Wednesday 16 October 2013

More about home educated children with special educational needs




Before looking at the only real evidence about the proportion of home educated children in this country with special needs, which I shall be doing either tomorrow or the day after,  I would like to address one or two points made  here in the comments yesterday. The first of these was an attempt to limit the definition of a child with special educational needs to those with a statement issued by the local authority.  There are a number of problems with this approach. The first is of course that a child, even one with the most serious,  medically diagnosed  difficulties, who had never attended school would not show up in these figures. The second is that there are many children at school with diagnoses of autistic spectrum disorder, to give one example, who do not have statements nor are likely ever to do so.  

Some local authorities, the London Borough of Hackney was one, have in the past had official policies of avoiding statements for children in its schools.  Elsewhere, there have been individual schools which are keen on them as a way of securing extra funding. Simply counting the number of statements issued to children who are subsequently home educated is a terrible way of working out how many children have special educational needs and disabilities!

Commenting a couple of days ago, somebody drew attention to the fact that Fiona Nicholson had earlier this year  made Freedom of Information requests to every local authority in the country and established the fact that 5% of home educated children have statements. This was a worthy endeavor, but that figure has actually been around for six years. York Consulting carried out a study in 2007, (Hopwood et al, 2007), which sampled nine local authorities and found the percentage of  home educated children with statements to be 5%. This has implications for the reliability of such sampling, something at which we shall be looking in the next few days.

Another suggestion made yesterday was that there was a correlation between the severity of a child’s special educational needs and the likelihood of abuse. No such correlation exists; or rather none has been discovered during research. If this were so, then you might reasonably expect a quadriplegic, blind and non-verbal child in a wheelchair to be more likely to be abused than an active, intelligent child with a relatively minor problem such as Oppositional Defiance Disorder. It is not so. The kid with ODD is several times more likely to be abused than the one in a wheelchair. This is because the levels of abuse of children with special educational needs relate not to the severity of the disability, but rather according to how irritating these difficulties make the child to their parents. Deaf children are four times as likely to be hit by their parents than those whose hearing is normal. Children with conduct disorders are seven times as likely to be abused or neglected as children who do not have this condition. Those with learning difficulties are far more likely to be abused than those with physical disabilities.  It is often those children with relatively mild disorders who are at the greatest risk of being abused. These are the children with special needs who are least likely to be statemented. 

I hope that this has cleared up one or two points and left the ground clear to look at how we may calculate both the proportion of home educated children in this country with special needs and also the overall abuse rates among home educated children , compared with children at school.

17 comments:

  1. Ed Balls, Graham Badman and a wannabe statistician who answers to the name of Simon W decided to go hunting, for want of better things to do. After only a short search they come upon a stag which is obscured by bushes. The only visible part of it are 10 prongs of the antler. After much deliberation and extrapolation (after all statisitcs is Simon's prefered passed time), they decided that this stag's antler must have 40 prongs and it is indeed a magnificent beast. Ed and Graham take aim. Ed misses the stag by five feet to the left and Graham misses by five feet to the right. At this point Simon throws his gun into the air and shouts, we got it, we got........

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  2. ' Ed misses the stag by five feet to the left and Graham misses by five feet to the right. At this point Simon throws his gun into the air and shouts, we got it, we got........'

    Well, I suppose that this sort of nonsense is easier than looking seriously at matters! Ed Balls? Is he actually in the government these days? More research need about this.

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  3. 'Deaf children are four times more likely to be hit by their parents...'

    Are we talking abuse here or a method of punishment which is not illegal under UK law, no matter how much some may wish it to be?


    'Neglect' or 'abuse' are very subjective and emotive terms, and so are 'disability' or 'special educational need'. As Simon says, children with the same conditions get diagnoses and support in some areas of the country but not in others, so, as I seem to be saying rather too often recently, there is no absolute measure of any of these and any statistics can only ever be 'best guesses'.

    I used the measure of Statements of Special Educational Need because it was the only comparative measure across schooled and home educated children that I could find. I know it's not a very good one, but it's still a great deal better than your original assumption of 40% which you based on a self-selected sample that was in itself from a sample of LA's selected by OFSTED.

    Atb
    Anne

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  4. Simon said
    "This is because the levels of abuse of children with special educational needs relate not to the severity of the disability, but rather according to how irritating these difficulties make the child to their parents."

    Have I missed an objective way of measuring how irritating a child is to its parents and hence what risk of abuse exists?

    One of the paediatricians we've seen gave us a chart showing a scale of emotion we use with our children that moves from 1 (calm) to 5 (furious) with an increasingly upset monster picture that they use to describe their own feelings, so I'd be very interested in an adult version if you've got one. That way you could say 'Anne, your persistent questioning of my points is raising you to a 4 on my anger scale' and I could know instantly exactly how angry you are, and what you will do next.

    Otherwise, we're back to assuming that what you find irritating, someone else will also find irritating. Which, since you describe yourself as 'an irritable middle aged man' may not be the most accurate measure.

    Anne

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  5. ''Deaf children are four times more likely to be hit by their parents...'

    Are we talking abuse here or a method of punishment which is not illegal under UK law, no matter how much some may wish it to be? '

    Indeed yes! You are right, hitting your child is not illegal, within certain parameters. However, if I were to hit my child every half hour, most people would view that as abusive.

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    1. I'm confused now (easily done, I'm afraid!) Has a home educator been prosecuted and found guilty of hitting a deaf child every half hour?

      To make myself clear, I think child abusers are the lowest form of life and would like to see them punished far more severely than the law currently allows. However, I also remember the Shetland Islands and the witchcraft cases, so I'm well aware how easy it is for a minority group to acquire an unjustified status as a risk because of a lack of understanding on both sides.

      Instead of regulation, I'd like to see cooperation and, to use a word I usually hate, 'engagement'. If LA's were to treat home educators as a 'hard to reach' group and make an effort to provide services that they'd find useful then they'd find some home educators would use them. As they proved that the home edders would be treated fairly and with respect, others would come forward. Yes, it would take years, but surely it would be better for everyone? And it has worked like that in some areas, so why not make it into a policy?

      From the HE side, the way we respond to questions is equally important. While we shouldn't be expected to justify ourselves for doing something perfectly legal, I do try to run a one-Anne PR campaign to explain that HE is simply the educational option that fits our family best at the moment. I've certainly never encountered any hostility from anyone in the community about it, but we've had a lot of people who've explained what they've been doing and started us down fascinating educational pathways that they'd never have known about if they'd been at school.



      Atb
      Anne


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    2. 'Has a home educator been prosecuted and found guilty of hitting a deaf child every half hour? '

      No, not that I am aware of. I mentioned the fact that profoundly deaf children tend to get knocked about more by their parents, (Knutson et al, 2004) as instance of the increased abuse of children with special educational needs. You questioned whether this was abuse, because it is legal to hit your child in this country, and I explained that it is not only the type of action, but its frequency which makes something abusive.

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  6. 'Have I missed an objective way of measuring how irritating a child is to its parents and hence what risk of abuse exists?'

    Well now, the situation is that the more articulate and lively children with special educational needs are; the more liable they are to be abused by their parents. Conversely, the more passive and helpless they are, the less likely their parents are to abuse them. I posted plenty of references to this research, which has taken place across the world.

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  7. 'That way you could say 'Anne, your persistent questioning of my points is raising you to a 4 on my anger scale' and I could know instantly exactly how angry you are, and what you will do next.'

    Hard to imagine why I would grow angry because somebody wished to debate some point or other about education! After all, that is the very purpose of this blog. Is that what they call projection?

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    1. Maybe. Which should also show you that I, like most other parents of children with SEN/disabilites, do not respond by resorting to abuse or aggression but by patiently and calmly pointing out the facts, or, if that fails, by walking away rather than remaining in a situation where you could very easily become irritated.

      I shall now model this skill for you.

      Anne

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  8. 'I, like most other parents of children with SEN/disabilites, do not respond by resorting to abuse or aggression but by patiently and calmly pointing out the facts, or, if that fails, by walking away rather than remaining in a situation where you could very easily become irritated. '

    A good example of arguing from the particular to the universal. Anne is saying here that she herself does not respond with abuse or aggression, therefore that is the case with most parents of children with SEN. We could re-phrase this as, 'Some parents whose children have special educational needs are not abusive or aggressive'; a statement with which nobody in his senses could fail to agree.

    Nobody would suggest for a moment that all or even most parents of children with disabilities or special educational needs are abusive; merely that their children are between four and seven times as likely to be abused than children without special needs.

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  9. You still at it Webb i thought you given up this rubbish blog? here a good link for you http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=2275740

    the other good news is GCSE A in Maths and A in English for Peter and Peter now studying A level Math and further maths and Physics / Computer science yet according to many he never pass any of these lol

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  10. Hi Peter W senior! Glad Peter W Junior is doing well- he ought to be with his early promise. I suspect others comments re passing - or not - was the fact that he didn't attempt these things at the normal age!

    Simon - I fully understand the fact that statements are not a good measure of SEN ect. and although I can understand that disability may well increase risk of abuse, I am still not convinced that this is a widespread issue with HE. I know there was a death in Essex of a child with SLD and one in Wales where HE was clearly relevant, but can't think of any more HE cases. What I do know is that in both of those the families were known to the LA but still couldn't save them!

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    1. hello Julie
      you on strike today?
      people like Webb make uneducated comments about Peter and me and some believed the lies told by Hampshire Council i have wrote and told them this and have never been sued by the council because the council know i have the evidence to prove it.any one in Hampshire home education keep well away from LEA officers in Hampshire
      Peter also hoping to take part in the Maths Olympiad he got score high in some maths test but to be asked to take it by the collage is a good thing to.the college is very good very helpful to us their where he wants to go to university to study maths or computer science

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  11. 'I know there was a death in Essex of a child with SLD and one in Wales where HE was clearly relevant, but can't think of any more HE cases. What I do know is that in both of those the families were known to the LA but still couldn't save them!'

    Deaths are mercifully rare, whether of schooled or home educated children. I am thinking at the moment of neglect and abuse, which I am afraid are very much more common among among children with special educational needs. This means that in any group with a large proportion of children with special needs, the rates of abuse for the group as a whole will also be greater.

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  12. Yes, but how can these children be "saved" - even when the children are seen every day in school, obvious abuse/starvation goes unreported- what are you suggesting would make a difference?

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  13. 'I know there was a death in Essex of a child with SLD and one in Wales where HE was clearly relevant, but can't think of any more HE cases. What I do know is that in both of those the families were known to the LA but still couldn't save them!'

    Deaths are mercifully rare, whether of schooled or home educated children. I am thinking at the moment of neglect and abuse, which I am afraid are very much more common among among children with special educational needs. This means that in any group with a large proportion of children with special needs, the rates of abuse for the group as a whole will also be greater.

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