Showing posts with label School Attendance Orders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label School Attendance Orders. Show all posts
Monday, 2 January 2012
Exploding a myth
It will perhaps surprise nobody to hear that I have once again managed to piss people off on a home education forum. I have to say that on this occasion, I was genuinely trying to help vulnerable parents and reassure them that they should stop worrying. This came about because the thesis was advanced that some local authorities in England and Wales bully and badger home educating parents into either abandoning home education or altering the form or content of it so that it more closely resembles a school type model. One person referred to parents being made ’to jump through hoops’ and forced to teach reading in a structured way. This sort of thing is usually done under the threat that a School Attendance Order will be issued, the parent prosecuted and the child returned to school if the parent does not do as the local authority officer requires. So far, so good; I don’t think that anybody here could disagree that this sort of thing happens. I then went on to suggest that it was astronomically rare for home educating parents to be issued with SAOs and then prosecuted for not obeying them, convicted in court and forced to send their children to school. Indeed, I expressed doubts as to this ever happening at all; upon which, a number of people became very angry.
The best way of seeing just how rare this process is, is to look at the figures. Let us begin with two local authorities who are famous for taking what some describe as ’ultra vires’ actions; Staffordshire and Birmingham, for instance.
Here is a Freedom of Information request made to Birmingham about the number of SAOs that they issued in one particular year;
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ehe_department_suitable_educatio_4
It will be observed that no SAOs at all were issued. Freedom of Information requests on this subject have been made to every local authority in England and Wales and the picture is same across the entire country; most never issue SAOs. Some issued one or two, but these were hardly ever to home educators. Staffordshire, for example has issued one School Attendance Order in the last five years, although not to a home educating family. See here:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ehe_related_statutory_attendance
Most of the tiny number of SAOs which have been issued over the last few years have not been to home educators. Of those which were, only a few reached the stage of prosecution. I can find not a single case where a local authority has issued a School Attendance Order to a home educating family, prosecuted them in court and then managed to secure a conviction and force them as a result to return their child to school.
I found this to be very reassuring for home educating parents. Knowing that this favourite threat of local authorities is an empty one which can generally be disregarded should allow home educating parents to form a more equal partnership with local authorities; one which is not founded upon fear and threats. Of course, not everybody seeks such a healthy relationship with their LA and some parents might be happy to be bossed about by petty bureaucrats. This is fine; I was not trying to bully anybody into changing how they deal with local authorities; merely pointing out that there is more than one way.
Actually, I thought that digging around might perhaps uncover one or two cases of home educating children forced back into school by their parents having been prosecuted for disobeying a School Attendance Order. In fact, I have not been able to come up with one case of this happening. May I ask, does anybody know of a case where a home educating parent has been served with a School Attendance Order, prosecuted for breaching it and as a result been convicted in court and forced to return their child to school? If so, could we just be told the name of the local authority? Since this is the only way that a home educating child can really be forced back to school by a local authority, it would be interesting to know if it ever happens. Is this some sort of urban myth? Can anybody give a real example?
There is one final point. One can readily see why local authority officers would maintain the fiction that they might issue an SAO to home educating parents, take them to court and force them to return their children to school. This suggestion would be very distressing to many parents and they might well back down under the very threat and do as they are told in order to avoid it. What puzzles me is why some home educating parents themselves seem so keen to buy into this myth and help local authorities to keep the pretence going. This seems to me to be a psychological question, rather than a legal one!
Thursday, 3 September 2009
The local authorities already have all the powers they need!
Whenever the discussion comes round to either new legislation on home education or home educated children who are not receiving an education some home educator is sure to claim, "But the LAs already have the powers, they simply don't use them." How true is this?
Why don't local authorities take action if their officers truly believe that they are aware of apparently home educated children who are not receiving a suitable education? There are a number of reasons. One might be because either the school or LA are wittingly complicit in the withdrawal of the child from the educational system and are therefore happy to leave him to his own devices. This is not uncommon, see my recent post and the associated comments. Howsoever, let us assume that an officer from the local authority does have reason to think that a child is not being educated, is not happy and wants to do something about it. What happens next?
The first thing to be done is for the LA to make informal enquiries. This generally entails writing to the family although it is not unknown for an EWO to turn up on the doorstep. Most families at this point do provide some evidence. Often, this is an educational philosophy downloaded from the internet. Of course, this is really evidence of nothing more than the ability to use a computer, but often it will be accepted by the LA. What is wrong with that? Well the problem here is that it does not really tell anybody anything at all about the nature or quality of the education being provided for a child. This is particularly the case if the family refuse visits. What can be done now if the LA are still not satisfied?
The answer is of course that proving a negative is, as any logician will tell you, a damned tricky business! How do you prove that a family is not educating a child? The decision is not left to the EWO on the ground. Those in direct contact with a family often know perfectly well that a child is not being educated and they report this to their line manager. It is at this, higher, level that the decision is taken whether or not to proceed further. There are various considerations. One is how long the legal process is likely to take and if it is worth dragging the child back into school where he will only make a nuisance of himself. If he is fifteen or sixteen, then it is unlikely to be worthwhile. A lot depends on the magistrates in the area as well. Some are famously reluctant to allow prosecutions under SAOs to succeed. This situation is exacerbated greatly by the lack of any standard definition of what constitutes a suitable education.
Eventually, the local authority might decide to issue a School Attendance Order. They have to give the parents plenty of notice before doing so, but in the end something like this might land on the doormat;
Statutory Instrument 1995 No. 2090 The Education (School Attendance Order) Regulations 1995
SCHEDULE
Regulation 3
SCHOOL ATTENDANCE ORDER
Education Act 1993
[name of authority] Local Education Authority ("the Authority").
As you [name of parent] of [address of parent], being the parent[3] of a child of compulsory school age in the area of the Authority, have failed to satisfy the Authority in accordance with the requirements of the notice served on you under section 192(1) of the Education Act 1993 by the Authority on [date of notice] that [name of child] is receiving suitable education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise: And as, in the opinion of the Authority, [name of child] should attend school:
You are required to cause [name of child] to become a registered pupil at the following school:
[Insert full name and address of the school and omit the whole or part of the following words as the case requires]
..........
being the school [specified by the Authority] [selected by you] [determined by a direction of the Secretary of State for Education and Employment] [as the school to be named in this Order] [specified in the statement for the child under section 168 of the Education Act 1993]
Failure to comply with the requirements of this Order is an offence unless you can prove that [name of child] is receiving suitable education otherwise than at school.
Signed [name of officer] of [name of authority] Education Authority.
Dated
Impressive as it looks, this document leaves much to be desired, which is why most LAs hardly ever bother with them. For one thing, having got the parents into court the people they now need to persuade are lay magistrates. They tend to be lot more gullible than LA officers and it often does not take much for them to be convinced that a suitable education is being provided, despite all the evidence to the contrary. There is no point at all dragging the borough solicitor into court, only to see the case thrown out and so if the local authority feel that it is liable to be a waste of time issuing an SAO, they will just not bother. But suppose it isn't and the magistrate agrees with the LA, what happens then?
The relevant case here is Enfield Borough Council v F (1987) (2 FLR 126) and sobering reading this precedent makes for any LA hoping to prosecute parents for ignoring a School Attendance Order. For one thing, an SAO obliges a parent to register their child at a named school. What happens if having complied with the order in this way, they then deregister the child the following week? Good point and a grey area of law. What happens if despite all this, the parents have been successfully prosecuted by the LA and fined for disobeying an SAO? Well, the child is still not in school and so the LA must now launch a second prosecution, sometimes combined with an application for an Education Supervision Order. The longer this process continues, the more expensive it becomes. Also, at any stage they may encounter an awkward magistrate who will side with the parents and dismiss the case. Some parents are adept at playing the system. They may register their child at a school before an SAO is issued and then withdraw him again a few weeks later. Cat and mouse games like this happen regularly in some local authority areas.
At the root of the matter is the lack of a satisfactory definition of what constitutes a "suitable education". Until this is sorted out and some sort of yardsticks devised which can measure this, then the situation will remain confused and open to abuse. This is why I believe that new legislation is urgently needed. Unless home educators are prepared to engage in a dialogue about this, then the matter will be decided by the unilateral imposition of rules by the DCSF and local authorities, a situation which would be welcomed by few home educators.
Why don't local authorities take action if their officers truly believe that they are aware of apparently home educated children who are not receiving a suitable education? There are a number of reasons. One might be because either the school or LA are wittingly complicit in the withdrawal of the child from the educational system and are therefore happy to leave him to his own devices. This is not uncommon, see my recent post and the associated comments. Howsoever, let us assume that an officer from the local authority does have reason to think that a child is not being educated, is not happy and wants to do something about it. What happens next?
The first thing to be done is for the LA to make informal enquiries. This generally entails writing to the family although it is not unknown for an EWO to turn up on the doorstep. Most families at this point do provide some evidence. Often, this is an educational philosophy downloaded from the internet. Of course, this is really evidence of nothing more than the ability to use a computer, but often it will be accepted by the LA. What is wrong with that? Well the problem here is that it does not really tell anybody anything at all about the nature or quality of the education being provided for a child. This is particularly the case if the family refuse visits. What can be done now if the LA are still not satisfied?
The answer is of course that proving a negative is, as any logician will tell you, a damned tricky business! How do you prove that a family is not educating a child? The decision is not left to the EWO on the ground. Those in direct contact with a family often know perfectly well that a child is not being educated and they report this to their line manager. It is at this, higher, level that the decision is taken whether or not to proceed further. There are various considerations. One is how long the legal process is likely to take and if it is worth dragging the child back into school where he will only make a nuisance of himself. If he is fifteen or sixteen, then it is unlikely to be worthwhile. A lot depends on the magistrates in the area as well. Some are famously reluctant to allow prosecutions under SAOs to succeed. This situation is exacerbated greatly by the lack of any standard definition of what constitutes a suitable education.
Eventually, the local authority might decide to issue a School Attendance Order. They have to give the parents plenty of notice before doing so, but in the end something like this might land on the doormat;
Statutory Instrument 1995 No. 2090 The Education (School Attendance Order) Regulations 1995
SCHEDULE
Regulation 3
SCHOOL ATTENDANCE ORDER
Education Act 1993
[name of authority] Local Education Authority ("the Authority").
As you [name of parent] of [address of parent], being the parent[3] of a child of compulsory school age in the area of the Authority, have failed to satisfy the Authority in accordance with the requirements of the notice served on you under section 192(1) of the Education Act 1993 by the Authority on [date of notice] that [name of child] is receiving suitable education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise: And as, in the opinion of the Authority, [name of child] should attend school:
You are required to cause [name of child] to become a registered pupil at the following school:
[Insert full name and address of the school and omit the whole or part of the following words as the case requires]
..........
being the school [specified by the Authority] [selected by you] [determined by a direction of the Secretary of State for Education and Employment] [as the school to be named in this Order] [specified in the statement for the child under section 168 of the Education Act 1993]
Failure to comply with the requirements of this Order is an offence unless you can prove that [name of child] is receiving suitable education otherwise than at school.
Signed [name of officer] of [name of authority] Education Authority.
Dated
Impressive as it looks, this document leaves much to be desired, which is why most LAs hardly ever bother with them. For one thing, having got the parents into court the people they now need to persuade are lay magistrates. They tend to be lot more gullible than LA officers and it often does not take much for them to be convinced that a suitable education is being provided, despite all the evidence to the contrary. There is no point at all dragging the borough solicitor into court, only to see the case thrown out and so if the local authority feel that it is liable to be a waste of time issuing an SAO, they will just not bother. But suppose it isn't and the magistrate agrees with the LA, what happens then?
The relevant case here is Enfield Borough Council v F (1987) (2 FLR 126) and sobering reading this precedent makes for any LA hoping to prosecute parents for ignoring a School Attendance Order. For one thing, an SAO obliges a parent to register their child at a named school. What happens if having complied with the order in this way, they then deregister the child the following week? Good point and a grey area of law. What happens if despite all this, the parents have been successfully prosecuted by the LA and fined for disobeying an SAO? Well, the child is still not in school and so the LA must now launch a second prosecution, sometimes combined with an application for an Education Supervision Order. The longer this process continues, the more expensive it becomes. Also, at any stage they may encounter an awkward magistrate who will side with the parents and dismiss the case. Some parents are adept at playing the system. They may register their child at a school before an SAO is issued and then withdraw him again a few weeks later. Cat and mouse games like this happen regularly in some local authority areas.
At the root of the matter is the lack of a satisfactory definition of what constitutes a "suitable education". Until this is sorted out and some sort of yardsticks devised which can measure this, then the situation will remain confused and open to abuse. This is why I believe that new legislation is urgently needed. Unless home educators are prepared to engage in a dialogue about this, then the matter will be decided by the unilateral imposition of rules by the DCSF and local authorities, a situation which would be welcomed by few home educators.
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