Friday 12 November 2010

Children Missing from Education

On one of the Internet lists concerned with home education there is currently anger and anxiety about a poster put up by the local authority in Derbyshire. It is outside, and inside, schools and nurseries. This is what it says:

MISSING CHILDREN
Education is vital to ensure that all children get a good start in life.
Every year more than 100 children go missing from the Derbyshire
education system. It's important we get them back into schools.

WHY DO CHILDREN GO MISSING FROM SCHOOL?
-Some children simply don't start school - their parents don't enrol
them.
-Other children stop going to school, or don't make the move from
primary to secondary.
-And some families never enrol their children when they move to the
county from elsewhere.

AT RISK
Children not in education might be at risk of harm we want to ensure
that they are safe.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU'RE CONCERNED
If you think a child is missing out on school call us in confidence on
0845 058058
We can contact the family and help get their child into school.


As usual, some home educators are outraged and view the thing as an attack on their lifestyle. As usual, they are quite wrong.

Children Missing from education or CME is an attempt to find children who are not attending school or receiving an adequate education elsewhere. According to the report Out of School, which Ofsted produced in 2004, there might be ten thousand such children in this country. Some of these are children who are kept at home in order to work or look after the home. They are at increased risk of abuse and involvement in crime. Others are teenagers who have simply dropped out of school. The parents move to another area perhaps and the child is not registered at a new school. Some vanish during the transition from primary to secondary. Reading the outrage among some home educating parents about the CME initiative, one rather gets the feeling that they do not really believe in the existence of such children. They see it all as part of a sinister plot by Ofsted and the local authorities to force home educated children to go to school. Last year, I gave a couple of examples of the sort of case that CME is actually designed to detect and since there are many new readers here, I think I should describe one of these cases again. The target for CME is not home education at all. It is children missing from education. In order to identify these children it might be necessary to visit the homes of children who are not at school in order to see whether or not they are being educated. There is strong opposition to such visits by some home educating parents, but they are a vital tool in rescuing vulnerable young children.

This case is from the London Borough of Waltham Forest. An eleven year old boy left primary school and there was no record of his being registered with a secondary school. The family were Sylhetis and the suspicion was that they had returned to their country of origin. An Education Welfare Officer was sent to the house after a number of letters had remained unanswered. There was no reply when he knocked on the door, but he could hear activity and voices round the back. He wandered round there and discovered a garage/workshop which had been converted into a small factory. The eleven year old boy for whom he was searching was there, evidently running errands for those operating the machines. The place was an absolute nightmare and was clearing being run without any regard to the Factory Acts or other relevant regulations. As far as could be established, the child's mother had returned to Bangladesh and left the boy behind. His father was using him to both keep house and also act as errand boy for his business. It did not take much to persuade the father that he would be prosecuted unless his son was sent to school. In this case, there was a happy outcome.

It is cases such as this which prompt unannounced visits from EWOs. The point to consider here is that had the father sent a letter stating that he was educating his son at home and did not wish to accept a visit, then the child could very well have continued being denied an education. Some home educating parents are adamant that all that should be required for them is to state that they are providing an education and that local authority interest in them and their children should stop at once. If that policy were to be generally adopted, then it would leave many children at hazard. I have a fund of anecdotes like the one above, all involving children who were not at school but were not receiving an education elsewhere. Without conducting enquiries, some of which might be thought of as intrusive, it would be impossible for the local authority to discover that the children were not being educated. This is the purpose of CME; not the persecution of home educators. If some home educating parents refuse to answer questions or allow visits, then it is very hard to distinguish them from the parents of children, like the one above, who are not receiving an adequate education. It is then not at all unlikely that they might receive an unannounced visit from an EWO. In such a case, they will have only themselves to blame.

52 comments:

  1. So why not put on the poster a line about home-education?

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  2. 'So why not put on the poster a line about home-education?'

    Because the average person in the street might then be discouraged from reporting a child who is not at school to the local authority. The aim is to discover all children who are not at school and then sift through them to work out which are being home educated.

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  3. Freedom comes at a price, often payable in lives. You'll never catch every case, the same way that you'll never prevent every car crash. What we end up with, and which society prefers not to mention, is that we end up with a set of rules that keep the casualties down to an acceptable level while not impinging excessively on the freedom of individuals.

    Many home educators consider the approach taken by Derbyshire to be excessive and Stasi-like, and it is prone to abuse in itself. There are plenty of stories of over-zealous officials disrupting families without good cause and indeed, if you add up all the state-sanctioned abuse and compare it to the ones they miss, who's to say which is worse?

    Benjamin Franklin had it right.

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  4. So although Derbyshire's spending has to fall by almost £100m over the next four years, they still think it's OK to spend money generating false positives about children missing education?

    Blimey.

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  5. It's a bugger isn't it.

    Can't sacrifice the kids who are simply been denied and education (possible a childhood too) for the sake of HE and shackle the authorities so they can't raise awareness of such kids and ask for public co-operation..

    But the description does to some degree make people look at your average HE family out on a day trip look like prime candidates for being reported.

    You can't put a bit about HE on the actual poster cos otherwise people might not call when they should. AND the parents of real missing kids who see the poster might go "oh look Loophole !!!! yippee !!!" and then when a few of them go on to create a devastating outcome that hits the press - they have our label stuck on them and we get tarred with the same brush.

    AND

    you can't discount the possibility that while the priority for the LA producing the poster is actual missing in Education kids, they might have a secondary objective of finding out by stealth as many of the unknown HEed kids as possible.

    If you become known to the LA by accident (ie not cos you told them you were HEing volantarily, are you then officially known, or do you stay "unknown" until YOU go tell them and they put your name on a list somewhere ?)

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  6. 'If you become known to the LA by accident (ie not cos you told them you were HEing volantarily, are you then officially known, or do you stay "unknown" until YOU go tell them and they put your name on a list somewhere ?)'

    It depends how keen the LA are to get involved. There are people who have regular meetings with their LA as representatives (sort of) of their local HE community, but who are officially 'unknown'. (And not bothered by the LA cos they're not interested in them.)

    Other LA's sneakily ask kids who are 'known' for names of other HE'd kids.

    Mine used to visit one child with the other one in the room chatting to them, but only the first was 'known' and so only that one was being monitored. Silly. We stopped having visits.

    Mrs Anon

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  7. "Stasi-like"

    We (as in people, not just HEors) really need to keep the big gun words for accurately describing truly awful situations, otherwise we are going to castrate ourselves linguistically and be unable to distinguish degrees via our choices of descriptors.

    The LEA may be heavy handed, overbearing, prone to overstepping their boundaries, underhand etc etc...but I doubt anybody who has actually lived under a Stasi like rule would be sitting in their offices thinking "ohh, just like home !"

    There is an element of sanctioned violence and incontestable imprisonment acting as a mental cosh and shackles that goes hand in hand with "Stasi like". Not to mention executions.

    I don't think a poster from an LEA really compares, no matter how much it has upset people, no matter how justified they feel in that upset.

    Plus the abundant use of such descriptors, when not applicable, makes any protest against something like a poster look hysterical and paranoid to the outside world. Which is not a big help as far as I can see to gaining sympathy and support. Since plenty of non HEors already think we are a bunch of loons before we even open our mouths.

    http://thereback.blogspot.com/2005/09/visit-to-stasi-prison.html

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  8. "Other LA's sneakily ask kids who are 'known' for names of other HE'd kids"


    So if this is a "hostile" LEA there is grounds to think that finding out who the unknown HEed kids are (and adding them to a list somewhere with the intend to in some way keep tabs on them) is potentially considered a secondary "bonus" of the poster campaign by the authorities ?

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  9. 'Other LA's sneakily ask kids who are 'known' for names of other HE'd kids.'

    I remember when I had a visit from Jean Turnbull from Essex LA, I mentioned in passing a home educating family who lived nearby and she at once said, 'If we don't know them, then don't tell me their name'. Their policy was that they were not interested in tracking down home educators. I know of other LAs who have similar policies. All are however keen to know of children who are not at school and not being home educated.

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  10. 'Many home educators consider the approach taken by Derbyshire to be excessive and Stasi-like'

    Have any home educating parents in this country actually had experience of the Stasi? In what way is putting up a poster of this sort like the behaviour of a secret police force? Or is this a reference to the famous lift scene in 'The lives of others'? This is probably all that most of these types know about the Stasi!

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  11. I've never come across any descriptions of totalitarian regimes starting off by putting their cards on the table. Except in popular science fiction. What generally happens is that a significant proportion of the populace think it's time for a bit more law and order/freedom from the old order and before they know it they are being ordered around by jack-booted thugs who would have had a collection of asbos under other regimes.

    Local authority officers are public servants. They are paid to provide services to people in their local area, not to pry into their private lives or go looking for criminal behaviour. We know, from bitter experience, what that leads to if it's encouraged and it usually involves socially inadequate jobsworths compensating for their lack of social status by making other people's lives a misery. There is no justification for it.

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  12. "I've never come across any descriptions of totalitarian regimes starting off by putting their cards on the table"

    Well from what I can gather from FIL and other "Il Duce" types (no lack of them) the blackshirts were on the street beating the crap out of people vigilante army style in the name or law and order before the party took power. Their interpretation is that it was this hardcore vigilantism that created the popular support that led to him gaining power rather than him gaining power and then going hardcore.

    Certainly the times when Thailand was under Marshall law (and me too by default for being there) the tanks on the streets, the curfew etc, the armed to the teeth teenagers shipped down from the south jack booting all over the city and scaring the knickers off me, sort of gave away the flavour of the brand spanking new, unannounced government from day one .

    I also have a vague memory from a documentary I saw about a squillion years ago, that the East German dictatorship let people know they were in power by building a wall and locking people in ?

    So I'm not sure it always necessarily dictatorship by stealth. But am far from an expert cos I did the industrial revolution at school,l so the above is mainly just personal impressions from talking to people who grew up under Stasi like governments and getting startled by coming out of a shop and practically walking under a tank that had appeared from nowhere, so it might not be that accurate.

    However i don't believe that a poster from a single LEA is proof positive that dictatorship by stealth is in progress. I think it is probably a lot more complicated than that, and a country's long term history and culture is going to colour to what extent a single act\product should be viewed with extreme suspicion and panic.

    I'm pro governments being kept in check (kind of normal reaction after having people machine gunned down outside your front door), but I think the best way to do that is to keep over egging out of it, in order not to alienate great swathes of the public from the onset leading to them not taking objections seriously and writing off any valid points as part of somebodies paranoia.

    Call this poster stasi like and the chances of winning popular support saying "not on, stop it !" is low IMO. In fact I think gen pub is more likely to stick the word "extremist" on the people protesting its existence rather than the entity that produced it. It could backfire horribly and make the LEA look incredibly reasonable by contrast and actually increase support for the poster and make more people act upon its suggestions.

    Any valid points will not be heard as the bulk of gen pub react to what they see as paranoia\hysteria and throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think a more muted response, might be more likely to attract people's sympathy.

    Especially if you point out that school users with bitter neighbours or rellies are also at risk of being caught in the net (who hasn't had a mildly sick child play in the garden or come to the shops with you while you give them one more day to get better, rather than rush them back to school ?) and underline the cost of managing the potentially high numbers of false positives that gen pub will have to pay for.

    I am of the opinion that gen pub needs to brought onside in terms of the bigger picture and individual issues, to knock problems being constantly revisited on the head. From my perspective the mode of communication is key in getting that support. That might be because we are few. Maybe there are so many of you lot that the gen pubs opinion is irrelevant and extraneous to requirements cos you have weight of numbers.

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  13. The Stasi had a huge number of informers to report any supposed wrongdoing by their fellow citizens. Such a poster gives the impression that perfectly law-abiding families are doing something wrong and are encouraging unwarranted state intrusion. Plenty of scope for malicious reporting in there, too. Also shades of Orwell's 1984, where reporting of anything other than the state-approved norm was encouraged.

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  14. Speaking of Stasi informers,

    To Whom It May Concern,
    I'm not Alison Sauer. LOL! I'm no one interesting.

    Mrs Anon

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  15. "The Stasi had a huge number of informers to report any supposed wrongdoing by their fellow citizens"

    Yes.

    And how do you think they "persuaded" people to inform ?

    A poster campaign in one region

    or

    By employing beatings, rape, torture, summery executions and (allegedly) irradiation as their MO of choice ?

    I included a link above, I think it illustrates the fundamental differences very clearly.

    I have come away from first hand and secondhand brushes with dictatorship\military rule with a deep sense of gratitude for the time and place where I was born, despite the evident and numerous flaws.

    It would feel disrespectful to the agony, grief and horror of millions who really have been persecuted and had their lives left in ruins to attempt to compare my reality under a democracy to those who have had no such luck.

    I'd feel like somebody, whose mum occasionally smacked her bum, standing next to a pedophile's victim yelling "Me too !!!!! I was ABUSED too !!!!"

    The above scenario shows a failure to acknowledge that profound differences are of far, far greater importance when it comes to determining "-like", than any superficial similarities.

    Why the need to claw equivalency of persecution from the scenario ?

    Is any genuine distress\stress\limitation experienced by HEors thanks to the poster not valid enough to stand in its own right, for what it is ?

    I know how I feel about having to not regularly leave the house during school hours to avoid the potential for somebody scaring the pants of my little boy by starting an uninvited conversation that risks ending in raised voices and the potential for somebody to call the police or social services. The above last year contributed to a period of much blue-ness and curtailed my ability (in both the emotional and practical sense) to HE as well as I could have done.

    But I am not going to pretend it feels anything like what living under a military dictatorship did.

    Not least cos I wouldn't expect anybody to either have sympathy or take me seriously if I did.

    Niether do I think it would have helped my already less than happy head state to start to think of myself in those terms. If I had been encouraged to see my sitation in overegged terms, knowing what I'm like, I think I would have fallen into far deeper depression, which may well have stuck for as long as I home educated.

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  16. "Speaking of Stasi informers,

    To Whom It May Concern,
    I'm not Alison Sauer. LOL! I'm no one interesting.

    Mrs Anon "


    (fires up donkey)

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  17. Repressive regimes either come into being violently or by small steps. Ultimately there is a climate of fear, whereby if people do not do as they are told then they might be next on the list themselves. The point I am making is that we are at the top of a slope leading down to the sort of dictatorship described. We've been taking small steps down that slope for many years now, and it appears that we're still heading down, even if at a slightly different angle. Would the people of Germany in the 1920s have behaved differently had they known what was to come? You might think it far-fetched, but both the UK and the US. The "if it saves just one..." or "anything to keep us safe" mentality is what leads to the type of regime you have described, where people have become reliant on others to do things for them and are too fearful and powerless to stop it once it has progressed beyond a point.

    I feel we will disagree on this one, you probably consider me too paranoid and that it will never happen here. I will continue to use that particular comparison when I feel it is appropriate.

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  18. Dave H is right. The only difference is one of degree.

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  19. Dave "The point I am making is that we are at the top of a slope leading down to the sort of dictatorship described. We've been taking small steps down that slope for many years now, and it appears that we're still heading down, even if at a slightly different angle"

    ___________________________________________

    http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/slippery-slope/

    EXTRACTED FROM PAGE-Slippery slope arguments falsely assume that one thing must lead to another. They begin by suggesting that if we do one thing then that will lead to another, and before we know it we’ll be doing something that we don’t want to do. They conclude that we therefore shouldn’t do the first thing. The problem with these arguments is that it is possible to do the first thing that they mention without going on to do the other things; restraint is possible.END EXTRACT

    I'm not assuming that the UK has cast iron immunity from any kind of political future. But neither do I assume an automatic chain reaction, leading to dire consequences, that is inevitable, unstoppable or even likely.

    To me the evidence provided by the UK's history and the recent small swing AWAY from Labour when people felt they were getting "too pokey nosy in our lives", despite what appears to be a lingering dislike\fear of the Tories, points to friction not slip.


    I have no idea if you are paranoid or not. That is a quack's call and I'm not one.

    Would you(meaning you and the people taking a similar line) sound it, if you went for the "it's Stasi-like !!!!" approach to appeal to both government, officials and the gen pub to have this current campaign quashed?

    Yeah, I think you would. Many people would probably call it an extreme, illogical, irrational (etc) comparison to make and potentially tune out protests about the poster.

    Which I don't really think is breaking news, but evidently doesn't seem to matter.

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  20. "Other LA's sneakily ask kids who are 'known' for names of other HE'd kids."

    sorry got sidetracked and forgot my orginal question.

    So if they get some names can they then stick them on the offical (or I guess unoffical) register, or do they go all gung ho saying "we know about you and we want you to comply with x,y,z ?"

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  21. I think it can go either way, depending on LA policy and/or individual LA officials. We were reported to the LA and ended up having annual(ish) visits.

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  22. "We were reported to the LA and ended up having annual(ish) visits."

    So the act of being reported can end up with people strong armed into visits (by being forced on the defensive, knocked off kilter by the surprise element, having to make decisions under stress\pressure) despite the law not demanding it ?

    Is it common for this as an outcome ? As in are there lots of other cases where this has been the outcome and is there a tendency for it to be focused in a few areas or is it more diffused ?

    I realize it's not like anybody can look it up on a database (although I'm thinking of setting one up here while we are small to collect info to build up a picture and get into the habit of collecting info, just not exactly sure how I'd go about designing it to be flexible enough to cover a variety of scenarios, yet search-able enough to be of use practically) but at grass roots level is there some sort of idea about the extent to which this happens ?

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  23. If anybody has any of the info i asked about above, an email would be great. Please don't be offened if i don't respond immediatly. My littest doggie just died and I'll probably be off somewhere leaking queitly for a few days. I haven't flounced of again in a huff I promise.

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  24. The opposite can also be true; we needed HE parents to be CRBed in order to get access to a school lab for science sessions (held by the group in after school sessions). There was little theoretical risk of us actually bumping into real school children but thanks to the rules, we had no choice but to be CRBed if we wnated to use the lab. Most of the parents involved were "unknown" but the LA bod assured them no other use would be made of the info- and so far (a year) no one has contacted any of the families to see if they are actually home educating. Actually, the LA aren't stupid - more families = more workload, and if the families concerned are busy arranging science sessions there is no reason to believe they are not providing a satisfactory education, is there?

    I have seen somewhere the theory that that in future LAs may get paid an actual allowance for each HE child registered (I have no idea if this is actually true )- and if this is the case it would increase the incentive to "find out" new families. At present though the opposite is true - it is more work for no money..

    Then of course the whole "you must have a home visit" is also up for debate; most people I know don't; if they send a report etc, the LA is more than happy. Now I know Simon would argue that this was open to abuse and of course it is theoretically possible; on the other side Mr Williams will argue that the same LA that I am talking about insists on visits. It is obvious that the LA is only bothered by those who either don't respond at all to inquries, or do and some other isssue is raised in terms or either education or welfare; they don't have the time or resources to worry about those who give the appearance of providing a satisfactory education. So down here being known is not definately not a cause for concern! (Unless you do have something to hide!)

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  25. 'I have seen somewhere the theory that that in future LAs may get paid an actual allowance for each HE child registered (I have no idea if this is actually true )'

    I have seen this as well, but cannot find anything about it anywhere. Perhaps it is just a garbled version of the bit from the DfE which says that local authorities can add onto their figures home educated children for whom they are already spending money and thus claim a tenth of the AWPU. Essex is certainly not hunting out home educated children and neither are some other local authorities. What would be their motive; most are running the EHE provision on a shoestring as it is. There are definitely moves in some places to find children missing from education, but that is quite a different matter.

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  26. I am wondering though about the role and funding of LAs if the Michael Gove stuff about delegating school budgets is in the Education Bll; how will LA departments (such as those who run PRUs, support disabled children etc in school) going to be funded??

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  27. 'we needed HE parents to be CRBed in order to get access to a school lab for science sessions (held by the group in after school sessions). There was little theoretical risk of us actually bumping into real school children but thanks to the rules, we had no choice but to be CRBed if we wnated to use the lab.'

    Off on a tangent here, but we book a school hall in the evenings and all the adults involved have to be CRB checked even though it's at a time when NO kids are on the premises...{sigh}

    Mrs Anon

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  28. "We were reported to the LA and ended up having annual(ish) visits."


    I too have an annual visit from a lovely woman called Jackie. I get a letter asking to arrange a date, I ring her up and agrere. She then comes to my flat and has a cup of tea and chats to my daughter who proudly shows off her work. Jackie tells her that its lovley and we have a nice chat about what we've been up to over the past year.
    This is a lovely experience, partly because both she and I know I don't need to do this, but I am happy to because it makes all our lives easier.

    I do not want this to change into a demand to access my home because of a few paranoid HEers with a persecution complex. Usually, if you are polite to a person, they will reciprocate, if you are antagonistic they will respond.

    I do not deny that there are some badly organsied and trained LAs, but surely we should be noting that there is a difference and demanding the same high quality in all LAs, not saying they're all the same and thus accepting bad behaviour.

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  29. 'I too have an annual visit from a lovely woman called Jackie. I get a letter asking to arrange a date, I ring her up and agrere. She then comes to my flat and has a cup of tea and chats to my daughter who proudly shows off her work. '

    This is pretty much the same experience which we had and also many other families. It is nice to read an account of a fairly typical visit by an LA.

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  30. "I do not want this to change into a demand to access my home because of a few paranoid HEers with a persecution complex."

    So because you are happy to have home visits and find them enjoyable, everyone else should feel the same and not rock the boat? A bit, I'm all right Jack, isn't it?

    We have visits in our current area and they are fine, but after the first visit in our last area we refused to have any more. The two visitors were only interested in ticking off their chart and taking our children off into a different room to question them. Our children made it perfectly clear that they didn't want to do this (they were quite young) but they kept trying to persuade them. My children didn't know these strangers and didn't particularly like them, so why would we want to invite them back into our home? Do you think we should have just put up with them for your sake?

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  31. It is all down to better training for LAs then isn't it? Both of you (the last 2 anons above) want excatly the same thing; you don't want to be forced into hostile visit. Now anon with a HE visitor called Jackie is happy with the status quo, and feels that that too much hostility from others will end up in forced demands for all; last poster presumably thinks we should fight more for our freedoms.

    Currently the law is liberal, but it is the issue with LAs that go further than the law on one side, and a few home educators on the other who either are abusive and so really do have something to hide, or who don't but are completely uncooperative, that causes the problems.

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  32. "It is all down to better training for LAs then isn't it? Both of you (the last 2 anons above) want excatly the same thing; you don't want to be forced into hostile visit."

    I (the second anon) am currently happy with visits but I have friends who would never want visits however nice the visitor. I wouldn't want them to be forced into any kind of visit, however 'nice' they may seem to others. The courts accept evidence in any form the defendant chooses to provide it, why should LAs be entitled to specify the form the evidence takes? The was the outcome of case law as far as I recall. The judge accepted that in some particular cases (as in the case he looked at where the mother was handicapped, I think) an LA may need to make a visit but it should not be a routine matter for all HEers. Why does anyone think this needs to change?

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  33. "Why does anyone think this needs to change?"

    - I don't. Most LAs do of course, at least in theory, because they know that a) if some tragedy happens they are the ones that get pillioried in the press b)some families are not educating their children at all, and yet can get away with it because they can't get access to gather evidence.

    On the otherhand, there are some home educators who feel the law needs changing. Leaving aside those who want more legislation (of which clearly Simon is one, and I do know others) there are the want-to -be anonymous group working with GS over the guidelines. Now I am pretty sure they want less not more LA interference, but given the pressure from LAs, the press and charities , the publicity surrounding the tragedies and the odd questions in Parliament that Simon mentioned in thsi blog, I do still feel there is pressure towards, at the very least, compulsory registration.

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  34. "So because you are happy to have home visits and find them enjoyable, everyone else should feel the same and not rock the boat? A bit, I'm all right Jack, isn't it?"

    No, I refer you to my last paragraph as you seem to have missed it:

    I do not deny that there are some badly organsied and trained LAs, but surely we should be noting that there is a difference and demanding the same high quality in all LAs, not saying they're all the same and thus accepting bad behaviour.

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  35. "No, I refer you to my last paragraph as you seem to have missed it:

    I do not deny that there are some badly organsied and trained LAs, but surely we should be noting that there is a difference and demanding the same high quality in all LAs, not saying they're all the same and thus accepting bad behaviour."

    I did miss this the first time around but I still think what I said stands. You seem to be saying that, as long as the visits are 'good' and the visitors well trained, everyone should be happy to have a visit and not rock the boat. But some people will not want visits no matter how well trained the LA is (as I mentioned later). Why should they be forced to have a visit?

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  36. "Currently the law is liberal, but it is the issue with LAs that go further than the law on one side, and a few home educators on the other who either are abusive and so really do have something to hide, or who don't but are completely uncooperative, that causes the problems."

    I agree and I think they stem from the same place: a mistrust of the other. This doesn't have to be the case; at the risk of sounding like a channel five TV movie we all want the same thing, we should be working together.


    " I have friends who would never want visits however nice the visitor. "

    I don't mean to sound flippant, but visits from anyone, ever, or just authority figures? Most HEers I know who don't have visits are confident in their HE abilities and couldn't give a monkies who talks to their kids about it.

    Alison (the artist formaly known as the first anon)

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  37. I did miss this the first time around but I still think what I said stands. You seem to be saying that, as long as the visits are 'good' and the visitors well trained, everyone should be happy to have a visit and not rock the boat. But some people will not want visits no matter how well trained the LA is (as I mentioned later). Why should they be forced to have a visit?

    I'm not saying as long as the visits are good, I'm saying the visits should be good and we should expect professionalism and respect for our properties.
    I'm not saying we should force people into visits, in fact I think this would only destroy the positive relationships HEers have with their LAs, but I don't understand why anyone is so against it, other than the fact that they have had a bad expereicne with their LA, which is where my argument for demanding professionalism comes in.

    Ali

    ReplyDelete
  38. "b)some families are not educating their children at all, and yet can get away with it because they can't get access to gather evidence."

    Is it really that easy to fool an LA when replying by post to informal enquiries? If the LA is not happy with the reply they can request more information, and if it's not sufficient to convince them that an education is being provided they should issue a SAO and let the parent prove it in court if necessary. And if it is that easy to fool them by post, wouldn't these parents be clever enough to fool them during an annual visit? After all, plenty of abusive parents manage to fool social workers.

    ReplyDelete
  39. "but I don't understand why anyone is so against it"

    Your lack of experience of reasons or your disregard for those reasons only reinforces your, 'I'm happy with visits, so why aren't you' attitude. Not everyone is the same. Not everyone is confident with officials or feels happy inviting them into their homes for a wide variety of reasons. Why should they have to justify their reasons for refusing a visit to you or anyone?

    ReplyDelete
  40. Your lack of experience of reasons or your disregard for those reasons only reinforces your, 'I'm happy with visits, so why aren't you' attitude. Not everyone is the same. Not everyone is confident with officials or feels happy inviting them into their homes for a wide variety of reasons. Why should they have to justify their reasons for refusing a visit to you or anyone?

    Because their refusal has an adverse effect onmy life and those of others. I don't want a justification, I just don't understand.

    Your assertion that not everyone is the same or that some people are uncomfortable with authority seems to be off the top of your head and not from any factual evidence (I may be wrong) and, I think, is an issue EWOs have a duty to tackle in the sense that they should make people feel comfortable in the meetings.
    Could you give me one or two of these wide variety of reasons please?

    Ali

    ReplyDelete
  41. "Because their refusal has an adverse effect onmy life and those of others. I don't want a justification, I just don't understand."

    And your insistence that there is nothing wrong with visits and you can't see why they don't have them isn't going to have an adverse effect on their lives? The more people make this kind of statement to LAs and in public, the greater the pressure will be on families that do not want visits.

    "Your assertion that not everyone is the same or that some people are uncomfortable with authority seems to be off the top of your head and not from any factual evidence (I may be wrong)"

    I've already mentioned one family I know who does not want visits. A bad experience with any official can be enough to make future contacts difficult. I also know another family who have lots of contact with various medical people, many of whom need to come into their home. Yet another visit, by yet another stranger just adds to their stress. Can I ask you why you think the LA should have greater powers than a court when it comes to defining the form evidence takes? Do you think that the majority who refuse visits are unreasonable or not normal?

    ReplyDelete
  42. "And your insistence that there is nothing wrong with visits and you can't see why they don't have them isn't going to have an adverse effect on their lives?"

    For the last time, I'm not insiting they have visits. I have never said this, in fact, on several occasions I've stated the absolute opposite, but you seem determined to put words into my mouth. I do not want to put pressure on families, but I am interested in their reasoning. If I made a decision in my life that adversly affected someone elses I would be happy to explain my reasoning.

    "A bad experience with any official can be enough to make future contacts difficult."

    I have mentioned this several times, but on pains of becoming boring, this is the fault of the LA concerned and they should be appropriatly reprimanded.

    "I also know another family who have lots of contact with various medical people, many of whom need to come into their home. Yet another visit, by yet another stranger just adds to their stress."

    This is an anecdote, not a reason. It seems that this family has no issue with authority? or people coming into their home? I think this is not a common occurance and would hope the LA involved would treat it as an individual case. I would hope, in this case, for cross agency cooperation as there are already visits being made to the home.

    "Can I ask you why you think the LA should have greater powers than a court when it comes to defining the form evidence takes?"

    OK, to continue your analogy, if I were accused of a crime and I had the indisputable proof that I was innocent I would not then refuse to share that with the court because I didn't feel happy with authority. I would put the best case forward in the best way.

    " Do you think that the majority who refuse visits are unreasonable or not normal?"

    A) I don't think the majority do refuse visits. Proof please of otherwise.
    B) I would like more answer options to this question please, neither unreasonable or abnormal are correct.

    ali

    ReplyDelete
  43. "For the last time, I'm not insiting they have visits. I have never said this, in fact, on several occasions I've stated the absolute opposite, but you seem determined to put words into my mouth. I do not want to put pressure on families, but I am interested in their reasoning. If I made a decision in my life that adversly affected someone elses I would be happy to explain my reasoning. "

    But you are putting pressure on them to have visits by complaining that their refusal is harmful to you. I still don't know how it is harmful to you though. I have visits, my friend does not have visits, where's the problem?

    "I have mentioned this several times, but on pains of becoming boring, this is the fault of the LA concerned and they should be appropriatly reprimanded."

    I said any official, so that could include medical staff, police, tax inspectors, teachers, etc, etc. Bad experiences with any person who has power over you could have this effect. How do you guard against all conflict with authority? And this is only one possible reason for not wanting visits. Many have children with SEN who would struggle to cope with visits, for instance.

    "This is an anecdote, not a reason."

    Well yes, of course it's anecdotal, but it's the reason an individual family does not want visits. You asked for reasons that families might not want visits so I gave you one.

    "I would hope, in this case, for cross agency cooperation as there are already visits being made to the home. "

    So the visits are to check on the safety of the children, not to check on the provision of education? In that case, why not ensure that every family in the country is regularly visited by a social worker who will have the appropriate training. A lot can happen during those six week school holidays and under 5's are the highest risk group, why pick on home educators?

    "OK, to continue your analogy, if I were accused of a crime and I had the indisputable proof that I was innocent I would not then refuse to share that with the court because I didn't feel happy with authority. I would put the best case forward in the best way."

    I'm not suggesting they refuse to give evidence. Case law has established the right of LAs to make informal enquiries. In a court you choose how to provide evidence of your innocence. A family defending a SAO in court might provide written evidence, maybe with photos and details of activities, or an evaluation by an educator from outside the family or affidavits signed by people who have witnessed the education taking place, etc, etc. It seems unlikely that the court would visit the family home and they cannot refuse to accept particular forms of evidence so why should the LA?

    "A) I don't think the majority do refuse visits. Proof please of otherwise."

    Yes, that wasn't phrased very well, I didn't mean that the majority refused visits, I don't think they do. I meant to ask if you though the majority of those who do refuse visits were not normal or are unreasonable.

    "B) I would like more answer options to this question please, neither unreasonable or abnormal are correct."

    Feel free to make up your own options. I'm asking your opinion, not taking a survey.

    ReplyDelete
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