Khyra Ishaq – Abused in life, abused in death

When Labour lost the last general election, home educating [HE] families in England knew this would not signal the end of the pressure for change in HE legislation. We hoped though that there would be a considerable lull, not only whilst the coalition government settled in together and worked out their priorities, but we were also aware that funding for any potential changes could be delayed due to limited cash-flow. We did expect some ‘bother’ when the Khyra Ishaq Serious Case Review was published in July 2010. That event came and went with relative calm on the HE horizon, largely because its criticisms were focussed on the failure of various sections of Birmingham City Council’s social care department. It was always clear though that the prevailing calm was only superficial. Beneath the surface many educational and social care ‘professionals’, we suspected, were lobbying hard to bring about change along the lines of Graham Badman’s very bad review. It was however quite a shock when this uncertain calm was shattered early in November 2011 by the front cover of the TES Magazine, which read “Collateral damage – Neglect and abuse under the cover of home education”.

Inside was a 4 page article by Felix Allen with the title “Out of school, out of sight” along with a comment by the editor Gerard Kelly, “Parental rights, and the wrongs of the wicked few”. Together they were an attempt to embarrass Michael Gove and his Department for Education [DfE] to return to Ed Ball’s policy of imposing a registration scheme on HE families. The opening paragraphs of Allen’s article can be found on the TES web site here, whilst the whole of the editorial can be read here . Besides being a regular contributor to the TES, the internet attributes several recent Sun articles to a Felix Allen. That does not surprise me, as the quality of his article on HE would be more at home in the pages of a Murdoch red-top, than in what is meant to be a serious publication for teachers and other educationalists. Without any evidence, the lead paragraph speaking about HE children claimed that,

“hundreds are at risk of abuse and neglect”.

Things only got worse with Allen’s opening sentence;

“Khyra Ishaq, a bright, happy girl from a chaotic but apparently loving family, had a perfect attendance record at school until the day she was suddenly withdrawn from lessons, along with some of her five siblings.”

When I read this, I had to ask whether he had actually read the Serious Case Review [SCR] and/or the judgement of High Court Judge in the 2009 care hearing concerning Khyra’s siblings? (My reflections on both are here and here respectively.) No one carefully reading either of these documents can come away from them describing the Ishaq household as an “apparently loving family”. The six children’s natural father Ishaq Abuzaire had drifted away from his wife, Angela Gordon, over a period of months or perhaps years – no one is certain when he finally left her with six children all under ten. Before Khyra’s death in mid May 2008, the police had been involved with the family on several occasions, including claims of violence towards the mother and some of the children. As far back as March 2006, the mother went to the GP with one of her children, whom she claimed had been hurt when the father pulled them out of a chair. The GP advised her to contact the police, but failed to report the matter themselves. One week later a Health Visitor who attended the home after a call to Children’s Social Care [CSC] from a concerned anonymous caller. In February 2007, the mother made further allegations of physical and emotional abuse by the father, and a Health Visitor referred the family to CSC as she was required to do. The SCR does not give any indication that this referral was acted upon. If it was not followed through then it set a very sad precedent for the months which led up to Khyra’s death.

Felix Allen, by spinning his description of Khyra’s family to suggest it was a loving environment forfeited any claim to be taken as a serious journalist. However, he continues in this vein for several paragraphs. Consider for example this attempt to practice the art which Alastair Campbell made his own:

“But, for years, many teaching and child protection professionals had been warning that such a death was not inconceivable at all – in fact, they say it was inevitable given the current state of the law surrounding home education.”

And later:

“While Khyra’s case is an example of the very worst that can happen, schools and local authorities have long been warning that hundreds or perhaps thousands of other children are being abused and neglected, or simply not receiving any meaningful education, all under the cloak of parental choice.”

It is striking therefore that Mrs Justice King in her judgement in the care hearing, did not mention HE, but stated:

“K’s death was caused by and is the responsibility of her mother and the Intervenor, but on the evidence before the court I can only conclude that in all probability had there been an adequate initial assessment and proper adherence by the educational welfare services to its guidance, K would not have died. Merely looking at the photographs of the house and the conditions in which the children were living confirms in my mind that had social services even seen the bedroom in which the children lived or the Mer [sp. manner] in which they were fed, they would undoubtedly have intervened.”

Try as he might, the author of the SCR could not bring himself to disagree with laying the blame upon her mother and her partner and the failure of various departments of Birmingham City Council:

“When considering all of the information presented within this report and specifically, that contained within Section 11 missed opportunities, it can only be concluded that the death of the child was preventable. This finding concurs with judgements made within the care proceedings that the death of the child is the responsibility of the mother and the adult male, but can only conclude that had there been better assessments and effective inter-agency communication over a period of time it could have been prevented.”

Fact: Two independent witnesses agree that what could have prevented the death of one child and the malnutrition of five others was better assessments and adherence to procedures by a number of social services departments.

Fiction: That flaws in HE legislation contributed to Khyra’s death.

Underlining this is that whilst the NSPCC’s John Radford who authored the SCR, did his best criticise the current HE laws and to infer that they contributed to the situation, even he could not honestly include this in his Final Conclusions. Just one of eighteen recommendations he made refers to HE, highlighting how little part it played in this tragedy. (For more about this and the NSPCC’s established position of lobbying for the/more regulation of HE, see my page on the SCR here.)

Perhaps knowing that they were taking a risk by seeking to influence the DfE to act and teachers to decry HE as a potential safeguarding issue, Allen and his editor both decided to vilify HE parents by labelling them as “the lobby”. Under the subheading of “A clash of extremes” the article states:

“Though a major Government review has confirmed the dangers inherent in the system, all recent attempts towards tighter regulation have crumbled in the face of sustained, highly organised campaigning by a very vocal home education lobby.”

Echoing this, Gerard Kelly wrote:

“The impression that these DIY pedagogues live on the margins of acceptable society is, however, only reinforced by the antics of the home-education lobby. It is relentless, vociferous, obsessive and litigious. This paragraph will result in hundreds of protesting emails, several solicitors’ letters and at least one complaint to the Press Complaints Commission. The lobby’s lack of perspective, its uncompromising zealotry and adolescent monomania fuel suspicions that home educators shouldn’t be left in charge of a pot plant, let alone a child.”

Before the days of the professional foul, footballers often gave the impression that they played by the adage that if all failed, they should play the man not the ball. In debating circles this is described as an ad hominem attack, and is a tool employed by those whose arguments are weak. Can HE parents take encouragement from the fact that those who seek to control other people’s families are so short on sound reasons that they have to resort to personal attacks upon us rather than reasoning their case. However, articles like these are not really aimed at HE parents, but rather at teachers and others who are so institutionalised that they find it hard to see beyond the school fence. As Kelly recognised in his piece, it is they who are most threatened by HE, assuming that when parents choose that option, it is effectively a slap in the face for the teaching profession. It is now over three months since the TES published this article, so I am not writing now for those who were inflamed when they first read these comments. As I made clear above, the pressure for regulating HE has been relieved only temporarily by the change of government, not dispersed completely. I fully expect that when the political opportunity opens up again, those in favour of the supremacy of the State in education will once again press hard for change. When that time comes, it will be important that there are reasoned responses to sensational claims like Allen’s available to those who know little or nothing about the facts of this argument.

There was effectively no HE lobby until Ed Balls recruited Graham Badman to construct a case against HE. Badman’s report was full of logical and statistical flaws, as Graham Stuart MP sought to get him to appreciate during the Children’s Schools and Families Select Committee hearing on 12 October 2009 – see Question 9 to 20 here. The strength of political determination aligned against HE did more than anything else to take a diverse collective of HE families and force it into a vocal and effective lobby. In a rare moment of accuracy, Allen wrote,

“motivations vary so widely that it is impossible to define them as a movement as such”

and that describes exactly what we once were and would be very pleased to return to, provided it is safe to do so. For now though, articles like those in the TES only serve to remind parents who are seeking the best for their children that those who think that we cannot be trusted to deliver are still lobbying for change. There are important issues raised by this argument and it is very telling that those who want to make the State all-powerful in the training of children do not address that issue directly, but repeatedly seek to play the safeguarding card. Read both these TES articles carefully and you will see that neither has any evidence of abuse, just innuendo and hearsay. Let me repeat, the death of Khyra Ishaq was caused by failures amongst Birmingham City Council staff and departments, not by HE legislation which is not fit for purpose!

The lack of hard evidence of abuse by HE families has not silenced our opponents. Take the NSPCC for example. In my review of the Khyra Ishaq Serious Case Review here I mention how Vijay Patel, the NSPCC’s Child Protection Policy Advisor, sought in an interview to link the death of Victoria Climbié in February 2000 with HE. Afterwards one of his seniors, Phillip Noyes, had to apologise for the remark, stating,

“Clearly there is no connection between home education and Victoria’s tragic death as she was not being educated at home.”

This was not Patel’s first mistake though. On 20th January 2009 he had participated in a discussion on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show with Annette Taberner from Education Otherwise. Gill Kilner, a HE mum, helpfully transcribed the whole of the discussion and placed it on her blog here. Here is a section relevant to my point:

JEREMY VINE: OK. Hold it there, let’s go back to Vijay for a second. She’s making a fair point, Vijay, if you can’t back up anything you’re saying with figures.

VIJAY PATEL: Well, they’re hard to come by and I can’t talk about the London Safeguarding Board, but I will say there’s a.. there is one case which was in the media two years ago: the case of Eunice Spry, but more important..

JEREMY VINE: Well, one case is… I’m sorry, if I..

ANNETTE TABERNER: I’m happy to talk about Eunice Spry actually, because Eunice Spry did cooperate with her local authority..

JEREMY VINE: Can I.. sorry.. Annette, I just don’t want to go into an individual case, if that’s OK.

ANNETTE TABERNER: That’s fine.

JEREMY VINE: Vijay, have you got any statistical base at all?

VIJAY PATEL: We.. the inf.. We don’t have the evidence there statistically, no.

JEREMY VINE: So why are you, why is anyone else worried about child abuse in homes where children are home educated?

VIJAY PATEL: We are not against home education. Now we need to be clear about that. We have.. it’s really that… Parents should decide what’s in the interests of children. What we do want is that… It’s important children are safe. And we know in some cases, some people are very skilled at hiding behind law and guidance and saying: I shall just keep my children at home so nobody knows what is happening.

[emphasis mine]

I can only ask if it is just, that with a complete lack of evidence as admitted by Patel, that he and others including the TES should headline fantastical claims like “Collateral damage – Neglect and abuse under the cover of home education” and “Parental rights, and the wrongs of the wicked few”? Is it honest journalism to put a damaged doll’s arm on the front of the magazine when there is no evidence of a single bruise resulting from a parent beating their child and hiding their abuse specifically behind the camouflage of home education? I am confident that if the opponents of HE had any real evidence, they would not have to resort to false claims that some children were abused because they were home educated and out of sight.

Ed Balls must have thought initially that he had been given exactly what he was looking for – a home educated child who had died at the hands of their parents. However, long before the SCR was published, it was very clear that Khyra’s death may not have happened if her school’s concerns had been taken seriously by Social Services and others. Though he should have known better when the SCR was published Balls sought to vindicate his political agenda by claiming that it justified his attempt to regulate HE. Now an ex-Secretary of State, on 3rd August 2010 he wrote here in the Guardian:

The debate brings back my thoughts as children’s secretary when I first heard the facts about Khyra’s short life and terrible death from starvation.

It was always clear that many factors must have contributed to Khyra’s death, and the serious case review confirms that poor communication and a failure among some professionals to follow procedures were among them. Above all, though, the adults closest to Khyra bear responsibility for what happened and they have rightly been held to account for it in the courts.

However, the fact that Khyra was being home educated throughout her last critical year, when her body mass declined to its final unsustainable state, was also a major factor. The restricted access to her by professional agencies effectively removed any oversight of her welfare or development – just when she needed it most.

This was nothing less than a wilful abuse of Khyra’s memory – hence the title of this post – an abuse which others now feel able to continue. Khyra was not HE throughout her last year, she was in school for the first six months of it! Whilst he had to agree with the conclusions of the SCR in the second paragraph quoted above, Balls could not swallow his humble pie and admit he was wrong; instead he had to be economical with the truth as he reached the end of his piece:

He [Michael Gove] will learn a great deal from the executive summary, which concludes: “Within current legislation, the assessment requirement for home education is weak and there is no mandate to monitor, assess or inspect the quality of home-education provision, once approval to home educate has occurred.”

It continues: “Consequently, there is no effective method to ensure that home education remains suitable, developmentally appropriate and safe, without the explicit consent and active participation of parents, or carers. The lack of any prescribed opportunities for children to formally express their views, or to actively participate within the assessment or decision-making process of home education, or to have any independent access to external processes … represents a major safeguarding flaw.”

[emphasis mine]

The paragraphs he quotes, implying that they are part of the conclusion of the Serious Case Review Executive Summary, in fact appear on page 8, with the Summary itself beginning on page 3. The Conclusion is to be found on page 11 and reads in full (I quoted the first paragraph above):

When considering all of the information presented within this report and specifically, that contained within Section 11 Missed Opportunities, it can only be concluded that the death of the child was preventable. This finding concurs with judgements made within the care proceedings that, the death of the child is the responsibility of the mother and the adult male, but can only conclude that had there been better assessments and effective interagency communication over a period of time it could have been prevented.

The death of a child is always a difficult and poignant experience, but when that child has sustained extended punitive brutality and starvation by adults who should have been there to care and protect them, failing in their duty even in the latter stages to seek medical intervention, it is almost beyond our comprehension. It is the duty of us all to ensure we understand why these tragic events occurred and do everything in our power to prevent such a tragedy from ever occurring again.

Of course Mr Balls believes that the State is good and that people who disagree with him are bad. I suspect that it was as important to him that in Khyra’s case he distract attention away from the failures of the State as it was to turn the heat onto non-conformist HE parents. Could his real problem be that HE children probably stand more chance of growing up as free-thinkers, than the children schooled in the ideologies he so vehemently espouses? I have not heard him in conversation with Jamie Oliver, but I suspect that he would willingly support Oliver’s campaigns for sustainable pig and chicken farms and quickly decry battery farming (after all, these days such things are vote winners). What we do know is that Balls and his socialist friends are against free-range children – compare the opposition of the powerful to the education of the masses when Sunday Schools were first started to teach children to read. Under Blair & Brown’s Labour, school education was focused more and more upon training children to give the required answers and not to think for themselves.

Reverting now to the TES cover article, Felix Allen stated on page 30:

In theory, social services can take up where the school left off when a child is de-registered. But they can never match the daily contact teachers have with children, making it harder for signs of mistreatment to be spotted. And legally, though the law is often misunderstood, whether a child is safe and whether a child is receiving a suitable education are separate issues.

In claiming daily contact with teachers is a safe option he is dancing on Khyra’s grave! It is an insult to her memory! The SCR is clear that despite outstanding efforts by Khyra’s school, CSC failed to take any action, stubbornly refusing for weeks to accept their formal referral. Whilst four of the six children had been withdrawn from school, two had not. When admitted to hospital after Khyra’s death, these two were also suffering from malnutrition. Teachers at the youngest’s school had concerns over his loss of weight – he was having to hold his trousers up – and noted such prior to a medical he had just ten days before his sister died:

Information from a sibling’s class teacher for medical due 7th May 2008 that child was described as thin, weak, tired easily, felt the cold easily, skin was a little better at present.

In section 11.122 the SCR states:

7th May 2008 – the mother did not attend for a sibling’s medical appointment, when seen, the child weight was described as down slightly, height was recorded as static, and a further review is planned for September 2008. Given the concerns raised by the school staff and the fact that the child’s weight was down it is surprising that a review was set for September some four months hence. Additionally, no plans were made to undertake follow-up home visits by the school nurse or to inform other agencies.

The theory Mr Allen espouses sounds good, but the tragic case of this unhappy family tells us that it can be nothing more than a theory, as care staff are only human themselves. I would have thought that if there were to be any occasion when the ‘daily contact teachers have’ should have rung alarm bells, it would have been M’s medical. But just as the requests from the staff at Khyra’s school were ignored, so too the data from M’s medical fell on deaf ears. M was not safeguarded by being in school, Khyra was not at more risk because her mother had appealed to HE law to withdraw her from school. It was at the point she was withdrawn from school that her teachers cried out to CSC for help, and it was that department which turned its back on them, on Khyra and on her five brothers and sisters.

If an argument needs spinning, then it does not stand up to scrutiny. “School is a safe place” is such an argument. This point at least was acknowledged by Gerard Kelly in his editorial:

Oddly, the numerous cases of pupil catastrophe that punctuate the regular system are never used to trash the concept of “school”.

Perhaps the HE lobby is not so nasty after all and we don’t punch below the belt, as our opponents are all too ready to do.

I want to conclude this post by mentioning one area where I am in agreement with Felix Allen. On page 32 he introduced Jenny Price, former general secretary and past president of the Association for Education Welfare Management (AEWM). She is a socialist BIG society supporter (to differentiate it from David Cameron’s money saving version), who believes CRB checks protect children, despite a series of high profile case where people with CRB clearance have been prosecuted for child abuse. (I cite two from nurseries and one from a school in my page looking at the SCR.) However, a few paragraphs later Felix Allen returns to her comments:

Mrs Price says she knows of several examples where schools have encouraged the parents of pupils whose performance and attendance is poor to consider home education instead. The arrangement protects the school’s statistics and saves an exclusion being recorded against the child’s name in case they want to return to mainstream education later.

He follows this by quoting an unnamed senior education welfare manager who confirmed the practice was widespread.

“If you asked any local authority, they would know of cases where that’s happened,” she says. “There are also cases where education welfare services might be involved and you’re at the point of looking at prosecution for nonattendance. Again, that’s an option parents have…”

The vast majority of HE parents have not taken on the responsibility of HE without careful thought. It is costly on many fronts. Time, money (usually one parent has to stay at home), emotions, energy are all consumed in large amounts by those who seek to give their children a family-based education. (This is one reason why we would like to crawl back into the pre-Balls and Badman world we used to enjoy.) The blood, sweat and tears alone are enough to provoke us to warn any prospective HE parents not to rush in where others fear to tread. These difficulties do temper all the good things we and our children share as we learn together, but we value the benefits sufficiently that we can work with the hardships. However, I can think of nothing more dreadful than parents who are already struggling to bring up difficult children being told by school teachers or educational welfare services that they are about to be prosecuted, but they could avoid it by de-registering the child. Hear-say evidence of the kind offered by Jenny Price abounds, but the very nature of it means that no school is ever going to record that such advice was given.

Now if there is any case for change in HE legislation, then this is where it lies. Unprepared and ill-informed families are probably also unmotivated with regard to the effort required for successful HE. If a parent is struggling to get a child to school, they will almost certainly struggle to motivate them to learn at home, unless they are a genuine school dissenter – often labelled as phobic by the educational system – one who really does want to learn, but not in a class of thirty. Whilst schools need to realise that school is not always the best place for children to learn, there should be a law preventing them from ‘leaning on’ parents to de-register children in order to protect a school’s league table position or reputation. If the TES wanted to change the law in that respect, I would join them in the lobbies.

Let me therefore end on a positive note. It could be argued that HE in the UK got off to a bad start. In the 60s and 70s many who favoured it came from the anti-establishment hippy/traveller sector of society. This did not go down well with many local authorities, which were on the whole staffed by people who were very committed to the system. Such polarisation made any building-up of trust impossible, as did officials’ readiness to resort to legal action, and so a gulf was created between the two parties. However, because most local authorities were too busy running schools, they did not have the time or energy to root out HE families. That was certainly our experience in the 80s when we lived in Manchester, which had not thought through its policy on HE. Whilst there have always been cases where the two sides clashed, for many years most HE parents just got on with the task they had chosen not to delegate to a well-meaning State. That status quo was shattered in 2009 when, driven by his Socialist ideals, and aided by the United Nations and European Convention on Human Rights, Balls decided that it was time to push the door ajar as a first step to bringing HE under State regulation. In time his plans could have very easily enable Big Brother to insist that a National Curriculum, etc. must be followed. What he and Graham Badman had failed to take into account was that the increasing numbers of HE families in Britain had changed the demographic of the HE constituency. It was no longer populated by fading hippies who found it hard to organise themselves. Almost overnight Balls and Badman mobilised an army of articulate, confident and determined people. A lobby with both bark and bite came together from nowhere and took Westminster by storm.

I suspect if local authorities could de-institutionalise their staff so that they could recognise that there is now throughout the country a very big self-help group with years of experience at its finger-tips, then there may be a way the two could work together. If teachers could set aside their professional pride – they need not worry because most HE parents have no desire to teach in schools – and accept that mums and dads can teach their own kids quite well, then partnership may be a way forward for all. Few if any HE families wish to come under the State’s control, but many would be more than willing to advise and support families who were considering HE. Some, I am sure, would be willing to help any family who were struggling with a child who hated school, but still wanted to learn. Could a more helpful way forward be appreciation of our sincere efforts rather than demonising us in the pattern of Balls, Badman and now the TES? I wish I was confident that the rhetoric will soon stop, but I am far from certain it will.

Government Responds to Home Education Petitions

Yesterday, I added a page to this blog reporting a letter from Michael Gove stating that the Government had not yet considered what changes to make to the law concerning HE. You can find it here.

Today, I received two emails from Number 10, telling me that the Government had responded to two petition I had signed on their web site. I did this quite a while ago – both petitions closed on 6 June this year. The text of the petitions and the government’s responses to both can be found on this page and on this one.

The first was signed by 5,658 people and the government’s response reads:

Parents have the primary duty to ensure that their child receives a suitable education and home education is a well established alternative to school which allows them to fulfil that duty. Where a parent opts to educate their child at home rather than at school, they must provide their child with an education that is suitable to the child’s age, ability, aptitude and any special educational needs they may have.

Guidelines which set out the legislative position and the roles and responsibilities of local authorities and parents in relation to home educated children is available at - http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/publications/elective/.

The Government respects the right of parents to home educate their children and we appreciate the strong views held by both home educators and local authorities. As you will appreciate, we have not yet been able to consider in detail our approach to home education and whether or not any changes to the existing arrangements are required.

The other petition received fewer signatures, 862 in all. The government’s response to this one unsurprisingly echos that to the other:

You have petitioned to uphold the freedom of choice parents enjoy in the UK regarding home schooling by rejecting Graham Badman’s proposed compulsory registration of home educators.

The previous administration put forward proposals to legislate for a registration and monitoring scheme for home educating families. These were removed from the Children, Schools and Families Bill, prior to the General Election.

We are currently considering priorities within the Department for Education, including our approach to home education, and whether or not any changes to the existing arrangements are required.

Of course the important sentence in both are the final ones. No commitment either direction, but as this government have previously said (here) they are aware of strong arguments from both sides!

Whilst Department of Education remains as undecided as it was yesterday, they do not rule out changes, therefore my message remains the same. I believe the HE community must not go to sleep thinking the danger is past. There is still plenty of work for us to do, not least in making sure that the underlying forces behind Badman’s review, will never again have an opportunity to say that the State is the only guarantor of child welfare.

Big Brother is still watching!

Channel 4 may have pulled the plug on their infamous “reality” programme Big Brother, but an army of child protectors are still at large in council offices across the land!

Mark McCullough of Glentham and his seven year-old daughter Isabelle Photo: RAYMONDS (Daiy Telegraph)

Yesterday and today the media have been reporting on the case of Mark McCullough who received a letter from Lincolnshire County Council threatening him for allowing his seven-year-old daughter to walk unaccompanied 20 metres to their home from a bus stop. The letter said that it was a “child protection issue” and that they would take action if the family did not make other arrangements. The matter was brought to their attention by a concerned bus driver.

The BBC reports:

Denise Carr, the county council’s head of transport services group, said: “As a responsible authority, we have expressed our concern that a seven-year-old is standing on a busy road alone each morning, and then crossing the road unaccompanied after school.

“The bus driver should not be expected to leave a bus full of young children alone to escort the pupil safely across the road.

“As the pupil was also left standing by the roadside on a cold morning without warm clothing, we have raised our concerns with the girl’s parents, following discussion with the school.

“Safeguarding is the responsibility of everyone, and where we become aware of anything that compromises the safety of a vulnerable child or adult, we will take steps to address it.”

Home educating families are all too familiar with with the sentiments of that last paragraph; it is the mind-set of Directors of Children’s Services across the land.

Today, the Council has backed off and admitted that its letter may have been heavy handed. Here is a further quote from the BBC:

Debbie Barnes, assistant director of Lincolnshire County Council’s Children’s Services, said: “The safety of children is the responsibility of everyone and where a member of staff brings a situation to our attention where the safety of a child or adult is compromised, we must react.

“NSPCC guidance states that children under eight should not be out alone; in this instance, a seven-year-old girl has been standing unaccompanied on a roadside and left to cross the road by herself.”

She added that “with hindsight we accept the letter could have been phrased better and we have no intention of going down the child protection route or court action” and that the council would like to sit down with Mr McCullough to discuss the issues.

Different attitude, same mind-set: parents cannot be trusted, it needs Big Brother from the Council to keep children safe. It also seems that the NSPCC is now regarded as the defining authority on child safety.

You can find further reading on these pages: BBC 14 Sep., Daily Telegraph 14 Sep., BBC 15th Sep. & This is Lincolnshire 15t Sep.

Now the reason I started this post was not because I had read the story, but because this morning’s edition of Today on BBC Radio 4, followed up its report on this story with a discussion between Anastasia de Waal, from the Institute for the Study of Civil Society, and Julia Margo, of the think-tank Demos, on the responsibilities of parents and the state over children’s welfare. At the moment it is available on iPlayer here.

This discussion should be compulsory listening for every family and especially any home educating families who think that the election put Badman and Balls’ ideas in the grave. It needs listening to more than once because hidden in there is some criticism of the approach of social service departments, but on the whole all those involved in the interview had no problem with the idea that local authorities can be trusted far more than parents. The interviewer gets the ball rolling with the question:

Who should be in charge of children when they are not in school?

Anastasia de Waal is perhaps more cautious than Julia Margo, but for both it is not really about if but how the State should watch over parents. Margo quotes Finland, Norway and Germany as good examples of  State oversight, but this is tempered by criticism of how Social Services in the UK often fail to relate constructively with parents. However, as is said in the discussion, “the bottom line is the welfare of the child”, and it is assumed without question that the State knows best!

Ed Balls may never again be Education Secretary, Graham Badman may never be employed by the present Government, but the ongoing vision of making children safe by enfolding them firmly in the arms of the State is deeply embedded in the mentality of most LA staff and it will not go away without a fight!

It seems that Michael Gove has not yet decided his policy on home education (see here), so there is still a need for the HE community to keep their MPs (and peers in general) aware that we are not child abusers.

Debbie Barnes, assistant director of Lincolnshire County Council’s Children’s Services, said: “The safety of children is the responsibility of everyone and where a member of staff brings a situation to our attention where the safety of a child or adult is compromised, we must react.

“NSPCC guidance states that children under eight should not be out alone; in this instance, a seven-year-old girl has been standing unaccompanied on a roadside and left to cross the road by herself.”

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

It’s only a quiet, little country road – you could sit there all day and maybe see 20 or 30 cars…”

End Quote Natasha Fegan Father’s partner

She added that “with hindsight we accept the letter could have been phrased better and we have no intention of going down the child protection route or court action” and that the council would like to sit down with Mr McCullough to discuss the issues.

The case of mistaken identity?

Yesterday the Serious Case Review into the tragic death of Khyra Ishaq was published. It was politically notable because it was the first SCR to be published in full. The whole document is 180 pages in length and can be downloaded from the Birmingham Safeguarding Children Board’s web site (click here to download the SCR as a PDF). They also provided accompanying press releases from themselves, Birmingham City Council, West Midlands Police and the relevant NHS, PCTs.  [Update Jan. 2012 - these documents have been removed from the BSCB site, so they are now hosted on this one.] The SCR Action Plan can be downloaded separately from the full review here.

At the time of writing I have not had the time to read through the SCR, nor the associated press releases. This post is therefore not a full response to the SCR, but an initial reflection and seeks to provide a note of clarification which is sadly needed to avoid confusion spreading unnecessarily.

The Birmingham Post published three reports yesterday covering the publication of the SCR and one more today. The first was advance notice of publication and can be found here. The most notable comment was in the opening paragraph:

Under-fire social workers in Birmingham were today bracing themselves for more criticism as the long-awaited findings of an inquiry into the death of Khyra Ishaq are revealed.

Once the report was published the headline “Birmingham social services missed chances to save Khyra Ishaq, says report” confirmed what many people were expecting. This extract from the article highlights these failures:

Hilary Thompson, chairwoman of the BSCB, said: “The serious case review concludes that although the scale of the abuse inflicted would have been hard to predict, Khyra’s death was preventable.

“The report identifies missed opportunities, highlighting that better assessment and information-sharing by key organisations could have resulted in a different outcome.”

It said: “There were a number of early missed opportunities for intervention by professionals.

“Three incidents during March 2006 were not progressed, either by failures of paperwork to reach the correct departments, failure to follow safeguarding procedures, or to conduct thorough checks prior to case closure, resulting in any knowledge and intervention remaining purely single agency at that stage.”

The review, which began in May 2008, concluded: “Had there been better assessments and effective inter-agency communication over a period of time it (Khyra’s death) could have been prevented.”

A complaint of harassment by Khyra’s mother, Angela Gordon, against a social worker who visited their Handsworth home in February 2008 “generated a reluctance” to complete an assessment, the report found.

It said: “The complaint by the mother… appeared to impact upon the Children’s Social Care manager and practitioner.

“This action appears to have generated a reluctance to follow through on plans with a partner agency to effectively pursue assessment procedures, for fear of wider repercussions within the complaints process.”

The report continued: “Whilst a number of agencies and individuals sought to deliver effective services to the child… there were others who lost sight of the child and focused instead upon the rights of the adults, the adults’ behaviours and the potential impact for themselves as professionals.”

Now these observations did not come by surprise. In March last year Mrs Justice King giving judgement in a care hearing in the High Court (Family Division) Birmingham District in respect to the five surviving children, expressed similar conclusions:

K’s death was caused by and is the responsibility of her mother and the Intervenor, but on the evidence before the court I can only conclude that in all probability had there been an adequate initial assessment and proper adherence by the educational welfare services to its guidance, K would not have died.

(For a fuller review of her judgement see here.)

The Birmingham Post accompanied their report with a list of the Recommendations from the Serious Case Review. Just two of the eighteen recommendations, 13 & 14, refer to home education [HE] and I will comment on these in the future. Today (Wed. 28th Jul.) the Birmingham Post did a follow up article with the headline, “Khyra Ishaq: Council and social workers failed to act on signs of abuse”. Two comments in it are worth noting here:

Teachers and concerned members of the public attempted to alert social services and the city education department to what was happening but their cries went unheard, the inquiry found.

As HE parents who have looked carefully at information which has been in the public arena for some time concerning Khyra’s tragic death have been saying, the failing were not in the laws concerning HE, but in the capability of the local authority’s children’s services. (Many us us also believe that underfunding is a major factor in causing these failures. Sadly I suspect that in a society whose members neither want to take responsibility themselves nor pay taxes to equip others to fully fill the gap so created, and in the face of global financial crisis, such pressures are likely to increase rather than to be resolved no matter which political party holds the reigns nationally or locally.) The BP reporter goes on to confirm that concern raised about  HE by the LA was a red-herring by adding later:

The inquiry’s central conclusion – that education officials were out of their depth when agreeing the emaciated Khyra could be taken out of school and educated at home – flies in the face of the council’s official explanation earlier this year that nothing could have been done to save her.

From Mrs Justice King’s ruling it was clear that key members of Birmingham’s children’s services did not understand the law concerning HE and this included “a man called I H who is [Birmingham CC’s] ‘Educating Otherwise adviser’”, since named in the national press as Irvine Horne.

This lack of understanding concerning the law on HE though is not confined to Birmingham City Council staff. It is found in many local authority offices as well as in the minds of more important civil servants such as the Children’s Commissioner, Maggie Artkinson. When she appeared before the CSF Select Committee in October last year quoted Khyra’s name as all the justification she needed to argue for a change in HE legislation (transcript here – see Q36). She was however doing nothing other than singing from her sponsor’s song sheet. That sponsor was of course Ed Balls, at the time the Secretary of State for CSF, and who also over the months has used every opportunity to use Khyra’s death as justification for his attempt to nationalise the children of England. We are grateful he failed. Others who it appears don’t understand the law concerning HE include OFSTED, who recently published a very poor report on LAs and HE – see here for my comment on it.

One ray of hope in all this is that the present Secretary of State for Education, seems to be better informed. His statement on the publication of the SCR can be found here. Two of the five paragraphs refer directly to the situation concerning HE.

On home education, Michael Gove said:

We respect the right of parents to educate their children at home and most do a very good job, some of them picking up the pieces where children have had problems at school. We strongly encourage local authorities to develop a positive relationship with their home-educating community.

We note the views of the Birmingham LCSB about the law as it applies to home-educated children and we are aware of the very strong views held by local authorities and by home-educating parents on this matter. Clearly lessons need to be learned by the tragic events in this case, and I will consider the letter I expect to receive from Birmingham shortly, to see what changes need to be made to the existing arrangements and reply in due course.

Need I remind HE families of what was said by both parties now in the governing coalition before the general election? Whilst they both condemned Labour’s policy, they both said that there would have to be changes in the future! HE families need to keep their eyes on what is happening!

Moving on. Unfortunately confusion also seems to have spread to authors of this SCR and that too is a real cause for concern. The BBC web site carried two reports on the day the SCR was released. One,  “Starved girl Khyra Ishaq’s death ‘was preventable’” was much in line with those from the Birmingham Post. However, the second was seemingly written with the assistance of the Balls & Badman Department of Spin. Titled, “Khyra’s home education ‘helped conceal abuse’” it claims:

The report, released on Tuesday, said the current legislation for the assessment requirement for home education was “weak”.

There is “no mandate to monitor, assess or inspect the quality of home education provision once approval has occurred,” it added.

“This situation is particularly advantageous for parents who may wish to conceal abuse.”

These quotes are taken from the Executive Summary and my comments on them and the rest of the SCR will have to wait until I have read it. The confusion in the article however went further as the reporter jumped to the wrong conclusions about this statement on page 8, which is in the Executive Summary:

Education Otherwise (EO) provides advice, support and assessment to parents who have elected to educate their children at home. The lack of a robust and rigorous process by EO, during February 2008, to assess the capability of adults within this household to provide effective home education, coupled with the absence of any risk assessment process to address safeguarding concerns previously communicated by education welfare, must be viewed as a significant failure.

This was taken up in the BBC article and, when it was first published and the reporter had contacted what everyone in the HE community knows as ‘EO’ (an independent charity) for their comments. Unfortunately, I did not make a copy of the BBC report when it was first published, because on reloading the page today I found very different wording in it. The interviews with EO representatives were gone and instead there was these paragraphs:

One organisation criticised in the report is Education Otherwise (EO), a department within Birmingham City Council, which gave support and advice to parents who opt to teach their children at home.

The report said other agencies were hoping to rely on assessments carried out by the city council’s EO but ignorance of home education legislation around those processes “clouded professional assessment and decision making”.

The phrase highlighted in italics has not been changed (and it shows), but originally it went on to describe the charity Education Otherwise. Alerted to this case of mistaken identity EO did publish a press release yesterday on their web site. It reads:

Tuesday 27 July

Press Release – Confusion in Khyra Ishaq Serious Case Review

Confusion in Khyra Ishaq Serious Case Review over use of “Education Otherwise”

A spokesperson for the leading Home Education charity, Education Otherwise reacted with dismay at the confusion in the Serious Case Review into the death of Khyra Ishaq.

Fiona Nicholson, Trustee of Education Otherwise said, “Like all parents I am horrified at the death of Khyra Ishaq. However, due to the confusion caused by Birmingham City Council I need to make it clear that the charity Education Otherwise has no role in the assessment of home education. Birmingham City Council used the same name for their internal department and this has not been made clear in the serious case review or any publicity.”

Annette Taberner, Trustee of Education Otherwise has written to the Select Committee and to Birmingham Council highlighting a number of errors in the Serious Case Review, which should have been corrected before the final draft was agreed in April.

Ian Matthews, Media Spokesperson said, “Despite the agreement of the courts in March, Birmingham City Council are still persisting in causing confusion in the media by using the name Education Otherwise. Criticism intended for Birmingham council in the Serious Case Review appears instead to be directed at the home education support charity. We will be advised by our lawyers on how to proceed.”

See full press release document for footnote references. [N.B. - this file is now hosted on this site as EO have not moved it to their new web site.]

What a mess! At least Mrs Justice King was accurate enough to refer to Irvine Horne as “the Educating Otherwise adviser” for Birmingham. Perhaps this was because he was at pains to “explained that he is the only adviser to Birmingham City Council with regard to Educating Otherwise”.

The SCR was, according to today’s article in the Birmingham Post, “led by a senior NSPCC Inspector”. The NSPCC has sadly over the last two years been at the front of the campaign to invade the lives and homes of HE families. In April 2009 it apologised after one of its staff suggested that home education may be a cover for child abuse cases like that of Victoria Climbié (see here). Whilst I am not going to comment on whether or not another of its staff has been guilty of using this SCR to convey that same message, until I have read the whole review, I am left to wonder why a senior official was unable to distinguish between a national charity, Education Otherwise, and a department within Birmingham CC, labeled Educating Otherwise?

I would like to think that this confusion was caused by incompetence rather than mischief. Then again  if the authors did not have the ability to distinguish between the two very different organisations, it really does not reflect well on them!

It is a pity too that Caroline Gall in rewriting her report on the BBC’s web site, did not have the grace to include a comment and an apology about the error in the original copy she posted. She could have even expanded the story by highlighting the misleading wording of the SCR, and especially its repeated use of EO’s initials! Perhaps if she had done so, this piece would not have been so long!

Finally, I know that in the HE community their are mixed feelings about EO. Some families think it is wonderful, whilst others give it a wide berth. I would hope though that whatever our feelings towards the charity, all HE families would not wish it to be confused with a section of a LA’s underfunded and ill informed children’s services which seemingly did not understand the law concerning HE. I think there is one thing we will all agree about concerning the real EO – its representatives do understand HE legislation!

Hopefully, in my next post I will be able to give an in depth response to the SCR in relation to its comments on HE.

Khyra Ishaq: Council and social workers failed to act on signs of abuse

OFSTED publishes its Home Education Survey

I must start with an apology, I wrongly predicted in my last post here that my next one would follow the publication of the Serious Case Review into the death of Khyra Ishaq. I had forgotten about OFSTED’s outstanding enquiry into HE which was published this week (on Thurs. 17 June).

I commented on their survey in January here, that at the time there was widespread concern in the HE community about the motivation behind it and the quality of the questionnaires sent to HE parents and children. Whilst there is a hope within the HE community that a change of government will see a more sensible approach to HE in Whitehall, there are also fears that educationally blinkered bureaucrats will continue to push for the State to assume authority over parents in regard to the education of their children.

I was made aware of the publication of this report entitled “Local authorities and home education” by a page on the BBC’s web site here and an article in the Independent here. Both carried headlines which HE families would see as negative – “More home education information needed, say inspectors” and “Home school parents ‘must register children’” respectively. When I eventually found the report here and the associated Press Release here on OFSTED’s website I could see why – this is the message they intended to emphasise. For example, the Press Release starts:

Local authorities need more information and understanding about home education to provide effective support for children educated at home, a report published by Ofsted today reveals.

However, before I get into what is wrong with the report, I do want to point out that it is not as bad as it could have been. In fact it has some very positive things to say about HE parents and children. It is also important to note that the stated objective of the report was:

… to evaluate how well the sample of local authorities discharged their statutory duties to ensure the suitability of education for children and young people who were educated at home. (Executive summary – p4)

This was not an inquiry into HE (which OFSTED has no responsibility for), but an enquiry into the ways in which Local Authorities (LAs) relate to HE families. It is unfortunate therefore that OFSTED chose to headline the report in a way which makes it sound like the Son of Badman – but then perhaps that was its non-declared objective.

Returning to the positives, the report does say some nice things about HE parents and children:

What many of the parents surveyed had in common was their passion for their children’s upbringing and their willingness to give up significant amounts of time to be their child’s educators. (A diverse group, s6 – p10)

The children and young people whom inspectors met were enthusiastic about their learning and explained what they thought they had gained by being educated at home. Those who had attended school compared their experiences and conveyed clearly that, for varying reasons, they were happier now that they were being educated at home. (Executive summary – p7)

One young person summed up the views of several who had found school difficult, either academically or socially, when she said: ‘At school, friends can do it all fine, you can’t do it, it’s not nice at all. At home, it’s just your family, you can relax and it’s all fine.’ The following are typical remarks made by young people who had previously attended school who spoke to inspectors during the survey:

‘I really like being educated at home, it’s more social and less stressful.’

‘When I was in school it was really competitive. Now I can work at my own pace and I don’t get distracted – I just get on with it.’

‘When my mum decided to take me out of school I was glad, it was what I had been wanting for ages, I was really relieved.’

‘I’m feeling much healthier and happier now.’

(Children’s experiences, s48 – p21)

Besides recognising that both parents and children are usually happier because of their HE experiences, the report does touch on some other constructive possibilities. These included easier and cheaper access to examinations like GCSEs and encouraging initiatives such as flexi-schooling. Initiatives such as these should be welcomed by HE families provided they are available on request, without strings attached. However, such things also depend on a change of culture in many LAs from one of policing to one of partnership with HE parents.

In spite of such praise, it does have to be pointed out that what parents and children think about their HE experiences is outside of OFSTED’s remit both as an agency and in the terms of reference for this report.

I need now to address the dangers of this report. I was struck as I read it by how often the words ‘registered’ and ‘monitoring’ are repeated throughout. This is a concern because under present legislation there is no HE registration scheme in place, nor is there any provision for the monitoring of HE parents or children. So why are these words used so often in this document? Could it be that educational bureaucrats have a less than average vocabulary? Have they not come across such words as notify and encouragement? Or has their educational experience pushed their minds into a mould which only lets them understand the world from inside a bubble where the State is supreme? I suggest the latter.

Where the report is helpful is in identifying the source of the conflict between such officialdom and those who understand that parents are primarily responsible for the education and welfare of their children, with the State there to step in when parents and their families fail for whatever reasons. This principle is not new; it is what gave birth to the modern system of state-run schools. These days in societies like ours it is generally perceived that ‘children go to school’ but that has not always been the case. In Britain government schools were resisted until the late 1800’s when they came into existence in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Amongst other things this huge sea-change separated parents from children during working hours, leaving children to their own devices or to be employed in factories. Less than 150 years later OFSTED, in common with the the majority of the population, thinks of schools as “traditional” (p13). Family-based education is traditional, state-funded schools were established as cover for parents who were failing!

This revisionist view of education is in part responsible for the confusion which now arises from legislation brought in by the previous government. The report cites section 436A of the Education Act 1996, which was inserted there by the Education and Inspections Act 2006, as ‘chapter and verse’ for what they claim is the LA’s statutory duty to monitor home educated children. It then goes on to bemoan the fact that other legislation fails to provide them the powers to do so. Thankfully Graham Stuart, who became the champion of HE families in the last parliament and has now been elected as the Chair of the Education Select Committee, quickly spoke out to condemn OFSTED’s spin. On the blog of the Conservative Education Society (here) he blasted OFSTED for not knowing the facts:

It is astonishing that the Chief Inspector of Schools should stray onto home education and get it so wrong. In Ofsted’s official press release she says that “it is extremely challenging for local authorities to meet their statutory duty to ensure children have a suitable education”, when they have no such duty. Parents, not the state, have the statutory duty to ensure that their children have a suitable education.

I hope that the new Secretary of Education is in full agreement with him. However, I want Michael Gove to go further. Whilst this ambiguity continues, the door is open for people like the current Children’s Commissioner, Maggie Atkinson, to argue that every child in the country (and their families) all belong to the State. You need only watch the first two and a quarter minutes of this video to see what I mean! (source)

At present the door is open for HE families to engage with their MPs and to press the the new team of Education Ministers to make clear in legislation that English, British and International laws do not give the State ultimate authority over children. Graham Badman in his report (here) and Baroness Deech (here) both argued that the United Nations have given such powers to every state that has signed its Convention on the Rights of the Child! OFSTED’s report, though it may have been commissioned by Ed Balls as a time-bomb for his successors, provides us with an opportunity to appeal that this confusion be removed before the political pendulum swings back in favour of Socialism.

The BBC report mentioned above carries what is probably the most important comment on HE this week:

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: “We respect the right of parents to home educate their children.

“The Ofsted report confirms that most parents who educate their children at home do a very good job, some of them picking up the pieces where children have had problems at school.

“We note Ofsted’s findings and recommendations and ministers will shortly be considering if changes need to be made to the existing arrangements, given the strong views expressed by both home educators and local authorities.” (emphasis mine)

That is real ‘Government Speak’, but what can we take away from it? Is it a put-down for OFSTED? Is it a vote of confidence in HE families? The most important sentence is the last one. The Department recognises the gulf between the views of the HE community and those of LA staff and ministers are to consider what changes need to be made to made, if any.

To those who would say “None!”, I respond with the warning that if the ambiguity is not dispelled then with the next change of government we could easily see a return to Badman or worse. However, if we lobby now for changes which reinforce the current law and remove the over-application of Labour’s “Every Child Matters” agenda, then the future for HE in England and Wales could be a lot more peaceful than it was last year.

Finally, you may be wondering if the OFSTED report tell us anything about how LAs respond to HE families. Yes it did, but only in passing. 15 LAs were consulted. 2 of them (13%) operated a policy that pressurised parents to put their children back in school (Local authorities’ actions: Guidance for families, s16 – p12). When it comes to good practice, the report mentions in several places that 5, and sometimes 6, LAs tried to work with HE parents. That at best is 40% of LAs engaged ‘constructively’ with the He community.

Upon their own evidence, OFSTED could have headlined their press release with the point that at least 60% of LAs are not doing enough to support those HE families who request their help. If they had taken that approach, they could have continued by adding that all LAs should also abandon the mind-set that believes ‘school is best’. Now that would have been refreshing as well as surprising – from the organisation which thinks HE parents should be CRB checked before being licensed to look after their own children 24/7! (Section 3.2.3, bullet point 3, Memorandum to CSF Select Committee – available here.)

It looks like we may have a quiet time for a while

The dust is beginning to settle on a British General election which had held the attention of many English home educating families. Having seen off the misguided attempt by Ed Balls to establish the State’s authority over the nation’s children as supreme in his Children, Schools & Families Bill 2010, we held our breath as we waited to see what the outcome of the election would be.

As I am sure every reader will know the final decision on who would govern was delayed because the British electorate had give no single party an independent mandate. At a time when financial concerns were dominating the minds of politicians, party leaders were presented with a result which would only stack up in just one way. (Whilst I think both Cameron and Clegg had to be brave to commit to working together, I have a concern for the long term changes in society their coalition may have been motivated by.) As the dust settles on this ‘new politics’ what might be the implications for HE in England and Wales?

Both the parties, Conservative and Liberal Democrats, had been our heroes in the closing months of the previous Parliament. They had come together in opposition to the Balls-Badman pincer movement, triumphing finally in the wash-up. However, now alert to the existence of large numbers of HE families spokesmen for both had said whilst they were against Labour’s proposals “things would have to change” in the future in regard to HE. Now that both parties have their hands are on the national helm, where will they take legislation in regard to HE? What will they propose?

It is still early days, but yesterday (20 May) saw the publication of their official agreement on what they hope to achieve in the next five years. Called “The Coalition: our programme for government” it can be download as a PDF from here. Two sections in it, 14. Families and Children, and 26. Schools, could contain proposals for HE, but the good news is that they don’t! I hope this means that HE families will not be pestered for a while, but I am making no promises as the socialist staff in local government offices across the country are still committed to the ideology that all children are in the care of the State.

What I do think will be disastrous therefore is if HE families now retreat under the covers. The last year and half witnessed some excellent work by normal families, parents and children,  in educating MP’s about HE. Now though there are over a third of MPs who are new to Parliament and potentially know nothing about HE. I would like to think that not only would families keep in touch with those MPs who are still there but those with a rookie MP would, once they have settled in, get to know them and tell them about the benefits and blessings, as well as the hard work, of teaching your own children. Of course you will need wisdom, we don’t want to stir up a hornets nest, but we certainly don’t want to loose the ground we gained through a lot of hard work.

I am hopeful that the time to stop posting to this blog is getting close. I have recently uploaded what I hope will prove to be our last appearance in the local paper in connection with Balls & Badman – you can find it here. However, I am not going to fall into the trap of saying that this is the end. On the horizon there is still the publication of the Serious Case Review in connection with the death of Khyra Ishaq in Birmingham. Given the way Ed Balls sought to use it for political gain and how his comments were at variance with those of Mrs Justice King (see here), I suspect that I will want to comment when the summary of the SCR comes into the public domain. Once I have I hope it will mean that the course of this blog will be run!

A Future Fair for Whom?

I have never been a Party Political person. To be honest I see flaws in all of the views of the Parties and if involved in full-time politics I would have to fulfill the role of the Biblical prophets who repeatedly reminded rulers of the need for righteousness in public life. These days journalists partly are cast in that role, but too often they do so with an agenda of their own. Take for example this pathetic excuse for an article from this week’s Times Online. However taking Nicola Woolcock’s comments on HE to pieces, whilst a relatively easy task, is not the point of this post.

Their is a very old joke which asks how do you know when a politician is lying? The answer being, “When their lips are moving.” Over the next few weeks here in the UK we will be bombarded with claims from all the Parties that they will provide the best hope for the future and anyone who is motivated to go to a polling station on 6th May, will have to make some sort of decision on whom they think will be best at providing oversight in Great Britain over next half-decade or so. The purpose of this post is not to encourage you who to vote for, but to test out the claim of the present Government that they will ensure a “Future Fair for All”.

It is pragmatic not to look in a Party’s manifesto to see how they will act in office especially when they have been in power for over a decade. It is far safer ask what they have and haven’t achieved in that time. Again, my declared purpose in this place is to address the important topic of HE and I am not about to look through all of Labour’s portfolio of recent Bills.

I cannot however resist commenting on their election slogan in the light of their attitude to HE. In fact on the day Gordon Brown launched this thin veneer of a headline, I was motivated to write to our  regional newspaper to comment on it. I really did not expect it to get published as it was far too long for the letters page – you may have noticed that brevity is not one of my skills!

Not wishing though for my time spent then to be wasted now that the election battle-buses are on the road, I thought posting it here may be helpful to some.

21 Feb, 2010

Sir,

A future fair for all -
except home educated children

Your readers may remember that over the last six months you have printed several reports where families have expressed concern about the present Government’s plans for changing the law concerning parents’ freedom to elect to home educate their children.

Initially our concerns were provoked by the publication of a review by Graham Badman. This had been commissioned by the DfCSF because they feared that home education could be used as a cover for child abuse. Even though Badman could find no evidence of this, he recommended far-reaching changes in the law which if implemented would require families to seek approval to home educate. Owen Paterson, MP for North Shropshire, presenting a petition in the Commons from “a large number” of his constituents, described Badman’s recommendations as “iniquitous”.

These recommendations now form part of the present Children, Schools and Families Bill and have been criticized by MPs of all parties including, Kate Hoey , David Anderson and Caroline Flint from the Government’s own benches. Why have so many MP’s taken up the concerns of their constituents as clearly as they have? Because from having very little knowledge of home education a year ago, they have now met children and parents from home educating families and are clearly impressed by the character and skills of the young people as well as the commitment of their parents.

There is one small but important group of MPs who have not joined in these parliamentary tributes. This group are Ministers in the DfCSF, led by Secretary of State Ed Balls, one of Gordon Brown’s closest allies. Before Badman, they had already carried out three consultations about home education, and immediately after those, they launched yet another one – dealing only with the registration and monitoring aspects of his review with no mention of the support which Badman recommended that local authorities provide for home educating families. They received over 5,000 responses to this consultation, and to each of the 11 proposals an average of approximately 82% replied negatively, yet on 11th January the DfCSF published a response which basically said they were ignoring the concerns expressed in the responses they received. In the same way they have ignored a report by a Commons Select Committee and the record breaking number of petitions presented to Parliament (around 300), claiming they only want a light touch regime. It was pointed out to one Minister when she appeared before the Select Committee that ‘light touch’ was the phrase used twelve years ago to describe the national curriculum!

The DfCSF continues to protest that it wants to support home educators, but as one MP pointed out during the recent Committee stage of the CSF Bill, the Department does not practise what it preaches. Again, on 11th January Gordon Brown and Ed Balls announced “Home Access Grants” which would “give 270,000 low income families a free computer and free broadband access”. However, on the DfCSF web site, and subsequently confirmed by two Ministers, it is stated that home educated children do not qualify for these grants. Is this what they and their party mean by “A future fair for all”?

Yours etc…

The question then, which any rational person would ask, is if this promise of a fair future – a just tomorrow – a sign of repentance on behalf of Gordon Brown and his crew or are they nice words to pull the wool over the electorates eyes?

Labour’s tenure at the DfCSF has included repeated ‘consultations’ into HE of which Graham Badman’s was seemingly a final attempt to get the answers they wanted. The suspicion that many of us have is that his ‘findings’ were in effect drawn up before his ‘review’ was announced. No doubt the fight that Ed Balls found himself in once Badman’s work was published surprised the Secretary of State. Badman’s incompetence was perhaps best illustrated by his inability to do basic maths even when Graham Stuart MP corrected his figures twice! (The first in a Select Committee session and later at a meeting of the Commons Public Bill Committee.)

Now the electorate would hope that when a minister has been shown clearly to be rushing badly researched legislation on to the statute books, that the same minister would welcome the opportunity think again and commission more reliable research before rushing on stage with a sticking plaster. Not Ed Balls. On Wednesday (7th Apr.) he quickly wrote a letter to Michael Gove blasting him and the Conservative Party for blocking a number of clauses in his precious Bill during the wash-up. He then published it on his own (not Labour’s) web site here. On the topic of HE he wrote:

Finally, you and your colleagues have been clear about your opposition to the proposed registration scheme for home educators. I do believe this is profoundly misguided and will put children at risk in the future. We have always been clear that the vast majority of home educators do a good job and that they have nothing to fear from the proposals we brought forward. However, without our reforms the small minority of children at risk will remain so. By opposing these provisions you have removed a potentially valuable tool for local authorities in their work to safeguard all children.

His letter concluded:

It is a great pity that you have put at risk improvements in our schools, support for pupils and the well-being of our young people. I will be campaigning to ensure that this Government is returned and that these measures do make it on the statute book in the first session of the new Parliament.

Are those words expressed on his authority or do they have his boss’s (be that Brown or Mandelson) support? In a last ditch attempt to justify their mischievous objectives, seemingly driven by ideology rather than what is best for children, Vernon Coaker clinging to the white flag of surrender, made this promise (see here for more details):

We hope that we can bring these matters back before Parliament in the near future, along with other measures that we have had to remove from the Bill, such as toughening home-school agreements, home education and the ability to collect data for the new school report card.

We don’t yet know what will be in the Labour manifesto about HE, but we are in no doubt what is in their hearts and mind. Clause 26 and Schedule 1 we were told at various times was about education, or about safeguarding or supporting HE families or, according to Mr Coaker, “merely suggesting that there should be a better understanding of what was going on.” With so much confusion amongst ministers who can criticise HE parents for thinking that there are unspoken objectives buried under their protestations.

I don’t care who you vote for as long as HE families are aware that the Socialists in Labour do not believe that your children are your responsibility. They believe that all children are the responsibility of the State and that the State can prescribe where, how and what they are taught. It is from this ideology that the modern Thought Police have emerged. HE parents and children do not conform to their dictates – free-thinkers are a danger to their vision of a Socialist world. They think they are backed by the whole issue of the ‘Rights of Children’, but as where other issues are concerned they pick and choose which ‘Right’ dismisses all other conflicting ‘rights’. Badman made that clear in his headline quote:

“The need to choose, to sacrifice some ultimate values to others, turns out to be a permanent characteristic of the human predicament”
ISAIAH BERLIN, Four Essays on Liberty London: Oxford University (1969)
[Page 1, Report to the Secretary of State on the Review of Elective Home Education in England, Graham Badman, June 2009]

Will the Future be Fair for All under a returned Labour government? I am convinced that it will not be for HE families and I am convinced that they will not be the only people who are not tolerated as totalitarianism masquerades as tolerance. On one point therefore I can agree with David Cameron, its Time for a Change. And whilst his party and the Lib Dems both responded to the pleas from HE families for help, I am not saying that this means that either (or both) of them have the right answers to all the important questions. Who you vote for is your choice if you wish to vote – and you still have the freedom to chose not to vote.

Just one final note. I had hoped to make this my final post until after the election. However, yesterday BBC West Midlands was saying that the Khyra Ishaq Serious Case Review was due to be published “soon”. They did not give a time-scale, but if it is published in the next four weeks, I trust that it will provide us all with the opportunity to call Ed Balls to account for the opportunism he has resorted to by using her memory for political gain.