On not conflating education and welfare

It is almost a battle cry of British home education and has been since the Badman Report in 2009; you must not conflate education with welfare! The problem is of course that when you are talking about home education it is almost impossible not to do so. The reason is simple.  My decision to educate my daughter at home was made on purely educational grounds. I thought that one-to-one tuition in a relaxed setting would yield better educational results than having her in a classroom with thirty other children. This is very rarely the case with home educating parents in this country though. Time after time, research shows that education is not a major factor in the decision to home educate. Lifestyle, family closeness, bullying, religion and things like school phobia are common reasons for choosing this option; education by itself is not. Indeed, in many cases, education has no bearing at all on the parents’ decision to educate their child at home.

An example of home education being undertaken for motives wholly unconnected with education cropped up on one of the big internet support groups recently.  I found this quite infuriating and I shall explain why.  A mother said that she had recently deregistered her nine year-old son from school, because he was screaming, crying, being sick and threatening to kill himself; so anxious was he not to be separated from her. She wondered if she had made the right decision. Needless to say, other members of the group hastened to assure her that she had, even telling her that her son would be fine when he was older and that she didn’t need to worry. School was the only problem and once that was taken out of the equation, everything would be fine.  

Now very few nine year-olds threaten to commit suicide; it is one of the greatest warning signs that something is terribly wrong, that you can imagine. What is happening in that child’s life that he should feel that way? Is he afraid of school, or just fearful of being separated from his mother? Why has the matter only now reached crisis point, after he has been at school for four or five years? Has there been some trauma in his life unconnected with school, such as a relative dying? Has the mother got a new partner? Have they moved house? Is there a possibility that the child is being abused?  Does the mother actually want to educate her own child? Is she capable of doing so? These are the kind of questions one would wish to know the answer to before telling the mother that the only thing wrong is school and that once he is removed from there, everything will be fine. At any rate, this case illustrates perfectly what I was saying about home education very often not being about education at all. Here is a mother making the decision to home educate for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with education. This is why the  advice not to conflate education with welfare is a bit of a red herring. In almost every example of home education in this country that I have ever come across, education is only one of the factors which precipitate the decision to home educate. Often, as in the case above, education is completely irrelevant and welfare concerns are the only motive.

Are local authorities acting unlawfully when they monitor home education on a regular basis?

One of the most irritating features of home education in this country is the tendency of parents to latch on to random and fairly obscure words and phrases, incorporating them in every letter they write to their council or submission made to a select committee. ‘Conflate’ is one such word, ‘purposive’ is another; as in ‘learning by purposive conversation‘. Combined with the use of odd Latin expressions, I think that the hope is that this will lend their writing a veneer of erudition. Sadly, it has the opposite effect!

Without doubt, the most popular and overused expression in recent years has been ‘ultra vires’. These Latin words simply means beyond one’s powers and are generally used in connection with statutory bodies such as local authorities or government departments. For home educators, this phrase is most often used about the routine monitoring of home education. This is on the increase in some areas; the county of Lincolnshire and city of Nottingham, for example. The claim is made that these local authorities are accordingly acting in an unlawful manner and exceeding their powers. Let us see if this might be true.

The basis for many of the claims made about local authorities overstepping the mark with home education are founded upon a couple of lines in the 2007 guidelines on home education. They say:



2.7 Local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine  
      basis.



There are three points to consider here. First, local authorities go beyond their statutory duties all the time and mostly people are glad about this. The statutory duties are the absolute bare minimum that an authority must undertake. If they do not do these things, then they are in breach of the law and Council Tax payers or the government can call them to account. Doing more than this bare minimum though is what most of us expect from our council. If my council has a statutory duty to run at least one library and then instead opens three or four, I am not going to complain about this. If they have a duty to empty my bin at least once a fortnight, I shall not be taking them to a judicial review if they want to collect my rubbish more frequently than this. They are not acting unlawfully by doing more than their statutory duty.

In other words, the fact that they may have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring home education on a regular basis does not mean that they cannot or should not do this. It is just one of those extra things that they might choose to do which goes beyond the absolute minimum that they are obliged to do by law.

The second point to consider is that it is in any case debatable whether or not such a duty exists in law. The law is unclear on this point and many local authorities take a different view of it than that held by home educating parents. Before instituting a policy of this sort, local authorities always take extensive legal advice, knowing as they do that home educators are a touchy bunch. I rang up  Lincolnshire and Nottingham and they both confirmed that they have taken the advice of barristers on this question before sending out the letters to which some home educating parents object. What it essentially boils down to is this. The legal department at these  local authorities believe one thing and have been confirmed in their belief by consultation with experts in the law relating to education. A handful of parents believe that they have a better understanding of the law, chiefly because of what they have read on various internet lists to which they belong. It will be interesting to see which side are right!

The third point is even simpler. Let us assume that local authorities do not have a right to monitor the quality of home education on a regular basis. In other words, let us concede everything that the most militant home educators assert so forcefully. Let us even grant that such actions on the part of local authorities would be unlawful. None of this makes the least difference. The aim of yearly checks has nothing to do with the quality of home education; they are intended simply and solely to establish that an education is actually still taking place. They have no reference at all to the quality of the thing; they just want evidence that the child is in fact being educated. The passage of time can have the effect of altering what would be a suitable education for a child and the fact that the local authority was satisfied that a child of five was receiving a suitable education tells them nothing at all about that same child at twelve or fourteen.

Local authorities are not acting unlawfully in checking each year that children who are not at school are receiving an education. It may not be strictly part of their duties to do this, but as I remarked above, we are usually pleased when our council does more than they have to! I am not at all sure that those home educating parents who have learnt all the law they know from just reading blogs and home educating forums really do know more than the Borough Solicitors in various places. The way to settle the matter would of course be to seek a judicial review and I understand that two people are currently attempting this in Lincolnshire. It will be interesting to see what happens.