HomeSchooler.org.uk

Survey asking home educators to indicate who they saw in a week.

"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"

"A local authority officer has just admitted in an email to a home educator that 

'the high percentage of children (actual number taken out as it identifies the LA) 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." more:http://maire-staffordshire.blogspot.com/2009/10/dishonest-or-stupidity-local-authority.html

Press Release Friday 18th September 2009

Report's Author Makes Urgent Request for Evidence to Back His Conclusions

Home educators today reacted in astonishment to news that DCSF had sent out a letter from Graham Badman, author of the contentious Report on the Review of Elective Home Education in England, appealing for assistance in finding more evidence to provide to the forthcoming select committee inquiry into the Review.

In a suprising admission, the covering letter from DCSF2 admits that the evidence on which the 28 recomendations were based was a "small sample" and that they needed to show "more statistically rigorous" information to the Inquiry.

Results from Freedom of Information requests made by home educators has shown that only 25 out of 152 local authorities responded to the earlier request. Ann Newstead, Spokesperson for Education Otherwise (EO) said “time is running out for Graham Badman since the Select Committee will be scrutinising the conduct of the review next month”. Despite acknowledging the poor basis for the Recommendations, the letter still asserts that the data that had been collected provided "persausive evidence for change".

Fiona Nicholson, Chair of EO's Government Policy Group said “Our position remains that the Badman Review was not given sufficient time to consider the issues and hence reached hasty and disproportionate conclusions. We welcome the scrutiny of the Select Committee"

Notes to Editors

1 Review of elective home education in England http://publications.everychildmatters.gov.uk/ default.aspx?PageFunction=productdetails&PageMode=publications&ProductId=HC+610&

2 Elective Home Education (EHE) review - request for supplementary data http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/news-and-communications/la-week...

"Directors of Children's Services
All local authorities in England

17 September 2009

Select Committee hearing on the Review of Elective Home Education in
England

I am writing to make you aware of the forthcoming Select Committee hearing
in early October which is likely to examine the evidence from the various
sources which led me to make the 28 recommendations in my Review. The
Review recognised that most home educators do a good job and that they
should be supported by local authorities (LAs) in accessing appropriate
services for their children. You may be aware from press reports and activity
within your local authority that some sections of the home educating
community are questioning some of the LA evidence which assisted me in
arriving at my conclusions.

I had a good response from LAs to my call for evidence to inform the Review.
This provided a rich source of contextual information which I considered
alongside submissions from individuals and a wide range of organisations
with relevant expertise. Most of my recommendations have not been
challenged, reflecting the sound evidence base. However, a small group of
home educators have refused to accept my conclusion 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 educating population'
with others disputing the evidence base that shows that a small but significant
proportion of home educated children are receiving no, or an inadequate,
education.

I would like to strengthen my statistical evidence in advance of the Select
Committee hearing so that it is more extensive and statistically robust. This
would allow the Select Committee to consider good quality factual information
that supplements the qualitative analyses underpinning my report. For this
reason I need a response to this letter by 1 October.

DCSF's `Star Chamber' gave approval for this voluntary data collection on 15

Published on AHEd's Wiki: http://ahed.pbworks.com/LiesDamnedLiesStatistics#StatisticianComment

"W. Wallace
(BSc MSc MPhil FSS AFIMA.)

Mr Wallace has worked in Local Government as a Statistician and also as a University Statistics Lecturer and Research Fellow.

Dear (AHEd)

Quite frankly I can't believe that you received the Appendix as an FOI request. I had been looking for a statistical / methodological appendix to the Badman report but had not found one. The methodology as shown does not stand up as plausible or acceptable statistically, apart from all the other issues concerning the precise information used i.e. abuse, disability services or known to SS for a variety of possibly unsubstantiated reasons.

The use of a sample median to gross up to a national value requires that all LA's have the same number of EHE children, which they do not.

It is not easily possible to estimate the statistical error introduced by doing this but suffice it to say that the standard error of such an estimate would be so large that it would not be worth using the statistic.

Also quoted is 477 registered EHE children known to the 25 LA's that responded out of the 90 asked to respond as part of the review. We have no way of knowing how representative the 25 are of the 150 LA's and this needs to be checked before any statistics can be quoted. Are we comparing like with like? If we were confident that these 25 reasonably reflected the total 150 then we might take the 477 and divide by the total number of EHE children in the 25 LA's. This would give us an estimate of the proportion of EHE children known to SS per LA. This is what they could have done but did not.

There are at least two main flaws to be noted:

1. The inappropriate use of one measurement instead of the target measure. Using 'known to SS' rather than recorded abuse (often termed an error of operationalisation).

A summary of the many misrepresentations and errors in the report by Action for Home Education...AHED Wiki Page here...

"On the 11th June 2009 the Department for Children, Schools and Families published its Review of Elective Home Education in England, which was conducted by Graham Badman. The Secretary of State and the Children’s Minister announced on the same day that the Government accepted all of the Review’s recommendations, ‘subject to identifying funding and workable delivery arrangements’. Currently, the Government is consulting on some of the Review’s recommendations and has stated that the Improving Schools and Safeguarding Children Bill will include clauses on ‘monitoring arrangements for children educated at home’. The Review’s recommendations if enacted will have profound implications for parents and children who educate at home. We wish to raise with you a number of concerns we have about the quality of the Review. There are a number of shortcomings that arguably amount to a breach of both the Nolan Committee's ‘The Seven Principles of Public Life’ and the Civil Service Code. Clearly, these are serious allegations and, if correct, undermine the legitimacy of, and public trust in, the Review and its conclusions. In effect the policy making process has been let down by a poorly conducted Review."...more...