Monday 1 March 2010

Building bigger haystacks

The metaphor of looking for a needle in a haystack is one often used by home educators when talking of some new initiative such as ContactPoint or Schedule 1 of the CSF Bill. The claim is made that searching for abuse or other hazards is like looking for a needle in a haystack and that building a bigger haystack makes the job more difficult. In addition to generating more false positives, there will be an increased risk of overlooking genuine cases. It's an interesting idea, even if it does not stand up to scrutiny.

The specific accusation made is that home educated children are actually a normal risk group for things such as abuse, injuries and so on and that it is ridiculous to focus on them as though they were more at hazard than children in school. Before we can look at this idea, we need to see what we mean by these terms. If we count all the children in a large area like a country or even just a county and then see how many of them are abused, then we can work out a normal rate. So if we find that among a group of 10,000 children, twenty are abused in a year, then that would give us a normal rate of 0.2 per 100. If we then found that in a group of a hundred children, six were abused in the course of a year, that would give us a rate which is thirty times higher than average. Something is happening in this group; it is high risk.

Now if home educated children were simply drawn pretty much at random from the general population and the only difference was that instead of attending school they stayed at home with their parents, then of course they would be at the same level of risk as children at school. In the real world, that is not what happens. In fact a fairly high proportion, nobody knows how high, of home educated children come from groups who are themselves at higher risk of some things. Let's look at one or two of those groups.

In some areas, over a third of electively home educated children are of Roma/Gypsy heritage. Often, the teenage boys from this community being taught out of school learn more practical skills. They might be working a lot with horses, cars or machinery, while their contemporaries are sitting in a classroom studying maths. A natural result of this will be that a fifteen year old boy working with vehicles say, will be at greater risk of injury than a child sitting at a desk. Or again, there is probably a higher proportion of children with special educational needs among home educated children than in the general school population. These children too are at higher risk of some things. Illness, for example and sometimes premature death.

When we look at the whole group of electively home educated children, we find that although some of them are just children whose parents have decided to teach them at home because they prefer it to school, quite a few belong to various higher risk groups. This has the effect of pushing up the overall rate of risk for all children in the overarching group of electively home educated children. Just how much more they are at risk is a matter of debate; they are certainly not just a normal risk group. This means that by focusing resources more upon them than upon the general school population, we are actually creating a smaller rather than a larger haystack. The danger would lie in pretending that this was not so and that we should simply assume that all children aged between five and sixteen were equally at risk of abuse, illness, injury and death. We have a precedent for this kind of thing.

When HIV/AIDS appeared in the eighties, the government in this country was very keen to pretend that everybody was at the same risk of catching the disease. Leaflets were distributed to every household and we all had to believe that nobody was at any greater risk than anybody else. Of course it was nonsense. In fact injecting drugs or having unprotected sex with gay men or people from Sub-Saharan Africa are far more likely to give you AIDS than most activities. So it is with harm to children. This is seldom acknowledged explicitly, because it sounds so awful. Imagine a Minister giving a speech in which he told us that AIDS was being spread by junkies, foreigners and practicing sodomites! It will not be happening any time soon.

All children are not at equal risk. Some groups of children, stepchildren for example, are at very high risk of being raped, abused, neglected or murdered. Children from some areas are more likely to contract certain diseases. Some backgrounds are more common in neglected children than others.

So we see that simply because the category of home educated children contains a disproportionate number of children from higher risk groups, this means that it is worth paying a little more attention to children at home than we do to those at school. Some people suggest that the experience of New Zealand, where home educated children are no longer routinely monitored, is instructive. Not really. Without knowing the motives of New Zealanders for home educating, the ethnicity, proportion of children with special needs and so on, it is impossible to know whether, as in Britain, home educated children there are at a higher risk.

And so we come to the present situation. Graham Badman and Ed Balls are not stupid. they know perfectly well that the children of the sort of people who visit this Blog or hang around on the EO or HE-UK lists are at no more risk of anything than children at school. The problem is very similar to the difficulty we saw above with AIDS, of explaining who are the real risk categories, the people we really need to be concentrating on. Let's try and draft a speech for the Minister in which he tells the truth about home education;

"In a dramatic U turn yesterday, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families announced that he had scrapped plans to monitor home education among respectable, middle class families. Instead, greater attention would be paid to Gypsies, disabled children and poor quality, working class families on housing estates."

I don't think that Ed Balls is ready to make such a speech just yet. In short, a child who is not sent to school by his parents just because they wish to teach her at home is not at any increased risk of anything. However, because in the whole group of home educated children there are a quite a few children from high risk groups, more attention is being directed to home educated children in general.

34 comments:

  1. "Graham Badman and Ed Balls are not stupid."

    Errrm... so why haven't they done what any sensible person in their shoes would have done and introduced straightforward registration scheme? This would have enabled reliable research to have been undertaken. Then they could have found out why parents were home educating, what 'at risk' groups there were, and what were the best strategies to put in place to reduce the risk.

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  2. Very simply because every time anybody tries to conduct a proper study of home education, many home eduators go mad and try and wreck the process. Witness the Ofsted attempt in fifteen local authorities last year and the DCSF pilot study being proposed this year. York Consulting encountered similar problems in 2006. Unless the study includes every single home educating family, it will be worthless. Many home educating parents deny the need for new research.

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  3. Nonsense. What home educators have objected to is research being undertaken by parties that are unlikely to be philosophically neutral. Universities are best equipped to undertake such research - but of course there's always the risk they might produce findings unacceptable to the government.

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  4. York Consulting were quite neutral. Hardly anybody would co-operate with them. Even Education Otherwise found when they carried out a survey of their own members in 2003 that 80% would not respond! Paula Rothermel also only had a 20% response rate in 1997/1998. It would in any case require new legislation in order to make sure that every home educated child in the country was actually registered with local authorities. Is this what you are advocating?

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  5. I'm not *advocating* it because I don't have a problem with home educated children not being registered. I was pointing out that it would be the first sensible step for a government concerned about home-educated children being at risk and wanting reliable information about them.

    I thought York consulting were commissioned to do the research by government.

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  6. York Consulting were paid by the government. They had a free hand though. And you are quite right when you say that registration would be a sensible first step for a government concerned about home educated children being at risk and wanting reliable information about them. Hence, of course, the Children, Schools and Families Bill 2009.

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  7. All of the higher risk groups you mention (Gypsies, SEN, illness) are already monitored in additional ways to most home educators. Two of my children have a chronic disease and are seen at least 8 times a year by medical professionals - usually more (4 routine visits a year combining 2 appointments with different professionals plus extra tests and check-ups as necessary).

    We even became a false positive. I think they may had suspected anorexia because my DD was taken aside and questioned about her home life and dietary choices, and asked if she had any friends. Luckily my DD took it well and treated it as the joke it was (she is slap bang in the middle of normal weight!).

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  8. George Stewart2 March 2010 at 03:03

    Simon, though I may find myself at disagreement with you often on this issue, I am glad you provided those last three paragraphs.

    IF the goal is to save a life, does it not make sense to look at the various factors involved and determine what the statistical correlation coefficient for each factor?

    Look at the Ishaq case for a moment. There were many variables surrounding that case ranging from ethnicity to the mother having a live in step partner (assuming not married) who was just out of prison.

    If the goal is to identify risk factors that place children in danger then it is imperceptive that Government identify those factors in which there is a strong correlation coefficient. Otherwise the problem never gets fixed.

    And please do not parrot the so called statistics that Badman quoted as there were not statistics. Though I do realize that math and statistics education in the UK is a disaster affecting present day adults in positions of influence along with pupils.

    A statistics link for those readers who never took statistics;

    http://www.investorglossary.com/correlation-coefficient.htm

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

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  9. I agree with you completely, George Stewart. The problem is that we are currently pretending, despite massive evidence to the contrary, that children whose mothers have a live in lover are at no greater risk than those living with their natural parents. Children whose parents are married are safer than those who are merely cohabiting. The education of parents has a great deal of bearing on the risk of injury and abuse. Ethnicity is another factor. The problem is that no government will want to open those cans of worms. The result is that we pussy-foot around the real risk factors and try and hide them in larger groups. This is just what is happneing with home education.

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  10. Some SEN children receive extra attention, anonymous. As for Gypsies and Travellers, this is a very tricky problem. I used to visit a Traveller camp regularly and saw things which would make any ordinary person's hair stand on end. The police don't like to interfere and if a School Attendance Order is issued, it cannot be enforced. As I say, in some areas, notably East Anglia, a very high proportion of heome educated children belong to this group.

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  11. George Stewart2 March 2010 at 03:34

    Simon, well I must say that I had been thinking a few days ago you could not see the forest because too many trees were in front of you.

    You have now stated exactly why many home educators are so angry about this. Personally, had the Government come out originally with a package of assistance that was contingent on registration we would not be where we are at today. They would have effectively been able to get home educators registered and everyone would have been happy.

    Instead this Government went out and said we need registration because you are abusers. Pure political stupidity, you need to make friends not enemies. That is why I personally oppose this, its the accusation.

    Speaking as someone who is trained as a statistician, I do not think Graham Badman is well trained in statistics or if he is, then he is carrying out someone elses bidding. I say that because if the goal is save a life, then a proper statistical study would have been performed and correlation coefficients would have been determined. Instead he touts off that "twice as likely to be known nonsense." When I hear him spouting that I think he must have been a timeshare salesman at some time because that is how they sell.

    I will state for the record that new laws are probably good for instances where the coefficient is at 1.0 or close to 1.0. But then I also have to say if the coefficient is near 0.0 or gasp below, then no law should be enacted.

    Well, I feel that I need to argue with you about something instead of what became preaching to/with the Choir.

    On that end note, I will say that your political aptitude is on par with Badmans use of statistics, this Bill with home education provisions will NOT be passed by this Parliament. There is not enough time to do it. We win by default and a win is still a win no matter how you get it.

    BUT, if Labour comes back in after the election.....

    Cheers,

    GS

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  12. Well as for the CSF Bill making it onto the Statute Book, we'll just have to wait and see. I have a suspicion that after the Khyra Ishaq case, fewer Lords are likley to be speaking out in favour of unregulated home education and the bill will move pretty quickly. We shall see.

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  13. ". The police don't like to interfere and if a School Attendance Order is issued, it cannot be enforced. "

    So how do you foresee the new law changing this?

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  14. There indeed AnonySue, you touch upon a very interesting nlaws there will remain a small number of children who remain unknown to the local authorities. I suspect that many of them will be of Gypsy/Roma heritage. As things stand, many LAs avoid any sort of trouble with this community. If the DCSF were breathing down their necks though, I think that they would find themselves able to take a more pro-active role. In any case, this situation exists at the moment because Travellers, like everybody else, know that they can just avoid sending their kids to school and refuse to speak to the local authority. That will change and they will also probably change their approach.

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  15. It might just squeak through if the Bill takes the quickest possible time in the Lords. If I'm reading it correctly it looks as though the Bill could reach assent by the 29th March. The 2nd Lord's reading is on the 8th March, committee stage could happen on the 9th, report stage must happen 14 days later, so possibly the 23rd March. At least 3 sitting days usually pass between the report stage and 3rd reading so that would take us to the 29th March, then the Commons would have to consider any amendments made in the Lords. Could it go to Assent the same day? This is based on virtually no debate at any stage - a few hours at most. Is this likely?

    According to this article, http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/christopherhope/100025216/sir-george-young-names-the-election-date-but-harriet-harman-wont-play-ball/, Parliament is likely to be dissolved on the 1st April.

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  16. "Travellers, like everybody else, know that they can just avoid sending their kids to school and refuse to speak to the local authority. That will change and they will also probably change their approach."

    How do you foresee them keeping track of travellers? Maybe they will microchip the children and track them that way?

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  17. "Children whose parents are married are safer than those who are merely cohabiting. "

    Noooo.... children whose parents are married are safer *as a group* than *the group* of children whose parents are cohabiting. What is true for the group is not necessarily true for the individual. Each case needs to be evaluated due to the complex and varied features of individual cases.

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  18. George Stewart2 March 2010 at 04:15

    Simon my friend, honestly there just is not enough time because of procedures to get this all passed. Getting the Bill passed by this Parliament is like you telling me that you will drive your car to Aberdeen with one gallon of petrol from Asda! It would indeed be a noble goal and a grand achievement but you are never going to make it.

    It is no longer an issue of who will speak out or if it is a lower number. There is a procedure in place as to what needs to happen and when.

    The timing of those events in the Lords also hit up against the wall of Easter, the election date itself and the dissolving of Parliament because of the election.

    Seriously and I say this extending the right arm of friendship, pull out a calender and put in the election date (May 6 likely), dissolving Parliament date (April 7, I believe), Easter break (look at prior years) then pull out the interactive guide on how bills become law!!

    http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/passage_bill/coms_lords_first_reading.htm

    Forgot one thing, you also need to look at the Lords calender for the next few months to see when they are actually doing anything!! You will see they do not work too hard or often!!

    So when you state the Bill will move pretty quickly, it can not move more quickly than the rules of the Lords allow. There is a bare bones minimum of time that is needed to pass anything in the Lords.

    Yes, I agree with you that the Government will move the Bill as quickly as it can. Yes, they will make sure this Bill does not require the six plus months that it normally takes in the Lords.

    But, they can not just decide to wrap it up in one day!! Is the second reading taking place any earlier? Absolutely not!! Committee will take place in accordance with the Rules and so on with the rest of the stages.

    Procedurally, if this bill is accelerated to the bare bones minimum amount of time, per the Rules in the Lords, it still simply runs out of time.

    What this tells me is that the Government wanted this for political purposes or they were too stupid anyway and did not understand how a Bill becomes law.

    Again, please do the calender exercise. Besides it is rather interesting to do and is a learning experience. They do not teach these things in the schools.

    The only variables are;

    1.) Election is in June, not May.

    2.) Politicians give up their April holiday break.

    3.) The Lords Committee can read faster than Commons Committee and can wrap this up in one day instead of three weeks.

    What do they say an MP does, "They work for you." You can stop laughing.....

    Having said that I will state that Lords do not work for anybody!!

    Cheers, GS

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  19. George Stewart2 March 2010 at 04:22

    Anonysue, you are not reading the Rules correctly. In the Lords it will not go to Committee the next day;

    "It usually starts no fewer than two weeks after the second reading."

    The earliest it can thus go is 22 March.

    One day in Committee, puts Report Stage on 6 April.

    Third reading at the very earliest is 9 April.

    This is also assuming that all other business will not interfere. There are other Bills going down the pipes as well!!

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  20. George Stewart2 March 2010 at 04:30

    suzyg said...

    "Noooo.... children whose parents are married are safer *as a group* than *the group* of children whose parents are cohabiting. "

    I shall step in to the fray and assist Simon.

    The correct response is that the correlation coefficient between couples cohabiting and the incidence of child abuse may be higher than that of married couples and child abuse. Those coefficients need to be calculated for both groups.

    Next, Ministers have a duty to ask what is the correlation coefficient between home education and child abuse.

    If the correlation coefficient between cohabitation and abuse is higher than home education and abuse, Ministers need to devote their energy to inspecting cohabiting couples instead of home educators!!

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  21. George Stewart wrote,
    "Anonysue, you are not reading the Rules correctly. In the Lords it will not go to Committee the next day;"

    Oh good, for some reason I read that as 'within two weeks'. So even if there is no debate (or only a few hours) it will take till the 12th April.

    Do you think it's likely they will hold the election in June? or do you think that the local elections in May and the cost savings involved in holding both elections on the same day would make it difficult for them to justify the extra cost of a June election, especially in the current economic climate?

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  22. Simon wrote,
    "In a dramatic U turn yesterday, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families announced that he had scrapped plans to monitor home education among respectable, middle class families. Instead, greater attention would be paid to Gypsies, disabled children and poor quality, working class families on housing estates."

    As there is no evidence (peer reviewed and widely accepted as accurate) that home educators are a high risk population, you are suggesting that it's acceptable for them to effectively state:

    "In a dramatic U turn yesterday, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families announced that he had scrapped plans to just monitor populations at high risk of abuse and will monitor all families, including respectable, middle class families."

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  23. George Stewart2 March 2010 at 05:13

    AnonySue said...

    "Do you think it's likely they will hold the election in June? or do you think that the local elections in May"

    The PM will be excoriated by the Press if it is June because of the money.

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  24. So it's highly likely to boil down to bargaining during the wash-up. The Conservatives could say, we'll pass the rest of the Bill if the HE bit is deleted', or 'we'll let the HE bit through if you delete this part of another Bill', for instance. Is that how it works?

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  25. That's exactly how it works AnonySue. The Tories are desperately anxious to avoid the Constitution and Governance Bill going through, particularly since the bits about the alternative vote system were tacked on the end. I am guessing that they will do anything to avoid this getting through, up to and including allowing the CSF Bill to pass.. We'll just have to wait and see.

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  26. You are perfectly correct suzieg, when you say:

    "Noooo.... children whose parents are married are safer *as a group* than *the group* of children whose parents are cohabiting. What is true for the group is not necessarily true for the individual."

    I'm sorry if anybody else got the impression that I was saying that all the children of married couples are completely safe and that no child living with cohabiting parents can ever be safe!

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  27. George Stewart2 March 2010 at 06:23

    Simon says;

    "I am guessing that they will do anything to avoid this getting through,"

    The Bill in question is only now getting a third readings and then, only then, off to the Lords.

    There is no dealing to be made, none.

    The Bill you reference can not physically get through the Lords before Parliament is dissolved. It is not possible even if the rules are met exactly.

    Gordon Brown is PM, he is not King, neither is Ed Balls. They can not "wish" a Bill being passed.

    So the idea that the Tories will make a deal over that Bill at the expense of another Bill is utter rubbish.

    Your understanding of the wash up process is beyond comprehension. The party in power is going to the power out of power, hat in hand, asking them for help to get something passed.

    The Government is being forced to bend to the will of the Tories if they want anything passed in the next month.

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  28. It is true that Gordon Brown is not God. It is also true that governments can push things through parliament if they are so minded by means of so-called expedited legislation. You might care to get hold of a copy of "Fast-track legislation: constitutional implications and safeguards (HL 116 2008-09)", published by the House. This report sets out the following justifications which have been used for fast-tracking legislation:

    Northern Ireland peace process and devolution settlement (the single largest category in terms of numbers of Bills);

    To remedy an anomaly, oversight, error or uncertainty that has come to light in legislation;

    To respond to the effects of a court judgement;

    To ensure that legislation is in force in time for a forthcoming event;

    To deal with economic crisis;

    To change a public authority’s borrowing or lending limit or other funding issues;

    To deal with a crisis in prisons as a result of industrial action;

    To respond to international agreements;

    To implement Treasury announcement in the Budget or autumn statement;

    To respond to public concerns;

    Counter-terrorism related.

    The one about responding to public concerns is interesting, especially in the aftermath of the Khyra Ishaq case.

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  29. The classic case of fast track legislation was of course the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. It passed every single stage in the Commons in one day! I don't say that the government are intent upon this, only that it has happened in the past and could also happen in the future. I remember that I had a friend who owned a pitbull and was rubbing his hands with pleasure, detailing all the stages that the bill would have to go through; first reading, committee and so on. Some MPs were getting ready to table amnedments, the government could not possibly do it. It would take them a year and then they might run out of time. (This was in 1991, not long before the 1992 election.) And then, it was pushed through in one day.

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  30. George Stewart2 March 2010 at 07:07

    Simon says;

    "It is also true that governments can push things through parliament if they are so minded by means of so-called expedited legislation."

    I am very familiar with the text you cite.

    The legislation in question is not fast tracked (either CSF or CG), which is entirely clear because it is following existing rules exactly.

    This Government, and in fact any Government, can not decide to flip to the expedited rules because of politics.

    If these Bills were of an urgent and emergency nature, they would have been on the expedited track from day one. That is how fast tracking is meant to work and in fact works.

    Again, either Bill is not going to be allowed to pass until and unless the Tories approve. So as I stated, Labour is going to bend to the will of the Tories as they hold all the proverbial cards.

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  31. Leaving aside the political bit, what then should be done about families whose children are calculated to be at greater risk than the home ed population as a whole? If it is not acceptable (to either home edders or the Consrvative party)to have universal "inspections/visits/call it what you will" I can't see how it is going to be any easier to implement such visits to a targeted few -"excuse me, Ms Smith, we want to visit you because you are living on a rough estate and your children might be in danger"??
    I should add that I did have reading the failures of those who didn't save Khyra made me wonder about whether I was in danger of doing more harm than good with a local family I am involved with; am I in danger of ending up as a witness in an inquest? That probably sounds very dramatic but perhaps we shouldn't be so blase about the risk versus benefit ratio of home education sometimes.

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  32. "I can't see how it is going to be any easier to implement such visits to a targeted few "

    Whilst current case law states that home visits should not be a routine requirement for all HEers, it was recognised that in some circumstances a home visit will be necessary. I think in that particular case the mother was disabled and the judge supported the LA and said that a home visit was necessary for them.

    In every case of abuse we've seen so far someone else has drawn the family to the attention of social services. The social services then fail to follow the recommended procedure and a child is harmed. What high risk group are you thinking of in particular that might need extra surveillance? Disabled children are usually seen regularly by members of the medical profession, things like Sure Start Children's Centres are 'targeted on particular local areas or disadvantaged groups', etc. Can you think of any high risk group that isn't already targeted for extra help and contact with professionals? Usually contact with professionals who have better welfare/safety training than your average LA HE inspector too.

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  33. "I should add that I did have reading the failures of those who didn't save Khyra made me wonder about whether I was in danger of doing more harm than good with a local family I am involved with; am I in danger of ending up as a witness in an inquest? That probably sounds very dramatic but perhaps we shouldn't be so blase about the risk versus benefit ratio of home education sometimes"

    Good point, Julie. That is why it is vital for the HE community to be realistic when they describe the benefits of HE to people considering it. It is not right for every single situation.

    The problem is that 2 outwardly similar families could easily have 2 completely different HE outcomes. For eg, near me: large family, council estate, very messy and seemingly chaotic home, shouty mum, Dad on permanent late shift, but the kids are all thriving, healthy and the ones who have 'graduated' from HE have all done better, academically, than either of their parents. Their life-chances are now dramatically improved.

    They could LOOK like a family needing intervention, at first glance. But, as it turns out, they are really good at parenting successful children.

    Under the proposed new rules this family may have been discouraged/denied the opportunity to HE, probably on the grounds of the 'place where education is taking place' is a big, chaotic mess with lots of children running round seemingly under-supervised.

    If that had happened and the kids had been forced to stay in school, it is likely that instead of both older kids doing well in college, one would be pregnant and the other in a young offender institution. (They were certainly headed that way, until they were pulled out of school.)

    This is what is so awful about false positives. Real people being damaged.

    Mrs Anon

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  34. Thanks Mrs Anon. This is my greatest fear with this new legislation and you have expressed it so much better than I can.

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