Lost Children

My community is suffering from a loss today. A young girl, a student in a local high school “challenge” program for gifted students, suffering from an anxiety disorder, has apparently killed herself.

I mentioned a few posts back, I think, that a few years ago we lost a young man who killed himself as a result of school bullying.

You know how you get these chain reactions of thoughts going in your head sometimes. Well, my mind has been whirling in one of these all day today. This morning I woke up to strange messages on my facebook page, only to discover that minutes earlier MP Graham Stuart had read most of my submission on North American regulatory models to the Children, Schools and Families  bill scrutiny committee. I was pretty excited about this, and immediately went to Parliament TV to have a look.

My two teenage sons came into the kitchen while I was watching. They were definitely astounded to hear their mom’s name being bandied about a U.K. parliamentary committee, and this kicked off a conversation about parliamentary democracy, the differences between the Canadian and U.K. systems, and the bigger differences between parliamentary democracy and the U.S. system (we are dual citizens of Canada and the U.S.).

We ended our political discussion because Peanuts demanded that we join him in a game of Secret Door, but I kept thinking about how engaged my kids have always been in political issues, from proportional representation in Canada to whether or not Vancouver should host the Olympics. I compare their research on and involvement in these issues to my own school-based education in politics, which consisted of a ninth-grade civics class, during which Miss Riggs enjoyed humiliating children by categorizing their parents’ employment. Children whose parents worked in construction were gleefully informed that this was “unskilled labor” and that this was the lot of the uneducated. My father, who owned a construction company, had a few words with Miss Riggs after that lesson.

It was my dad who taught me to think for myself, not school. He died last summer, and not a day goes by that I don’t think of some of the things he taught me. Of his children, I am the most like him, physically, emotionally, mentally. Like him, I have suffered from depression and anxiety. School exacerbated that for me, and it was school pressure that triggered my suicidal thoughts at age 20. I got help for those feelings, and learned how to cope with depression. Some kids, like the two I mentioned at the beginning of this post, don’t get the help. We lose them.

When I heard the news about the lost girl this morning, I thought about my own post-adolescent depression. Like most parents, I thought of her parents. How they must be feeling. How I would feel in their place. I thought of my own kids. One of my sons is very like me and my dad. He and I have often talked about how one finds balance, meaning and happiness in life. But even though he, like me, tends toward anxiety, I don’t really worry about his mental health. In fact, I don’t worry about any of my kids in that way. Why? Because they are very happy people. They have control over their lives, and they know it. They have family support for their endeavors and their decisions. They have never been forced to endure someone else’s agenda for their lives. It makes a difference.

Suicide is the number two cause of death for youth in Canada, and number three in the U.S, where some 5,000 young people between the ages of 15-24 kill themselves every year. In the U.K. suicide accounts for 30 percent of deaths in the 15-24-year-old age group, or about 3,000 young people per year. In the U.S. it is estimated that for every suicide, there are about 400 unsuccessful attempts. That’s a lot of unhappy young people.

So I wondered, what is the rate of suicide for home-educated young people?

I  can’t tell you that, because I can find virtually no information about home-educated children and suicide. I have found one reference to a family in North Carolina whose children died in a murder/suicide. Guess what? The parents were known to social services for child abuse. In the U.K. there is the one case in South Gloucestershire. That young person’s family was also well known to authorities.

That’s it. Two cases. Ever. That’s all I can find any reference to. My conclusion?

Home-educated young people don’t seem to kill themselves. Now why might that be?

Well, I have a theory. I have alluded to it already. Home-educated young people are in control of their own lives, of their own learning processes. They are, well, happy! I picked up a gaggle of them today from an art class, and their joy simply smacked me in the face. They were laughing, telling jokes, relaxed. This group was not feeling pressured. They may choose to be political, but their parents have refused to allow them be be politicized, or objectified, by an educational system that would use them rather than meet their needs.

These young people are not at risk for suicide, or for any of the other high-risk behaviors that plague so many modern teens. Because suicide isn’t the only risk, is it? What about drug abuse? In August of 2008, Partnership for a Drug-Free America had this to say:

A new study released today by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America reveals a troubling new insight into the reasons why teens use drugs. According to the 2007 Partnership Attitude Tracking Study of 6,511 teens (PATS Teens), the number one reason teens see for using drugs is to deal with the pressures and stress of school. In this nationally projectable study (margin of error +/- 1.6 percent), 73 percent of teens reported that school stress is the primary reason for drug use, indicating that teens’ perceptions of motivating factors for using drugs are dramatically different than past research has indicated.

So what about home educated young people? What’s their risk for drug abuse?

Well, if there is any information available on this, I certainly can’t find it. And you know what? If it existed, we would know about it, because the media love nothing more than a good home-education-bashing story.

Makes you think, doesn’t it? Home educated children don’t seem to abuse drugs, and they don’t seem to kill themselves. So why is the U.K. government so keen to harass them and their families? Is it, perhaps, because home educated children show up compulsion state education for the prison that it is?

I think so.

I’m Not Sure Where This is Going, But It Looks Exciting! or Data, Data, Who’s Got the Data?

Some of you regular readers may remember that I have previously mentioned the work of Mr. Ciaran McHale, the man who makes the complex simple for us?

Well, he’s been busy again. Today I was privileged to proofread a chapter in a report he is writing on, at least in part, the way in which the U.K. Department of Children, Schools and Families has treated freedom of information requests.  The chapter in question is a summary of the way in which Graham Badman collected data for the DCSF’s review of elective home education. (You can read the whole chapter yourself, here.)

Just to refresh your memory, this data was later used in Badman’s Report on Elective Home Education. This, therefore, is the data that has been used to make allegations that home educated children are at a higher risk for abuse than other children, that their rate of child protection plans is, in fact, “double that within the normal population.” That’s a direct quote from Mr. Badman, by the way. Read it in black and white right here. Don’t you just love it? He has finally admitted that he doesn’t consider home educators to be part of the “normal” population. It’s all so clear now. Home educators are just, well, not normal. Just call us Abby.

Anyway, back to Ciaran and his analysis of Badman’s data collection. In the course of his “research,” Badman sent out three different questionnaires to local education authorities. Now, here’s what struck me. This entire fiasco, including Badman’s report, the subsequent allegations of child abuse, the ensuing media brouhaha, the demands for changes to home education legislation, the proposed spending of millions and millions of pounds to bring those abusive home educators into line, all stem from the second of these surveys.

This second survey, Mr. McHale shows, had the lowest reply rate. Only 22 local authorities (less than 15 percent) bothered to answer it. Yet Badman felt empowered by this pathetic response to propose measures that would radically change the lives of thousands of families.

Well, hundreds of those families suddenly twigged to the danger that was facing them, and were furious at the smear campaign that the government was conducting against them. (If you want to talk harassment and vilification campaigns, Ms. Undersecretary of State Diana Johnson, there’s one for you.) So what did they do? They started sending in freedom of information requests to demand the data behind Badman’s allegations. Hundreds of them. I have mentioned this before, but it really is the crux of the matter. Here’s a thumbnail version of how it went down.

“Where,” the supposedly abusive home educators cried, “is the data? Give us the data! We demand the data! We wish to see and conduct our own analysis of the data! Why didn’t you publish the data with the damn report?” these shamelessly swearing pirate educators demanded.

“You can’t have it,” replied the DCSF.

“Why not?” the pirates wanted to know.

“Because we say so! Ummm, no, hang on a minute,” said DCSF, glancing around office, drumming desk with fingers. “Because…because you are harassing us! So there!”

This has caused a bit of a conundrum for the home educators. As Mr. McHale puts it, “…without the ability to examine the evidence (that is, the survey responses), underlying those accusations they could not fully defend themselves from the accusations. In turn, this meant they could not hope to stop the passing of new laws, resulting from those unchallenged accusations, that might adversely affect their rights.”

Well, there is a lot more to this story, and many of you know that some intrepid home educators did manage to pull out quite a lot of the data by contacting the local authorities directly. (In this way they have managed to disprove virtually every allegation that Badman and the DCSF have made about home educating families.)  Some of you may also know that the DCSF accused those data collectors of wasting taxpayer money, harassing civil servants, and generally being vexatious.

But why am I telling you this little bed time story, some of which has been repeated many, many times?

Because Mr. McHale has now told us that he will have even more exciting news for us soon!  He says, in fact, that his next chapter will provide “evidence that the DCSF had been acting unlawfully when it rejected FOI requests that sought the local authorities’ responses to surveys.”

Now what’s going on here? What about these surveys made them so important that the DCSF was willing to ignore the law and refuse to release them? What were they trying to accomplish? Well I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for the next installment!

Pirate Learning: Buccaneer Scholars in Families that Rock

We had a typical, unschooling kind of Saturday. Got up a little late, looked at the comments put on my blog in the night (GMT day) by my lovely U.K. home educator friends (so much fun to wake up to), ran around searching for wrapping paper, bags, tape, etc. to wrap the presents (new Harry Potter film and science kit to be shared by 7-year-old home educated twins) small Peanuts was taking to a kung fu birthday party, dropped Peanuts at the party and headed to a Mexican restaurant with husband and young Ramalangadingdong, where R and I worked on permutation and probability math while waiting for our tortilla soup. After lunch R listened while I read him some pages from my novel-in-progress, and then we all headed off to the movies for a little light entertainment.

Guess what we saw? Well, you know it as The Boat that Rocked, but here in North America we have had it as Pirate Radio. I like both names, really. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it (though not necessarily for young children–parental discretion advised).

The year is 1966.  Some crazy and committed rock and roll rebels are broadcasting their beloved music from a pirate radio station on a boat anchored in the North Sea. All of England listens, it seems, since government-sanctioned stations are not allowed to play the new music that is rocking the world. The story’s villain? The evil Minister Dormandy (thank you, writer Richard Curtis–are you trying to make us think of Normandy, that bête noire of English history?), who is desperate to stamp out pirate radio in the next 12 months. “That’s the whole point of being the government,” Dormandy says. “If you don’t like something, you simply make it illegal.” The minister is aided in his quest for control by his sycophantic flunky, the annoying Mr. Twatt.

You really have to see it to appreciate it. Here’s a link to the trailer.

Anyway, you can see why I was enjoying this movie so much at this particular moment. It is such a pure depiction of the sheer joy of freedom, of the buzz that you get from refusing to allow some elitist government nannies tell you what not to do. Of course I was thinking of all you home educators in England. I was thinking of Danae, who keeps yelling that we shouldn’t have to be twice as good to be considered equal. I was thinking of Imran who keeps asking why we aren’t considering the best interests of the child. I was thinking of Ciaran, who keeps demanding that people use logic. I was thinking of Tania, who keeps doing the math. I was thinking of Jill, who keeps demanding clarity, and that people sign petitions.

I was thinking of Gill, Techla, Elizabeth, Lisa, LisaG, Sally, Maire, Mieke, Su, Carlotta, Leaf, Jem, Grit, Debs, Jennifer, mum6kids, firebird and all the other bloggers (I just can’t get you all in) who keep looking for the facts, looking for the holes, and reporting the things the mainstream media ignore until they can’t ignore them anymore because of your tenacity. I was thinking of all the people like Alison, Elaine, Barbara and Annette who keep giving their time to home ed organizations. I was thinking of Raquel and Emma and all the others on the facebook groups. I was thinking of Chloe and the gang at the Home Education Youth Council, who make educrats look like the cheese nugs they are. I was thinking of all the folks on the Badman Review Action Group who keep writing the MPs, the Lords, the committees, the press, and anybody else they think might listen. I was thinking of the 5,000 who told the government where to get off in their “consultation responses.”

I have been meaning to write a tribute to you guys for awhile, to put some names, some real people out there for North American home educators to connect to. So here it is. Keep it up, you pirates, you buccaneer scholars. You know the true meaning of freedom, and I know you won’t give it up. Let your music, your passion, and your words continue to resonate with your children, your friends and yourselves. Let no bad men or twatts get you down. Someday you’ll be able to say, like Minister Dormandy, “We have their testicles [isn't there a slang word for that?] in our hands, Twatt, and it feels good.” Then there really will be dancing in the streets.

Rock on, my pirate friends.

This is What Happens When You Ignore Your Own Convictions

You make mistakes. You get sidetracked. You let excitement and enthusiasm guide your actions rather than consideration and logic. At least I do. And I did.

I messed up. I want to acknowledge this up front, and explain, and then, perhaps, undo a bit of damage, if I have done any.

Today on the Badman Review Action Group, someone made the following comment:

….But I mentioned that there is research about children from lower socio-economic groups doing very well when home educated. I was wondering if it might be a good idea for someone who has contact with researchers/real ‘experts’ into home education to contact John Humphreys and/or whoever is producing the film?

Now, this comment may or may not refer to the submission I made to the scrutiny committee regarding different regulatory models for home education in North America. In my enthusiasm, I referred to a couple of studies on home education in the United States. One of the articles I referred to I had read in its entirety. The other I had not. Nor had I done my research on the background of that study, or the controversy it engendered.

The study in question, “Scholastic Achievement and Demographic Characteristics for Home School Students in 1998,” by Dr. Lawrence Rudner, was peer reviewed and published in a scholarly journal. So far, so good, right? But I forgot, or ignored, several of my cardinal rules of talking about home education.

Rule number one: If you are going to consider academic research on home education, check to see who did the study, who funded it, and what it was based on.

Now, it is not that I am going to make blanket judgments about a study just because of who the author is, but certain things do make my eyebrows raise. And if I had been paying more attention, I might have noticed that the Rudner study was funded by HSLDA and was based on testing done through Bob Jones University.

Bob Jones is a protestant Christian institution with a definite fundamentalist bias. Because home education in North America is so very encumbered by the fundamentalist Christian stereotype, I ordinarily avoid referring to information that comes exclusively from that segment of the home educating population.

I happen to have been raised in a theologically liberal Southern Baptist environment (no, it is not an oxymoron, such communities do exist), but I spent most of my young adult years as an atheist, including my first nine years of parenthood, during which I made the decision to educate my children at home. I am now a Roman Catholic (it’s complicated), but I strongly object to anyone drawing any conclusions about my educational decisions for my children based on my religious affiliation or practice.

Education, as I have frequently maintained, is a matter of conscience. While it may, for some people, have a connection to religious belief or practice, it is still, at bottom, a matter of conscience, not religion. So bottom line, if I had known the study could be reasonably associated with any particular faith group, I would never have referred to it.

Rule number two: Look at critiques of any research you refer to.

Did I do it? No, I did not. And there were several. One, in particular, was waiting for me at the magazine I respect the most, Home Education Magazine. This critique beautifully lays out the objections to this particular study, and I am just too embarrassed to go into them, so if you want to see them, read them here.

Rule number three: Try not to refer to academic research on home education. There are other ways to make your points.

Why? Well, again, the people at HEM make a very compelling case that academic research on home education may hurt us more than it helps us. I have always found their arguments valid, and so I am embarrassed and more than a little disappointed in myself that in the past year I have, on several occasions, referred to this type of research. In having done so I find myself guilty of intellectual laziness.

So, in an effort to limit the damage such references may do/have done, I will try to address some questions that may arise from my mistake.

1. Do I believe that the conclusions of the study I referred to are necessarily invalid?

No, not necessarily. But there were enough systematic problems with the study that I wish I had not referred to it.

2. Why did I choose to refer to that particular study?

Because one of its conclusions, the one to which I referred, bears out my personal experience over my 17 years as a home educator and home education advocate. That is, that a higher level of parental education (including parental teaching experience or qualifications), does not produce superior educational results in children educated at home.

The Rudner study pointed out that children whose mothers did not finish high school performed very well on the standardized tests considered by the study. This has been my observation as well. People often look at my husband and me, both of whom had the opportunity to complete university degrees and attend graduate school at Yale, and say, Oh, well, of course you can educate your children at home. You have the proper qualifications. But I see something different.

I have met literally thousands of home educating families in the 17 years we have been at this, and a great many of the parents had only minimal education themselves. Many of them chose home-based education for their children precisely because school-based education had so profoundly failed them. Their children, without exception, flourish as their parents learn and grow with them. Education becomes a family project, and the parents fill the gaps in their own knowledge as they learn alongside their children.

I can attest to this in my own life as well. Failed by my high school math teachers I, who had tested as a “gifted child” in math, gave up on math and abandoned it as soon as I could pass out of my bachelor of arts math requirement. When my oldest son came to advanced math studies, I decided to encourage him not to give up on math, as I had. Even though he was heading into theatre studies at university, I encouraged him to join me in learning pre-calculus math. He did, and we both mastered the subject. I am now continuing to study with son number three, and we are about to head into calculus.

3. What can we rely on if we do not refer to research that is being done on home education (and more is coming up all the time)?

We can rely on our own experience with our own children, and share that with those we come in contact with who question home education. We can use anecdotal evidence from other home educators we personally know. We can rely on logic.

Logic and experience, I think, are really our best defenses. Those who demand greater regulation of home education do so out of a mistaken belief that while there are “good and responsible” parents who choose to home educate, there are also “bad and irresponsible” parents who may use home education as a “screen” behind which to abuse their children, force them into marriage, force some particular political or religious dogma upon them, or just plain ignore them. The ultimate answer to this is, where is the evidence that such a thing is happening? Laws and regulations cannot be based upon “what if people might?” Law must be based on consent of the governed, clear and present danger, actual harm proven. You cannot base laws that will destroy the peace of mind of thousands of parents and children on “what if” scare tactics.

Any sensible free society has child protections laws. Any person who believes that a child is suffering from neglect or abuse should report their concerns to the authorities. My youngest child is mine today precisely because someone made such a report. I have great compassion for all parents, including those who can’t handle the responsibility of parenthood. I believe that the process through which the state becomes the parent of last resort should be an intensively exhaustive one, based upon concrete evidence and with bias weighted in favor of the biological family. The biological connection is paramount for human beings, and we should break it only in the most dire of circumstances.

As a society we must rely on the experience that reminds us that in the vast majority of cases parents make the best possible decisions they can for their children. We must rely on evidence that shows us that state interference in families often does more harm than good. We must demand that the voices of our children be heard, and that their human rights be respected. We do not need “expert assistance” or research to make these claims and these points.

So, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I hope those who have come across my grievous error will understand that the mistake was made in an excess of enthusiasm, and will forgive, if not overlook, it.

Blogdial on the only Nazi Law Remaining in Force

Now, I don’t usually repost directly from other blogs, but today, for the edification of my North American readers who may not have run across him, here is a post from the British blogger Blogdial, at his very, tippy top best, in my opinion. And today I am proud to be American.

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=2410

Ignoring North America, or “The Tasmanian Model”

Yes, ignoring the regulatory experience of 2 million home-educated students in North America. That’s what the U.K. Department of Children, Schools and Families is doing with regard to regulation of home education in England. I wrote to the Parliamentary Select Committee about this when they were doing their enquiry into the Badman Review of Elective Home Education in England, but they ignored it too. So then I submitted the following document to the Scrutiny Committee for the Children, Schools and Families Bill. I wonder if they will ignore it as well? (N.B. MP Graham Stuart has not ignored it. Thank you, Mr. Stuart.)

Submission to the Scrutiny Committee for the Children, Schools and Families Bill, U.K. Parliament, January 21, 2010

1. I submit the following material to the Committee in relation to Clause 26 – Schedule 1, the proposed legislation regarding Elective Home Education in England.
2. As an international observer who is both a long-time home educator and an active participant in the development of a regulatory approach to home-based education in Canada, I note with distress that the Department of Children, Schools and Families did not actively consider the many positive, cooperative and democratically conceived regulatory models regarding home-based education that have developed in North America.
3. In Canada, large, heavily populated jurisdictions with excellent regulatory models include the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. In the United States, 10 states make no legislative demands of home educators. These include the heavily populated states of Texas, Illinois and Michigan. Fourteen states require only notification of intent to educate at home. These include California, Wisconsin and Delaware. Twenty states have moderate regulation, meaning parents may be asked to submit materials in a portfolio, test scores or evaluation. Only six states have what is considered to be “heavy” regulation. Even the heavily regulated states make no demands of home educating families akin to those proposed in Schedule 1. To the best of my knowledge, no state demands home visits, and no state requests to interview home educated children.
4. Greater levels of regulation create greater cost for the state with very little in the way of return. Others have dealt the spurious analyses of the impact assessment, but as an international observer I note that New Zealand has recently ended its policy of home visits of home educating families due to the prohibitive costs of the practice.
5. Greater regulation of home education does not produce better results. The following quotation from a peer-reviewed academic article on this topic made the following observation: “The authors of this study find no evidence from their analysis that supports the claim that states should exercise more regulation of homeschool families and students in order to assure better academic success in general or improved higher-education success in particular. On the contrary, the findings of this study are consistent with other research findings that homeschool students perform well academically – typically above national averages on standardized achievement tests and at least on par with others on college-admissions tests – and do so regardless of whether they live in a state that applies low, moderate, or high governmental regulation of homeschooling.” (“State Regulation of Homeschooling and Homeschoolers’ SAT Scores,” Academic Leadership, August 11, 2009) http://www.academicleadership.org/emprical_research/State_Regulation_of_Homeschooling_and_Homeschoolers_SAT_Scores.shtml
6. Research conducted on home-based education indicates that, unlike traditionally schooled students, home-educated students whose parents have less formal education achieve similar academic results to those whose parents have more academic credentials. A 1999 study by Dr. Lawrence Rudner, Vice President of the Graduate Management Admission Council (the non-profit testing company that sponsors the Graduate Management Admission Test in the United States) observed the following: “Home schooling’s one-on-one tutorial method seemed to equalize the influence of parents’ educational background on their children’s academic performance. Home educated students’ test scores remained between the 80^th and 90^th percentiles, whether their mothers had a college degree or did not finish high school…Students taught at home by mothers who never finished high school scored a full 55 percentage points higher than public school students from families of comparable educational backgrounds.”

In conclusion, Schedule 1 is not only disproportionate; it also ignores the ample experience and evidence accumulated in other jurisdictions in which home-based education is widely and successfully practiced. The fact that the only regulatory model that the DCSF seriously considered was that of Tasmania, an island with a total population of 500,000 is ludicrous in light of the experiences of 50 states, 10 provinces, and nearly 2 million home educated students in North America.

Now, before I sign off, I have to just add a word or two about Tasmania. Education Otherwise had a meeting with Graham Badman early in 2009, and this is a quotation from the meeting notes: “Graham Badman raised [the Tasmanian model of home education regulation] repeatedly with home educators and yet never said what he meant and also did not listen when home educators told him that a system for a tiny country could not possibly be replicated in England even if there was a will to do so which clearly was not the case from his discussions with EO and HEAS.”

Here’s what a home-educating parent had to say about the “Tasmanian model.”

The Tasmanian model that apparently Mr Badman thinks might work for all home educating families looks pretty intimidating. Is it actually designed to put parents off the whole business of home educating in the first place?

Apart from providing dated work examples and jumping through various hoops I can’t see for the life of me what the Tasmanian Model actually offers home ed families. Registering is faffy and then there is this semi-threat that it wont be excepted; followed by the instruction to provide exidence and I get the feeling (though I could be wrong) that photos of the children doing stuff would not count and anyway there would be the oddity of sending photos of your children to a complete stranger.

What do families get in return for all this? What sort of support is on offer that the homeschool community don’t already provide for one another?

Tasmania is an island with a population of about 500,000. The home education group there contacted me today to confirm that their entire home education population consists of 552 children. As opposed to between 20,000 and 80,000 in England. Excellent regulatory model then.

Interestingly, though Badman has said that he promoted the Tasmanian model because home educators themselves are actively involved in the monitoring process for home education on that tiny island, nowhere in the proposed regulation for home education in England is there any reference to the involvement of home educators in the assessment of home education provision. One home educator with credentials in both  social work and education was told that she would never be considered by her local authority as an education officer precisely because she is a home educator. So much for the “Tasmanian Model.”

Child Abusers to have greater legal protection than ordinary parents, Social Workers insist

The following article was released by members of the Badman Review Action Group yesterday.

Child Abusers to have greater

legal protection than ordinary

parents, Social Workers insist

Under proposed legislation, parents who abuse their children will have more rights than ordinary parents who opt to teach their children themselves.These changes will apply to all families who decide for whatever reason that their children’s educational needs are better met in the home environment EVEN IN THE ABSENCE OF ANY WELFARE OR SAFEGUARDING CONCERNS.

In evidence submitted to the Scrutiny Committee for the Children, Schools and Families bill, social workers Imran Shah and Cintha Archer stated, “As home-educating parents ourselves, we would enjoy greater legal safeguards if we were abusing our children than we would do for educating them at home. We find it perverse that Schedule 1 [of the CSF bill] will give localauthorities greater powers to act over families who are providing loving care than they have over families where children are being abused or are at risk of abuse.”

Mr. Shah and Ms. Archer enumerated their ethical and legal concerns about the proposed legislation in their submission, chief of which is the fact that, “There is no statutory requirement within the text of this Bill for local authorities to act in the child’s best interests. As experienced social workers we are alarmed at this omission, which gives administrative procedures primacy over children’s needs. Since there is no obligation on local authorities to have the best interests of the child as their central and overriding concern, the new powers will be damaging to the well-being of the child.”

Schedule 1 powers will not only remove any legal obligation the local authority has to safeguard the home educated child’s best interests, say Shah and Archer, it will also remove the rights of legal redress from home educating families. This, they maintain, will be particularly onerous for families where class, race, sexual orientation, religion, disability, ethnicity or culture are a consideration. Local authorities will have no legal requirement to consider the impact of its actions on families or children for whom these factors are an issue, even though social workers and social policy makers accept that these families are the ones that fare the worst in dealing with government and its agents.

Shah and Archer insist that they are simply arguing for fairness and equality before the law. “We are not arguing for the removal of the protections that are afforded to the families who are subject to social services intervention, merely stressing that it is unjust to not extend those same protections to those families who are educating their children at home as an expression of their loving commitment to their children. Local authorities already have the powers that they need to ensure that children are safe and that their educational and other needs are being met Schedule 1 is unjust, illiberal and damaging to home-educating families and their children, and we ask for it to be removed from the CSF bill.”

The full text of Mr. Shah’s and Ms. Archer’s submission is available at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmpublic/childsch/memo/ucm0702.htm

Those who wish to contact either Mr. Shah or Ms. Archer for comment may leave a comment on this blog. The blog author will pass on such inquiries to BRAG.

Serious Case Reviews, or, If It’s All About Education, then Why does the Undersecretary Keep Talking about Child Abuse?

I’ll tell you why. Because the U.K. Department of Children, Schools and Families knows that is the only card it has to play to try to whip up public opinion against home-based education. Fear of, and knee-jerk reaction about, child abuse.

Today I saw a letter written by Undersecretary of State Diana Johnson on Serious Case Reviews (investigations into child abuse) and home-educated children. We touched on the statistics on this issue in my last post, but here is what Ms. Johnson had to say yesterday, in her letter to a fellow MP.

“During September my officials did a survey of SCRs known to Government Offices and to Ofsted. Government Offices reported that they were aware of 140 current SCRs covering children in the 5-18 age bracket and three of these were reported to cover home educated children. However they commented that many SCRs did not include the educational setting of the child, so the figure could have been higher.”

Seriously. Ms. Johson seriously expects us to believe that investigating care workers wouldn’t note or report that a child who was the subject of a Serious Case Review was home educated. This defies everything we know and have experienced regarding institutional prejudice against home-based education. If a child who was home educated had an SCR, you can bet that the educational provision would be noted. The SCRs that do not note the educational provision do not do so because the child goes to school, like the vast majority of children. Why note something that is obvious? Home education, however, being practised by a tiny minority of the population, and about which the vast majority of education officers and social workers have great prejudice, would be noted.

Ms. Johnson follows her letter up with references to some high profile SCRs which the DCSF has attempted to tie to home education. Badman and the DCSF have been dragging these same four cases out over and over for the past year  in their smear campaign against home education. Even though Ms. Johnson said yesterday that Badman’s review was “about education,” she is, yet again, using these cases to try to justify to another MP the government’s intention to interfere in and control the private lives of families.

Claire Blades, a home-educating parent who is also a former math teacher, has done some research on this topic. The following comments are taken from her submission to the Children, Schools and Families parliamentary Select Committee Inquiry.

In August 2007, a one-month-old baby was the victim of a cot death on the Isle of Wight. Both parents were drug addicts and were living an “alternative lifestyle” on an “unsafe site”. Their baby had been placed on the child protection register at birth under the category of neglect along with three older siblings, one of whom was home educated. Nine agencies were involved with the family including social care, the police and the education welfare service.

A 16-year-old girl from a traveller family hanged herself in December 2004. A number of agencies were involved with the family, including health, education and social services. “Misunderstandings over legal advice (about education) were a critical element coupled with a perception that it would not be possible to pursue this difficult case to a satisfactory conclusion.” Social services had identified a number of concerns but “due to apparent poor communication between the social worker and first line manager the impetus was lost”.

The body of a 16-year-old girl was found lying on her back in the front room of the family home in March 2007. It is believed that her body had been there for four months. It was so badly decomposed that the cause of death could not be established. The family reported that she began complaining of chest pains and had other symptoms in October 2006. Her mother said that when the child died on 3 November 2006 she could not face having the body taken away. In criminal proceedings, the mother pleaded guilty to preventing the lawful burial of her daughter and neglect of her son. The judge described the case as “absolutely unique” and noted that the mother was “suffering from a profound and untreated depression”. The girl and her brother had been withdrawn from school in January 2005. The Serious Case Review stated that the mother “complied with all statutory requirements in relation to children in elective home education. She co-operated with visits from the London Borough of Enfield Education Department in April and May 2005, and June 2006. The visiting officer had no concerns about the family or their circumstances, and was satisfied with the programme of education proposed.”

In April 2007, foster carer Eunice Spry was jailed for 14 years (reduced to 12 by the Court of Appeal) for the abuse of three children – one of whom she had adopted and two she had fostered for most of their lives. Over a period of 19 years, Spry routinely beat, abused and starved the children. The case came to light when one of the children reported her foster mother to the police. The children had been home educated since 1994 when they were aged eight, eight and five. Gloucestershire social services were involved in the care of the children from 1985 when she was approved as a foster carer until 1994 when she was given legal parental responsibility for the three children and two others in her care. Between 1990 and 2000 social services responded to 12 concerns expressed about the care of the children. The police returned the children home when they ran away and injuries seen by medical professionals were not reported.

So, these are the cases, Diana, that justify your contention that home educated children are at greater risk than schooled children? Does anyone see a pattern in these cases? I certainly do, and it has nothing to do with home education. I see three cases in which children, known to social services agencies, were profoundly failed by those very agencies. I see one case in which a parent, profoundly depressed upon the loss of a child, behaved irrationally. A case of “there but for the grace of God.”

Yes, bad things happen to families sometimes. Every once in a while a bad thing happens to a home educating family. This is not a result of home education. It is a result of life.

So I will ask you, reader, what do you think? Do you think that based on this evidence home educating families should be singled out for the invasion of their homes by welfare officers to ensure that their children are “safe and learning,” even when there is no evidence that they are not? Do you think that home educated children should be forced to endure interrogations alone with these same welfare officers, whether they agree to this or not? Do you think that, even though schools are only required to “provide” education, home educating families should be forced to prove that their children have “attained” education?

If you said yes, I have some more question for you. What about the sixteen children in England, every year,  who commit suicide as a result of school bullying? Or the other 200 young people who commit suicide each year for various reasons? What about the fifty percent of school children who are not meeting educational expections for their “key stage”? What about the ninety-eight percent of families who are apparently sending their children off with “unhealthy” school lunches? Based on these horrifying statistics, should the government send welfare officers to interrogate every child in England alone for eight hours once or twice a year to make sure that they are “safe, well and learning”?

If it’s all about education, Diana, then let’s make it a level playing field. If you are going to interrogate the home educated children to make sure that their views are being considered, and that they would not rather be at school, then you are going to have to interrogate all the school children to ensure that their views are being considered, and that they would not rather learn at home. My kids have never had a friend who attended school who didn’t say to them at one time or another, “Wow, you’re so lucky. I wish my parents would homeschool me.” Does that mean that their parents should have have been forced to pull them out of school so that they could be educated at home? By your logic, it does.

Has Diana Johnson Slandered Home Educators? It Seems She Wants to “Have her Cake and Eat Both.”

My thanks to the indefatigable folks over at the Badman Review Action Group for the following information. A home-educating mom spotted this bit of debate today in the U.K. House of Commons, regarding the Children, Schools and Families Bill. Labour MP David Anderson of Blaydon asked Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Diana R. Johnson what assessment has been made of the accuracy of the data used to produce the Badman Report on Elective Home Education.

Ms Johnson: Graham Badman’s review of home education collected a limited amount of qualitative and quantitative evidence from local authorities about home-educated children in their area. The data were used to produce an estimate of the population of home educators known to local authorities of about 20,000, which is consistent with estimates produced in an earlier report by York Consulting entitled “The Prevalence of Home Education in England”.

Mr. Anderson: I thank the Minister for that reply, but does she acknowledge that my constituents and many others feel that the data that were pulled together meant that Badman got this badly wrong, particularly when he said that children who were home educated were twice as likely to go on the at-risk register? They believe that that information means that they, as parents, are being scapegoated and that a bad decision might be made. May we have a reassurance that that will not happen?

Ms Johnson: May I first pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the keen interest that he has been taking in home education and make it clear once again that Graham Badman’s report is about home education?

On the safeguarding data, Graham Badman asked for information from local authorities about child protection plans [CPPs], because they are the only evidence of rigorous multi-agency processes that show no bias or subjectivity in relation to safeguarding. Seventy-four of 152 local authorities responded, which covers over 55 per cent. of the local authorities in the country, and Graham Badman found a higher incidence of home-educated children in those child protection plans. I reiterate that there are safeguarding provisions in place generally in our law. The report is predominantly about education.”

Now a number of things are fascinating about this. First, you will note that the Department of Children, Schools and Families is still insisting that home-educated children are more likely to be at risk of child abuse, and hence the subject of child protection plans, than school-educated children. This is in spite of the fact that home-educating parents have proven, several times, and in several ways, that this is a lie. So no, Mr. Anderson, Ms. Johnson cannot guarantee that your home-educating constituents will not be scapegoated or painted as potential child abusers, because she herself is still indulging in the practice.

Second, Ms. Johnson does not mention, in these comments, the number of home-educated children who are not “known to authorities.” According to Badman on page 22 of his report, this number might be anywhere from equal to the number who are “known to authorities” to double or treble that number (in other words, another 20,000 to 60,000 children.

Third, we see that the DCSF continues to defend the faulty data and the faulty data interpretation that Graham Badman refuses to relinquish rather than admit defeat in the face of the facts. (But I am delighted that Ms. Johnson has taught me the new mathematical fact that 74 is now 55 percent of 152. It really is all about education, isn’t it Diana?)

How, you may ask, am I so sure that Badman is wrong and that the assertions of home educating parents are correct?

I will tell you. First, I happen to know that home educating parents are in the process of chasing down every single one of the local authorities submissions to the Badman data through freedom of information requests, and that they have almost completed that mission. As I understand it, they are just now doing some fact checking on whether the numbers of CPPs that local authorities submitted are current and ongoing, or if those LAs instead reported every single CPP they have ever had for a home-educated child. (By the way, this is information that should have been available publicly as part of the original report. Why and how the DCSF refused to publish this data  may be the subject of another post.)

But be that as it may, home educating parents have used the DCSF’s own data, and their estimations of the number of home-educated children in England to prove that Badman, Johnson, Balls, et al, are lying when they say or imply that home educated children are at greater risk of abuse than children who attend school.

Now, Badman and Johnson make their assertion that home-educated children are twice as likely to be at risk of abuse based on the number of child protection plans for registered home-educated children in 74 local authorities. Here’s what they say: “The number of child protection plans [for home educated children] in the authorities that we covered in the last survey, [is] .4 percent, which is double that within the normal population.”

Here’s what home educating parents keep pointing out: Nobody actually knows how many children in England are educated at home. Some 20,000 are registered. Some 12,000 of these are in the 74 local authorities that responded to the survey. Badman is extrapolating a percentage from incomplete information.

Graham Badman based his .4 percent (“double that within the normal population”) on the registered population in about half the local authorities. (Oh, and by the way, 54 of the 74 local authorities that responded to the survey reported NO child protection plans for home-educated children. So all of these CPPs cited by Johnson and Badman were issued in just 20 local authorities. That rings a few alarm bells right there, doesn’t it? Might we have some home-education-hostile local authorities?)

The fact is that even the DCSF’s low-end estimate of the actual number of home-educated children is 40,000, and some people estimate that as many as 80,000 children may be educated at home. Now bear in mind (as Graham Badman seems unable to) that EVERY SINGLE CHILD PROTECTION PLAN FOR A HOME EDUCATED CHILD IS KNOWN!! There are no unregistered home-educated children with protection plans!

If a child who is place under a protection plan happens to be educated at home, then that educational provision is automatically registered with the local authority. I’ll say it again. Any home-educated child with a CPP is registered as home educated. I’ll say it another way. No home-educated child with a CPP is unknown. See what I mean? That whole population of home educated children who are “not known” to their local authorities? They don’t have child protection plans. BECAUSE IF THEY DID THEY WOULD BE KNOWN, WOULDN’T THEY?

So that .4 percent number is for the REGISTERED ONLY POPULATION! Therefore, if the low end estimate of home-educated children is correct, then the rate of child protection plans for home-educated children would be identical to that of the “normal” population. If there are more home-educated children, in other words, if the higher-end estimate is correct, then the rate of CPPs for the home-educated population might be as low as half that of the “normal” population.

So then we have the following Wonderland-esque interchange between MP Graham Stuart and  Graham Badman in the scrutiny committee hearings.

Graham Stuart:  “If you take the number of home-educated children with a child protection plan and you see that as a percentage of 70,000, it comes out at a great deal less than the average for the population, and that I believe is the definitive statement of what we know. It does not tell us everything we need to know, which is why I would not overstate my reliance on it. Could you please comment on whether you believe that we can truly say, as you have repeatedly said, that there is double the rate of the most serious level of child protection plan among children who are home educated?”

Graham Badman: “I fear we are in danger of going round in the same circle. I am afraid I fundamentally disagree with you. You think I am wrong; I think you are wrong.”

Graham Stuart: “It is maths.”

Graham Badman: “Well, fine; we might want to debate that later—perhaps you went to a better school than me….I believe that we are quite safe in saying that on the basis of the child protection plan analysis that they [DCSF statisticians] carried out, there are twice as many young people on a child protection plan known to local authorities within that population as are within the general population. That is a fact. I am sorry that you do not agree with me, but we could go on for ever disagreeing.“

So Badman, Johnson and their crew want it both ways. They want to spend millions in taxpayer money tracking down all home educating families in order to force them to “register” with their local authorities, but they don’t want to admit that they exist when they are running their little “child abuse” statistics. As my Argentinian friend Javier used to say, they want to “have their cake and eat both.”

Well it doesn’t work that way, sweethearts. Or to quote Graham Stuart again, “It is maths.”

(To see much of this information vividly portrayed in a more graphic, easy-to-digest format, click here.)

The Real Consultation Report: Guess What? A Little Different from the Public Summary

Ah, those intrepid U.K. home educating parents and their troublesome freedom of information requests. Guess what? One of them actually turned up the internal Department of Children, Schools and Families Consultation Unit Report on the Consultation on Elective Home Education.

This Unit Report presents a rather different interpretation of the consultation responses than the public summary did. In the overview from the official, public, DCSF-published summary, the consultation responses are described with very muted language. Most home educating families, it said, “did not accept”  Graham Badman’s “human rights arguments.” They “expressed concern,” or they “felt” or they “did not think.” They “doubted.”

The internal document, written by DCSF people, for DCSF people, was worded with a little more va-va-voom. Here’s a sample from the overview.

Overall, there was a very negative response to the consultation.

Most respondents said there seemed to be confusion in the DCSF recommendations between the powers necessary to ensure a suitable education and the powers needed to ensure a child’s safety from abuse of various kinds and these things should not be grouped indiscriminately together….

The majority disagreed with the need for a register and suggested that singling out home educators for a register was discriminatory, and would penalise decent home educating families. Most respondents were also of the opinion that a register as proposed would be used for control and monitoring and to forcibly return children into state education….

Most respondents said it was completely unacceptable to criminalize parents for not registering and this would not be beneficial to the child….Most respondents strongly rejected the need for the DCSF to take powers to issue statutory guidance in relation to registration and monitoring of home education and believed the report had demonstrated that the DCSF had a lack of understanding of home education, and had failed to produce any evidence to suggest any problems with the current system.

The vast majority of respondents believed the proposals to interview a child alone and visit the premises where education took place was a serious intrusion of family life and made it appear that home educating parents were guilty until proven innocent.

So, it seems that in internal DCSF documents, they occassionally tell the truth. They are able to admit that the VAST MAJORITY of home educating families wanted nothing to do with their proposals, and felt there was neither need nor evidence to justify them. Which means, of course, that the dear Secretary of State was well aware of the truth when he told his big lies in the parliamentary debate about how the majority of home educators support the proposed legislation.

Here are the actual quotations from Mr. Balls, taken from Hansard, Second Reading Debate, January 11.

“In the vast majority of cases, home-educating parents will want to co-operate fully-this will be very light touch indeed-but in the small minority of cases where things go wrong, there is a balance to be struck between the rights of the parent and the rights of the child, and we must ensure as a society that children are safe and are learning.”

“The issue is whether they are being educated and whether they are learning. There is no right in the Bill for a local authority to go in, demand a visit and see children on their own. The vast majority of parents would be happy to let that happen, but if they choose not to do so, that is a choice for them. The local authority then has an obligation to ensure that those children are safe and are learning, and consequences will then follow from that. But the right to go in and demand a meeting will not exist for education purposes under the Bill.”

And here’s what the Unit Report said about parents being “happy to let that happen.”

“Few respondents agreed with this and believed this was the most disturbing and worrying of all the proposals as no other groups of people would be subjected to being interviewed alone. They said that the LA should never under any circumstances be permitted to interview a child alone and thought this was an extremely serious infringement of civil liberties and would be a dangerous route for the Government to take.”

In fact 94 percent of respondents did not agree that it would be acceptable for a child to be interviewed alone by an LA officer.

Should we extend the benefit of the doubt to Mr. Balls, and just assume he got his “vast majorities” backwards?

I think not.

Anyway, have a look at those documents that have been turned up in the FOI requests. Very interesting, but not very surprising, reading in Annex A on the local authorities responses. Also interesting to see that in a meeting on June 25, DCSF personnel were already discussing possible “campaigns” regarding the consultation.