I remarked a few days ago that those opposed to wholly unregulated home education are once again being told that they will have "blood on their hands". Baroness Deech is the latest such person. This phrase was first used of Graham Badman of course and quickly proved counter-productive when it led to the denial of several Freedom of Information requests. The idea behind this accusation about "blood on their hands" is that vulnerable children are liable to die if any obstacles are placed in their parents' path when they wish to deregister them from school. This may be so, but what is absolutely undeniable is that children have already died as a direct result of the ease with which it is currently possible to withdraw a child from school.
Khyra Ishaq is of course one such child and another was fifteen year old Scarlett Keeling, whose mother withdrew her from school supposedly in order to home educate her. Her pedagogic technique consisted of wandering off to India with the child, who subsequently had the most educational experience of having sex on a beach in Goa with a number of men, one of whom killed her. From a purely educational viewpoint and leaving aside all safeguarding issues, I surely cannot be alone in thinking that she would have received a better education in an English classroom.
Now of course, this is not to suggest for a moment that home educated children are any more likely than those at school to be murdered. They are not. I am just pointing out that although restricting the practice of home education may lead to the deaths of children, not restricting it already has caused such deaths.
If those who agitate for regulation of home education are supposed to have "blood on their hands" for any resultant deaths, then I suppose that the same must logically apply to the people who have been campaigning for years for the practice to be completely free and unrestricted. The best parallel I can think of is with rock climbing. Traditionally, people climb with ropes and safety harnesses, everything is done in a particular way and the aim is to take as much care as is humanly possible. Then there are free climbers, who simply climb up without any precautions and take a lot of risks. Now I think that is absolutely fine; if somebody wishes to take chances like that, that's their business. I have done things like that myself and it was nobody's business but mine. Suppose though, that I had encouraged others to follow my lead and started discouraging people from using ropes and other safety aids? I might be alright on a rock face, but suppose some of those who followed me were not able to cope? What if they took their kids up there in the same way? I would be at least partly responsible for any subsequent accident.
This is pretty much what has happened with home education. The existing school system, while certainly not perfect, has grown over the years with the aim of doing the best for the greatest possible number of children. Inevitably, it fails children from time to time. Those who take their children out of school are like the free climbers whom I spoke of above. There is no reason why they should not take a risk like this, although of course when their gamble involves the education of children, other considerations must apply. But by starting organisations which encourage others to take this serious step, they must share responsibility when an atmosphere is created in which any parent can simply pull her kid out of school with no prior warning, whether or not she is capable of providing an education for her child. There is no doubt that whatever happened subsequently, Khyra Ishaq's mother genuinely intended to teach her own children. She bought workbooks and other educational resources, but of course found that she was not up to the job. This is an extreme case, but I have seen other children whose parents have deregistered them and then found that they can't really ensure that their child is being educated.
Thirty or forty years ago, mothers like Khyra Ishaq's would not have considered for a moment taking their children out of school. They would have been afraid of the truancy officer knocking on the door. The current climate, where parents feel able to remove their children from school willy nilly, has been created by groups such as Education Otherwise. If Graham Badman and Baroness Deech really can be said to have "blood on their hands" because they wish to rein in home education a little, then those who helped create the situation where Scarlett Keeling's mother could just take her out of school and whisk her off to India, must also be thought to have blood on their hands due to the unintended consequences of their actions.
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simon says Scarlett Keeling's mother could just take her out of school and whisk her off to India, must also be thought to have blood on their hands due to the unintended consequences of their actions.
ReplyDeleteMany people whisk they children away for so called hoildays durning school term all that happens is you may get a fine! and of course child has been away from school no one knows where and in some cases this can be for 2 or 4 weeks! not much the truancy officer can do because if he knocks on door he get no answer because family are away on hoilday!
'The existing school system, while certainly not perfect, has grown over the years with the aim of doing the best for the greatest possible number of children. Inevitably, it fails children from time to time."
ReplyDeleteYou could say precisely the same about home education.
The difference in the degree of responsibility between home educators publishing accounts of their own experiences and politicians taking steps to restrict the practice is immense. The one involves no compulsion (people coming across the information that they have a legal right to deregister are not therefore compelled to do so) and the other is compulsory: someone wishing to deregister a child who might be suicidal due to school bullying will have to jump through extra hoops, as a result of the actions of people such as Badman and Deech, which might cause them to leave the child in school.
ReplyDeleteWriting and talking about your free climbing doesn't make you responsible for any subsequent deaths caused by free climbing. Forcing them to use faulty harnesses might though.
Okay....first of all, I think the death of Scarlett Keeling is a red herring. I don't think that even if we get a law with unmodified Badman ideas in it, that the removal of any child from the country will be prohibited in such a way that it could protect against the events that caused her death. Of course her death is terrible and I find it hard to understand the sort of parenting that leaves a child in the circumstances that led up to it , but many millions of Britons take their children abroad -and no one is suggesting that this is stopped. How could it be? Can Passport control distinguish between "we are off for a family holiday" and "we are off to not home educate?" - and to be honest are the children in group A at any less risk than the children in group B? - Not to mention that children get murdered in the UK too - some down to inadequate parenting (ie not knowing where your child is) but mostly down to terrible chance- the wrong place at the wrong time.
ReplyDeleteThe bigger issues here though- will making home education harder endanger the lives/welfare of children? Yes, probably of a few -I am thinking here of the suicidal teenagers bullied at school, but it is impossible to quantify. The opposite side of the coin is will making HE harder save/protect any children from abuse? Again, possibly a few (it is at least theoretically possible)- but it is unquantifiable- the numbers of families who choose to home educate is still a small proportion of the population, we all know the statistics are not reliable and we are largely relying on hindsight.
What would be a much more efficient method of saving children would be a social services system which actually worked - what ever the educational status of many of the dead children in this country over the past few years, the one thing that is obvious is that they were already known to social services... but this didn't protect them.
Howver, at the risk of sounding completely ambivalent here - I do wonder whether it is too easy to just withdraw your child from school. I do know that the Scottish system of having to seek permission to withdraw is much hated - and I know that some Scottish LAs (or whatever they are called) abuse that process. Yet some families make the decision in difficult circumstances and then find that they don't want to back down- and yet the decision because disastrous for the whole family. Without going into details, I spent much of yesterday with such a family (and various professionals involved). Everyone (and I mean everyone , including the LA) is trying to be helpful; but the pessimistic part of me can see (a few years down the road, not now) ending up with a care order; and I do wonder whther by propping things up now we are making that more inevitable later. That is all I am going to say about the case, but perhaps a few more people need to recognise that home education is a huge commitment and that getting it wrong can have detrimental effects on not just the child, but the whole family.
Julie says- I spent much of yesterday with such a family (and various professionals involved). Everyone (and I mean everyone , including the LA) is trying to be helpful; but the pessimistic part of me can see (a few years down the road, not now) ending up with a care order; and I do wonder whther by propping things up now we are making that more inevitable later.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean by such a family? did you get briefed by Hampshire LA before meeting the family? or is theis family not doing home education in the right way? was Jan Lewis involved?
How come Hampshire LA come running to you to help?
you then say but perhaps a few more people need to recognise that home education is a huge commitment and that getting it wrong can have detrimental effects on not just the child, but the whole family.
What do you mean by getting it wrong? not doing home education the way your group does it? or not doing home education the Hampshire LA way? we need less people poking they nose in that is what is wrong with England! Crazy old Badman is just waht is so wrong with england poking his nose in where it is not wanted!
Khyra was seen to be safe and well by a social worker about a month before the EWO visited. The EWOs visited for at least an hour and decided they were providing a suitable education (mistakenly in my view - there were virtually no educational materials and a failure to supply further information as agreed). Khyra was also being abused whilst at school but did not disclose to a teacher despite plenty of opportunity. How would the new law have changed this result? Do you think the EWO would have been better trained to spot abuse than the social worker? Do you think she would have been more likely to disclose to the male EWO who she had just met than female teachers she knew well and were obviously caring?
ReplyDeleteSimon, you say,
ReplyDelete'.....a direct result of the ease with which it is currently possible to withdraw a child from school.'
You could also argue that abuse and neglect is the direct result of the ease with which it is currently possible to get pregnant and become a parent.Would it be acceptable government to appoint professionals to visit pregnant women with the purpose of checking whether they are fit to be parents? Of course not. Attending midwives and GPs do not have this role, attendance at antenatal visits and classes is not mandatory and IF someone had a concern there are channels where concerns can be addressed.
The argument is of course about how much control government should assume in family life. As the vast majority of families fall in the 'good enough' category , the argument comes down to how much should a society put systems in place to protect the vulnerable few and at what cost .
In the discourse of politics each sides polemic will seek to establish its own point of view and will often use emotive language and inflated numbers to get that across in debate. I find it rather simplistic to use extreme examples and statements on either end of the debate to make the point. Both sides in this argument have used these tactics. One in offence the other in defence.
'For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.'
I have come to see that reactionary responses are counter productive to each side and only result in polarisation and the use of emotive extremes.
Not everyone involved in the home education groups thinks that polemic discourse which identifies one individual or ideology as 'guilty' of advancing a level of regulation they disagree with, is a beneficial defensive tactical move.
Mimicking and reflecting government propaganda tactics and not recognising them as emotive tactics, skirts many of the issues.
One child who is neglected or abused either by 'the system' or by 'lack of a system' in a given community is of concern but the balance of what happens to the majority of law abiding innocent families means that both sides view needs to be recognised and acknowledged.
The Keeling case is unfortunate, but not really relevant to UK home education. If I remove a child from school and move with that child to India for six months, it's actually no longer an issue for UK social services because unless the Indian authorities agree with any concerns, it's out of their jurisdiction. If that six months starts at the beginning of the long school break in summer then it'll be two months before anyone in the UK officialdom realises. This is where Baroness Deech lost the plot regarding forced marriages - unless you're going to constrain all overseas travel by children, it'll happen whether they're in school or not.
ReplyDeleteYou will find that home educators will be vehemently opposed to any attempt at regulation while we have examples of officials abusing the powers they have, either by overstepping them, or merely hiding behind the wall of secrecy of a family court. Officialdom is not to be trusted.
While I don't know all the facts of the case, the most recent one to come to light is currently on show at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf5XR7w9H-Y where if there is a good reason for the actions of social services, they should reveal it. I'm sure if they asked the family for permission it would be given, because I'm sure the family would like to know as well.
Ishaq was known to social services, it was just a complete cock-up on the part of social services that let it all happen. If all social services departments suddenly had another two hundred cases each, are they likely to get better or worse at spotting the important cases? The blood-on-hands scenario is very possible, and it doesn't need to be a home educated child that suffers, it could be another child who gets missed because of all the resources spent checking up on all those extra families that don't need it.