Ofsted tentacles stretching towards home educators

The government’s Chief Inspector of Schools clearly has far too much time on her hands!  Christine Gilbert, clearly feeling that the challenge of raising the standards of education in the nation’s schools is not enough to keep her occupied, has decided to focus her attention on home educating families and, in the process got it all wrong!  According to Ofsted, a key finding of their report was that  the current legislation around home education severely hampers local authorities in fulfilling their statutory duties to ensure that home educated children receive a suitable education. And yet, no such duty exists! In English law, ALL parents are obliged to ensure that their children receive a suitable education by sending them to school or otherwise. Steve Richards, NorthStarUK’s Educational Director stated, “It is profoundly disturbing that Ofsted, itself, does not know the law and prefers to attempt to pressurise the new government into reviving Badman and Ball’s discredited agenda for state regulation of family life.”

In the opinion of NorthStarUK, this sort of discriminatory behaviour has to stop – home education is as valid a life-style choice as school-based learning – this is what is enshrined in English law and it is about time that Christine Gilbert focused on upholding the law and the rights of parents rather than engaging in the publication of bullying misinformation.

Home education law ends up in right place!

All at NorthStarUK were delighted with the news coming from Westminster this week that Ed Balls’ campaign against the liberties of home educating families has finally ended up where it belongs – in the wash-up!  This is the term for the horse-trading that takes place in the days following the announcement of a general election to ensure that as much government business s possible is completed. Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs had made it clear that they would not support the clauses in the Children, Schools and Families Bill relating to home education – thus causing Ministers to back down or risk loosing the whole Bill.

Steve Richards, NSUK’s Educational Director and long time home educating dad, said this week, “No credit goes to Ed Balls for this decision, this was forced upon him; but all home educators will be grateful to those members of the Lords and Commons who have stood up for our rights and refused to cow down to significant ministerial pressure in recent months.”

We have no doubt that this is not the end of the battle – if Labour win the election Balls has promised to re-introduce the missing clauses and even if the Conservatives win it is likely that they will re-visit this area sometime in the future.  Let’s just hope that next time, decisions will be based upon honesty, integrity and sound research from experts in the field of home education from around the world.

Khyra Ishaq – a tragedy that has nothing to do with home educators

Now that the court case involving Angela Gordon  and her partner, Junaid Abuhamza, has come to an end with both receiving significant jail sentences, it seems appropriate that we at NorthStarUK make seem comment on the tragic case of Khyra Ishaq’s death. Ed Balls and Graham Badman have both used Khyra Ishaq’s death as an excuse to attack the freedom of home educating families in England; both pointing to the fact that Khyra Ishaq had been home educated for the final few months of her short life.  According to Balls and Badman, this is justification enough to warrant wholesale changes to the legislative framework involving elective home education and the establishment of the right of local authority staff to interview any home educated child alone and without the parents being present. Indeed, Graham Badman, in an attempt to link this tragedy with home education in general went so far as to say “There are a tiny minority of people who use the home education system as a mask for sometimes horrific abuse of their children.” For Balls and Badman, Khyra Ishaq was let down by an inadequate legal system that did not give local authority staff sufficient powers to step in and protect this poor child when she was in harm’s way.

The reality. however, was quite different. Concerns for Khyra’s safety were expressed within weeks of her removal from school, in fact the deputy head of her former school tried to visit the family and raise concerns . She expressed concerns to social services who refused to accept that there was any need for urgent action. In the ensuing months, the police, social services and educational staff all visited the home and Tony Brownbill, Birmingham City Council’s spokesman said that it had done all that it could, going on “Something happened in the house that no-one could get to because there wasn’t sufficient legislation to get in.” On 17th May 2008, Khyra Ishaq died.

In our opinion, the current legislative position is robust and clear – local authority staff are not obliged to agree to a parent’s request to home educate until they are satisfied with the provision being made by the child’s parents.  Whilst the law provides considerable flexibility about how this is to be achieved, it is nevertheless clear where the power lies – it is with the local authority. The 1997 Education Act states “If it appears to a local education authority that a child of compulsory school age in their area is not receiving suitable education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise, they shall serve a notice in writing on the parent requiring him to satisfy them within the period specified in the notice that the child is receiving such education.”  Ultimately, the local authority can compel parents to send children to school if they are seriously concerned with the educational provision being made by parents.

There is no need for the laws regarding home education to be altered and there is certainly no need to provide local authorities with greater powers.  After all, Khyra Ishaq was known to the local authority and it was Birmingham City Council staff who took the decision that she was not in any danger. Not only is there no evidence that greater powers are need, but there is precious little indication that these greater powers, if granted, would be applied with any greater wisdom the next time.

Jeremy Clarkson, home education and living in an imperfect world

There cannot be many people in the UK who have not heard of Jeremy Clarkson, the lead presenter in the popular BBC programme, Top Gear. Clarkson has acquired something of a reputation for having strong opinions, especially relating to the impact of what he sees as overly intrusive government in ordinary people’s lives. In addition to his TV appearances he also writes a column in The Times. He often writes with a very direct and some would say offensive style. However, often, his manner of writing hides some very perceptive comments.

In this week’s article, he writes about the UK government’s latest proposal to make it compulsory that all dog owners must have third party insurance so that they (the owners that is and not the dogs!) are able to pay damages when their little pouch attacks somebody. As a long time dog owner I think that the plan is barmy but of course what the government is trying to do is respond to dog attacks and the growing use of large and vicious dogs as status symbols and protection by young men in disadvantaged areas of our cities.

Clarkson also mentions home education in his article, pointing out that it is madness to try to legislate on the back of extreme cases of wickedness such as the death of Khyra Ishaq, whose mother removed her from school claiming she was home educating her. The government’s response to this was the Badman Report and proposed new legislation making it possible for local authority staff to interview children without their parents being present – because abused children are unlikely to say anything whilst the abuser is present!

Clarkson closes his article in a typically direct and crude manner but what he says is that this world is not perfect – bad things happen to very decent ordinary people; and it is nonsense to generate legislation that affects and controls ordinary people’s lives in order to try to stop all of the bad things happening.

What Clarkson is saying, of course, is very much in keeping with the worldview presented in the Bible – we live in an imperfect and fallen world where things are not as they should be, that all human beings behave stupidly and wrongly at times and sometimes that can seriously hurt others. Christians, however, would argue that the answer cannot be found in the hands of government, legislation will never change human nature. Only the gospel can affect people deep within their beings and give us all what Jesus called ‘new birth’. This is God’s ‘good news’ for a world where bad things happen.

Home Page News 18th January 2010

At church yesterday the speaker asked us all – ‘what puts fire in your belly?’ ‘What, in your life, excites you when you think about it?’ He was particularly asking us to reflect on the work that we do for the Lord, and especially inviting us to focus on those areas that we are especially called to minister in, over and above everything else. As I sat there I thought about NorthStarUK and also about gifts – not the sort that we receive at Christmas, but rather those that our Creator gave us at birth. For many years I worked as a special needs teacher. Many of the students I worked with were amongst the weakest in the school, in terms of their academic prowess. But each and everyone one of them had gifts; they all had abilities given to them by their Creator. Often these were talents that school did not notice or value; nevertheless, they were still gifted individuals – indeed, much of my most important work, I felt, was to try to convince them that they had abilities, because many years of schooling had often caused them to lose confidence and led them to devalue themselves. It also struck me that schools do not have a very good track record of working with exceptionally talented individuals, either, unless these talents coincided with what schools were looking for. I thought of Mozart – a child prodigy; how would he have got on in one of our local schools – now it has to be admitted, he would almost certainly have known more about science or geography, but would he have had time to compose – he was writing music from the age of five! Schools inevitably aim at producing generalists; our Creator, however is more concerned to produce unique, talented individuals who have a role within their community. As parents, teachers and educators let’s spend some time this week reflecting on the gifts that each of our children has been given and help them to have a fire in their belly as they develop those gifts and talents in the coming years.

Just how much time does Ed Balls have in a week?

Just how much time does Ed Balls have in a week? In a week of headlines that clearly show the desperate state of the nations schools – including news of increased assaults on teachers, news that white boys from poor families continue to be let down by the schooling system, GCSE science grades are inflated, as many as one in eight primary school children had been given the wrong SATS results and almost 50% of 14 year olds admitted to having been bullied – Ed Balls has still found the time to pick on home educating families.

With less than six months left in the job, Ed Balls seems determined to leave his mark. Having publicly accepted every one of Graham badman’s recommendations immediately the Badman Report was published, he has now pushed ahead and drafted legislation in the Children, Schools and Families Bill that will see virtually all of Badman’s recommendations pass into law. Despite ample research that demonstrates that children taught outside schools are more likely to be successful – both educationally and socially – Ed Balls thinks he knows best. He plan to make every home educating family register with their local authority. Each year, parents will have to provide local authority staff with a clear programme of what they plan to teach their children. Each year, local authority staff with little or no experience of home educating will then be permitted to decide whether or not the family may continue to educate without schools! Even OFSTED does not inspect school that often!

In one simple legislative act, Ed Balls has transformed the educational landscape – responsibility for educating children has now been transferred from parents to the state. How ironic that that slippery slope which began with Margaret Thatcher’s National Curriculum in 1988 should finally bring us to the point where our children are not our own – they now belong to the state to be taught what the state wishes and in a place that the state designates!

Perhaps, after all, Ed Balls can afford to ignore the mundane and pressing problems of the school system – because he has his eyes on the bigger picture. Home education demonstrates that parents and children do not need schools, they do not need trained teachers and they do not need the state. Perhaps this is just too radical and too scary for poor Ed Balls to countenance.

Scheming plots?

There is growing evidence that very senior staff within local authority social services departments have worked very closely with staff from the government’s Department for Children, Schools and Families to undermine parents rights to home educate and to portray home education as a growing risk to child safety. Recently a member of the House of Common’s Select Committee for Children, Schools and Families asked Maggie Atkinson, Ed Balls’ candidate for the post of Children’s Commissioner, “What do you think we should be saying as a Committee regarding the legislative process and the Badman Report, and whether it is protecting children’s interests or trampling all over the interests of home-educated children?” Her response was “I would give you two words, and they are the first and second names of the child who died ‘Khyra Ishaq’.”

Ms Atkinson was referring to the tragic case of a child from Birmingham whose mother and step-father allegedly starved her to death. In the last months of her life Khyra Ishaq did not attend school. However, what Ms Atkinson did not tell the Select Committee was that, months before, Khyra Ishaq’s teachers had repeatedly warned social workers of their concerns but had been told that the situation did not warrant further inquiry. Ms Atkinson also choose not to inform the Select Committee of the nineteen children in Birmingam who have died of abuse or neglect since 2004, nor did she feel it necessary to tell the committee members that sixteen of these were already known by social workers, police or health care staff to be at risk of harm. And the evidence of collusion between senior social services staff and the government – on the 16th January 2009, Maggie Atkinson and Graham Badman along with John Coughlan and John Freeman (Joint Presidents of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS)) had a 24 hour session with DCSF staff to work on matters relating to the DCSF’s Children’s Plan; three days later the ‘independent’ Badman Review was launched.

Home Page News – 28th September 2009

The UK government seems determined to undermine home educators and make life more dificult for families who choose to teach their children outside of the school system. Not only have we seen the DCSF launch a review of home education amid fears that home education was being used as a cover for abuse or domestic servitude, but Graham Badman’s final report suggested the imposition of draconian control measures clearly targetted at discouraging parents from choosing home education. For various reasons, the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee has chosen to look into the way that Graham Badman undertook his review. As I reminded everybody last week, the deadline for members of the public to make submissions to the Select Committee was the 22nd September.

I was staggered, therefore, to read last week that Graham Badman has now asked local authorities to provide him with more information to help support the original data that his report is based upon. It seems that his original statistical data was based on a very small sample – he now needs more data to support his findings and recommendations! As somebody wrote last week – “he is looking for evidence to support his evidence!” This is little more than a tacit admission on his part that the data that he currently has will not stand the scrutiny of the select committee and that he needs to find more supporting data. One does not need to be a conspiracy theorist to smell a rat here!

Whilst Christian home educators and others must be vigilant and do all that we can to stop the proposed changes in legislation; at the same time, we have to remember that we have a sovereign God who we believe is in charge of this world. Ed Balls and Graham Badman are not the real ones in control – as much as they may think that they are. I visited the delightful Swallow Falls in North Wales over the weekend. One cannot help but be overwhelmed by the power and beauty of the water as it cascades down the valley. I was reminded not only of the wonder of creation but of the power of God’s grace – which is poured out upon this world so lavishly. At this time especially, those of us who are home educators in the UK need to hold on to this truth and thrive in the knowledge that our gracious God is in control.

Badman and the DCSF’s ‘doomsday’ scenario

Much has been written about the Badman Report and most home educators have, rightly, been indignant at the manner in which the Department for Children, Schools and Families aided and abetted by some in the educational media and children’s charities have decided to wage open warfare on sensible law-abiding parents whose only ‘crime’ is to step outside the government prescribed education system and try to offer their children something better!

Though there is ample research that demonstrates clearly that children who learn without schools do at least as well as their schooled peers, that their employment outcomes are excellent and that they integrate well into society, Graham Badman has chosen to ignore this. Was this consultation a genuine attempt to improve relations between local authorities and home educators or was it, in reality, little more than a ‘stitch-up’, a sham, where Ed Balls, Delyth Morgan and others within the DCSF could ensure that the last island of educational independent in this country was brought within the controlling tentacles of government? Badman’s unwillingness to acknowledge research that has findings favourable to home education and the membership of his advisory committee, which included three specialists on safeguarding children and a champion of ‘children’s rights’ and no current home educators would suggest that Badman and his masters knew quite well what recommendations they wanted to see at the close of this consultation.

Though Badman has been compelled to acknowledge that there is no evidence to support Delyth Morgan’s shameful association of home education and forms of child abuse, Baroness Morgan, herself, has never publicly apologised for this slur and Graham Badman’s recommendations clearly assume that home educated children are intrinsically more vulnerable and need greater protection from their parents, than those children who attend school!

Is the real issue that home educated children simply highlight the failures that are so common within the school-system? Perhaps the teachers’ unions dislike the fact that untrained mums and dads do a better job than their members or that unpaid parents with limited physical resources appear to be more successful than a nationalised education system costing billions!

Perhaps, in the end, this whole Badman exercise is based upon fear – the fear that more parents will recognise that successive governments over the last twenty years have experimented with the nation’s children, promising much, delivering very little and changing strategy often enough to disguise the outcomes of their actions.

Once parents recognise what has occurred, the number of families home educating could explode as thousands of parents decide to take full responsibility for their children’s education and leave the far riskier national school environment.

Is this ‘doomsday’ scenario what is truly behind the DCSF’s current attack on home educators?

ContactPoint – safety in number?

Today, the UK government’s ContactPoint database goes live. Although initially the database will only be accessible to local authorities in the north west of England, the plan is to roll it out nationwide and permit just under 400,000 individuals to look at a raft of information about every child in the UK. Costing a quarter of a billion pounds to set up, the government has consistently argued that it will enable services for children to be coordinated and ensure that no child slips through the net.

ContactPoint will hold a raft of information about children in England, including their name, address, date of birth, health information including GP details and information about other professionals involved in providing care for a child.  Of particular significance to home educating families the database will hold  details about the child’s formal education provision.

Auditors, Deloitte and Touche published a report in 2007, however stating that the database could never be totally secure.  The government appears to acknowledge this since it has decided to shield the identities of over 50,000 who are regarded as particularly vulnerable.

Whilst some children’s charities have welcomes the new database, opposition political parties have been critical – the Liberal Democrats have called it “intrusive” and the Conservatives have raised concerns about security matters.

The Christian home education group, Home Service, has consistently opposed the implementation of ContactPoint, arguing that it will not achieve its objective of improving the connected-ness of children’s services nor will it improve the situation greatly for the thousands of children in England suffering abuse who are  already known to the local authorities.  In addition, Home Service has argued that the introduction of ContactPoint will rob home educators of their right to privacy. The currently legal position in England and wales is that most families are not required to notify the local authority of their decision to home educate their children.  ContactPoint will destroy this right because the database will each child’s school. This will enable local authorities and others to monitor home educating families in a way that was impossible previously and in a ay that current legislation does not require.

ContactPoint grew out of the desire to improve child safety in the aftermath of the death of Victoria Climbie. Will children in the north west be any safer today as a result of ContactPoint?  The tragic case of Baby P – where health care professionals and social workers were acutely aware of the child’s suffering but appeared to do nothing of substance to prevent it happening -  seems to suggest that the answer to this question is quite simply ‘No”!