Michael Gove and the home educators

I have always taken it rather for granted that Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, is a bit of a weasel. His appearance is distinctly musteline and he is after all a career politician. Still, he was the darling of the home educators during the run-up to the election. He valiantly denounced Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill and promised that the Tories would always stick by home educators. In January he said:

' I do not believe that the current system is perfect, but it is fundamentally important that we respect the rights of home educators first and that we ensure that any change to legislation is conducted in accordance with their wishes and interests.'

I found this pretty awful actually, emphasising the rights of parents without mentioning the rights of children, but there, I admit that I have a bee in my bonnet about children's rights. And why on earth should we , ' ensure that any change to legislation is conducted in accordance with their wishes and interests.'? Just because a group of people choose to follow some activity, does that mean that we must always automatically ensure that any legislation affecting them is in accordance with their wishes? Does that apply to fox hunters and vivisectionists as well? Or the owners of shotguns and pit-bull terriers? The logic of this escapes me utterly. In February he was promising that a Conservative government would repeal any legislation on home education which Labour passed. There was no doubt at all that Gove was the people's choice at least as far as the home education community was concerned.

In May Michael Gove became Secretary of State for Education. Home education was certainly safe in his hands. We could all breathe a sigh of relief and carry on educating or neglecting our children according to whichever particular strand of home education we favoured. Well at least for the next month or so, until Ofsted's report on Local authorities and home education was released in the middle of June. He suddenly seemed a good deal less sure about his opposition to new legislation about home education. The DfE announced that;

' We note Ofsted's findings and recommendations and ministers will shortly be considering if changes need to be made to the existing arrangements, given the strong views expressed by both home educators and local authorities.'

This was the first hint that Gove might be changing his position slightly. Note the words well, 'considering if changes need to be made'. Observe that crucial word 'if'. A mere five weeks later and the Serious Case Review on Khyra Ishaq's death was published. Michael Gove said;

' We respect the right of parents to educate their children at home and most do a very good job, some of them picking up the pieces where children have had problems at school. Clearly lessons need to be learned by the tragic events in this case, and I will consider the letter I expect to receive from Birmingham shortly, to see what changes need to be made to the existing arrangements and reply in due course.'



What's changed in this picture boys and girls? Can you spot the difference? Well in June he was, ' 'considering if changes need to be made'. Now in July he will, 'see what changes need to be made to the existing arrangements ' See what's changed? The 'if' has vanished. The statement earlier this week is saying in effect that changes need to be made. The only question is what those changes will be, not if they need to be made. In other words, the arrangements around home education are going to change.

You can't altogether blame Gove for this abrupt volte face. Everybody gets upset about dead little girls and the immediate impulse is to do something about it. Now that he is in government, the obvious thing to do is pass a law which will stop any parents in the future torturing their children to death in this way. This is the standard response to such tragedies. Victoria Climbie's death produced the Every Child Matters document, the Soham murders produced the Independent Safeguarding Authority and now Khyra Ishaq's legacy may also be a new law. This is what governments do when they can't think of anything else. I think that matters are now balanced on the edge of a knife and it would only take one more case involving the abuse of a home educated child to tip the balance. The rumour is that just such a high profile case is about to hit the courts in the next month or so.

That there has been a shift in public opinion on the subject of home education seems clear. When Alan Thomas had a piece in the Guardian a couple of days ago, the comments were interesting. Usually one would expect to hear a contrapuntal murmur from Guardian readers of 'creeping surveillance society...statisim.... liberty' and various similar expressions. In fact everybody apart from the home educators seemed to be in favour of a crackdown on home education. I found this surprising.

How would Gove go about changing the law without encountering the same sort of fuss that Ed Balls did with his CSF Bill. Perhaps by going about it piecemeal, instead of demanding everything at once. It would not, at least to begin with, need an entirely new bill. Little bits and pieces are constantly being tacked on to things like the 1996 Education Act, sometimes years later. I should think that something along the lines of The Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006, Statutory Instrument 2006 No. 1751 might meet the case to begin with. As I say, Gove would be unwise to start a row by doing everything at once. To begin with, a simple requirement for home educating parents to register with their local authority would probably have the support of almost everyone except home educators themselves. Then it would just be a matter of adding other provisions every six months or so. I don't know of course if this is what will happen, but I would not be at all surprised.

A change in the law.....

The two perspectives could hardly be more different. To most people working in the field of education and social care; it is a grotesque anomaly. Getting on for a hundred thousand children about whose education hardly anything is known. Are they passing GCSEs? Nobody knows. What percentage go on to become NEETS? We have no idea. Are they as literate as the general population? Couldn't really say. I mean, it's absurd! It has to be said that this view is probably shared by many ordinary people. On the other side are the parents of the children in question. To them, any attempt to change the law or even ask too many questions about the situation is a gross intrusion into their private life; a flagrant breach of the rights of both parent and child. Outrageous!

The law covering home education is to be found in the 1996 Education Act. The wording of this act in respect of home education was lifted practically intact from the 1944 Education Act. The relevant words, those concerning a suitable education to be obtained, "By regular attendance at school or otherwise", were inserted into the act not to legitimise home education but to allow the upper and middle classes to continue engaging governesses and tutors for their children. It is I think, safe to say that the idea that parents would one day use this section of the act to justify teaching their own children out of school never for a moment crossed the mind of anybody in the legislature. Yet here we are, sixty five years later, and those few words are still the only thing that the law has to say on the subject of home education. In other words, the education of perhaps eighty thousand children is regulated by a couple of chance sentences in an old act of parliament.

Any objective observer would probably agree that with the numbers of children educated out of school rising inexorably, it really is time for a law which specifically sanctions and regulates the practice of home education. About the details of such a law, there will be no universal agreement; that is inevitable. But about the need for some sort of legal framework there is consensus, except of course among the home educating families themselves. But this is often the case. Individuals and communities who are closely bound up in some peculiar and outlandish activity often have difficulty understanding how others view their special interest. The incomprehension on the face of the steam engine fanatic when he realises that not everybody is fascinated by the Flying Scotsman. The pigeon fancier who cannot see how anybody could fail to appreciate the finer points of bird breeding. So involved are such people, that they will be wholly unable to take an objective and dispassionate view of their obsession.

So it is with home education. It is the ultimate strange hobby, a hobby which affects every aspect of the lives of its devotees. If their lifestyle brings them into conflict with the law, then so be it. The law can go hang! The Queen's speech in parliament paves the way for the registration and inspection of home educators. This is perhaps the bare minimum which most normal citizens would expect and desire for the scores of thousands of children being taught out of school. Whether the new law will be able to get pass the Lords is another matter entirely. The present administration is quite fond of invoking the Parliament Act and an important Bill involving children would be a perfect excuse for doing so should there be obstruction in the Upper House. One thing that home educators should realise is that however much they campaign, to the man on the Clapham omnibus the proposition that children taught at home should be registered and inspected is an eminently sensible one. Public opinion is not likely to be with the home educators on this matter.

Why some people don't "get" home education

One of the things which I have noticed over the years, both in my personal and professional life, is the huge number of parents who cannot apparently wait to get their kids into nurseries almost as soon as they are born. I am talking here not of busy professionals on Maternity Leave, but couples where one parent is not working and also unemployed single mothers. I have sometimes felt like saying, although I have never been so rude, "If you are that keen to get shot of him, I wonder you had the bloody kid in the first place!" I have often thought that this strange desire to pack children off to nurseries, schools, play-schemes and holiday clubs might be at the root of many people's suspicious attitude to home education.

When the Summer holidays are beginning, newspapers routinely run jokey articles asking how parents will survive for the next six or eight weeks. Many parents have told me that they dread the holidays because they don't know what to do with their children. I find this truly extraordinary. Like most, probably all, home educating parents I absolutely love my daughter's company and have done so from the moment she was born. Why would I want to miss out on a single minute of her childhood?

My wife an I have friends are utterly foxed by this. They tell us that it would drive them mad to have their children at home all day. They say things like, "I don't know how you do it!" or "Don't you get fed up with just your daughter for company during the day?". We also know mothers who complain that their brains feel as if they are turning to mush because they are stuck with their baby or toddler all day and that they simply can't wait to get the child into a nursery so that they can get on with their life again. Regular readers of this Blog will be aware that my social skills are all but non-existent and I am hardly able to disguise my horror that anybody could speak this way about their child.

Those who feel this way about their children, and they are in the majority, find it unbelievable that there are people who would choose to keep their children by their side for twenty four hours a day. And this was quite literally the case when my daughter was young. I never felt that I wanted to be parted from her for a moment and even now that she is sixteen, I frequently spend the weekend in her company and still find her a constant pleasure. Well, why wouldn't I? As I say, this is how most home educators feel. For those who do not feel like this, I get the impression sometimes that they think that this is a bit fishy, even creepy when they encounter home educators. Normal people are not this attached to their children, there must be something abnormal about it. What are they up to? Are they abusing their kids? Something's not right!

As I said above, I think it possible that these completely different views of children may be the cause of any friction between home educators and normal parents. People who send their kids to school just don't "get" it, the idea of parents and children being so close that they actually enjoy being with one another! I thought in this context, I would again post the link to part of a television programme which my daughter and I appeared on a couple of years ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0AQuqo7IAg

The people talking to us, Matthew Wright and Lowri Turner, seemingly took it quite for granted that Simone's education would be as good as she might get at school. What neither of them could grasp was the idea that a father and his teenage daughter could enjoy being with each other all day and that it was really the most natural thing in the world. Lowri Turner makes one of the most tacky and tasteless remarks I have ever heard in the whole course of my life and says that Simone and I seem unnaturally close and that she seems more like my wife than my daughter! This is fascinating. She had already told the audience that at that age, she would not even sit next to her father on the beach. She evidently believed that this was normal; to me it sounds completely dysfunctional. This shows the enormously wide gulf which can sometimes exist between "ordinary" people and home educators.

It might be as well to remember this when we are talking to those who do not educate their own children. To me and I think other home educating parents, getting on well with your children is the most natural thing in the world. It is not getting on with your kids that is strange and unusual. For many parents of school children, the case is precisely opposite; it is not getting on with your child that is the norm. I can't help wondering whether or not the current demands for tighter control might be caused not by any genuine fears about forced marriage and so on, but rather because so many people, both in government and also in the general population, just can't imagine what we're up to, wanting to have our kids with us all day long!

A small number of cases......

If the ability of parents in this country to educate their own children were to be under threat, then nobody would be more concerned than the present writer. Fortunately, no such threat is apparent, at least at the moment. What has happened over the last few years, as home education has become increasingly popular, is that it has grown clear that a small number of parents are using the pretext of home education as a cover for other things. Just what those "other things" are is a matter of lively debate. I believe them to be, for example, neglecting the education of a child, sometimes in order to avoid prosecution for truancy; some think that these "other things" include physical and sexual abuse. What nobody disputes, nor have ever disputed, is that such cases are a small number. Small, but perhaps significant enough to make it necessary to take some sort of action. The aim of any new action is not and never has been home educating parents per se. There is a good deal of evidence to support this thesis.

Here is Martin Ward, deputy general secretary of the Association of School and College leaders, speaking about home education shortly after the Graham Badman review was launched, "However, there have been concerns about a small number of cases where this option has been exercised to the detriment of the child.". He went on to defend the right of parents to educate their children. His views were echoed by others during and after the review. On the day that Graham Badman's report was published on June 11th this year, Ed Balls said, "The review also found evidence that there are a small number of cases where home educated children have suffered harm because safeguarding concerns were not picked up, or not treated with sufficient urgency, particularly where parents were uncooperative or obstructed local authority investigations."

All along, everybody concerned in the review of elective home education conducted by Graham Badman has been at pains to emphasise that they are not against home eduction, but simply want the powers to cope with a small number of cases where the right to home educate is being abused. Here is Baroness Morgan, answering a written question about any new powers which local authorities may acquire, on June 29th, "We do not expect them to place any significant additional burdens on local authorities as most already monitor home education, and our proposals will provide additional powers that will assist local authorities in dealing more efficiently with the small number of cases where home education does not come up to scratch." Once again, a small number of cases. And finally, here is Graham Badman himself writing on September 16th., "a small but significant
proportion of home educated children are receiving no, or an inadequate,
education."

There can be little doubt that any new law will be directed not at home educators in general, but at those who are using home education as a cover or excuse. Nobody has any idea what percentage of supposedly home educating parents this is likely to affect, not least because nobody knows to within a few score of thousands how many parents in this country are educating their children. Of course, any new regulation will cause irritation and inconvenience to a certain number of genuine home educators, although for most there will be no discernible difference. This inconvenience might however be a price worth paying if it rescues even a small number of children from neglect and possible danger.