A local authority with a very high proportion of home educated children with statements of special educational need

Apropos of the discussions on this topic which have recently been taking place here, I thought readers might be interested in this news item from Stoke-on-Trent. Out of the 74 home educated children known to the local authority, 11 have statements. This is five or six times the percentage in the general school population.

http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk/74-children-taught-parents-home/story-19958164-detail/story.html#axzz2iL4bdlP7

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.

Why are home educated children in the United Kingdom more likely to be neglected or abused than those at school?

I have had a couple of emails over the last few days, from home educating parents wanting to know what grounds I have for suggesting that their children are more at risk of neglect and abuse than those attending school. There are of course a number of factors involved here, but today I wish to examine just one of these.

When Ofsted conducted their survey of home education in late 2009, the inspectors spoke to the parents of 130 children. A quarter of these either had a statement of special educational needs or, when deregistered, had been at the stage known as ‘school action plus’; meaning that they needed extra support to cope with  a special educational need (Ofsted, 2010). Other surveys have similarly found a high proportion of home educated children with special needs (Hopwood et al, 2007).

I think that most home educating parents will be aware that these figures reflect accurately  the situation today. Let us work with the figure of 25% of home educated children having special needs or disabilities for the time being and see what the implications are for the risk of neglect and abuse of home educated children as a group.

Children with disabilities and special educational needs are at greatly increased risk of being physically, sexually or emotionally abused and/or being neglected. The largest survey conducted of this phenomenon was undertaken in the United States almost fifteen years ago. 40,000 children with disabilities or special educational needs were involved and such children were found to be about four times as likely to be neglected or physically abused as children without such difficulties (Sullivan & Knutson, 2000). The great majority of this neglect and abuse took place in the home.

There are many imponderables here, but if we use the figures provided by such research as that cited above, then we find that that 25% of home educated children, those with disabilities or special needs, are likely to contain four times as many incidents of neglect or physical abuse, compared with children who do not have their special needs. Looking at home educated children as a group, this has the effect of increasing the likely incidence of neglect and abuse by 75% overall. This means that taking a home educated child at random, that child is 75% more likely to be the victim of  neglect or abuse than a child at school, purely as a result of this one factor. In reality, of course, the risk to home educated children is greater than this, for various other reasons at which I shall be looking in the future.  For now though, it is enough to say that the chance of a home educated child being abused or neglected is at least 75% higher than for children at school.

'Cruelty to children

One of the less attractive features of the campaign against Graham Badman’s proposals becoming law, was the psychological cruelty inflicted by a number of parents upon  their children, some of whom had special educational needs. During my own daughter’s childhood, I always conceived it to be a major part of my duty,  to protect her from distress and shield her from worry. To reassure her, in fact, that she was safe and that there was nothing to worry about.  This was not at all the line taken by some home educating parents in the run-up to the passage of the Children, Schools and Families Bill through parliament! For them, this was a golden opportunity to make their children anxious and in some cases hysterical with fear; simply so that they could claim that their children were being harmed by the very discussion of increased regulation of home education.

This is not a history lesson and if this sort of cruelty had ended with the abandonment of the CSF Bill in 2010, there would be little point in raking over the ashes. Unfortunately, it has not and there are still parents who are determined to exploit vulnerable children in order to make political capital of them. Consider this, which was less than three months ago:



http://www.home-education.biz/blog/education/dealing-with-highly-intrusive-parasitic-public-servants




Look at the advice given in the above post:



Always tell your children how much you love them and how, if ever they were taken from you, you would never, ever stop looking for them. Encourage them to respect their instincts and always to question the morality of authority. Make sure they learn their personal details as soon as they are old enough and tell them that wherever they are and whatever the circumstances they can always contact you.


I can imagine nothing more likely to terrify a young child out of her wits than to suggest the possibility that she might be snatched from the security of her family. It is the sort of thing which would cause most children to lay awake at night in terror, waiting to be taken. Why would you do that to your child? The answer is that you can then use your child’s response to brandish at local authorities or other people who wish to discuss a change in the law. ‘Look,’ you can tell them, ‘You have upset my child and she is now nervous and clingy, because she is frightened that social workers are about to snatch her away from her family.’

This was done by quite a few parents during the aftermath of the Badman Review. They used to boast about it on various lists. One mother announced that her son, who had developmental problems and was on the autistic spectrum, had had a ‘major meltdown’ when she told him that the authorities would be able to take  him away from her for interrogation alone! I had hoped that mistreatment of this sort had ended, but judging from some of the things I have been hearing lately, it has not. There are still parents frightening their children in this way and warning them that the government wants to enter their homes and perhaps take them from their families.

I am expecting to see more of this sort of thing when the enquiry starts in Wales about the possibility of registration of home educated children. Incidentally, despite Alison Sauer’s irritation at my mentioning the proposals contained in the bill which the Welsh Assembly hopes  to pass in the next year or so, I observe that others have picked up on the thing since I posted about it here. As I suspected, few people knew of it, but this has now been remedied. I am all in favour of change in the law, but I certainly believe that it should be discussed openly beforehand.

The DCSF writes to local authorities.....

The Department for Children, Schools and Families has written to local authorities updating them on the situation regarding home educated children with special educational needs. This is being done in light of the Badman Review and the proposed new legislation. Most of us would see this as a fairly good idea; keeping the LAs posted and reminding them of the new duties which will possibly devolve upon them with the passage of the Children, Schools and Families Bill 2009. Most of us, but not a number of home educators. The response of one mother posting on a list sums up their reaction, "OMG, how dare they!" Another cries, "Completely outrageous!"

So what do the DCSF actually say which provokes such anger? Well, to begin with they want to make sure that children withdrawn from school do not lose the specialist services which they are getting, just because they are going to be taught at home;


"In some cases it may be that parents on their own would not be able to make suitable
provision for their children but could do so with some support from the local authority. Under
section 319 of the Education Act 1996 local authorities have the power, after consulting the child’s
parent, to make special education provision otherwise than at school, including in the child’s home.
The Government expects local authorities to consider whether such provision could help home
educating parents to make suitable provision when decisions are being taken concerning the
suitability of home provision for children with SEN. Where local authorities make such provision for
a home educated child with an SEN statement then the provision can be recorded on the statement
(SEN Code of Practice, paragraph 8.96)."


This is, I think, a timely reminder. Many parents have found that services have a habit of stopping once they deregister their child and it is good that the DCSF is aware of this. There is also talk of funding children to take GCSEs if they wish and also having access to some school facilities;

"We are also planning to allow local authorities to access DSG funding where they do not
provide significant financial support but permit young people to access some school services and
fund them to take their GCSEs if they opt to enter as private candidates. We would count each such
pupil as 0.1 for DSG funding purposes, and review towards the end of the next spending review
period whether this is an appropriate level. We plan to make this change for the 2011-12 DSG
period."

Apart from that, the DCSF remind the local authorities that if the child has a statement then there must be an annual review. If it is impossible to establish that the child's needs are properly provided for in the course of the review, then a School Attendance Order should be issued.

We must of course bear in mind that some children with special educational needs are among the most vulnerable of individuals. Some suffer from global developmental delay, for example and are pretty well helpless; unable to speak, understand much, take care of themselves in even the most rudimentary fashion or express any needs or wishes at all. I really cannot see that when such a child has a statement, that it would be unreasonable when reviewing it for the child herself to be seen and her situation assessed. Some parents, despite the fact that they love and cherish their child, are actually not capable of looking after them and providing for their education single-handed.

So bland and anodyne is this document, that it is hard to see why anybody should take exception to it. As far as I can see, the main objection seems to be that the DCSF are preparing in advance for the implementation of a new law, rather than leaving it until the last moment. This would be a bad thing, because?

One is inescapably driven to the conclusion that the people who are kicking up a fuss about this letter are doing so purely and simply because it is something which looks new. In fact all the duties to which the DCSF draw the attention of local authorities are existing duties. They are alerting them to things which may change in the next few months. It is very depressing to think that some people are so opposed to change that they would start shouting about something like this as a matter of principle. It seems that anything which comes from the DCSF or mentions new legislation automatically causes fury and opposition from a certain section of the home educating community! Even more intriguing is the fact that none of the vociferous people on the lists who are complaining about this letter, actually seem to have children with special educational needs! There is a frantic effort to find anybody who actually knows about the law on special needs, just so that complaints may be made that the DCSF is overstepping the mark.

I have said before and I will say again, that this attitude, that of opposing everything suggested as a matter of principle, is likely to backfire badly. If home educators continue to refuse to deal with them, the DCSF will simply find other partners. I cannot see how this would be of any benefit at all to home educating parents. Even the new piece of research being suggested is likely to be boycotted by some parents. The effect of all this will be that the DCSF may decide that there is little point in even attempting to ascertain the views and opinions of home educators.