessment. LA officials can say pretty much anything about them in their reports, and HEors are up against it if they need to prove that LA assessments have been unfair. HEors do not have access to endless resources with which to defend themselves against the state machine, and they do not trust social services or the family courts, with their reputation for back-covering and secrecy. Camilla Cavendish, with her 
previous engagement  on the subject of problems with family courts, should surely understand this. 

The prospect of assessment can also easily be hugely damaging to educational provision. Many HEors understand that helping the child pursue their interests is the most efficient and suitable form of education, and yet they worry that this may well not pass muster with the assessor and they therefore alter their educational provision, thereby make it far less effective. Children also often become demotivated at the prospect of assessment.

Then there’s the problem of the fact that many HE children will not want to see the assessors or show them evidence of their work. One of the main arguments in favour of registration and monitoring is that the state should be able to hear the voice of the child. Given that many HE children are saying that they don’t want to have to be seen by an official or produce their work, how can the state be genuinely taking the voice of children seriously, when they have ignored it as soon as they step through the door?  

Many home educators also feel strongly that a double standard is being applied in asking only home educated children where they want to be educated. When school children are asked where they too want to be educated, then perhaps it would feel like a fair question.

It feels all the more ironic that it should be the voice of the HE child that is sought, when it is actually the case that many home educators spend their entire family lives working consensually and respectfully with their children, not invading their privacy, not demanding to see work that isn’t freely offered, and generally doing their best to respect the human rights of their children.

Another significant factor that must be considered in regard to protecting children and promotion of long term mental health is the fact that many HE young people are being home educated because of severe problems with the schooling system which have impacted negatively on their mental and often physical health.  Home education can currently provide a wonderful opportunity for these children to recover.  If these young people are to be put through as assessment which could lead to them being returned to school, it is likely that this will be experienced as very traumatic.

This may seem an inconsiderable issue to some, but it is not.   At least half of the suicides of young people are related to bullying but that is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other people who suffer long term consequences from school related stress, bullying etc.

This is on top of a load of other arguments about ECHR infringements, the problem of a state determined education undermining democracy, the state appropriating parental responsibilities, and therefore later being held to account etc, etc.

Friday, November 03, 2017

Summary of What's Wrong with the Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill

Lord Soley's Bill is due its Second Reading in the House of Lords on the 24th November. The Second Reading provides the first opportunity for the Lords to debate the key principles and main purpose of the bill, and to flag up concerns and specific areas that they think require amendments. Further:

"Before second reading takes place

Before a second reading debate takes place, members who would like to speak add their name to a list – the ‘speakers list’.

What happens at second reading?

The government minister, spokesperson or a member of the Lords responsible for the bill opens the second reading debate.
Any member can speak during second reading – this stage can indicate those members particularly interested in a bill, or a specific aspect of it, and those who are most likely to be involved in suggesting changes at later stages.
Second reading debates usually last for a few hours but can sometimes stretch over a couple of days.

What happens after second reading?

After second reading the bill goes to committee stage – where detailed line by line examination and discussion of amendments takes place"

...all of which suggest that now's the time to make it quite clear where the home education community stand on this issue, and why they see the whole thing as hugely problematic.

To summarise: current law as described in these guidelines is already fit for purpose.  All the Serious Case Reviews have demonstrated that children were failed not by being hidden, but by the services failing to act appropriately.  The bill as proposed would not solve the problem as it would stretch resources even more finely and it would introduce all manner of other problems, from constitutional and legislative ones, to inflicting terrible harm on families, to involving a lot of useless expense. Other more creative solutions could be found within current law.

Below is a fuller set of arguments against the Bill in broad categories, along with some other ideas about what could more usefully be done:

Legislative and Constitutional Implications: 

1. If the Bill were to be enacted, the state would take 
over the matter of deciding upon the nature of a suitable education.   As well as contravening 
Article 2 of Protocol 1 of the Human Rights Act which states that:" In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions", a state-dictated education risks spelling the end of the culture of free thought, debate and criticism that has underpinned a successful democracy in this country.  It would also mean that given that parents cannot really be deemed to be responsible for something over which they have no control, ie: they must deliver a state mandated education, the state should be responsible (rather than the parent) if the provision fails the child.

2.  The Bill would clarify the meaning of "cause to receive" in s7 of the 1996 Education Act.  If the bill were enacted, LA officials would be assessing whether parents have met their parental duty to "cause a child to receive an education" by looking at the child's work.  This means that they would be looking to see that the child had learnt something, which means that "having a duty to cause to receive an education" doesn't only involve making suitable provision. It would also mean that a child has actually learnt something (and to a suitable level).  This would mean that there would be a lack of parity under the law since HE parents would be held to a higher standard of duty than schooling parents.  Schooling parents are deemed to have deferred responsibility to schools, but for the parental duty to mean anything at all, this only makes sense if the meaning of "cause to receive" means "a duty to provide an education" rather than "a duty to ensure learning takes place".   If schooling parents don't have a duty to ensure that learning takes place, why should HEing parents be judged on this basis?  If the bill were enacted, to remove the resulting inequity of schooling and HE parents being treated differently under the law, either s7 has to be removed from the statute, (obviously not a good thing, since someone surely does have to have a duty to educate young people), or schooling parents would need to be assessed as to how well their children learn.  It is unlikely that this latter solution would be popular with the electorate.

3.  It is anyhow the case that judging whether parents have met their duty to cause a child to receive an education upon whether the child has learnt anything is actually very poor learning theory indeed, as it is simply the case that no parent/teacher/any other human on the planet can open the head of another person and pour knowledge in to it.  However good the provision, a learner can still stare out the window thinking "la la la!".  It is grossly unfair on parents/teachers/anyone else on the planet to judge them on the basis of something over which they have no ultimate control.  And of course, poor learning theory makes for bad laws - the ambiguity surrounding "cause to receive" is a source of much misery in the schooling system as it is, with many teachers leaving the profession because, for all the brilliant lessons they offer, they still can't MAKE their pupils apply their minds.  Let's not make the whole situation even worse by extending the law on false learning theory to another area of education, thereby increasing stress in families and most likely making learning even less likely. 

4. The bill would amount to a breach of various 
UNCRC articles including:
Article 2: a child's right to protection against discrimination.  
Article 3: a child's right to have adults doing what's best for a child.
Article 5: a child's right to be given guidance by parents and family.
Article 12:  a child's right to have an opinion, be listened to and taken seriously.
Article 16:  a child'd right to privacy.
Article 18: a child's right to be raised by their parents.
Article 28: a child's right to an education.
Article 29:  a child's right to an education which develops his/her personality.

5. On top of contravening Article 16 of the UNCRC with a massive invasion of a child's privacy (demanding to see the child's work etc), where the bill requires data sharing without parental permission or compulsory state interventions (as opposed to services offered), the proper threshold of concern for sharing data is that there is a cause for concern at the level of significant harm. If this threshold is not met and state interference is routine, then this has already been dealt with in the supreme court.  
The NO2NP campaign judgement covers the whole of the UK, not just Scotland, which means that this type of action is against the law.


Impact on Families: 

1.  The bill will damage families whose educational provision may very well be ruined by trying to jump through state-dictated hoops. Many HE children have been failed by conventional schooling and home education in its various manifestations can provide a wonderful healing form of education in which these children thrive.  The bill would remove the capacity of parents to provide an education that is genuinely suited to their children and children will therefore fail all over again.

2.  HE families are justifiably afraid of LAs.   They know that LA officials are often poorly trained and have very little understanding of HE and they will be reluctant to leave their child in the company of such a person, particularly as will often be the case, the child themselves is deeply reluctant to be assessed in this way.  Further, HEors know that LA reports about them are often fudged, subjective, don't represent the truth of the matter and are poorly written and they feel they have next to no defence against this misrepresentation.  Recent family court judgements on covert recordings acknowledged that professionals have been known to make things up to the detriment of the family, yet HEors understand that they have little redress with regard to social service judgements and in family courts. They have seen innocent HE families put through harrowing situations in the family courts, some ending up losing their children and others even being falsely accused in the criminal courts of things like Fabricated and Induced Illness.  Even after these families have been exonerated, HEors have witnessed the long term deep damage to the young people and families involved.

3.  Families will be hugely stressed by the visits, for reasons in point above, but also because children have often left school in a severely traumatised state and the fear of returning there is truly awful.  The first young person I mentioned the bill provisions too said, (despite the fact that she is highly academic, thriving in an art college now etc), "Well, if that had happened to me when I was a fully fledged school refuser, I would have refused to comply.  I would have hidden under my bed, and locked the door. I would not have been able to deal with the fact that my parents might be punished for this.  I would have been so scared of being forcibly returned to school, that I wouldn't have been able to do anything about preventing punishment to my parents."    Not only is this clearly HUGELY stressful for these sorts of families, it again punishes already struggling parents for things over which they have no control, unless, of course, the state requires them to forcibly drag their progeny from under their beds, in a way that could be deemed highly abusive.

4. The stress that would be involved in the "assessment" would most likely mean that there would be many false positives, with added stress and expense for local authorities and damage for families.

Costing and Resources:

1.  Local Authorities won't be able to afford to enact the Bill.  The costing exercises some LAs have undertaken look farcically optimistic when read alongside headlines in their own local newspapers announcing LA budget cuts.  These estimations don't take in to account the cost of social work referral, other agency referrals, SAO issuance and taking families to court for non-compliance, etc. as well as the cost of a number of children requiring schooling where they hadn't previously, many of these children requiring extra SEN provision. This bill will stretch over-stretched resources even further and leave even less money for genuine cases.  It is also very likely that the HE community will go on strike, refusing contact with LAs.  50,000 SAOs would be very expensive.

Better solutions:

1. Schools, LAs and Ofsted need to sort themselves out so that they not only making sure that the Pupil Registration Regs of 2016 are working properly and that no backdoor off-rolling is happening, but also that schools are able to talk openly and frankly to their LAs, so that they can raise concerns without fear of being made to feel as if they have failed for not coping with the problem themselves. 

It would help a lot if Ofsted were to stop judging schools by results and instead should look solely at provision. This would introduce far more honesty in the schooling system, including schools being honest with Ofsted and their LAs about the young people who are failed by their provision. Ofsted, instead of punishing teachers and demoralising the work force, should accept the limits of human capacity and instead help with good practice when it comes to off-rolling.  

2.  Illegal schools could be found through a more honest off-rolling process which would allow the Prevent  strategy and other community based projects to kick in more effectively which could then be dealt with through Ofsted without generating a load of unnecessary work monitoring perfectly legitimate home educating families.

3. Ofsted should be given more effective powers of inspection and entry to deal with illegal schools. 

4.  Young people when off-rolled, could be given contact details of a person or hot line whom they could call should they need to.  

5. Families removing their children from school could automatically be given information that connected them to well established groups in the HE community.   The skill set in the HE community is now pretty big.  Most big FB groups in FB can advise and help really effectively.

6.  Schools should have properly funded SEND provision. This would limit the numbers of families with SEN who feel compelled to HE due to appalling school provision.

7. There should be the offer of state funded virtual schools for those who want to work remotely.

8.  Home education, instead of being seen as the enemy, could be regarded as offering a model for updating and improving the education system in this country.  Schooling in this country is in crisis. Funding is a huge problem.   Teachers are leaving in droves.  Bullying of all sorts is rife and young people leave school burnt out and demotivated by a one size fits all curriculum and endless exams,. The contrast between schooled young people and those were were HEd when they enter sixth forms and universities is often dramatic, with the previously home educated raring to go.  Further, the schooling system does not take into account that the teacher is no long the sole repository of wisdom, and it is not making the best use of technological innovation. This slowness to adapt is most likely a result of a combination of vast vested interests and habit, but we have a model of an easily adaptable, light-on-its-feet type of education in the form of home education. Home educators know that information is no longer at a premium.  Lectures from the most eminent minds in the world are available at a click of a button.  Criticism and feed back are available in spades, again at the click of a button.  Home Educators know about personalising education, using data, gamification, and internal motivation in order to improve learning outcomes. They know about how to maximise the wisdom of crowds in many of their FB groups.  Could we gamify education? Can we offer distance learning options. So lets really think about replacing schools with something more appropriate for the 21st century or at the very least, think about something a bit more Finnish. Let's look at providing safe spaces for children to work in, learning hubs, personalised learning, data based, data driven individual educations where children can acquire the skills they will actually need in a fast paced world. This is actually the sort of discussion we should be having and most likely, after an initial disruption, it would be a darn sight cheaper.

7. Instead of funding education centrally, provide education vouchers so that families can chose the provision that genuinely suits their child. 

Thursday, October 05, 2017

Home Education is NOT THE PROBLEM

With Lord Soley's bill lining up for a second reading, home educators find themselves at the butt end of some simply terrible BBC reporting here and here. Gill has done her usual expert job making mincemeat of one of these pieces, and perhaps there isn't a need to say any more, except I want to - OK, yes mainly because I need to vent, but also because I want to tell you what a teacher friend said to me this morning.

He said, and bear in mind, he's been a teacher for over thirty years, and has only been peering over my home educating shoulder for the last three years, "It isn't home education and home education law that's the problem.  It's schools".   Get that, Lord Soley and all those whose brains are turned to mush by the desire to be re-elected and not say unpopular if true things: It's schools and the related regulatory institutions that are the problem.  Sort that mess out and STOP BLAMING HOME EDUCATION!

Now, let me tell you for why:  (hat tip: teacher friend who didn't eat his porridge till it had gone completely cold because he needed to wave his spoon around a lot), schools are the problem because head teachers are effectively forced to off-roll pupils who are not performing to the necessary standard and this is because heads and teachers are judged on the grades pupils achieve.  If Johnny gets five U grades (or whatever they're called nowadays), Ofsted adjudges heads and teachers the most execrable fuckwits and out they go, losing their jobs, livelihoods, houses, cars, marriages, self respect, you name it, everything goes in an all round personal disaster of epic proportions.

It doesn't matter that Johnny's teacher has been providing excellent, entertaining and informative lessons, and that Johnny has simply decided to spend his time staring out the window. In a piece of idiocy that is almost masterful in it's daring misrepresentation of reality  - given that teachers can't just open up the top of pupils' heads and pour knowledge into them and that pupils do actually have to open their minds themselves in order to learn anything at all - it is nonetheless still the teacher's fault that Johnny has failed.

This mutilation of reality is deemed a good thing by our elected representatives because it isn't a vote winner to have to tell parents that their precious progeny have the brains and attention span of a gnat.  Parents form a far bigger part of the electorate than teachers, and anyway, teachers have nowhere to turn electorally because every party would encourage Ofsted to judge them in a similar manner.

And then there's the added pressure upon teachers in that there is no money for help with pupils who struggle to learn in an average sort of a way.  Even in the very unlikely event that such a pupil actually does have an Education, Health and Care Plan, it is still unlikely that this plan will actually be fulfilled in any meaningful way and this along with all the other pupils with learning differences who don't have EHCPs means that teachers are left with huge classes containing children who actually need specialised provision that they cannot hope to deliver.

So all in all, even the very best of teachers are caught in a vice, with pressure from all sides.  The only release is to chuck Johnny out, telling the parents on the way just so as to make it sound concerned and legal: "So yes, you're going to home educate him," for which read "Phew, now we're bailed out of this holy mess that is not of our making!"

And so it is that disaffected young people end up being home educated and yipppeee from our elective representative's point of view, because home education is an easy target: tiny demographic, which doesn't garner much public understanding or sympathy, we can pick on them, rather than look at the massive mess in our own back yard.

So don't be fooled.  The problem is NOT home education or home education law.  It's a combination of lack of funding in schools, the desire to win votes and the subsequent distortions of learning theory, all of which means that young people end up being home educated without any prior preparation or knowledge about how it works.

BUT, you might be thinking, given that these young people are now being at least nominally home educated, perhaps the law surrounding HE does need to be changed?  The answer to that is a resounding NO.  These children ARE  KNOWN TO THE AUTHORITIES who already have all the law they need to get to young people who may be falling through the net and yet social work teams around the country can't cover the ground as it is.  A shortage of social workers is actually the problem that needs sorting.

OK, so I've calmed down a bit, though of course there's still a lot more that could be said on the crap learning theory in schools and how this could so easily be replaced with personalised learning and a little bit of creativity round the childcare aspect of school, but that's for another post. 

But right now, before I have a proper hope of regaining some composure, I feel the need to make another point: in one of the pieces, someone accused home educators of being irrationally afraid of the authorities.   I've just had to delete a lot of profanities right here, but I still want people to know how downright idiotic that assertion is.  Home educators aren't irrational about this. They have seen HE families torn apart by the authorities who wade in and do simply dreadful things in family courts with total impunity, the horror of the outcome being exacerbated because the authorities assume that families are home educating because they must have something to hide.

Our fears are not irrational.  Children and families have been devastated by the idiotic hand of a powerful state which in the family courts can get away with the most terrible injustices. This is why the law must, at the very least, not become more invasive: the state must not become more powerful, more intrusive and more wilfully misguided than it is already.

Monday, August 07, 2017

Examples of Local Authority Home Education Policies

...with notes if there is a contentious interpretation of case law on the nature of a suitable and efficient education:

Bedfordshire HE Policy

Derbyshire HE Policy

(recommends following the National Curriculum).

Hampshire HE Policy

Leicestershire HE Policy

Case law (Harrison & Harrison v Stevenson) also states that a suitable education – for a child capable of learning such skills – should instil in them the ability to read, write and cope with arithmetical problems. In other words, an education that does not include English and Maths cannot be considered suitable

North Yorkshire Policy

West Berkshire HE Policy

What do home educators provide?

• They make the learning process active, practical and participative.
• They take full advantage of all available resources, such as museums, libraries, parks, computers, educational DVDs and CDs.
• They have fun with the learning experience.
• They provide opportunities for physical development.
• They encourage their children to develop socially by possibly attending clubs.
• They encourage their children to read widely.
• They make learning enjoyable by using a variety of approaches.
• They give children opportunities for independent learning.
• They make sure their child has a suitable environment for learning.
• They make sure their child is safe.

Are there any compulsory subjects? There are no compulsory subjects for electively home educated children. However, you will need to provide opportunities for learning literacy and numeracy as these are key areas in a suitable education

Tuesday, August 01, 2017

Talmud Torah Machzikei Hadass School Trust case on Efficient and Suitable Education.

as an education that “achieves that which it sets out to achieve”.

life if he wishes to do so”.

 Mr Justice Woolf in the case of R v Secretary of State for Education and Science, ex parte Talmud Torah Machzikei Hadass School Trust (12 April 1985)

See EO Website. 

Monday, July 17, 2017

Blogs about the Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill

Will be updating as and when I hear of new blog posts about the bill. 

HE Byte cutting through the confusion surrounding the announcement of the Integrated Communities Strategy Green Paper.

An excellent response to the Integrated Communities Strategy Consultation.

This nails it: Home Education - A Democratic Right

For starters, a sensible perspective from Researching Reform.

Information about the Bill from edyourself

Essential reading from Sometime it's Peaceful

Not directly related, but debunking the "if you have nothing to hide" myth.

From the Badman era, but still relevant, from Uncharted Worlds

From Christians in Education

Tuesday, July 04, 2017

Why would the Latest Home Education Bill be Constitutionally Significant?

What is it about the "Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill, which received its first reading in the Lords on 27th June 2017, that is so significant? It is after all, highly unlikely to become law, but at least some of its significance stems from the fact that it is nonetheless part of an on-going effort on the part of those antipathetic to home education to influence legislators.

But what is constitutionally significant about that?  Well, if the bill were to become law, it would completely overturn a key underpinning of our democracy, ie: that it is for families to decide upon the nature and content of education rather than the state. This is because the bill would make it a requirement that every home educating family pass muster with their local authority in terms of their educational provision which means, in effect, that the state takes over the task of determining the nature of a suitable education.  Once this happens, democracy is at risk since it removes one of the key checks and balances that mitigates against the instigation of tyranny, ie: freedom in education.

But why, it is reasonable to ask, given that local authorities already have a duty to try to discover children not in receipt of an education, has the state not already taken over as de facto parent in terms of deciding upon the nature of a suitable education?  The state in determining that a suitable education is not taking place, must have decided upon the nature of a suitable education.

The thing is, the section on children missing education doesn't mean that anyone must define what a suitable education actually is.  It only means that the state must decide what a suitable education isn't!  These things are very different.

A suitable education is a broad category of things.  It is similar, in this way, to a healthy diet.  You can know, broadly speaking, when someone is not in receipt of a healthy diet, but you wouldn't by so doing, have determined what sort of diet a person must eat.

Likewise, the state determining that an education is not suitable is not the same as the state determining the nature of a suitable education, since all manner of different forms of education could be suitable and this is where we are at with current legislation. Families and not the state currently still get to decide upon the nature of a suitable education and they (unlike the state), can vary it so that the education is genuinely suited to the individual child.

However the recent bill as law would overturn all that.  The state would then decide upon the nature of suitable education. Parents would no longer get to decide this, and whilst this might not look constitutionally frightening at the moment, we must not forget how quickly democracies can deteriorate, how a chipping away at the edges of checks and balances could more easily lead to such a decline and how dictatorships are buttressed by a state controlled education.  Think not only of the decline of Revolutionary France and the Weimar Republic but also of the recent annexation of the Crimea and the current political volatility throughout the whole of the Western World, with swings to extreme ends of left and right, and populist votes which resulted in a president that admired the way Putin goes about things and press bans from Whitehouse briefings.

We are by no means at the end of history as Francis Fukuyama would have had us believe shortly after the end of the Cold War. Eternal vigilance remains as important today as it ever was.

Thursday, June 29, 2017

Reaction to the Private Members' Bill in the House of Lords

Home educators are still not missing a beat.  A Private Members' Bill with the title:

Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill

received its first reading in the Lords on the 27th June 2017.

Despite the fact that all are aware that there is little chance that the bill will become law, a group opposing the bill was set up on Facebook by 16.00 the next day.  By early the next morning, there were already 4000 plus members and counting, along with streams of good argument as to why this bill will be damaging and unhelpful.

The feeling against registration and monitoring is as strong (if not stronger) than ever!