Wednesday 3 November 2010

Anti-democratic activity in Birmingham

A couple of days ago I wrote about my concerns for democracy when it comes to home educators and their dealings with government, both central and local. My problems centre around the home educators and their allies rather than the local authorities and Parliament. A meeting was scheduled on October 12th for home educating parents in Birmingham to meet with the local authority officers who deal with elective home education in the city. This meeting was to be completely open, with any home educators at all welcome. The council were even laying on creche facilities for children, so that all parents could take part. Education Otherwise became involved in the business and began inviting various people from outside Birmingham. Mike Fortune-Wood from Wales, for instance, Fiona Nicholson from Sheffield and Ian Dowty from London. This changed the whole emphasis of the thing. From a meeting to discuss local issues, it began to turn into something like a national conference!

I have, as is my habit, been ringing people up and asking a lot of questions about this and the impression which I gained is that the local authority officers in Birmingham were not very happy about this attempt to bring outsiders into the meeting in this way. They originally thought that it would be just a discussion between local parents and council employees. Here is the email sent by Birmingham about the meeting before anybody mentioned bringing a barrister from London:

Please see below the final venue and agenda for the meeting on the 12th of
October.

The meeting is being held at the Council Offices, Margaret Street between
10am and 11.30 am.

Agenda;
1. Introduction
2. Issues raised by Home Educating parents
3. Response by LA officers
4. Actions to take forward

The following people will be attending;

Jason Lowther (Policy Director)
John Smail (Assistant Director, Integrated Services for Young People and
Family Support)
Michael Innocenti (Acting Head of Pupil Connect)

Gary Carruthers (Elective Home Education Advisor)
Carl Kirland (Elective Home Education Advisor)
Marie Murphy
(Elective Home Education Advisor)
Alex Mroczkowski (Special Educational Needs Assessment Service)


As you know Leisure Services will be hosting a session for any delegates'
children who wish to take part and it is important that they have final
numbers
by next Tuesday (5th).

As can be plainly seen, this is an open meeting; they just want an indication of the numbers. The EHE advisors had told all the families with whom they worked about this meeting and a large turnout was expected. Gary Carruthers, one of the EHE advisors in Birmingham, said;

'I had invited over a dozen non-affilliated families myself as well as Education Everywhere. I also asked those I'd invited to ask others they thought may be interested in taking part. Jason had invited other home educators.'

No doubt that this is open to all local parents. Dozens of families have been invited; the local authority are expecting this to be a big and open event. At some stage of the proceedings, local home educating parents who wished to attend were told by the local Education Otherwise representative that it had suddenly become a small, invitation only affair and that they would not be allowed to attend. It is unclear why this should have been. Local authority officers told me that they were uneasy about the possibility of having a lot of people from outside Birmingham coming to the meeting. There has been so much bad publicity about Birmingham recently that it was feared that a newspaper reporter might attend. They also could not see why they should be providing facilities for the children of parents who did not even live in Birmingham! A fair point really. The end result of all this was truly surreal. At the meeting were people from Wales and Sheffield who were supposedly looking after home educators interests, even though they were neither home educating parents nor residents of Birmingham. Home educating parents from Birmingham who wished to attend were told that they could not do so. It would be three weeks before they were even told what had been said at the meeting.

I cannot tell readers just what a lousy example of democracy this episode is. Local home educators wishing to attend a meeting about home education in their city are barred, but members of national organisations who are not themselves home educating parents are allowed in. I have never heard anything like it in my life! This could have been a brilliant example of grassroots democracy, with ordinary parents dealing directly with the officials from Birmingham City Council. Instead, it was hijacked by people from large organisations and the ordinary parents were squeezed out.

This is a perfect illustration of why local home educating groups are the democratic way forward. The reason for the presence of people like Mike Fortune-Wood, Fiona Nicholson and Ian Dowty was very simple and had little to do with the difficulties of the parents in Birmingham; many of whom had specific concerns which they wished to raise with local authority officers and which they were prevented from doing because the meeting had become an exclusive one for 'important' people from big organisations. Education Otherwise and Home education UK feel that other local authorities are looking to Birmingham for a lead when it comes to monitoring elective home education. They are therefore anxious to change what Birmingham are doing before their methods are widely adopted. One can see this point of view, but the way they went about it meant that local home educators were sidelined and ignored in their own area. This was disgraceful and the very antithesis of democracy. It must always be borne in mind that nobody has ever voted for people like Mike Fortune-Wood or Ian Dowty, whereas the parents in Birmingham are actually voters and therefore have a direct stake in what is happening in the city. These people were the only ones who had any business at all at the meeting on October 12th.

37 comments:

  1. "One can see this point of view, but the way they went about it meant that local home educators were sidelined and ignored in their own area. This was disgraceful and the very antithesis of democracy. It must always be borne in mind that nobody has ever voted for people like Mike Fortune-Wood or Ian Dowty, whereas the parents in Birmingham are actually voters and therefore have a direct stake in what is happening in the city."

    Except that local home educators invited them to the meeting, something you seem to find convenient to ignore.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It could be argued that only 'some' local home educators invited them along- the people who organised the meeting in the first place. It could even be argued that as Birmingham is of national interest that the entire 20-100 thousand HE community ought to have been invited.
    Yes it is all a mess but if I lived in a place that was known for ultra vires (not meaning Birmingham necessarily here) , I sure as heck would want Ian Dowty along- people stick by the book when barristers are present.
    I can see both point of view- both from the HErs who are resident in an area who may have in the end not been able to attend. And from any LAs point of view that too many from within and even outside the area would mean that if the 'negotiations' got tricky for them the LA see it going viral and that may cause anger, embarrassment and possibly public humiliation.
    Surely it would be sufficient for those who attended and those who are in the area to know what was said and that the rest of the world gets to hear the end result (not how it was achieved which could be rather embarrassing for some LA officials ).
    I know it is tempting to be blase about how the officials 'feel' but some LA officials are the ones whom the entire HE community wishes to influence a change and shift in their attitude towards HE

    ReplyDelete
  3. 'Except that local home educators invited them to the meeting, something you seem to find convenient to ignore.'

    I am not ignoring this at all. I know who invited these people to Birmingham. This was a decision made by two or three people. It does not alter for a moment the fact that when home educating parents in Birmingham tried to get to the meeting, they were denied access. Unelected individuals from hundreds of miles away who were not home educators themselves, were allowed to attend. This is profoundly undemocratic. Tell me, the local home educators who invited these people, what mandate did they have to take this step? Had any of them been voted into place by other home educators in Birmingham? Or was it done simply on the grounds that as representatives of Education Otherwise, they felt that they had a right to ride roughshod over other parents' wishes, parents who might not belong to powerful national organisation of this sort?

    ReplyDelete
  4. 'Surely it would be sufficient for those who attended and those who are in the area to know what was said and that the rest of the world gets to hear the end result '

    Horribly patronising to parents who wished to attend and express their own views, as they had been told they would be able to. It took three weeks for one version of what was said to emerge; a version which is now being contested by others who were present at the meeting.

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  5. "It does not alter for a moment the fact that when home educating parents in Birmingham tried to get to the meeting, they were denied access."

    Nobody was denied access intentionally. From what I've read there was a misunderstanding as a result of the LA requirement to register before a deadline so that child care facilities would be appropriate. If they had contacted the LA themselves they would have known this. If they had attempted to add themselves to the LAs list they would not have been denied access.

    "Tell me, the local home educators who invited these people, what mandate did they have to take this step? Had any of them been voted into place by other home educators in Birmingham?"

    As far as I know nobody has been voted into place to speak for other home educators so everyone had the same right to invite others to attend if they wished. It's not as though the home educators attending the meeting were making decisions on behalf of Birmingham home educators. They were just discussing the issues. Any decisions will be made by unelected LA employees. Do you know if they will be ratified by an elected official?

    "Or was it done simply on the grounds that as representatives of Education Otherwise, they felt that they had a right to ride roughshod over other parents' wishes, parents who might not belong to powerful national organisation of this sort?"

    Do you know if any Birmingham home educators did not want them to attend and do you know if they were in the majority? Unless you know this you cannot claim that they rode roughshod over other parent's democratic wishes.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Pressure groups often become involved in local issues. Are pressure groups now considered undemocratic?

    ReplyDelete
  7. 'Nobody was denied access intentionally.'

    I have now heard three versions of how this open meeting became closed. I have also spoken to several people who had the impression that Education Otherwise were responsible for the thing and that they had to arrange via EO if they wished to attend.

    'Any decisions will be made by unelected LA employees. Do you know if they will be ratified by an elected official?'

    The local authority officers are employed by and answerable to, elected councillors. I have been told that because this is a hot potato politically, any change in the protocol or documents will indeed need to be endorsed by an education sub-committee. That is how democracy works.

    'they felt that they had a right to ride roughshod over other parents' wishes, parents who might not belong to powerful national organisation of this sort?'

    I have no idea and neither does anybody else, whether the parents who wished to attend were in a majority. What we do know is that some parents wished to attend and were told that they could not, while room was available for officials from Education Otherwise.

    ReplyDelete
  8. 'Pressure groups often become involved in local issues. Are pressure groups now considered undemocratic?'

    When the involvement of national pressure groups means that local residents are prevented from attending a meeting about local issues and concerns which they have, then a pressure group can certainly become undemocratic. We need to look at the structure of the pressure group itself, as well, and see how the various officials are acquiring their posts and to whom they are answerable. This is a little tricky when the pressure group is both a registered charity and also a limited company.

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  9. Actually, whatever is happening in Birmingham I am not sure that HE can ever be democratic in any sense, nor is it really always desirable.

    For example, as I have said here and elsewhere, I have been involved in meetings in our LA. I am certainly not elected by anyone, I may be a representative of a group but the group isn't a democracy either; we aren't a membership organisation so nobody gets a vote. I suppose we are have a resemblance to the old Tory party machinations of many years ago- leaders sort of emerge in back room (although not smoke filled) debates.

    So when I have talked to the LA, who am I representing? I suppose (since we do have some discussion before hand) I am taking the majority of the groups views with me; but we don't all agree; and we do also have open meetings with the LA at which anyone can turn up and say their bit too. Home educators don't form any sort of cohesive group and I think that democracy itself is impossible because all the parties won't engage with the process, let alone abide by the majority vote if they did get that far.

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  10. Simon wrote,
    "When the involvement of national pressure groups means that local residents are prevented from attending a meeting about local issues and concerns which they have, then a pressure group can certainly become undemocratic."

    It doesn't sound as though you know what actually happened so you cannot claim this to be the case. From what I've read, if anyone did say that it was invitation only they did so because of a genuine misunderstanding of the LA wording in their letter. Any home educator could have contacted the LA and corrected this misapprehension, and I think someone did before the meeting took place.

    "I have no idea and neither does anybody else, whether the parents who wished to attend were in a majority."

    That wasn't what I asked. I asked if you know of any Birmingham home educators who did not want people from outside Birmingham to attend and if so, do you know if they were in the majority? Unless you know this you cannot claim that the local people that invited the outsiders rode roughshod over other parent's democratic wishes.


    I could equally say that you are riding roughshod over the wishes of Birmingham home educators by discussing their issues on an internationally available site and contacting their LA for details. Do you know if a majority of Birmingham home educators (or even any) want you to contact their LA about this issue?

    ReplyDelete
  11. "Actually, whatever is happening in Birmingham I am not sure that HE can ever be democratic in any sense, nor is it really always desirable."

    Yes, what Simon seems to be advocating is the tyranny of the masses. As long as people don't advocate the removal of other people's freedoms, they can say what they want to anyone, as far as I'm concerned.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Julie says-I have been involved in meetings in our LA. I am certainly not elected by anyone,

    But you act as if you are speaking for lots of home educators!What do you say at these cosy meeting with HCC?
    Julie also says-and we do also have open meetings with the LA at which anyone can turn up and say their bit too.
    What open meetings with HCC we never heard of any? we find that very hard to belive that just any one can turn up? where is it held miles away where hardly any one can get to the meeting?

    ReplyDelete
  13. 'That wasn't what I asked. I asked if you know of any Birmingham home educators who did not want people from outside Birmingham to attend and if so, do you know if they were in the majority?'

    You seem to be asking whether I believe that there was a delibearte attempt to prevent other home educators from attending the meeting. I have heard this of course, but do not know if it is true. It does not really matter though. the end result was the same, whatever the intentions of those who were involved.

    'I could equally say that you are riding roughshod over the wishes of Birmingham home educators by discussing their issues on an internationally available site and contacting their LA for details.'

    I have never heard such nonsense in all my life! When I was home edcuating, are you really saying that I had any sort of right to object if somebody outside Essex wished to speak to Rumer Lacey the EHE advisor? In fact she often used to go to conferences and people spoke to her. They then posted what they had said on public forums. Why would I have not wanted anybody to talk about Essex and its polocies on home education? Free discussion of that sort is the essence of democracy. Very odd point of view.

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  14. "You seem to be asking whether I believe that there was a delibearte attempt to prevent other home educators from attending the meeting. "

    No, I asked if you know of any Birmingham home educators who did not want people from outside Birmingham to attend and if so, do you know if they were in the majority?'

    "I have never heard such nonsense in all my life! When I was home edcuating, are you really saying that I had any sort of right to object if somebody outside Essex wished to speak to Rumer Lacey the EHE advisor?"

    So it's OK for you, as an outsider to talk to an LA, or for outsiders to talk to your LA, but not EO, Mike FW or Ian Dowty? Bit of a double standard there, Simon.

    "Free discussion of that sort is the essence of democracy. Very odd point of view."

    Exactly my point and I agree. So why are you objecting to Mike FW, Ian Dowty and EO going to the meeting?

    ReplyDelete
  15. 'So it's OK for you, as an outsider to talk to an LA, or for outsiders to talk to your LA, but not EO, Mike FW or Ian Dowty? Bit of a double standard there, Simon.'

    Well no, because my talking to local authority officers by telephone has not had the effect of preventing any parents in Birmingham from speaking to these same officers! If it did, then this would have been an unacceptable action on my part.

    'No, I asked if you know of any Birmingham home educators who did not want people from outside Birmingham to attend and if so, do you know if they were in the majority?'

    I do not know of any, no. But I do know that the actions of a few have had the effect of preventing the many from taking part in a meeting. Whether this was intentional or not or merely a byproduct, I could not say.

    ReplyDelete
  16. I'd say he is not objecting to them attending but to their attendance then causing the meeting to become closed so that local ratepayers and HE parents could not attend.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Simon wrote,
    "I have never heard such nonsense in all my life! When I was home edcuating, are you really saying that I had any sort of right to object if somebody outside Essex wished to speak to Rumer Lacey the EHE advisor? In fact she often used to go to conferences and people spoke to her. They then posted what they had said on public forums. Why would I have not wanted anybody to talk about Essex and its polocies on home education? Free discussion of that sort is the essence of democracy."

    and Simon wrote,
    "Imagine how annoying it would be if a group of people from Sheffield and Wales invited themselves here and tried to bulldoze and bluster the council into changing their parking policies and arguing that their own ideas on the subject would be much better! I for one would object strongly. I would object even if these outsiders were pushing an agenda which I agreed with."

    Which is it Simon? Is free discussion across county boundaries part of free speech and democracy and something you are in favour of, or is it something to which you would object strongly?

    It seems like you started from the position of disliking certain individuals or organisations and have then looked for ways to discredit them and/or argue against them and their views, changing your own views (about democracy, for instance) in any way that aids you in this aim.

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  18. "Well no, because my talking to local authority officers by telephone has not had the effect of preventing any parents in Birmingham from speaking to these same officers!"

    You don't even know if this happened or, if it did, how many people were affected given that LA officers issued many invites of their own (so even if people thought it was invite only, many had that invite). This is also not your sole complaint against these people.

    ReplyDelete
  19. "I'd say he is not objecting to them attending but to their attendance then causing the meeting to become closed so that local ratepayers and HE parents could not attend."

    In which case, mention of their location outside the area and even of Mike FW and Ian Dowty or even national EO were irrelevant since he seems to be claiming that it was the local EO contact who said it was closed. From what I've heard, there may have been a misunderstanding about the requirement to give numbers to the LA by a certain date, but even if this is the case, I doubt the EO local contact would have had direct contact with all the home educators previously invited by the LA. And I'm not sure how the blame for this should attach to the three people specified.

    ReplyDelete
  20. 'Which is it Simon? Is free discussion across county boundaries part of free speech and democracy and something you are in favour of, or is it something to which you would object strongly?'

    Perhaps I have not explained myself clearly. I can see no reason at all why anybody should not speak to and ask information from any local authority in the country. If on the other hand, apart from merely speaking to the authority, somebody then tries to influence their policies and practices, then this is a different matter entirely. So it was one thing for me to contact Birmingham County Council officials and try to find out what was going on. If I had then tried to persuade them to alter the way that they were conducting their business and try to get them to do things the way which I thought was better; this would have been a frightful cheek! Can you really not see the difference between these two things. Let me try and make it very plain.

    Man telephones local authority and asks what they have to say about X. This is perfectly acceptable and nobody could really object.

    Man goes physically to local authority, attends meeting instead of local person and then tries to get local authority to change their policies about X so that they are more in line with his own views. This is unacceptable and a damned cheek. I hope that this is now clear.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Simon wrote,
    "If on the other hand, apart from merely speaking to the authority, somebody then tries to influence their policies and practices, then this is a different matter entirely."

    So how is, 'people talking about policies and practices of the LA HE dept', different to "anybody [taking] about Essex and its polocies on home education"? They sound much the same yet one you would object to and the other you wouldn't. It's not as though they have more power to influence the LA than these others discussing HE policy with Essex who you seem to be happy about.

    "Man goes physically to local authority, attends meeting instead of local person and then tries to get local authority to change their policies about X so that they are more in line with his own views. This is unacceptable and a damned cheek."

    It's only hearsay that the local HE person may have mistakenly said it was an invite only meeting. Many people were directly invited by LA staff so this would not have affected them anyway. As you say above:

    "Gary Carruthers, one of the EHE advisors in Birmingham, said;

    'I had invited over a dozen non-affilliated families myself as well as Education Everywhere. I also asked those I'd invited to ask others they thought may be interested in taking part. Jason had invited other home educators.'"


    You appear to think it's OK for anyone to ring up and speak to Rumer Lacey at Essex LA in order to discuss their policies on HE and also for the policies to be discussed with other people from outside the area at conferences.

    Is this only OK if she does not allow these outsiders and their discussions to influence her decisions on HE policy? If she can avoid being influenced by these discussions, and as you seem to be against outside influences but happy with these contacts I can only assume you think she did avoid this, why don't you trust Birmingham employees not to be influenced by outsiders?

    ReplyDelete
  22. ' why don't you trust Birmingham employees not to be influenced by outsiders?'

    Well now, when I spoke to the Birmingham employees, it was a friendly chat. If a barrister had come specially from London to criticise their EHE policies and perhaps threaten them with judicial review, do you think that might be more or less likely to influence them? I am sure that you can see the difference between the two things.

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  23. What's a 'non-affilliated family'?

    Mrs Anon

    ReplyDelete
  24. 'What's a 'non-affilliated family'?'

    That would be an ordinary home educating parent, Mrs Anon, who is not wise enough to join Education otherwise!

    ReplyDelete
  25. "If a barrister had come specially from London to criticise their EHE policies and perhaps threaten them with judicial review, do you think that might be more or less likely to influence them? I am sure that you can see the difference between the two things."

    Is that what he did? And if so, should the LA be allowed to continue with actions extreme enought that Ian feels able to threaten this given his usually cautious approach to HE law? It must be quite extreme and harmful behaviour on the part of the LA for Ian to even consider going to that extreme.

    "What's a 'non-affilliated family'?"

    Probably home educators who are not regular participants of one of the HE groups in Birmingham (none of which require EO membership as far as I know).

    ReplyDelete
  26. "If a barrister had come specially from London to criticise their EHE policies and perhaps threaten them with judicial review, do you think that might be more or less likely to influence them? I am sure that you can see the difference between the two things."

    Yet you have expressed amazement that home educating parents might dread an LA visit because of their power to issue SAO's and take them to court. Yet you seem to believe that LA employees, with the back-up of a whole council legal department, live in fear of a single barrister? Come on Simon, surely you can do better than that.

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  27. At worse, from the LAs point of view, they will have to start operating within current laws as a result of Ian talking to them. Is that so wrong? Or should they be able to continue inflicting policy on home educators that are outside the law?

    ReplyDelete
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