Friday 31 December 2010

What is wrong with the 2007 Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities?

I have been re-reading the current guidelines which were issued by the Department for Children, Schools and Families in order to advise local authorities what they should and should not be doing about home education. They may be found here;

http://www.education-otherwise.org/Legal/7373-DCSF-Elective%20Home%20Education.pdf


The first thing which strikes anybody looking at these guidelines is that they are very favourably slanted towards those home educators who wish to be left alone. Local authority trying to claim that unknown home educated children might be missing from education? Think again, local authority! The guidelines are quite explicit;

2.6 Local authorities have a statutory duty under section 436A of the Education Act 1996, inserted by the Education and Inspections Act 2006, to make arrangements to enable them to establish the identities, so far as it is possible to do so, of children in their area who are not receiving a suitable education. The duty applies in relation to children of compulsory
school age who are not on a school roll, and who are not receiving a suitable education otherwise than being at school (for example, at home, privately, or in alternative provision). The guidance issued makes it clear that the duty does not apply to children who are being educated at home.



In other words, don't bother your head about kids who are being educated at home; they are not the target of this legislation. What about local authorities who insist that they are obliged to operate a policy of regular monitoring? Again, the guidelines are very clear;

2.7 Local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis.

Or how about this;

2.12 Local authorities also have a duty under section 175(1) of the Education Act 2002 to
safeguard and promote the welfare of children. This section states:
“A local education authority shall make arrangements for ensuring that the functions
conferred upon them in their capacity as a local education authority are exercised with a
view to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.”
Section 175(1) does not extend local authorities’ functions. It does not, for example, give local authorities powers to enter the homes of, or otherwise see, children for the purposes of monitoring the provision of elective home education.

The current guidelines are perfectly clear and phrased in unambiguous language. (One suspects, judging by the document which has already been circulated by the group working upon the 'new' guidelines, that this may not be the case with the guidelines which they are producing!) Local authorities were very angry when the 2007 guidelines were published, because they in effect chased the local authorities away from home educating families and advised them to keep their distance. These guidelines set out the legal situation very clearly and are not in the least respect unfavourable to home educators, whether known to their local authorities or 'under the radar'. One can see why local authorities might wish for new guidelines, but why should home educators be dissatisfied with them? Last year, when the Department for Children, Schools and Families were revamping their website, the guidelines vanished for a few days. There was widespread consternation among home educators, because they felt that the 2007 guidelines were a valuable tool in asserting their rights around home education. A year later and they urgently need to be scrapped. What has changed?

The answer to the above question is that many local authorities simply disregard these guidelines. They operate policies which are in direct contravention of the principles set out in the 2007 guidelines and bluff parents who are not familiar with the law into accepting arrangements which they do not have to. Since the dropping of Schedule 1 of the CSF Bill, there has been a tendency to act as though though the provisions of the bill actually became law. I don't think that anybody could argue that this is not the case; certainly I would not do so. It is thought by some that if a new and clearer set of guidelines were produced and endorsed by the Department for Education, then this would discourage local authorities from engaging in these so-called ultra vires practices. Of course if they drive a coach and horses through the current guidelines, guidelines which could not be plainer, what on earth is to stop them from doing precisely the same with another set?

As far as I can see, the present enterprise by the 'secret group' is liable to result in a clear and easily understood set of instructions to local authorities being replaced by guidelines which are vague and possibly all but incomprehensible. The document which was circulated by the group recently certainly raises this suspicion. I am awaiting eagerly the first draft of these new guidelines.

10 comments:

  1. "In other words, don't bother your head about kids who are being educated at home; they are not the target of this legislation."

    But this obviously doesn't mean they should be ignored, just that this particular legislation isn't relevant to them. Donaldson's informal enquiries and the requirement to provide a suitable education still applies to home educators.

    "2.7 Local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis."

    Yes, they have to have a good reason, once they have been convinced that a suitable education is being provided, to ask again. It must not be automatic/routine. The 'good reason' is probably where conflict is most likely.

    "One can see why local authorities might wish for new guidelines, but why should home educators be dissatisfied with them?"

    I think the main issue is that many LAs ignore them. The naïve belief (to me) of Graham Stuart and the group is that LAs are not following the guidelines because they do not understand them. I think they believe that if they are easier to understand (though as you say, they seem clear) more will follow them. Seems unlikely to me but who knows? I tend to believe they don't follow them because they don't like them and writing it in a different way isn't going to change that. But as long as it does not harm (and that could be a tall order depending on how the consultation is handled) at worst we may be in the same position as now and other methods of improving relations will have to be tried.

    I wrote this after reading the first part of your article and it looks as though we have reached more or less the same conclusion - though maybe I'm being naïve to hope for an effective consultation during which any confusions within the draft guidelines are ironed out.

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  2. 'I tend to believe they don't follow them because they don't like them and writing it in a different way isn't going to change that. '

    I couldn't agree more. I cannot believe that many local authorities actually don't understand these guidelines! I have an idea that anything produced by a group of parents to replace these current guidelines will be less clear and less easy for anybody to understand. This will benefit nobody.

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  3. Simon wrote,
    "The document which was circulated by the group recently certainly raises this suspicion. I am awaiting eagerly the first draft of these new guidelines."

    To be fair we have no idea if this was written by the group as a whole, an individual member or small part of the group or even by anyone remotely connected with the group. It is also a draft so it's clear the writer/s know that it needs improvement.

    You've said frequently that you cannot understand why home educators don't just ask and seem to prefer to guess yet here you seem to be doing just that. Why not take a leaf out of your own book and ask Graham Stuart if this is a document drawn up by the group helping him with the guidelines or is in any way connected with their work? You managed to do just this when you contacted the Metropolitan Police about the Child/Comprehensive Risk Assessment Matrix but seem to be having problems doing the same now. Or are you enjoying making it up as you go along too much?

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  4. "I have an idea that anything produced by a group of parents to replace these current guidelines will be less clear and less easy for anybody to understand."

    Why do you think parents will do a worse job than officials? Do officials automatically do a better job? What about teachers?

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  5. 'Why do you think parents will do a worse job than officials? '

    Because people that do something for a living usually make a better job of it than amateurs. The people who wrote the 2007 guidelines write stuff like that regularly and know how to phrase things in a coherent fashion.

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  6. "Because people that do something for a living usually make a better job of it than amateurs."

    What, like teachers?

    "Alison Sauer publicised it; surely the easiest thing would have been to tell us who wrote it?"

    Alison said that it's part of a project to outline the impact of ultra vires activities. This is obviously a different project to the guidelines draft, though of course there may be connections and some people may be involved with both projects. I think it was Graham Stuart and Nick Gibb who asked for evidence of ultra vires activities.

    Does it matter who writes things? Isn't it better to concentrate on the issues rather than personalities? Or would you decide whether to support a document or not based on who wrote it rather than the contents?

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  7. 'Anonymous said...
    Simon wrote,
    "The document which was circulated by the group recently certainly raises this suspicion. I am awaiting eagerly the first draft of these new guidelines."

    To be fair we have no idea if this was written by the group as a whole, an individual member or small part of the group or even by anyone remotely connected with the group.'

    Since the quotations in the document were collected from a survey sent out from The Home of Education website, which was set up by Alison Sauer, it is a fair bet that she was involved in writing the document. I shall be posting about this site in the future. In the meantime, I might point out that this site is advertising a series of books written by a home educating family known to Alison when she lived in Inverness. This is another link between the site, the document and Alison Sauer.

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  8. 'Or would you decide whether to support a document or not based on who wrote it rather than the contents?'

    No, but this evasiveness about the document is typical of everything to do with the group associated with Graham Stuart. Why the mystery? If I write a document or blog post, I put my name to it.

    The main reason that I do not support the document is that it is poorly written and most people would need a dictionary to figure out waht is meant by terms such as 'G & A costs' and 'LOC'.

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  9. 'Isn't it better to concentrate on the issues rather than personalities? '

    I agree. The issue here is whether or not the 2007 guidelines need to be replaced. If they do, then it is only reasonable for parents to be told why this is the case and given some idea of the process involved in choosing who will be given the job of writing the replacement.

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  10. "This is another link between the site, the document and Alison Sauer."

    We already knew that Alison was linked to the ultra vires document, since she was the one who sent out the link. But we still don't know if Alison is part of the guidelines group or if any other members from the guidelines group were involved in the ultra vires document. I made this comment in response to your assumption that the ultra vires document was written by the guidelines group along with the suggestion that the guidelines would also be 'vague and possibly all but incomprehensible' as a result. I think (but don't know) that you are assuming too much.

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