HEdline

Present: Cllr. Vanessa Brown, Cllr. Ted Kemble, Dani, Imran, Kate

The meeting was held to discuss the Badman Review of home education, and how the home education community could have an input to Brighton & Hove City Council’s response to the current government consultation.

Dani presented the councillors with a briefing note and a copy of the Badman Review recommendations and the government’s consultation document.

The discussion was friendly and wide-ranging.

Some points that arose were:

Impact of the Badman recommendations on home educating families in Brighton & Hove

Cllr. Brown felt that it was unlikely that the recommendations would be implemented in a heavy-handed way by Brighton & Hove Council staff, and that there was no reason for home educators to be alarmed.

Kate and Dani pointed out that relying on the good will of individual officers would leave home educating families in an uncertain position. Once the powers are in place, they are there for any future administration or staff team.

There may not be much discretion for individual officers or local authorities, in any case. The Review recommends that the government issue statutory guidance, which would presumably determine the way the new powers should be applied.

Monitoring and service provision

Cllr. Brown said that the council was concerned about parents it did not know were home educating. Kate and Imran said that they were not registered with the council’s EOTAS team, as the EOTAS team had no useful services to offer to home educators.

Dani said that the view of officers at Brighton & Hove (in common with Graham Badman, and many other local authorities) was that their job is to inspect and monitor home educators, by means of annual home visits. Even though DCSF guidelines make it clear that there is no duty to monitor, under current legislation, they persist in this role.

Kate said that we have had numerous meetings with officers at the council, right up to Assistant Director level, but have never made any progress towards a more imaginative and respectful relationship between the council and the home education community. Other local authorities provide drop-in centres, free venues for home education group meetings, subsidised access to council owned sports facilities, and exam centres for home educated children who wish to take public exams. When we have asked Brighton & Hove to provide these things, we have been met with a flat refusal.

Cllr. Brown said that her understanding was that most home educating families are happy to accept monitoring visits. Dani and Kate said that this is far from the case. People agree to the visits because they do not want to appear rude and because they are frightened that the local authority officer will put pressure on them to return their child to the school system, or even refer them to social services. Officers may not be aware of this, but the visits they carry out are generally perceived as irritating (at best) or extremely stressful. Some families go to great lengths to avoid becoming known to the local authority – including staying indoors between 9am and 3pm, or even not registering with a GP. This is not because they have something to hide, but because being registered with the local authority is of no value to them, and is experienced as an unwanted intrusion into their lives.

If the local authority were to provide useful and practical services for home educators, this situation could be turned around. However, if the Badman Review proposals go through, there will be no opportunity to do this, and relations between the council and the home education community are likely to worsen.

The requirement to submit a 12 month plan

All the home educators at the meeting expressed concern about this aspect of the proposals. For autonomous home educators, the idea of predicting outcomes for a child 12 months in advance is entirely at odds with the educational philosophy they have chosen.

Dani gave the example of her son, who has recently developed an interest in maps, as a result of reading a series of books. She did not know this would happen, so could not have included it in a 12 month plan for the year. If his interest in maps wanes, she would not want to be putting pressure on him to keep up map-related activities, in order to fit in with targets written now. That would mean abandoning the principle of respecting the child’s internal motivation to learn, which is at the heart of the autonomous education approach.

Kate pointed out that these proposals in effect remove the right of parents who prefer the autonomous approach on educational and philosophical grounds to educate their children according to their conscience.

Imran explained that for parents who choose an approach based on a parent-defined or external curriculum, this proposal is also a problem. The Badman review recommends that children should be required to demonstrate “progress and attainment” in accord with the plan drawn up the previous year. Are children who do not meet the targets set by their parents in the plan to be deemed failures?

Safeguarding

Imran expressed his dismay at the proposal to give local authority education officers powers in excess of those given to child protection social workers – right of entry to the home, and to interview children alone. He said that he would not be prepared to allow his children to be interviewed alone by an officer making a routine monitoring visit.

Dani said that blanket screening of a normal risk population was not an acceptable way to prevent possible law-breaking. Kate said that we don’t visit everyone’s home to check they are not beating their partners. Imran said we don’t visit the homes of all Muslims to check for terrorist activity. Why is it being proposed to check the homes of all home educators, without any evidence that their children are at risk of harm?

Kate said that the idea that a visit once a year from a stranger would enable children to disclose abuse within their families was ridiculous. It is not an effective solution to the perceived problem.

There is some evidence that the home educating community may in fact be a lower risk population. Figures gathered by a national home education campaign show an incidence of child abuse among known home educating families at less than a third of the rate in the population as a whole .

Dani pointed out that for children who are vulnerable or who have particular communication difficulties, the report recommends that the interview should be in the presence of a “trusted adult”. If this means an adult trusted by the child, then presumably the child would have already confided in that adult if there were any problems at home.

Brighton & Hove City Council’s response

Cllr. Kemble suggested that home educators should write to the Director of Children’s Services, to ask for our views to be taken into consideration in drafting the council’s response.

Dani said that she hoped the Cllrs would also pass on our views to the relevant officers, as we had previous experience of meetings with officers which we had felt were ultimately unproductive.

Asked at the end what their position was, Councillor Kemble gave a non-committal answer, saying that in the end it was up to central government to enact these proposals or not.