While welcoming the draft guidance on EHE which has been requested over many years there are some basic issues which are not addressed. These issues include the right of access to a child and the responsibility of parents/carers to provide a minimum basic education.

In view of recent legislation on safeguarding children and the drive to improve standards in education for all children it would seem that the draft guidance does not take account of these areas to enable LEAs to implement the recommendations and targets in these other policies"

 

Bedfordshire states that safeguarding children legislation and the general govt policy to improve education standards are reasons why there should be a right of access to children abd for LEAs to monitor home education.

 

In my view access to children stands to harm home educated children more than to benefit them.  Many home educated children are vulnerable due to experiences which occured in schools, and compulsory access to them can be a very negative experience.  Generally HE children are in regular contact outside the family anyway, and even if they happen not to be, once a year contact would not provide any significant increase in safeguard.

 

Similarly formal monitoring of home education has been shown in research in the US to have no significant effect on the education outcomes.

 

Calderdale raised limited concerns which are addressed here: “If I have any cause for concern it relates to the continued ability of LEA to monitor provision in an effective manner. “ It is not immediately clear whether Calderdale are concerned about themselves being able to maintain an ability to monitor provision, which would be down to their own management or if they are concerned whether they are being provided by legislation with an ability to continually monitor an HE child. There is no duty to routinely monitor or to continue monitoring anyone whose education is found to be suitable and the Education Act 1996 already allows for further steps when it is not found to be adequate.

 

“If this responsibility is to be discharged effectively, I suggest some minimum standards should be established i.e. child without a statement should be expected to attain a reading age which bears some relationship to chronological age.”

Such pre!--ions would go against the philosophy of many home educating families and the law allows for parents to educate according to their philosophical convictions.

 

Such demands could not be limited to reading attainment because this could not reflect a suitable education and therefore massive testing is being advocated at great expense to the state and against the philosophy of many families.

 

Also, what could be the remedy for underperformers according to the government standard? As a high percentage of state schooled children already fail to meet the government’s own standards, the remedy for home educated children not meeting the standard could not be to send them to school as this would clearly be a high failure risk.

 

Perhaps LEAs/DfES should publish free SATs attainment targets for those families who wish to compare their child’s attainment to school norms so that they can take remedial action should their child not be reaching the target. Perhaps LEAs should offer free testing to any home educating parents who would like to take advantage of it.

 

Research shows that home educated children are on average ahead of their schooled counterparts. Perhaps those children in state schools with low (reading) attainment should be encouraged to home educate ;-)

 

“Article 2 of Protocol 1 of European Convention of Human Rights states "No person shall be denied the right to education". If this concept is to be upheld the right of Local Authorities to make reasonable enquiries must be upheld and safeguarded. The statement that unless a range of limited and defined circumstances exist "the LEA should assume that efficient education is taking place" (3.10), is not helpful in ensuring such safeguards exist.”

 

It is not the job of the LEA to police the ECHR only to provide sufficient places and provision for education of all children of compulsory school age in their area. These people are all minors and therefore the responsibility for making sure they are not denied an education lies with their parent/guardian and unless the state becomes the primary guardian then this does not mean the LEA. The LEA already has a right to make reasonable enquiries and this has to be balanced with the family’s right under Article 8 to a private family life.

Cambridgeshire is one of many LEAs that cannot get to grips with the idea that a home educating parent should be accorded the same assumption of innocence that the rest of society enjoys. Anything other would be discriminatory against a minority group. There is no evidence to suggest that home educating parents are more likely to fail to provide their children with a suitable education than parents who use schools. There is however, evidence that certain sociological groups are more likely to fail to provide their children with a suitable education but this does not automatically lead to routine inspection of, for example, black, or low income families. It is easy to see that this would be unacceptably prejudiced and so it is to single out home educators in this manner. This also explains why a parent should not be required to inform the LEA of their choice to home educate and why the lack of compulsion to do so is not a “loophole”.

 

Cambridgeshire LEA believes there is a need for routine inspection of all home educators and part of the basis for this is that they believe the LEA has a “legal responsibility to ensure that all children in its area are properly educated”. It simply does not. It is and has been since education became compulsory, the responsibility of the parent to ensure their child’s suitable education. If it were the responsibility of the LEA, the LEA would be open to mass suing by the millions of failed children. As it is, parents cannot sue in the majority of cases because the responsibility ultimately rests with them. What the LEA does have a legal responsibility to do, is provide enough adequate school places for all children in its area likely to want a state school place.

 

There is difficulty in prescribing timescales when allowing for parents to prepare to respond to LEA enquiries because each individual child will have come to home education for different reasons and parents will need differing amounts of time to prepare. The parent should be given an amount of time that they consider reasonable for their personal situation.

 

Cambridgeshire LEA also believes that lack of access to the home educator’s home is a child protection loophole. This is a sickening slur on home educators which also unnecessarily conflates education and protection issues. Schooled children and home educated children are seen in all of the same public and private places except one – the school. Being a registered pupil at a school does not confer on that pupil protection from abuse and it is insulting to many, many abused children to infer that it does, especially the hundreds who are actually abused in the school environment. There is no evidence to suggest that home educated children are more likely to suffer abuse then schooled children and it is quite probable that statistics would show exactly the opposite. The high profile cases such as that of Victoria Climbie, which are often quoted to defend intrusive policies, have all involved children already well known to more than one local authority department. It is also extremely unlikely that access to a child in the limited form that LEA contact could be, would in any case detect any abuse. The LEA has a duty to be aware of child protection issues whilst performing its legal duties but it does not have a duty, nor does any other authority, to routinely investigate every child in its area for child protection issues; this would in itself be an act of child abuse.

This LEA has to be applauded for their open minded approach to and promotion of flexi-schooling. They show a clear grasp of the current legal position and insight into the inevitable future changes to school education in the UK.

 

However, this LEA’s approach to child protection concerns appears to be caught up in the media scaremongering type of reaction to “unseen” children.  It is faulty logic that assumes that if a child is seen on a rare occasion by an LEA officer that somehow that child’s safety is assured. It is also rather naïve and melodramatic to suggest that just because an education officer has not set eyes on a child that it is not known whether a child is dead or alive. It does not take much imagination to establish such a fact without personally seeing a child.

 

The LEA’s primary concern is with the educational provision for the child. Whilst considering that provision they should be alert to anything about that provision that may cause welfare concerns. It is not the duty of the LEA to assume a primary welfare role. This is the concern of the wider community.

To draw this unwarranted, over-emphasised concern about welfare to the home education community is a red herring that detracts from the poor welfare protection of children within the school system.

 

It is also a grave insult to the many home educating children and parents who are refugees from welfare failures in school to suggest they need the oversight of the same local authority that let them down.

 

Many LEAs seem to struggle with the lack of control they have over home educating families. It is a threat to their professionalism that some families thrive without their educational expertise. I see this push toward child protection justifications for intervention, as a clutch at straws to try and gain the control and kudos that they feel is threatened by home education.

 

Essex LEA has taken quite an aggressive stance that reveals their opinion that parents are not to be trusted and that although they want to give nothing in the way of assistance, advice or resources (having deleted every section suggesting offers of such), they do want control over home education.

 

They want the law changed to compel home educators to register with the LEA. They believe that simply encouraging parents to engage with the LEA compromises child protection, child tracking and monitoring of educational provision and makes truancy sweeps more difficult. However, there is no evidence that compulsory registration would protect children; LEAs have no duty to monitor home education; it is not the job of home educators to make truancy sweeps easier.

 

Their preference to delete para 3.12, which is the one defining the terms of section 7 of the 1996 Education Act, can only be intended to hide from parents and their own staff, the true choice of educational provision open to home educators.

 

Similarly they wish to delete the fact that parents may provide information in any reasonable form and that LEAs have no legal access to the home. Instead they want the guidelines to assert that most parents welcome a home visit, which is not only untrue but is an attempt to create a normalcy of home visits that would make it ever harder for parents to decline them.

This LEA is simply hateful toward home educators in their response. “Victoria Climbie was not on any school roll” says Havering, as if that justifies their implication that parents should have to seek permission to home educate. I am sick of having that poor girl’s name thrown at home educators as if she would never have died had there been stricter controls on home education. It is RUBBISH. Victoria was well known to SOCIAL SERVICES, much better known than any home educated child could be even with termly visits from the LEA, but that DID NOT SAVE HER LIFE.

 

Havering is unhappy that the draft guidelines “assumes all parents, carers and families provide safe homes and stability.” They clearly want to turn the whole basis of English law upside down and have a presumption of guilt until proven innocent – but only for home educators.

 

LEAs of course enjoy the luxury of clearly and publicly failing many children in both educational and welfare terms, yet being presumed innocent! They see home educated children as “potentially vulnerable”. Another insulting implication that home educated children are more vulnerable than school educated children – simply unfounded.

 

They claim a necessity to see every home educated child so they can ensure that it is the child’s choice to home educate; another prejudiced insult to the integrity of all home educators when no-one considers asking all school children if schooling is their choice. And what if it’s not the child’s choice, they have no right to send the child to school against the parent’s wishes simply on this basis.

This LEA’s response is one of the less hostile and reflects a better understanding of the law than many. They also have some positive suggestions such as ensuring schools are better informed about home education, saying parents should not be encouraged to inform the LEA about deregistration because the schools should do it, funding for college courses, free CRB checks and removing the discriminatory section on Travellers.

 

There are however still major areas of concern. There appears to be an assumption that home visits should be accepted, which their procedures promote; they no longer ask parents to submit proposals in writing but expect to gather information on their first visit; they conduct a second visit at 6 months and annually thereafter. They also give home ed children a dated card “confirming that they are registered for EHE”, a practice that criminalises children who are quite legally not known to the LEA.

 

They ironically concede that the list of stuff NOT required such as timetables, NC, marked work, formal lessons etc., is correct, but admit that they will nevertheless look out for some of them on their home visits! A clear indication that some LEAs know the law but choose to make up their own version to fit their own prejudices and are happy to admit it. Why can this happen? Because they know they can rely on many new home educators not knowing the law, on those that do having to fight them on an individual basis and on the DfES turning a blind eye and taking no responsibility for dealing with it.

 

Lancashire also wonder how they can “safeguard and promote the welfare of children” if they can’t see them; an issue that so many struggle with and a point I have covered elsewhere.

 

It really does seem that LEAs are either scared to death of a public flogging over some imagined future welfare tragedy involving a home ed child they had not seen (who would have been miraculously saved by a home visit – such blatantly flawed logic) OR they are trying to use the Every Child Matters proposals as a lever to get the control over HE they have long wished for. They simply can’t tolerate our freedom, they are jealous because they are so tightly controlled themselves, they are kicking the cat.

Another LEA who are happy to adapt their procedures to fit with their prejudices rather than to stick to the law. They arrogantly admit that their record of 98% of families accepting home visits is partly due to the fact that some parents don’t know they don’t have to have them, yet they still ask DfES to support home visits more strongly! They also bemoan the problem that they can’t always get the detailed information they demand because some parents are legally savvy enough to know they don’t have to provide it. Crikey, who let the peasants learn to read - this education malarkey is having some nasty side effects!

 

I feel a little sorry for them because they clearly do meet the occasional home “educating” parent who doesn’t take their child’s education seriously and it must be frustrating. They claim it is a “significant percentage” but I would be worried given some of their other comments, about their criteria for taking education seriously. An autonomous approach for example could, to the uninformed, prejudiced or didactic educator, appear to be a lack of interest.

 

But, what of those (very few I suspect) who really aren’t bothered about their child’s education – they already have recourse to the SAO procedure, what else do they want DfES to do? Case law already helps them to define a suitable education. Were they getting or would they get a better education in school? Do the numbers failing, when compared to those failing in schools, really warrant pre!--ion for home education?

 

Hey, just imagine how frustrated those same LEA staff would be if they witnessed the lack of commitment a “significant percentage” of children get from their school teachers – or maybe the adherence to the school model is enough to dispel the frustration - it does after all relieve them of any concerns about being sued! Oh, perhaps it’s being sued that’s the main concern then, not the child’s educational well being?

 

I know, I know, I’m getting sarcastic now, but these things make grim reading – they invite it!  I need to keep laughing or I’ll cry.

It is unusual, if not unprecedented to be allowed a candid glimpse into the collective mindsets of LEAs. Apart from sharing the government inspired prejudice that ‘a child unseen to the system is a child at risk’ East Yorkshire seem alone in being truly positive towards home education, but then they weren’t consulted by DfES, only obtaining the consultation by a ‘most circuitous route’.

 

Milton Keynes is perhaps the best example of a healthy and mutually respectful relationship between the LEA and home educators, also not represented in this limited consultation, quite simply because the DfES did not chose to include them. It is a pity, because they would have liked to respond, being justifiably proud of their work with us. What criteria the DfES did apply in their choice of LEAs to consult has not been made public as far as I know, but given that they had been appraised beforehand that it is widely regarded amongst home educators that Milton Keynes is a model of best practice, and combined with the fact that the overwhelming tenor of the responses might reasonably be characterised as hostile from a home educator's point of view, it is reasonable to suspect a similar bias by the DfES, and an indication perhaps of what we might expect when their guidance to LEAs is published. I hope not.

 

'If we've got nothing to hide, we've got nothing to fear'is the oft quoted challenge to home educators seeking to lawfully go about their duty to educate their children without unwanted and officious interference, but this limited snaphot of LEAs gives reason enough to look no further for very pressing reasons why many home educators jealously guard their historic right to do so without notice to government.

 

The response of Cambridge in particular chills the blood for its staggeringly totalitarian sentiments:

"Whilst always welcoming discussion with and the involvement of other stakeholders this Authority is doubtful as to the appropriateness of formally involving Education Otherwise and similar organisations and home educating parents in the review of its internal policies and practices (4.15)."

Parents as 'other' stakeholders in the lives of the state's children, but not to be involved in the states plans for them. Nasty, and not a sentiment that belongs in a country that calls itself a democracy. Clearly the concept of public servant is well and truly extinct in this LEA.

 

No less worrying, and illustrative of the sometimes militantly unapologetic nature of the LEAs conception of education as necessarily limited to the state school model of it, is Newham, who clearly reveal a complete unwillingness to listen to anything we may have to say on the subject. If you cut them in half, the lettering 'compulsory schooling' would be visible running right through:

"bullet points 4,6,9 [quoting home educator's own words in a list of What home educating parents are not required to do] It is difficult to conceive of an education being deemed adequate unles the premises are equipped to a particular standard, work is marked, and detailed plans are made in advance."

Difficult for them to conceive obviously. It is perhaps testimony to the deadly success of state schooling in suppressing every successful alternative experiment in education over its 136 year monopoly, that educational professionals could make such a statement without blushing. What is as clear as daylight to any home educator, that it is not only perfectly possible to educate well, but better than schools often manage without recourse to such school devices, appears not to occur even as a possibility to this author. Reason enough for home educators to want to remain unknown to such LEAs.

 

Essex exhibit another tendency of LEAs all too familiar to home educators the length and breadth of the land. In addition to requesting that the law be changed, they simply bid for the DfES to include in the guidance what they would prefer the law to be, rather than what it actually is, in order to legitimise their local tyranny. Their hostility and mean spiritedness is palpable in every vindictive excision of anything helpful to, or wanted by, home educators that they might be able to provide at little or no expense. Just two examples in order to avoid quoting their entire submission: "Para 5.2 - Delete "However, we recommend that all LEAs should adopt a reasonable and flexible approach in this respect, particularly where there are minimal resource implications." and "Para 5.12 - The text should be changed to ensure that parents inform LEAs when they are educating children at home." Never mind the contrary law, just do it!

 

Essex also know better than we obviously do, what our preferences are because they ask the DfES to: "Para 3.17 - Insert - The majority of parents welcome the opportunity to discuss the provision that they are making for their children's education during a home visit'." Oh no we don't. I can put them right on that, and confidently say that wherever is found a majority of home educators who submit to regular home inspections by the LEA, you also have a bullied and misinformed group who have either been successfully lied to and made to believe they have no choice in the matter, or have insufficient self confidence to refuse the LEA; in other words, are successfully bullied. It is true that some parents and children prefer, and even enjoy home inspections, but it is not true that this is a majority, far from it, and it is rarely a totally free and fully informed choice. Talking daily to hundreds of other home educators online for the past 9 years qualifies me to make this observation.

 

However, a very clear theme running through most of the LEA submissions is genuine confusion over how, within the existing law they are supposed to implement the government's "Every Child Matters". This is where the government's creeping culture change approach to public policy gets out of step with primary legislation, leaving the LEAs with a genuine problem when confronted with an educated and articulate bunch of citizens to whom their civil liberties and historic freedoms are important and not to be traded in the spurious name of child protection, an emotive as well as a very serious issue government is opportunistically using as a means to silence critics of its erosions of civil liberties and constitutional rights. As Benjamin Franklin said: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." I feel we deserve both, and the idea that they are mutually exclusive is dishonest and shameful.

 

LEA's difficulties of ensuring efficient education is taking place, of monitoring and inspecting our provision, are difficulties they have created for themselves in collusion with government who have incited them to pursue these ultra vires agendas. Like all bureaucracies, they naturally and inevitably tend to expand their spheres of competence in order to further careers and grow the importance of the institution; that's not a controversial statement. But it is statute which constitutes their functions and statute does not provide that an LEA has to be satisfied with the provision of education 'otherwise' than in school. It's duty is defined negatively as a duty to act if it appears that a child is not receiving suitable education. If it doesn't so appear to the LEA then it's duty is discharged and the home educating family who have lawfully chosen not to avail themselves of the state provision, have no further business with the LEA. As can be seen so clearly in most of the submissions here, the LEAs are often completely ignorant of other ways of educating that are all perfectly legal and meet the criteria defined by s7 of the Education Act 1996, and are therefore manifestly incompetent to judge what they don't understand, and may even declare open hostility towards. This perfectly illustrates the indispensibility of freedom in education from state ideology if there is to be democracy in education, and not totalitarian mind control.

 

The presumption of innocence, the presumption of competence is implicit in the wording of the 1996 act which was first penned for the 1944 act. Lord Justice Donaldson in June 1980 determined that an LEA was entitled to make informal enquiries to which a parent was under no legal obligation to respond, but would be wise to do so because unless they gave the LEA more information than a bald statement that they were home educating, the LEA would have to consider whether it appeared to them that they might not be educating suitably.

 

Even if the point is reached where reasonable (ie supportable) suspicion exists and the LEA is required to be satisfied of the provision, all that is required is that the evidence provided is sufficient to convince a reasonable person on a balance of probabilities only. Clearly this does not amount to a duty to ensure suitable education where the LEA is not the provider. Inspections of schools exist to reassure parents that the schools they have delegated their legal responsibilities to, are meeting them. If parents are meeting them directly, then such inspections are clearly not relevant, and statute makes no provision for them. That whole agenda is invented, and the home educator breaks no law if they decline to allow LEA monitoring and inspection.

 

It is very clear that this situation is intolerable to many, but by no means all LEAs, and probably has been for most of the 100 years of their existence. Home educators have been battling against LEA ultra vires ambitions since at least the 1950's when Joy Baker described her persecution through the courts in 'Children in Chancery'. The same hostile and wilfully uncomprehending attitudes she encountered half a century ago are instantly recognisable to home educators today. This is from our point of view why we need guidance that LEAs will respect, that helps them to understand and respect us. To learn to recognise what a reasonable 'appearance' of no suitable education taking place might look like, as opposed to being the product of unreasonable prejudice. To understand what their legally constituted role actually is, and be satisfied with that in the knowledge that the balance is as it should be, and that Rab Butler got it right in the penultimate year of World War II. That men and women to whom was entrusted the defence of the country were also to be trusted by government with their own children, and that this was indeed as far as they were aware, precisely one of the freedoms they were fighting for. Parent's as 'other stakeholders' in their children is an obscene inversion of reality worthy only of a fascist state. The state is not a stakeholder in my life or that of my children. It is my servant, or it should be. If the state seeks to set itself up as anything more than a parent of last resort, then it becomes a usurper.

 

I expect the guidance to reflect a properly constituted relation between home educators and the state, and dismiss all ultra vires ambitions, and I will tolerate nothing less.

 

Neil Taylor, home educator