HomeSchooler.org.uk

Exactly a year ago the Department for Children Schools and Families launched the Badman Review of Home Education. Last October we wrote that home educators had been subject to nine months of policy based evidence making. The tide began to turn with the publication of the Select Committee Report, which reprimanded the Department for relying on unsound evidence and for rushing to legislate on home education without publishing feedback from the recent public consultation.
Two months after the Secretary of State reassured parliament that right of access to the home and private interviews with children would be both voluntary and optional, the Department finally published feedback from the consultation which set out the real position.

"We have decided that local authorities should visit the place where education is taking place, which will usually be the family home, as part of their monitoring work. If families choose not to cooperate, and as a result are not on the register, local authorities will be able to use a school attendance order to require the home educated child or children to attend school."
MPs and Lords are being asked at every stage to accept without evidence that there is no alternative and also to accept that most questions about the future will remain unanswered since the Department has either not yet had time to make any decisions or chooses not to share any information before the Bill becomes law. A simple indication of how much the legal skeleton will be fleshed out later may be seen in the extensive regulation-making powers in six new sections of the 1996 Education Act, namely 19A, 19B, 19C, 19F, I9G and 19H.

Tania Berlow and Jacquie Cox
1/1/2010

STATISTICAL EXPOSE
· There are an estimated 20,000 Electively Home Educated (EHE) children registered with Local Authorities in England1. There may be another 40-60,000 EHE children not registered with Local Authorities. There is currently no obligation for families to register in this way. Under current law and guidelines parents have a duty to ensure their children receive a suitable education, not Government.
· If a Local Authority has reason to believe that a suitable education is not taking place, they then have a duty to intervene. The recent Review into EHE did not concern itself with asking why many Home Educators choose not to register as electively home educating. Any data discussed in this document is referring to those EHE children known to the Local Authorities, through registration or otherwise.
· The Badman Review on Elective Home Education (EHE)2 was commissioned by the Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF) used 3 questionnaires.
· The first questionnaire was not used to extract data but was used to inform the type of
questioning that came in the second questionnaire. 90 Local Authorities (LA's) responded.
· The second questionnaire was answered by only 25/152 LA’s and only 20 of these 25 LA’s gave figures that could be used. It appears that the data from this questionnaire has been disregarded for the statistics used in the Impact Assessment used to inform the Children Schools and Families Bill.
· When home educators questioned the provenance and the robustness of the data used by the review author to draw conclusions and make recommendations to the Secretary of State, the author asked the Star Chamber for more time to conduct a further supplemental data gathering exercise, which was completed by Local Authorities after the Review was published3.

This petition has just been launched, there is some controversy over the manner of its launch and the wording.

Some think that the wording implicitly gives our consent to further reviews and maybe the outcomes (presumably monitoring and registration) of those reviews and therefore prefer not to sign. On the other hand some think the simple fact of the petition, the media attention and the potential dis-rail the Badman recommendations is enough reason to sign.

I shall add views to the links above as they become available.

"I have been delighted to read the many submissions to the Children Schools and Families Select Committee by home educators, their supporters, organisations and several independent interested parties. This body of evidence shows the lie in Graham Badman's words to the Select Committee that opposition to his Review of Elective Home Education was mainly being perpetrated by a "vociferous minority.""

"This week the submissions to the select committee inquiry have been made public. Many ppl have blogged their shock about some of the contents, or their pleasure in reading some of the reasoned arguments against the Badman review. Ppl have also wondered why the whole thing hasn’t just been thrown out – but I don’t think the select committee has that kind of power, and I have a bad feeling that when it comes down to it, they are going to do absolutely nothing to help us."

"I've thoroughly enjoyed reading this transcript of the Home Educated Youth Council's August meeting with Penny Jones at the DCSF.

Some of my favourite highlights:"

"Seriously, anyone would think we decided to home educate these triplets like we choose pizza for lunch. Shall we have mushroom? Or just cheese and tomato?

I don't know about you, but we went through agony of thinking about the education of our kids, because like you with yours, we love ours. Like you, we didn't take our decisions lightly."

"1. In a letter to the information commissioner just released under the freedom of information act,

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/communications_with_information#co...

the DCSF use several examples to show why they are not releasing certain requested information to Home Educators. The first example used is the one I would particularly like to bring to your attention.

"http://www.facebook.com/wall.php?id=4545... &page=2&hash-Of2a77932b0633fb20f23cc27b7aOb09 The post of 13 June 23.45 suggests that Mr Badman will have a child's blood on his hands.""

I thought Graham Badman could go no lower in home educators' estimation, but this takes the biscuit.

At our first interview Mr Badman was interested in what I had to say. His opening question was to ask me if home educating mothers suffered from Munchhausen's by Proxy. I thought this to be a curious starting point - that of questioning whether home education is a symptom of mental illness. I am not medically qualified, but I was able to inform Mr Badman that there is no research evidence available that I am aware of, which makes this link.

This actually makes sense of the way the whole review was carried out and written up. If he was starting from that kind of basis of supposition, there was no chance of him ever doing anything good for home educators.