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I am not convinced.

—

by

Jax Blunt
in

I am not convinced by the existing research studies on the outcomes for home educated children both in this country and elsewhere. Although some (but not all) studies have found that home educated children outperform schooled children on a range of indicators, the results may be attributable to parental characteristics (e.g. better educated parents with higher incomes). Some of the studies were also based on small samples and therefore the ability to generalise is limited. Some were based on self selecting, and therefore biased, samples. The diverse characteristics of home educated children make it difficult to generalise about their academic performance.

I am not convinced that Graham Badman is equipped to make this kind of judgement on academic research. I am not convinced that he approached this issue with an open or independent mind. I am not convinced that anyone is taken in by it, so why are the Government leaping to implement his recommendations? Could it be because they are the recommendations that the Government wanted to see?

Why are home educators so scary? It’s got nothing to do with welfare. An annual home visit, even with grilling the child without parents present, is not going to prevent any abuse cases. How many visits happened to Baby P or Victoria? Didn’t do them any good did it? So please, don’t try to tell me that this is going to save one child any anguish.

What, you still think it’s got something to do with welfare? Let’s take a closer look. If it really has, please can someone explain Recommendation 24 to me.

That the dCSF make such change as is necessary to the legislative framework to enable local authorities to refuse registration on safeguarding grounds. In addition, local authorities should have the right to revoke registration should safeguarding concerns become apparent.

In what world can it be deemed unsafe for a child to be educated at home, but somehow safe for them to remain living at home as long as they go to school?

Schools are such safe places aren’t they. Hollow laughter.

Why is there such concern about home educated children and welfare anyway? Let’s take a look at the evidence.

Ah, right. There is none. What does Mr Badman have to say about that?

First, on the basis of local authority evidence and case studies presented, even acknowledging the variation between authorities, the number of children known to children’s social care in some local authorities is disproportionately high relative to the size of their home educating population.

Hm. Mind if I jump in there?

The size of the home educating population in local authority areas is not known. So how can we say that the number of children known to social care is disproportionately high? We can’t. Or at least we can’t if we’re attempting to represent the facts. But facts aren’t all that important here are they?

Secondly, what does “known to social care” mean? Does it mean – has been reported to SS because they are home educated and someone thought that was a welfare issue and actually there was no problem at all?

Could do. There are many anecdotal reports of this happening, I’d like to see some research done by someone who actually cared into how often this occurs.

Could it be because there is a high proportion of home educated children with special educational needs, and they are likely to be known to many services? Also possible.

In other words, “known to social care” means absolutely nothing, except a way of continuing with the smear campaign and rumours.

Secondly, despite the small number of serious case reviews where home education was a feature, the consideration of these reviews and the data outlined above, suggests that those engaged in the support and monitoring of home education should be alert to the potential additional risk to children. So saying is not to suggest that there is a causal or determining relationship, but simply an indication of the need for appropriately trained and knowledgeable personnel.

The only reason for this paragraph is to imply that causal relationship. Shame on you Mr Badman. I’m still not convinced.

So really, truly, this has nothing to do with welfare. We all knew that. This is about control. This is about giving the state an excuse to interfere in private family life, and drag children back into institutions, away from their parents.

Brings to mind The Children’s Story. If you haven’t read it, you should. And you can, here.

Comments

7 responses to “I am not convinced.”

  1. Linda avatar
    Linda

    Well said!

    Reply
  2. Maire avatar
    Maire

    Excellent

    Reply
  3. HHaricot avatar
    HHaricot

    I agree jax. I am composing a letter [slowly] to mp with both of these issues as central features
    1. rubbishing the only known research with no alternate evidence to give creditability
    2. using tautology to create the appearance of evidence of welfare issues – the FOI links on what do they know show this to be rubbish too.oh, and other central issues – actually placing ‘the bar’ for HE at a significantly higher level than schools – are all kids going to be removed from school if can’t read at 8? are all schools going to be ofstedded yearly, with individual child plans and outcomes?
    well, it does appear he doesn’t know how to ‘use’ academic research at all.
    i really believe we should all try and write some good long and short letters of critique and send to all MP’s, councillers, euro MP,s, local authorities
    and getting some kind of gap analysis – copsting, what if we do insist that they therefore have to look at everything, see everything, what if we all declare autonomous, what if we insist on legal representation with another trusted adult present if they are going to quiz our children
    what if we want to be paid if we are to sit on quangos
    with this number of hoops, and more inspections than a school, maybe we should have our money back as funding for he – ie if we have to jump through that hoop, they need to give us the means…. Read more
    but mainly, we want this to be non-passable – and therefore want the LA’s to actually pale over it – their increased responsibility if they will take it from us, the increased revenue required
    the government to pale at the costs – as the educational budget has shrunk
    and the human rights activists and lawyers to take this on.
    i think actually that it is SO outrageous, we possibly have more chance of killing it, than if it had been more reasonable
    of course if eo hadn’t colluded…

    Reply
  4. Tech avatar
    Tech

    Re Helen’s point above about costing:
    Someone, somewhere, sorry can’t recall where, said that if there were 50,000 children who had to be visited once a year, that would equate to 200 visits every single day of the year.
    If we say that an advisor would get paid, say, £100 a day, so you are looking at a cost of almost £7.5 million per year, just in wages. That’s without expenses, admin costs etc etc. It’s a huge amount of money for them to find when most LAs have minuscule budgets for EHE.

    Reply
  5. Clare avatar
    Clare

    Great points. I thought the review was bad enough when I read it first time round, but amazingly it gets worse with each re-read.
    It’s good to know how to answer the ‘more known to social services’ allegation.

    Reply
  6. dottyspots avatar
    dottyspots

    The SS comment is a real kick in the teeth for me. We’re known to SS – of course we are, ds1 has a designated SW. There has never been any question over our ‘suitability’ as parents or that our children are at any risk. Being known to SS does not equal that your children are at risk of abuse.
    As you say, considering the number of HE-ing families with a child with SEN/disability; add to that the number of families deregging after difficulties with the school (‘school phobia’, bullying, etc) who may have also had a referral; plus the probably well-intentioned (but ill-informed) referrals from professionals such as GPs or HVs (who aren’t aware of the law); then add the further referrals coming from neighbours, exs, family members, etc. and well, it’s no surprise that numbers known to SS are disproportionately high.
    And none of the above would mean the children were at any risk at all.
    Oh yes and the statement re. SS will probably comprise of HE-ers *known* to the LA – perhaps the full whack might bring those numbers down, who knows?
    What I would like to see is a breakdown of *why* these families are known to SS – perhaps that might highlight many difficulties with services in schools.

    Reply
  7. SallyM avatar
    SallyM

    About the safe at home as long as they are at school… one of the ways Social Services “support” the parents of pre-school children who aren’t coping is to put the children into a social services nursery. The idea, presumably, being that if the child is away from the parents for several hours a day then the parent has a break. More like respite care. I am guessing thats the thinking here. The child is getting a break from the parents and vice versa as well as being seen by other adults. In practise I doubt it works but whether things are practical or sensible doesn’t seem to feature much in the recommendations.

    Reply

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