Local authorities planning together on elective home education

From across England come eerily similar stories of local authority officers behaving in what some home educating parents see as unjustifiable ways. This centres in the main around requests to see the child physically and discuss with parents and child the nature of the educational provision being provided. The rationale behind this is fairly plain. It is easy enough for a parent to write that a child visits the library, plays the violin and belongs to various clubs; this does not make it true. Some local authority officers have found that when they talk to the children themselves, some of them have no idea at all what they are supposed to be doing. Clearly, the parents have been putting down whatever they think will sound like a good education!

Local authorities do not work in a vacuum. They talk to each other regularly, not only neighbouring authorities, but ones at the other end of the country. When Mike Allpress was the lead person in this county, Essex, on elective home education, he used to organise conferences in Harlow for other authorities in the south east. Representatives came from as far away as Southampton and a common framework would be agreed. This happens all over England. Just as some home educators band together and exchange information on lists such as the Badman Review Action Group, so too do local authorities pass on concerns to each other. Most of them also belong to the main Internet groups like BRAG, HE-UK and so on. They are very well informed about developments in the world of home education.

The behaviour of local authority officers responsible for home education in various parts of the country is now showing a common theme. In the Unitary Authority of Poole, in Suffolk, Oxfordshire, Birmingham and Gateshead, the same tactic is being used. Children who have not been seen for some time because their parents refuse visits, are the target for attention. The thrust of this is that local authorities want to see the kid and talk face to face with the parents. I can see their point. We often see parents on lists and forums who ask for help in putting together educational philosophies, but who would be rather at a loss if asked outright just what they had been doing for their kids education this week!

Home education in this country has been established by precedent, rather than statute. Apart from a few oblique references in some laws which were drawn up without even considering home education as such, most of the legal basis comes from old court cases; Bevan v Shears, Phillips v Brown, Harrison & Harrison v Stevenson and so on. Having failed, at least for now, to gain any new legislation, the aim is to build up a few court cases which will tend to show that local authorities have more power than the old cases of precedent indicate. They are being quite cautious about this and as soon as a parent complains to one of the home eduction groups, they will back-pedal. However, as I have pointed out before, the great majority of home educating parents do not belong to Internet groups. The first that we will hear of such a court case is when it has been reported in the papers.

At a guess, I would say that several local authorities will find parents who are supposedly home educating but are actually not providing even the sketchiest attempt at any sort of education. These parents will have School Attendance Orders issued against them and at least a few will refuse to comply with them. The resulting prosecutions will allow the local authorities to state their views in court and as long as they choose the right parents, the magistrates will then allow the allow the prosecution to succeed. A few successes of this sort, particularly if any appeals by the parents to higher courts fail, will change the landscape of home education in this country. As I say, the present way that home education is tolerated in England is a result of court decisions. The situation can be altered in the same way. In the absence of any new legislation, this is how local authorities will be able to effect a change in the legal situation around home education. What has been noticed in places like Birmingham and Suffolk are the opening shots in this campaign.

Resentment at being forced to do something

One of the things which I have noticed during the recent debates about the behaviour of the local authorities in both Birmingham and Suffolk is that the people commenting on the Internet lists are very angry. Actually, they are not just angry about the doorstepping by local authority officers; some of them seem to be in a permanent state of fury! This is curious, because I thoroughly enjoyed being a home educator and I was happy for most of the time. Educating my child was a source of great joy to me and this joy permeated my entire life. It was great; like a constant high!

Now I am quite prepared to believe that some of these angry parents have had problems with their local authority. A lot of us have problems with our local authority, although not always about home education. Rowing with the council is one of those things that have become a leitmotif of the age; rubbish collections, streetlights, education, petty rules, parking regulations, the list is endless. Home educators are certainly not alone in getting pissed off with their local authority. Most of us manage to keep these disagreements in perspective. However irritable I get on the telephone with the council, I can usually chuckle about it in the evening with my wife. One feels that this is probably not the case with the angry people one encounters on HE-UK and BRAG!

I could not help but notice that when I posted about Suffolk, one of those commenting had a laid back and rational view of the matter. By an odd coincidence, this person was somebody, like me, who has chosen to be a home educator. The great majority of those who are becoming angry on a regular basis have not chosen to home educate; they say that they have been forced to do it. This cannot help but give them a rather different perspective from somebody who embraced the idea enthusiastically from the day of the child's birth and always intended to do it. We all of us get a little tetchy when we are made to do something. It stops being fun if we have been compelled to undertake an activity or task. iIwonder if this could be at the root of the terrible anger which I come across, not only on the lists, but here on my own blog.

All parents get upset and angry if something is harming their child; whether it is a bully at school, failure to provide sufficient support for a special educational need or simply something which causes the child unhappiness. Many home educators have felt compelled to undertake the education of their children, not because they are keen on home education, but because they feel that this is the only way to rescue the child from misery. This decision to de-register the child from school is often the culmination of increasingly fraught and bitter arguments with the school and the local authority. This does not, from the beginning, tend to create a foundation for cordial relations with the local authority, whom many such parents blame for their child's unhappiness. Parents like this are already angry with their local authority before they start to home educate. This does not bode well for the future. On top of this is the fact that although they may not begrudge the child the home education, they are at the same time keenly aware that this is not something which they have really chosen freely. They sent the child to school at four or five like everybody else and now they have had to adopt a new and strange lifestyle. Their family and neighbours might disapprove, they have less money and freedom than they had when the kid was in school; it would be surprising if some of them did not get a little angry about this new situation.

I have noticed that those who chose to educate their own child seem to be more relaxed and good natured about it than many of those who felt that they have been forced into it. This is not to be wondered at. I have also noticed that those growing angriest about the local authorities are often those who have had fights with their own local authorities before having to take their children out of school. It is not hard to see that they are projecting a lot of their anger onto the local authority in Suffolk or Birmingham. I would be curious to hear of parents whose children have never attended school who are able to generate the same levels of anger as those who already have a history of fighting with their own council.

Doorstepping in Suffolk

I have been trying, not for the first time, to try and make sense of what is happening in the world of home education by putting myself in the place of the participants and thinking how I would feel and act. In Suffolk, at least one parent has received a letter from the local authority, saying that because they have not seen the home educated child for five years, they wish to pop round and assure themselves that the child is still physically alive and well and in the county. There have been predictable howls of outrage about this.

Let me first try and put myself in the place of the parent and see what I would do in a similar situation. This should not be hard. I was never overenthusiastic about having apparatchiks from local government poking into my affairs. I am still not. It should not be difficult for me to put myself in this person's place, because exactly the same thing happened to me when I was home educating. The local authority told me that I had been living and home educating in their county for years and that they wouldn't mind seeing the kid, just to make sure everything was OK.

The first thing to say at once is that I found this irritating. I knew the child was safe, well and receiving a far better education that she was ever likely to get at the local maintained school. What the Devil business was it of these people? Judging by what has been said on the lists, this was not the initial reaction of the parent to whom Suffolk sent a letter. Apparently the family were 'traumatised'. This sounds a bit rummy to me. What on earth is going on in their house that they would be traumatised at the prospect of a knock on the door from a local authority officer? Their child was apparently in tears. Now call me Mr Oldfashioned, but if I got a letter through the post that I thought might upset my child, I would not even mention it to her. Why would I? I'm the adult, it is for me to tackle things like that. What would I actually do in such a circumstance? To begin with of course, the bit about the unannounced visit is just designed to encourage the family to engage with their local authority. I might allow such a person into my home; I might not, depending upon how I was feeling that day. I would be inclined to ring Suffolk County Council and say something to the following effect;

'I have your letter and quite honestly it's a bit of a sauce. There's no point at all in your coming round at random like that, because you won't get into the house or see my child. If you want to meet her and see that she is alive and well, then I don't mind arranging to meet you in the library. What about next Thursday lunchtime? I don't mind doing this once in a while, although it's a great nuisance. If you pester me too much though, I shall make such a fuss to MPs and so on that you will think that you would better have stuck your head in a hornets' nest'.

Everybody is now happy. The parent and his family are freed from the fear of an unannounced knock on the door and the local authority are able to satisfy themselves that the child is alive and well.

Looking at the matter now from the point of view of Suffolk; it is possible to have some sympathy for them. Some home education advisors employed by local authorities behave as though they are running semi-autonomous fiefdoms. They play their cards close to their chests and often nobody actually sees their files and records from one year to the next. When somebody moves on or dies without handing on the caseload with plenty of notice, it can be discovered that everything is in a terrible state and it is impossible to know who has been seen and who not or even who is still being home educated. The last thing any local authority wants is for it to come to light that some kid in their area has died or is being cruelly mistreated without their knowing about it. It looks lousy when that sort of thing turns up in the papers. The easiest thing would be to trawl through the jumbled up files and then physically visit every one of those families just to make sure that they are still in the local authority area. Again, a very similar thing happened to me when a new officer started work in Essex and wanted to visit every family on the books, even though I had just allowed a visit six months earlier.

It strikes me that with a little bit of give and take, it should be possible to resolve these difficulties without recourse to the Human Rights Act!