Ofsted find 10,000 children who are not at school

The famous scandal about home education  which Barry Sheerman tweeted about recently, now seems to have become public. As he suggested, Ofsted are involved.  The only problem is that this is not  about home education at all. As expected, Gypsies and travellers are mentioned, but the only mention of home education is made in a footnote on Page 7, which  states unambiguously, 'This report does not apply to pupils whose parents have taken the decision to electively home educate them'.  In other words, this is nothing at all to do with home education. The language used by the BBC and newspapers is misleading. Reports in the media talk of children missing from school, but what they really mean is that they are missing from education; which is quite a different matter. My own daughter was definitely missing from school, but it would have been a rash person indeed who asserted that she was missing from education. 

The main thing which strikes me about this report, is that most of the children mentioned are missing from school due to the ineptitude or laziness of those whose job it is to provide them with an education. They are children who have been excluded, children with special educational needs for which schools were unable or unwilling to cater, kids with physical and mental problems and also those of asylum seekers. There is no suggestion that any are home educated children, whose parents are  not fulfilling their legal duties; more that local authorities are ignoring children who need school provision.  

On the whole, I am pleased to see this report, because it ties in with what I have been looking at recently, which is to say children who are not being sent to school and are consequently at risk of harm. As long as nobody muddles this problem up with home education, then I shall be glad to see action taken to tackle what really is a scandal.  A scandal it may be, but it it is not, as Barry Sheerman would have us believe, a scandal involving home education. The fifteen boroughs visited for this survey were Blackburn with Darwen, Bradford, Bristol, LB Camden, Derbyshire, East Sussex, Halton, Lancashire, North East Lincolnshire, Northumberland, Peterborough, Southampton, Telford and Wrekin, LB Wansworth and Wolverhampton.

The report, Children Missing Out on Education,  may be found here:

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/pupils-missing-out-education

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Home education

I have heard from one or two readers this morning,  who feel that they have been left behind by the recent discussion here about the APPG on home education. Perhaps I should give a little background. There are dozens of informal groups at parliament, where MPs, peers  and members of various charities, special-interest groups and so on get together to discuss anything from football and farming to brass bands. Or, in this case, home education. Although such groups have no real, official status, they can exert a certain amount of power especially when they are led by the Chair of the relevant select committee.  Graham Stuart, for those who didn’t know. 

Because MPs and peers are usually busy, the actual running of the groups is often delegated to a secretariat; a few people who arrange meetings, issue invitations, take minutes and sometimes act as gatekeepers. These individuals can really shape the APPG in their own image. In the case of the APPG on home education, these gatekeepers are Fiona Nicholson and Jane Lowe.  Now immediately, some people can see a problem with that; or really two problems. The first is of course that nobody elected these two people to that role. It looks to some as though Fiona and Jane simply had the sharpest elbows and were shrewd enough at intriguing to get themselves into this position. The second problem that some have, is even bigger. It is that Fiona Nicholson and Jane Lowe share something in common with the present writer. (And no, for those who have been reading the awful things that Maire Stafford and her cronies have been saying about me, it is not that we all dye our hair!) The fact is that any new legislation or changes in regulations will not affect Fiona and Jane, because they are no longer home educators. It will be recalled that when I was invited to give evidence to the select committee in 2009, a great fuss was made about this and it was thought that the fact that my daughter was no longer being educated at home should have been enough to disqualify me from expressing an opinion on the subject. The same thing is now being said about Fiona Nicholson and Jane Lowe.

Some current home educators have another difficulty,  as far as Fiona Nicholson is concerned.  In 2009, she and a few friends, such as Ian Dowty, submitted this document during the Badman enquiry.  


http://www.educationotherwise.net/attachments/article/151/Prospectus%20For%20Improving%20Support%20to%20Home%20Educating%20Families%200409.pdf


Among other things, it recommended:


4. Recommendation: that the DCSF Elective Home Education Team should 
work with home education support organisations to set up a national 
Committee for Home Education, remit to include contributing to 
Government policy initiatives related to home education, contributing to 
Impact Assessments and making recommendations related to Home 
Education policy. 

This national committee was to have a far-ranging but rather vague role and relationship to the government. It was not unnaturally assumed that Fiona visualised herself as heading this committee, which was to some sort of Quango. This belief was strengthened when she gave evidence to the Children, Schools and Families select committee on October 14th 2009. I was also giving evidence that day and one thing which struck me very powerfully was Fiona’s inability to say whether or not she approved of compulsory registration for home educators. Barry Sheerman, the Chair, pressed her repeatedly on this point, but she waffled on for some time, finally saying:

I am not taking a position on whether I think it would be a good or bad thing

Call me an old cynic, but the construction which I put upon that was that Fiona was in favour of registration, but reluctant to say so out loud, in case it alienated too many other home educators. 

In short, there are those who are suspicious of Fiona Nicholson’s  involvement in the APPG, because rather than being a home educating parent, she now has a commercial interest in the subject and is apparently being paid by at least one local authority to give advice. Incidentally, the APPG apparently has a website, about which few seem aware. If there really is such a thing, one guesses that it was set up by Fiona’s son Theo, who is something of a whiz about computer and internet related matters.

I must make one final point, which is that on a personal level, I am very much a fan of Fiona’s. She is an enthusiast for both the Molesworth and William books and I never knew anybody who enjoyed those books to be otherwise than fundamentally sound!

Enter a stalking horse…

I am quite interested to know what game Barry Sheerman MP, former Chair of the Children, Schools and Families Committee, is playing. Late on the night of October 16th this year, he tweeted that;

Home education is the next scandal which will eventually come to public
attention. It is being used in ways that deeply concern @Ofstednews

This gives one the impression that he is simply reporting something about which he knows. Ofsted are concerned about some aspect of home education and it will be coming to the attention of the public. Then, three weeks later, he is asking the Secretary of Sate for Education questions such as:

Barry Sheerman: To ask the Secretary of State for Education
what estimate he has made of the number of (a) girls and (b) boys
registered as being home-schooled who are not receiving an
 adequate education.

Barry Sheerman: To ask the Secretary of State 

for Education what steps he is taking to 

ensure that girls and boys who are home-schooled 

receive an equal education.

Rather than just reporting this new scandal, Barry Sheerman now appears to be paving the way for it, by hinting that some home educators are providing an inadequate education for girls. The clue is plain; home education is being used as an excuse for sexism  by some ethnic minority and Barry Sheerman is the boy to expose this racket! 

Probably, the community which is being talked about here is that of the Gypsies/Travellers/Roma. There are many of them and it is no particular secret that a lot of their girls leave school at 11 and don’t progress to secondary education. Often, these girls  are officially being home educated; a polite fiction which fools nobody, but satisfies both the families and the local authority. Here is the problem though and what some would regard as a danger for other home educators. If you wish to crack down on the spurious use of home education in this way, then you must either introduce a law aimed specifically at Gypsies,  limiting their ability to choose home education for their children,  or you must change the law for everybody. Historically, a good deal of bad publicity has attended the practice of passing  laws designed to target particular ethnic groups such as  Gypsies, Jews or blacks; I think South Africa and the Third Reich  know who we're talking about here!  This means that  the first option is a non-starter. Which in turn, of course, means that any action taken to tackle this supposed ‘scandal’ will inevitably affect every home educating family in the country.

There is an outside chance that this business about boys and girls receiving an equal education is aimed at Muslims, but I wouldn't have thought that there are large enough numbers of such families to make up any sort of 'scandal'.

More about Barry Sheerman and home education

Readers might be interested to know what questions Barry Sheerman has been asking lately in parliament. This on November 7th, less than a week ago:

Written Answers — Education: Home Education (7 November 2013)

Barry Sheerman: To ask the Secretary of State for Education
what estimate he has made of the number of (a) girls and (b) boys
registered as being home-schooled who are not receiving an
 adequate education.

Written Answers — Education: Home Education (7 November 2013)

Barry Sheerman: To ask the Secretary of State for Education what
steps he is taking to ensure that girls and boys who are
home-schooled receive an equal education.

I think that something is very definitely in the wind. What I
have beentold is that the clue is in the second of these two
 questions, with its reference to 'equal education' for boys 
and girls. This apparently refers to the Gypsy/Traveller/Roma
 practice of taking girls out of school after they finish primary 
school. Somebody has also mentioned Muslims who 
home educate as well. 

Possible home education scandal brewing...

A few weeks ago, the former Chair of the Education select committee, Barry Sheerman, tweeted this:

Barry Sheerman MP
‏@BarrySheerman
Home education is the next scandal which will eventually come to public
attention.It is being used in ways that deeply concern @Ofstednews

I haven't seen anything about it in Ofsted News, but I'll look into this.