Wednesday 13 January 2010

The local authorities already have all the powers they need; they just don't use them

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Many of those campaigning against the provisions of the new Children, Schools and Families Bill use the above argument when speaking to MPs and others who they feel might be sympathetic. It is, on the face of it, pretty convincing. After all, a local authority which suspects that a home educated child is not being educated properly can take the parents to court. They hardly ever do so though; such cases are as rare as rocking horse shit. Why should this be so?

When a child is withdrawn from a maintained school in this country, the school generally contacts the local authority and notifies them of the fact. Most local authorities will then get in touch with the family and ask for some sort of evidence that the child is receiving a full time education suitable to his age and ability. Not all local authorities bother to do this; the London Borough of Enfield, for example, does not usually do so. However, most do. Parents then write back explaining what they are doing with their child and either accepting or declining a visit according to how bloody minded they are feeling. Often, the stuff they send to the local authority is exceedingly vague and waffly. Instead of being specific about what their child is doing in mathematics or English, they trot out a load of guff about how little Johnny is fulfilling his capabilities in a variety of ways and that they are offering him learning opportunities in many settings. This sort of thing has often been cut and pasted from some Internet site, Home Education UK being a popular source. This can by the way afford a good deal of innocent amusement for those who are monitoring elective home education. Sometimes, two or three educational philosophies are word for word identical apart from the child's name!

Most of these children are probably receiving some sort of education, even if it isn't precisely the kind of thing that the officers of the local authority would like to see. Some are definitely not receiving even the most rudimentary education. How do you identify these children and either make their parents educate them or get them back into school? This is not easy. Sometimes, the local authority has an idea from speaking to the school which parents are likely to be making at least some attempt to educate their child. If they feel that certain parents are not doing so, then they can serve a notice requiring them to satisfy the authority that they are doing so. Some parents give in at this point and return the child to school. Others send in more paperwork. Sometimes this is a curriculum accompanied by typed work, supposedly completed by the child in question. Of course without actually speaking to the child, it is impossible to know whether or not this is actually his work. I certainly know of more than one case where a parent has put together documents like this which are wholly fraudulent and misleading. What happens if the local authority is still not satisfied?

The next step is to apply to the courts for a School Attendance Order. This is very chancy and quite expensive for the local authority. Because the definition of a suitable education is so vague, it is not hard for parents to persuade magistrates that their children are receiving a "suitable" education. here is part of the definition from Bevan v Shears 1911;

"In the absence of anything in the bye-laws providing that a child of a given age shall receive instruction in given subjects, in my view it cannot be said that there is a standard of education by which the child must be taught. The court has to decide whether in their opinion the child is being taught efficiently so far as that particular child is concerned."

This is not particularly helpful. What about this, from a case in 1985;

"Primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he is a member, rather than the way of life in the country as a whole."

It is all but impossible for a local authority to make a case against a parent based upon such concepts. The result is of course that few bother to do so. Why drag the Borough Solicitor away from his desk and get him to spend the morning in court for this sort of thing? It's waste of his time and everybody else's.

The case would be very different if there were a definition of a suitable education which included a rough guide of what children should be achieving at various ages. Perhaps that a child should be reading fluently by the age of twelve, always assuming that there are no special educational needs. Or maybe that a child of ten should be thoroughly familiar with the four basic arithmetical operations, or perhaps that he was able to write. Without clear benchmarks of this sort, of course local authorities will not and cannot exercise the power to force parents to educate their children. To claim that they already possess the powers to do so is simply not true. Unless there is a way of establishing whether or not a child is receiving an education, then there is no way of finding out the opposite; that he is not receiving an education.

As I said above, most of these children are probably receiving some sort of education, but mixed in with them are certainly children who are not. How are the officers of the local authority to distinguish between these two cases? From reading an educational philosophy which has been downloaded from the Internet, how are they too know which of these children have parents who actually intend to educate their children at home and which parents have withdrawn their children and have no intention at all of educating them? This is a genuine conundrum, the answer to which is presumably known to home educating parents but not by the local authorities! Of course, a home visit and quiet chat with the child in question would go some way to helping resolve this problem, but many parents are bitterly opposed to both these moves. All suggestions for ways of resolving this dilemma would be viewed with great interest.

37 comments:

  1. Simon, either you just don’t get it, or you are determined not to get it.

    Local authorities do not have any responsibility for, nor any duty to monitor the education of, children who are being educated other than in local authority provision, apart from:

    a) a general duty to promote the education and welfare of all local residents (not just children) - that is why we have local authorities, after all

    b) a specific duty to make enquiries if it appears that a child is not receiving a suitable education or if they have reasonable cause to believe that a child is at risk of significant harm.

    The reasons for this are twofold. One is because local authorities provide services to the local community. They provide services paid for by our money, earned by our labour. They are answerable to us, not us to them.

    The second reason is that the responsibility for the education and upbringing of children lies with parents, and because in the past, and elsewhere in the world, government agencies have been found to have a tendency to abuse their power and resources when given the right to intervene in family life. To be sure, children are failed by their parents. Unfortunately, children have also been failed by public services.

    This is the real conundrum. How do you ensure that neither parents nor local authorities abuse children? Well, I don’t think you can. What you can do is minimize the risk of abuse, and you can do that by resourcing local authorities so that they can provide support to families who need it. If effective support was in place, public sector employees would be out and about in the community much more than they are at present. The informal ‘monitoring’ that this would allow could go a long way to alleviating the concerns that have caused local authorities to fret so much about home-educated children. Though I must say a bit more fretting about school-educated children on the part of LAs wouldn’t go amiss.

    You might not like this set-up, and might think it wrong. Local authorities might not like it and think it wrong. But that does not mean that you can ascribe to them duties they don’t have, nor that they can take on such duties just because they want them. A police spokesman was commenting yesterday on how stop and search powers made the job of the police much easier. There are many powers that would make the job of the police (or local authorities) much easier, but the evidence suggests that those powers would not contribute to the common good.

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  2. One of us does not get it suzieg, but I am far from being convinced that it is me! Your view of the matter was actually thrashed out in the courts thirty years ago. In 1976 Mr. Phillips and Ms. Reah were the parents of a boy with the unusual name of Oak. They lived in Leeds and chose to educate their son at home. In the course of time, the local education authority in Leeds became aware that Oak Reah was not attending school and in the Summer of 1977 they wrote to his parents asking them about the educational provision being made for their son. His parents decided that it was nobody's business but their own and refused to give any information whatsoever about Oak's education. After a time, the LEA grew impatient and issued a School Attendance Order. So far so good, they were doing just what you apparently feel that they are entitled to do.Oak Reah's parents mounted an ingenious defence to this. They argued that the local education authority was wrong to issue the School Attendance Order in the first place, because it could not possibly have appeared to them that Oak was not receiving a suitable education; since they had no information at all about him, how could it appear to them that he wasn't receiving a suitable education?
    Although the magistrate decided against them, Oak's parents sought a judicial review of his decision and in 1980 this was heard. Lord Donaldson decided that the LEA was quite justified in making enquiries of the parents and that although they were entitled to refuse to give any information about their son's education, the LEA might then very well decide to issue a School Attendance Order as a result.
    In fact, local authorities can and do make enquiries when they discover a child being educated at home. If these enquiries are not answered to the satisfaction of the local authority, they are quite justified in issuing a School Attendance Order. This precedent, by the way, is still binding.
    You also seem to be forgetting the Children Act 2004, which provides a legal underpinning for the five outcomes of the Every Child Matters agenda. It is hard to see how a child could enjoy and achieve unless he were receiving a suitable education. It is also difficult to imagine him achieving economic wellbeing. The local authority has respnosibility to see that all children in its area, not just those at maintained schools, have access to the five outcomes. So I am afraid that all things considered, local authorities do have a duty to make enquiries of this sort. You are right that they may not have a duty to monitor regularly, but there is no doubt that they are perfectly within their rights to make enquiries. The results of these enquiries are all to often, as I say above, unsaisfactory.

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  3. I don't see why it has to be home visits unless there are other issues that are raising red flags in which case that aspect can be handed over to SS.

    I HE under rules that are quite similar to the proposals (I think ours are more onerous though). The least you can do is show up for an annual testing process at the school, not in your home. I've opted for regular meetings with his former teachers (at the school) throughout the year as well.

    It's PR motivated. They create the test, they mark the test, they decide the benchmarks that must be achieved in the test, there is no realistic right of reply with regards to the format or content of the test cos only they know what was in it and no recording is made (it tends to be mainly an oral test). I won't even know what was in it cos I'm not allowed in.

    Given the negative attitude towards HE I'm focusing on regular contact and real time exhibition of skills/work/materials to quash any worries and dampen down any intent to design failure into the end of year exam.

    I have gone off at a tangent...where was I ?

    anyway...it all happens at the school not at home, although I expect we could wrangle meetings/testing in one of the comune buildings (library study room, sport centre office etc.) if the school building itself has become a source of distress for the kid.

    One thing that might work in the UK is an on-going showcase of work that the Ed rep can see evolving in real time, apps like glogster let you embed VDO etc so it is like a turbo charged, media rich lapbook. I've been playing with it, because I need to ally fears that small person won't be a poem learning, dictation doing, orally/memory tested free zone. By paying lip service and creating samples of their most beloved methodologies and displaying it in real time I'm hoping that they are reassured enough that they won't lean heavily into testing those particular areas in June.

    Would that be a useful way to demonstrate the reality of the HEing environment in question, by distance rather than face to face ?

    I've been playing with it here using blogger. This isn't what it will look like when finished (honest gov), this is just the trial and error/learn to use the apps/ work out how it could be exploited version. It will be much tidier, more organized and more focused once I get into my stride. Theoretically.

    Takes ages to load.

    http://frankieenglish.blogspot.com/

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  4. "Others send in more paperwork. Sometimes this is a curriculum accompanied by typed work, supposedly completed by the child in question. Of course without actually speaking to the child, it is impossible to know whether or not this is actually his work."

    What, you mean like GCSE coursework that is often a compilation of work produced by teachers and parents? Why should parents of home educated children be presumed guilty and have to prove their innocence? Why do they have to do more than parents of school children, many of whom cannot read and write when they leave school so presumably they have not received a suitable education.

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  5. “One of us does not get it suzieg, but I am far from being convinced that it is me! Your view of the matter was actually thrashed out in the courts thirty years ago. >>>>>>>>>>>>

    Although the magistrate decided against them, Oak's parents sought a judicial review of his decision and in 1980 this was heard. Lord Donaldson decided that the LEA was quite justified in making enquiries of the parents and that although they were entitled to refuse to give any information about their son's education, the LEA might then very well decide to issue a School Attendance Order as a result. “

    What you appear to be missing is that Lord Donaldson was saying was that the LEA was right to construe this type of situation as one where ‘it appeared’ that a suitable education was not being provided. Oak came to the LEA’s attention. The LEA made a perfectly reasonable enquiry, Oak’s parents did not respond and the LEA took the lack of response as confirming their suspicions.

    The underlying principle is that the LA has to have reason to believe that the law is being broken before it can make enquiries. In this case, Lord Donaldson was saying that the LEA coming across a child who appeared to out of school and about whom the LEA had no information constituted reason to believe that the law was being broken. He was not saying that LAs have carte blanche freedom to enquire about the progress of all home educated that they know about. In other words, the freedom to make enquiries arises only in the context of a suspicion that the law is being broken. Once you understand that principle, Lord Donaldson’s ruling makes sense. If you don’t understand the principle you go round scratching your head and complaining it’s a grey area like a lot of LAs do.

    “In fact, local authorities can and do make enquiries when they discover a child being educated at home. If these enquiries are not answered to the satisfaction of the local authority, they are quite justified in issuing a School Attendance Order. This precedent, by the way, is still binding. “

    Agreed. But the SAO can be appealed. If Oak’s parents had responded to the LEA’s enquiry by saying “Oh, we educate him at home. Here’s a summary of what we do” and the LEA had issued a SAO, and Oak’s father had challenged it, the chances are he would have won the case, because, having told the LEA he was home educating, and having provided evidence to support his assertion, they would be on very dodgy ground by pursuing the matter.

    “You also seem to be forgetting the Children Act 2004, which provides a legal underpinning for the five outcomes of the Every Child Matters agenda. It is hard to see how a child could enjoy and achieve unless he were receiving a suitable education. It is also difficult to imagine him achieving economic wellbeing. The local authority has respnosibility to see that all children in its area, not just those at maintained schools, have access to the five outcomes. “

    We’ve discussed the Children Act 2004 before. It refers to services provided by the LA. There is a list of organisations to whom the duty applies and with whom the LA is supposed to work in partnership. I, and I think another poster, pointed out that the only way the five outcomes can apply to parents under the Children Act is if parents are seen as service providers and partners of the LA. This would have significant constitutional repercussions. I can’t remember you responding to that point.

    “So I am afraid that all things considered, local authorities do have a duty to make enquiries of this sort. You are right that they may not have a duty to monitor regularly, but there is no doubt that they are perfectly within their rights to make enquiries. The results of these enquiries are all to often, as I say above, unsaisfactory.”

    They still have the duty only ‘if it appears’. That’s *why* they don’t have a duty to monitor regularly.

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  6. You also missed a couple of stages. The full set of stages are:
    concern
    informal enquiry
    further questions
    notice to satisfy
    SAO

    An ed phil in and of itself is never enough. The test is if the ed phil can be presented again the same the next year it is inadequate.

    An ed phil should be accompanied by an account of how the philosophy is applied to each child. There should also be a list of resources etc attached.

    *waves to lovely blogger Sarah* The PRODUCT is not what you are looking at here. Home ed is allowed to be very diverse in this country (and rightly so) - there are no stages and ages etc. So what the LA should look at is the PROVISION. This means one looks at the parent's attitude and commitment and ability to adapt to their child. This may be illustrated by showing work but does not have to be.

    Sarah - many EHE families here have the philosophy that the work belongs to the child and is therefore private unless he wishes to show it.

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  7. I know three local authorities which are quite happy to accept an educational philosophy without any additional material. Others have mentioned on here that their local authorities are the same. Yes, I'm aware of the full procedure for obtaining a School Attendance Order.
    Tell me Alison, you say "An ed phil in and of itself is never enough" as though you are reading from some sort of guidance. Is this so? I have the 2007 guidelines and the guidelines used by the DCSF, revised in January 2009. Where are you finding guidance such as, " The test is if the ed phil can be presented again the same the next year it is inadequate."? I am interested in this.

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  8. Would you care to comment on the points I made about Lord Donaldson's ruling, Simon?

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  9. You said, suzieg, "What you appear to be missing is that Lord Donaldson was saying was that the LEA was right to construe this type of situation as one where ‘it appeared’ that a suitable education was not being provided. Oak came to the LEA’s attention. The LEA made a perfectly reasonable enquiry, Oak’s parents did not respond and the LEA took the lack of response as confirming their suspicions." Since this is what I had already said, I have no argument with it. Lord Donaldson in 1980 said that the fact that the LEA became aware of a child who was not at school, constituted grounds for suspecting that he might not be receiving a suitable education. The LEA were therefore quite right to make enquiries. There is certainly no duty on the local authority to go looking for such children, but when a school notifies them of such a child, they can and do make enquiries. I said all this in the original post and it seems that you agree. I said nothing at all about regular monitoring, either in the post or my subsequent comment. I was specifically talking about the local authority becoming aware that children who have been deregistered are receiving a suitable education and the difficulties of establishing this under the current system. Where do we disagree?

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  10. You said “This can by the way afford a good deal of innocent amusement for those who are monitoring elective home education.”

    Who is ‘monitoring’ home education and on what grounds?

    And “In fact, local authorities can and do make enquiries when they discover a child being educated at home.”

    But those are not the grounds on which local authorities should be making enquiries.

    It appears to me that you, like many LAs, assume that because LAs *can* make enquiries, and can, in certain circumstances, take non-attendance at school as grounds for making enquiries that this entitles them to make enquiries in the case of all children not attending school and gives them a duty to monitor home education. The duty to make enquiries in all cases might or might not exist currently, because the CME guidance conflicts with s7 of the EA 1996, but it didn’t exist when Donaldson made his ruling.

    What he said was not 'the fact that the LEA became aware of a child who was not at school, constituted grounds for suspecting that he might not be receiving a suitable education' but 'Unless the LEA knows into which sub-category a particular child falls, it is put on enquiry". In other words, that that the LEA had reasonable cause to suspect that Oak’s parents were in breach of the law because initially they had no information about his education. The fact that Oak’s parents didn’t respond to the LEA gave them more cause for suspicion. However, if a parent de-registers a child from school and notifies the proprietor of the school that the child is being home-educated, and the proprietor notifies the LA of this fact, then the LA has no grounds for making enquiries unless there are other circumstances which might provide those grounds. Donaldson made it quite clear that his judgement hinged on the fact that the LEA had no information about the child.

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  11. I'd also be interested in your comments on parents' responsibilities to fulfil the five outcomes.

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  12. Ah, we have fallen down on semantics. When I refer to, "those who are monitoring elective home education.”, I am not talking about anything other than officers who are notified that a child has been withdrawn from school and then ask the parents about the type of education that the child is currently receiving. I am not talking here of those LA officers who get in touch once a year in order to check that the suitable education is still being provided.

    The duties regarding the five outcomes from the Every Child Matters agenda are not the parents' responsibility; you are absolutely right there. However, it is the local authorities duty to ensure that the children inits area have access to the five outcomes. To that extent, they are justified in asking parents what they are doing in this respect and to do their best to make sure that parents are aware of the five outcomes. They probably have a legal right to intervene under the Children Act 2004 if they then discover that a child does not have access to the five outcomes.

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  13. Ah, semantics again!

    So why does the CA 2004 give a (long) list of the LA 'partners' but not mention parents? And how would the LA's accountability to parents, as an education service provider, fit into this framework that 'probably' gives them a legal right to intervene?

    Since a big fuss has been made about the fact that successive governments have been thoughtless enough not to define a 'suitable' education, when do you think the government will get round to giving LAs a checklist of the criteria for the five outcomes? Just so they can be objective when assessing the child's access to them.

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  14. All this is done via Children's Trusts. The local authority is an education provider, but also provides many other services. Parents are not listed as partners for this reason. Parents have various duties towards their children. For example they must keep them well fed and healthy. If they fail to do so, then other agencies might step in and take care of the matter themselves. For instance if a child is starving, then social services might take her to a hospital and help her recover. This does not mean that the parents were in any sense before this happened, "partners" in the Health Authority or social services department. They simply had a genral duty to do something for their child. The same applies to the five outcomes. If their child is not getting access to them, then just as in the case of the child without access to food, other agencies might intervene. I have to say that I do not agree with a lot of this, but this is how the legal situation currently stands. Just as children need food, shelter and warmth, so too according to the Children Act, do they need access to the five outcomes.

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  15. Sorry can't seem to paste into this box....

    My comments about ed phil etc actually are from my training of local authorities. The vast majority of authorities out there who have been trained in home ed have been trained by me.

    Interestingly I was listening to Ian Dowty one time and he said exacty the same as me...so I am not alone.

    The guidelines have big bits in expecting professional judgement and because many authority officers do not see anything outside of the National Curriculum they need illustrations and guidance to learn.....as do we all.

    I do find it sad that you dismiss natural learning. I have seen it work and not work. There is a difference between autonomous/natural learning and benign neglect. And autonomous learning does work. It is about environment, commitment and values.

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  16. As far as the 5 outcomes are concerned Simon you are wrong.

    They do not apply to families - they apply to services. They are to mimic what happens in a well functioning family. They are aspirations, not targets, so actually have very little legal weight and cannot be enforced.

    It is utterly ridiculous, both logically and legally, to attempt to enforce these things in families.

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  17. I see Alison, you were actually quoting yourself about educational philosophies? Neat trick, I shall have to start quoting my newspaper articles as though they are objective research!
    Local authorities have a duty under the Children act to safeguard and promote the welfare of children living in their area. that is all children. they also have a duty to improve the wellbeing of children and young people. This is all done in the light of the five outcomes. These duties cover all children, not just thpose who are in hazard. It includes home educated children just as much as those at school. It is for the local authority to decide which children need to have their welfare promoted.

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  18. Alison, I can't copy and paste here in Firefox; I have to use Internet Explorer.
    Simon,my understanding of the Children Act is that LA's have a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children *within their existing duties*. It does not confer a new duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children to whom they have no existing duty ie those who are receiving a suitable education otherwise than at school.

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  19. The problem with this view, that local authorities have a specific, rather than general, responsiblity for all children, not just those who are in hazard, is that it fundamentally changes the direction of accountability between LAs and the people who pay them to provide services.

    It also raises an important question regarding the LAs' ability to fulfil such a responsibility. In this view, LAs must have such a duty in regard to all parents, not just those who are home educating. What if a parent disputes the LA's judgement regarding what constitutes a desired outcome? What if the LA fails to ensure that a parent co-operates in giving a child access to one of the outcomes? The only way such a muddled chain of accountability would be untangled would be through endless litigation, which would hardly be a good use of public time or money and would do no good to children whatsoever.

    What government and LAs appear to want is to be able to tell parents what to do, and if they disagree, to prosecute them. Well, that would be very convenient for the LAs and government, but it begs the question of who decides on what is best for children and on what grounds.

    This view is not how I read the Children Act, and is unworkable.

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  20. This is from the Statutory Guidelines to the Children Act;
    "1.1. Local Education Authorities, and all schools and further education institutions in England
    have a statutory duty with regard to the safety and welfare of children separate from the
    Children Act 2004.
    1.2. Section 175 of the Education Act 2002 requires Local Education Authorities and the
    governing bodies of maintained schools and further education institutions to make
    arrangements to ensure that their functions are carried out with a view to safeguarding and
    promoting the welfare of children"

    Local authorities have a general duty to ensure that their functions are carried out with a view to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. As things stand, if a local authority becomes aware of a child being deregistered from school, part of its functions entail making informal enquiries about the child's education. There is no dispute about that, see the discussion above on Lord Donaldson's ruling. In carrying out this function, the local authority has a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of the child. It is a general duty covering all their functions when dealing with children. Certainly, the act covers various cases such as looked after children, private fostering and so on. Home education is not one of these specific cases, but the general duty covers everything that the local authority does.

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  21. "their functions are carried out with a view to safeguarding and
    promoting the welfare of children"

    I read this as, whilst carrying out their functions, they must take care that their actions do not harm the child or reduce the welfare of the child and where possible, their actions should contribute to the safety and welfare of the child. So taking home visits, if an autistic child would struggle to cope with a home visit, the authority should not carry out a home visit because to do so would be harmful to the child. Where a suitable education is not being provided but the child has school phobia and were self harming when at school, the authority should not issue a SAO because school would be more harmful than no education at home.

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  22. Cutting and pasting in Firefox.

    Right click inside the comment box.
    Move down to 'This Frame'.
    Select either 'Open Frame in New Window' or 'Open Frame in New Tab'.
    Cut and paste at will.

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  23. Waves back to Alison

    Hello love,

    I was answering this bit, but forgot to quote it

    "Of course, a home visit and quiet chat with the child in question would go some way to helping resolve this problem, but many parents are bitterly opposed to both these moves. All suggestions for ways of resolving this dilemma would be viewed with great interest. "

    I think if the proposals go through and if there is a greater probability of LAs asking parents to back up their written edphils/curriculums by making the kids and their work available for evaluation, the tools of web 2.0 provide HEing parents with a less intrusive/onerous alternative that can offer more tangible, more persuasive, "bigger picture" examples of what the education is offering that child when compared to other options.

    I'm not saying "this is what you/the gov should do", more a case of this is an alternative worth considering if the rules of HE in the Uk change and people do find themselves being required to demonstrate the suitability of the education provided, particularly if their style makes it disadvantageous to their case to use more traditional modes of example (workbooks completed, curriculums followed etc) and they want to avoid a face to face meeting.

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  24. No. Donaldson made it clear that the LA acted reasonably given that they had no information about Oak. An LA that has information about the 'sub-category' (Donaldson's word) a child is in is acting beyond their legal remit if they make enquiries. They have no responsibility in respect of providing education, nor of law enforcement, which are the only two hats they wear with respect to education.

    Clauses 1.1 and 1.2 that you cite clearly relate to services provided by LAs, schools and further education institutions, none of which have any duty toward home educated children, unless 'it appears' the child is not receiving a suitable education (ie to the LA with its law enforcement hat on). If the LA knows what sub-category the child falls into (ie home educated) there is no reason for it to exercise its law-enforcement role.

    You haven't addressed the issue of the accountability of

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  25. I'm not at all sure that I know what you are driving at here suzieg, when you keep talking about the accounatability of local authorities. Local authorities have a huge number of duties. In exercsing those duties, they are bound to irritate some council tax payers and please others. For instance, our council are planning yellow lines in my street. Because I do not hvae a car, have never driven and am bitterly opposed to the private ownership of motor vehicles, I am delighted about this. They could put yellow lines on every street in the town and I would be pleased. All the neighbours though are annoyed and mutter things about accountability and "Whoo pays their wages anyway?". The same thing happend when council inspectors go snoping around shops and cafes. The fact that one set of people get annoyed by this or that action of a local authority does not have anything to do with accountability. Generally, it just means that they are doing their job properly. every such group which is put out of countenance in this way, feels that they are a special case. Home educators are just one such group.

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  26. What I'm driving at is that underpinning our systems of legislation are certain principles. Local authorities did not just arise spontaneously from the ether. Local communities vote for councillors, who appoint an executive to run local services. The services are for the benefit of local communities, are paid for by them and if a majority of local people don't like what they are doing or how they are doing it, they can complain to their local council. If they don't like the response, they can vote for someone else at the next election.

    Whether or not individuals are happy about particular policies is a secondary issue. The fact remains that local councils are not entitled to direct local people, but local people, as a group, are entitled to direct their local councils.

    Council inspectors snooping around shops and cafes is not analogous to LAs monitoring home education, because shops and cafes are offering a service to the public which people pay for. No one is paying parents to provide a service on their behalf.

    This confusion has arisen with childminders. Until recently, a distinction was made between people who were paid to mind other people's children (in which case registration and inspection was required) and people who were minding other people's children on an informal, unpaid basis, who weren't required to register or be inspected.

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  27. The problem is suzieg, that your idea of how things should work is not how they actually do work, even in theory. You say;
    "The fact remains that local councils are not entitled to direct local people, but local people, as a group, are entitled to direct their local councils."
    I gave the example of the painting of a yellow line in our street. Nobody in the street wants it and yet it is going ahead anyway. Rather than the people directing their local authority, the local authority is directing them and forbidding them to park outside their own homes!

    To understand why this should be, you need to consider ther nature of a representative democracy. We choose people who will represent our interests. We choose them at elections and then give them the authority to make decisions and take actions on our behalf. If we don't like what they do, then we can vote differently at the next election. The Government in Westminster were voted in to govern on our behalf. They are introducing legislation which will be enforced by local authorities. I am not sure whether or not you are suggesting a reform of the electoral system as a remedy for the problems facing home educators, but under the present system everything so far has been done perfectly in accordance with traditional practice. We have local authorities, in a sense, so that they can direct us and run aspects of our lives. One of those aspects happens to be education.

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  28. LOL! Simon, what did you actually teach your daughter about our constitution? What a very bizarre view of democracy!

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  29. Hello! I'm Simone's, Simon's daughter. Been looking over dad's shoulder and couldn't help commenting myself at this point - hope you don't mind.

    suzyg, I've just finished Unit 1 of Government and Politics AS level, in which I had to know extensively the way in which direct democracy worked as opposed to representative democracy. As you're apparently not aware that our democracy is a representative democracy, let me explain. Direct democracy, where citizens make their decisions for themselves, is not exactly possible in today's world, due to large no. of people etc etc. We're not in 4th century BC Athens any more. (Direct dem. continues today w. referenda, but that's another point.) Since the country still needs to be run, we elect representatives. They are _supposed_ to run the country in our best interests. "By the people, for the people, with the people": this is frequently taken to mean that the people have some measure of control over gvt. , that gvt. should govern in the people's best interests, and that there should be a measure of political participation for a democracy to be healthy.
    Right. The doctrine of mandate means that when we - or rather you - elect a government, you are giving it legitimacy, and also the authority to make decisions on your behalf. This usually entails the political programme laid out in a party's manifesto. We also give a "doctor's mandate" which means that the government has the authority to act on unexpected circumstances not covered in the manifesto, such as taking the country to war. Parliament is the guardian of the government's mandate, and also (hopefully) prevents the government abusing their mandate.
    Now, you are right that local people are entitled to direct their local councils. You do that when you vote for the candidate you want. You give them a mandate to govern the local area. Luckily, the UK has accountability (limited, due to the lack of a written constitution and faults within the simple plurality election system) and this means that if you are not happy with what the local executive has done with their power, you vote for a different candidate at the next election. Of course, due to our electoral system, the vote may be "wasted". Or perhaps a different representative from the one you would like will gain power. You see, the views of the whole community must be taken into account - or _should_ be taken into account. That means not just the views of home educators. This might lead to the "tyranny of the majority", as John Stuart Mill warned, but that is a danger of our democracy. /politicslecture

    So, what was _your_ view of how democracy works in the UK? *raises eyebrows*

    *fully anticipates being told I'm my father's sock-puppet* Please check out my lj account, if you want to make sure I'm not my dad. _Before_ making accusations.

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  30. "The doctrine of mandate means that when we - or rather you - elect a government, you are giving it legitimacy, and also the authority to make decisions on your behalf."

    So could the government be considered illegitimate if less than half of the voting population vote?

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  31. Yes, Anonymous, I personally think that in those cases the government are illegitimate. Not just because less than half of the population might vote, but because of the First Past the Post system, less than half of those people may elect the government. However, the way the system currently works is that the government is considered to have the consent of the people...I'd disagree with that.

    On the other hand, you could view it that the reason voter turnout is so low is because there's a high degree of contentment with the situation...it's open to analysis. Also, the lowest the turnout's been in recent years in app. 59% - not less than half. In 2005 it was 61%.

    I guess my description of a representative democracy was of how it _should_ work instead of how it does work. :) It's hard for any electoral system to create a government with complete consent and legitimacy. If we had a situation with Proportional Representation and everyone voted, then there'd be a problem with which party held the electoral mandate.

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  32. "...to ensure that their functions are carried out with a view to safeguarding and
    promoting the welfare of children"
    Yes, that's what I said. They have a duty to ensure that their _pre-existing_ functions are carried out with a view to safeguarding. In other words, if they are making informal inquiries about a HE child, they have to ensure that they do it with a view to promoting the child's welfare. It doesn't give them a _new_ function to check up on the welfare of _all_ HE children.

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  33. "On the other hand, you could view it that the reason voter turnout is so low is because there's a high degree of contentment with the situation...it's open to analysis."

    Well the reason I've not voted in the past is because I can't see much difference between the two main parties and I've spoken to many who feel the same. They both want to look after their 'friends' and supporters in high places or big business. I have voted more recently for a Liberal MP, not so much because I believe in The Liberal Party, but because this particular MP has responded to various issues after I've sent letters and has also campaigned strongly for a local issue I am concerned about.

    There is an interesting table on Wikipedia which shows that Labour gained 35.3% of the vote in 2005, only 3% more than the Conservatives on 32.3% yet Labour gained 55.2% of the seats and Conservatives only 30.7% (Liberals gained 22.1% of the vote and 9.6% of the seats). I realise that the idea is for the MP to represent his area (and mine appears to do this), hence the skewed amount of seats despite the proportion of votes, but the majority vote with their party under the control of the whips, so they obviously cannot specifically represent the people in their area. I can see no reason why proportional representation should not apply if they have no intention of representing 'their' constituency.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2005

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  34. Thanks Erica, just the point I wanted to make.

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  35. Yes, the statistics there are exactly right; I personally feel _very_ strongly that some kind of electoral reform is necessary, possibly the Additional Member System? That way there'd be party representation and constituency representation, which I think would be more satisfactory.

    I think the fact that people do view the two main parties as essentially the same (which is true to a certain extent) is another reason why our political system needs changing; First Past the Post essentially leads to political atrophy, where no new ideas can break into the system. The fact is that Britain is a three party system in terms of votes, but not in terms of seats, which I personally think is unfair.

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  36. I like the sound of the Additional Member System as long as the party list is open. I don't like the idea of totally unelected (by the public) individuals entering parliament from a closed list. It would be too open to abuse (bribery, favouritism, etc), giving too much power to the individuals responsible for compiling it.

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  37. i got a suggestion for All LA?DCSF/Balls Ms Johnson "go to hell" and f off and leave us all alone!

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