Select Committee Inquiry on Elective Home Education

Children, Schools and Families Committee Select Committee Announcement

Committee Office, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA Media Enquiries: Rebecca Jones 020 7219 5693 / 07917 488549

No. 48 of Session 2008-09 7 October 2009

Elective Home Education

Oral Evidence Sessions

The Children, Schools and Families Committee will be taking formal oral evidence as follows:

Monday 12 October 2009 at 4.45pm
Wilson Room, Portcullis House

Witnesses:

Graham Badman CBE;
Ms Diana R Johnson MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools, and Penny Jones, Independent Schools and School Organisation, DCSF.

The purpose of this session is to examine the evidence base for and recommendations of the DCSF commissioned review of elective home education in England.

Please note these sessions will be open to the public on a first come, first served basis. It is advisable to allow about 20 minutes to pass through security checks. Committee rooms and timings are subject to change.

Please note that seating is limited and there is no guarantee of access to the Committee Room. There is no system for the prior reservation of seats in Committee Rooms. Interested parties are strongly encouraged to follow instead a live video and audio feed of proceedings, which can be viewed on the Parliamentary website at http://www.parliament.uk

Wednesday 14 October 2009 at 9.30am
Wilson Room, Portcullis House

Witnesses:

(At 9.30am)
Jane Lowe, Trustee, Home Education Advisory Service; Fiona Nicholson, Trustee /Chair Government Policy Group, Education Otherwise; Simon Webb, home educating parent; David Wright, home educating parent, and Carole Rutherford, co-founder, Autism in Mind


(At 10.30am)
Colin Green, Chair, Families, Communities and Young People Policy Committee, Association of Directors of Children's Services; Ellie Evans, Head of Children Missing Education team, West Sussex County Council; Sir Paul Ennals, Chief Executive, National Children's Bureau, and Phillip Noyes, Director of Public Policy, NSPCC

The purpose of this session is to examine the views of home educators, local authority representatives and national children's organisations on the recommendations of the DCSF-commissioned review of elective home education in England and assess the desirability and feasibility of those recommendations.

Please note these sessions will be open to the public on a first come, first served basis. It is advisable to allow about 20 minutes to pass through security checks. Committee rooms and timings are subject to change.

Please note that seating is limited and there is no guarantee of access to the Committee Room. There is no system for the prior reservation of seats in Committee Rooms. Interested parties are strongly encouraged to follow instead a live video and audio feed of proceedings, which can be viewed on the Parliamentary website at http://www.parliament.uk


FURTHER INFORMATION:

The Children, Schools and Families Committee is one of the House's Select Committees related to government departments: its terms of reference are to examine "the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for Children, Schools and Families and its associated public bodies". The Committee chooses its own subjects of inquiry, within the overall terms of reference. It invites written evidence from interested parties and holds public evidence sessions, usually in committee rooms at the House of Commons, although it does have the power to meet away from Westminster. At the end of each inquiry, the Committee will normally agree a Report based on the evidence received. Such Reports are published and made available on the Internet. Copies are sent free to those who give oral evidence. Reports usually contain recommendations to the Government and other bodies. The Government by convention responds to reports within about two months of publication. These responses are also published.
The Members of the Committee are:

Mr Barry Sheerman (Chairman) Labour, Huddersfield
Annette Brooke Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and Poole North
Mr Douglas Carswell Conservative, Harwich
Mr David Chaytor Labour, Bury North
Mrs Sharon Hodgson Labour, Gateshead East and Washington West
Paul Holmes Liberal Democrat, Chesterfield
Fiona Mactaggart Labour, Slough
Mr Andrew Pelling Independent, Croydon Central
Mr Andy Slaughter Labour, Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush
Helen Southworth Labour, Warrington South
Mr Graham Stuart Conservative, Beverley & Holderness
Mr Edward Timpson Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich
Derek Twigg Labour, Halton
Lynda Waltho Labour, Stourbridge

Media Enquiries: Rebecca Jones, Tel 020 7219 5693 / 07917 488549, email: jonesbl@parliament.uk
Specific Committee Information: Tel 020 7219 6181 / 1376, email: csfcom@parliament.uk
Committee Website: http://www.parliament.uk/csf/ Watch committees and parliamentary debates online: http://www.parliamentlive.tv
Publications / Reports / Reference Material: Copies of all select committee reports are available from the Parliamentary Bookshop (12 Bridge St, Westminster, 020 7219 3890) or the Stationery Office (0845 7023474). Committee reports, press releases, evidence transcripts, Bills; research papers, a directory of MPs, plus Hansard (from 8am daily) and much more, can be found on http://www.parliament.uk

I'm absolutely outraged at the selection of witnesses chosen for this inquiry. It's almost certainly a foregone conclusion that it will turn out to be a big stitch up. Only three of the witnesses selected have any experience of HE. The rest are composed of people from the government and non-governmental-organisations including the NSPCC - none of which have any real knowledge or experience of HE. My son is concerned that no HE children are included as witnesses.

I have no idea who David Wright is but I am dismayed that Simon Webb has been included as a witness. He has the cheek to call himself a HE parent despite the fact that he is no longer active as one. The man can best be described as a dishonest journalist who has used his column in the Independent to attack HE families who do not subscribe to his philosophy or styles of teaching and learning. What disgusts me the most about Simon Webb are his views and attitudes towards HE children with certain types of SEN as represented in a blog comment he made on the 11th August 2009.

Is the proportion of home educated children with special needs higher than in the school population? This idea has been put forward, but of course without knowing how many children are educated at home it is a bit hard to calculate and compare percentages! There is no doubt that a quick glance at the messages on both the HE-UK and Education Otherwise listings seems to indicate that practically every child mentioned has a special need of one sort or another. A closer look reveals something very interesting.

Almost none of these children have what most people would describe as a special need or disability. There do not appear to be quadraplegics, children with spina bifida or Down's Syndrome, the deaf or the blind, those with moderate to severe learning difficulties. Instead, they apparently suffer from a variety of problems which are usually alluded to by a few cryptic letters; ADHD,ME,ODD,OCD and so on. Since many of these mothers, for those on these message boards are almost invariably female, present as articulate, anxious and middle class, it is interesting to speculate about the reason for the sorts of problem which they claim their children are afflicted with.

It is a long standing joke among those with whom I work that middle class children are never illiterate. They "suffer" instead from dyslexia. Nor are they naughty and badly behaved; it is that they are displaying the symptoms of ADHD. Clumsy and ill co-ordinated middle class kid? Must be dyspraxia. And so on and so forth. In other words, there is a good chance that there is actually nothing much wrong with many of these children other than the usual childhood problems; namely that they are reluctant to learn, they drop and break things and don't do as they are told.

I have been thinking about this apropos of the numbers of children claimed to be known to children's social care. Some people have put the idea forward that many cases where the child is known to social services are simply because of some special need or other. Again, it would very helpful to know the figures involved and in particular the reasons for the referrals, which always seem to be missing from the published data. One thing is sure, you are unlikely in the extreme to get a social services referral just because your kid is clumsy or disobedient. If special needs referrals are skewing the figures then there must be a bit more to it than that.

From the perspective of a parent who is HE because schools failed to provide sufficient and appropriate support for my son with SEN, I find this blog comment incredulous and highly offensive. I am sure than many other HE parents of children with SEN will agree with me and consider Simon Webb to be clearly unfit to participate in this inquiry.

Outraged, foregone conclusion, and stitch up are words that apply very well to this inquiry. The controversial selection of witnesses participating in the inquiry raises the question of the independence of the selection process. This has resulted in a torrent of complaints being sent to the committee about the selection of witnesses and home education representatives - who are anything but representative of the HE community.

Graham Badman has had three attempts at collecting evidence to support his conclusions and back up his figures with. One attempt to gather evidence was carried out even after the Badman Report was published! If the methodology of a review is wrong at the outset then any quantitative results cannot be anything other than incorrect and unusable for determining a conclusing or formulating a strategy. There appears to be no evidence that anybody with expertise in statistics has been called in to scrutinise the figures in order to determine their accuracy, despite the government and civil service having many fine statisticians within their ranks.

The inclusion of Simon Webb as a witness is fraught with concern from the HE community because his views are not consistent with those of the majority of the HE community. An increasing number of HE families are concluding that Simon Webb is a suspect and ungenuine individual who may even be a mole or a saboteur. It is becoming clearer as each day passes that Simon Webb's main intention of getting involved in HE is not to support HE families but to further his career in journalism, and that HE is merely providing a platform for him at the moment.

Many questions have been raised about the selection of witnesses including:

1. Why is EO the only HE support group represented on the panel when EO does not represent the majority of HE parents? It is estimated that fewer than 10% of all HE parents in the UK are members of EO. Therefore, any comments about EO being the largest and oldest HE support group mean very little in practice.

2. Why was nobody from AEUK, AHEd, HEUK, The Badman Review Action group, or the Stop the Government Stigmatising Home Education group called as witnesses? All of these groups have sent in submissions and members of these groups have asked to be witnesses.

3. Why have no established researchers or authors on home education including Paula Rothermel, Roland Meighan, the Fortune Woods, or Alan Thomas been invited? Paula Rothermel was involved in the review, has submitted to the select committee, and even volunteered herself to act as a witness.

4. Why are there no representatives from religious and cultural home education movements?

5. Where is the independent statistician to show how flawed Mr Badman's statistics are?

6. Why are charities involved? Isn't this supposed to be an inquiry into the conduct of the review and its recommendations rather than its actual content?

7. Why has a representative of the NSPCC been called as a witness to this inquiry? Their policy adviser, Vijay Patel, smeared home educators with unfounded allegations of child abuse on Radio 2 on Tuesday 20th January 2009. He was then asked if there was any evidence to back up his claim with and admitted that there was no evidence. This resulted in him having to make a public, if not well publicised, apology.

8. Why have no HE children been invited as witnesses? Chloe Watson of the HEYC published a damning commentary about the fact that the views of HE children have been completely ignored as no HE children had been invited to give evidence. When she asked why, she was told that the committee chose who should give oral evidence by selecting those they felt would answer the questions they wanted to pose best.

In the light of these facts, I am convinced that the select committee should be bombarded with complaints over the appallingly skewed and biased selection of witnesses. Submit complaints using the following email address: csfcom@parliament.uk

Video links to watch select committee meetings can be found here.

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Playe ... ingId=4813

Videos are viewable in Win Media and also in Silverlight. Silverlight is available for Linux.

Here is a transcript of the meeting, courtesy of Shena Deuchars:

Part 1

5:20 Start of meeting; Barry Sheerman (BS) greeted gallery - it's quite full.

BS introduced called on Diana Johnson (DJ) to start

DJ: Cannot refer to monitoring because out to consult; Friday's document: LAs can claim money for EHEs, SEN first; exam centres for EHEs; when recommendations implemented, England will still be liberal on EHE - no NC, no laws against it.

GB: registration, light-touch monitoring; if I were a dir of Children's Services I would not last long if I did not know about 80,000 in my care. [But EHEs are NOT in his care!!!] Report is critical of LAs - support for SEN and training of staff. Why did the children leave school? Tried to represent EHE opinions. Parents consider EHE a place of last resort. Plus a group of parents with philosophical belief that they can do ed better. Turn to safeguarding - initial press coverage was not a good thing. I asked two questions about safeguarding - are the concerns over-represented? what could be done about this? Education - need further work on 21C education (what is suitable and efficient?) and on autonomous education.

Balance rights of children with the rights of parents - tried to give EHE children and parents a voice; LA forum. Believes EHE holds a mirror to the school system. Surprised by vociferous minority

Paul Holmes (Chesterfield): Met EHE this summer. Para 8.12 - disproportionately known to social care. Why known to SC? SEN, e.g.

GB: Understands need for clarity 17 disability; 37 assistance; 47 child protection. Original data confused - 41 CPP - glitch was argued so he went back to check - the 41 was double - now understood to be 5X general population. 1 Oct data - from 74 LAs, there is double proportion. S47 enquiry only held after assessment and CPP after that. Figures presented now are only those with CPP.

PH: Are the figures for EHE known to SC only those on CPP?

GB: Yes.

PH: Huge disparities between LAs - How to explain?

GB: Can't - EHE unevenly spread; fewer EHE if schooling satisfactory; material deprivation. If LAs reflect on why children are dereg, should also reflect on what they don't know. SCRs - disparity can be explained by LAs not knowing what they don't know.

PH: What about false reporting? are they in the figures?

GB: S47 enquiries don't occur on the basis of false reporting.

PH: Will data be made available so that EHEs can look at it?

DJ: We are working through the FoIs - huge number.

PH: Put data on web so that EHE can see it w/o FoI.

Penny Jones (PJ): Data from second report is on web.

GB: New data (74) raises more concern. 0.4% of [*known*] EHE are on CPP and 0.2% in general pop. Should not

Chap on left (CL): If there are twice as many EHE as those known to LAs, then there are only 0.2% on CPP. [HURRAH!]

GB: If we double EHE, then the numbers are higher. If 0.2% is general then we remove another 20,000 which reduces the 0.2%...

CL: Rubbish - deal with data as it is. We have no reason to assume that the unknown are less safe.

GB: repeats "twice the percentage". Will clarify data afterwards. Second set od data - LAs asked us to raise other concerns: NEETs, suitable ed.

CL: NEETs in EHE?

GB: In 74 LAs - 1220 16-18s [?] 220 NEETS (22%)

Division Bell - meeting adjourned - Not sure who else is there, but I see Ann Newstead.

Part 2

6:10 restart (Chap on left is Graham Stuart (GS))

Annette Brooks (AB): [info from Tania's email] GB, can you confirm that your data is correct?

GB: Yes - checked by DCSF statistician. BTW, back to GS's question - we can't be sure that the unknown 50% are safe. My data is correct, not yours. But we'll send you more data.

BS: EHEers are cross because they want to be judged on education not on CPP.

DJ: That's right. Govt wants to ensure good ed for children.

BS: I want every child to get a good deal and obviously great experiences - but also obvious evidence of not good education.

DJ: Agrees.

AB: In favour of simple registration. However, applications - clearcut to refuse on CP grounds. Right of appeal?

DJ: Yes, any process needs to be fair and consult is on this so I can't comment. Fairness is key.

AB: Would like to have seen case studies of good EHE in GB's report. I know of cases where children are removed, e.g. children with ASD, parents threatened by being judged on some unknown critera for suitable.

GB: If money flows to LA, then LA can commission other services to support EHE. Voluntary sector (AiM) can provide better support and they should be able to draw down the money. It is perverse to cut children off from resources as soon as they leave school. Most of my report is about meeting children's needs in EHE.

BS: The problem is that anyone engaged with SS has a stigma. Need positive relationship in support for EHE, not "inspection".

DJ: That's govt's view. Ned good practice.

AB: Welcome support recommendations. But concerned that parent may have child who will never fit the round hole of schooling and will there be flexibility?

GB: the report would not stop that. Trying to say - it is important for govt to know about every child and

Man on right (MR): Could we drop registration and make obligation to receive advice?

DJ: Need register in order to be able to plan services.

MR: will there be a sanction for not registration?

DJ: It is out for consultation.

GB: Annual registration is not onerous. There are some bad cases out there and [quote from Daniel Monk].

MR: This is about the state intervening in the family.

GB: Need changes to guarantee rights of child.

Lynda Waltho (LW): access to child - police need warrant, LAs do not use current powers. Why do they need new powers?

GB: LA quote - we have no way to safeguard children and be sure that they meet ECM. No way of knowing they are in country unless we see child. LAs do not have to use powers. We need to safeguard children. Quote from Jane Lowe: if you EHE, it is first and foremost a home. LAs need to respect that.

LW: What if child does not want to meet LA?

GB: Was dreading question. It is up to the sensitivity of the officer - does the child really want it or are they repeating what the parent says? Preparing to involve other trusted adults. We are not trying to prevent good EHE but we are judging each case on its merits and trusting the good sense of others.

BS: We are going to talk to a group of EHE children.

LW: I am calmed by your response but you're talking a lot about training. What about resources? This could be a bottomless pit. Is that another question you don't like?

PJ: Cost of implementation... in full response. Resources have been earmarked.

David Chaytor (DC): If stats are so difficult to collate, are there no info on learning outcomes?

DJ: Data is incomplete. EG, GCSE stats would not show.

DC: What about KS2 or GCSE stats would they not show EHE?

PJ: Unless we know about all of them, we do cannot say how representative they are.

GB: If we extend access to exam cetres we'll get better data. NEETs data is stark also data in JobCentre+. Do we know enough about the outcomes? No, not that they don't have any, but that we don't know. LAs don't know when to intervene

DC: Stmt of intended learning?

DJ: Two sides of A4 per child. Issues with autonomous learning we need to address. Work to do on this. Also to see what is suitable and efficient. Stmt not more than a few pages.

GB: Glad it won't be me doing this. Against background of 21C - back to UN. Understand why autonomous ed say this but child has right to be part of society. Need broad brush curriculum that gives child choices. If you don't know about something, how can you have a choice? Harrison case: Ed demands at least an element of supervision. Leaving child to work out own course is at best childminding.

DC: Implication is that there should be some general outcomes not per child.

GB: As someone with 40 years experience, partaking part in society requires certain knowledge therefore stmt should be definable.

BS: Mixing with peers? Research on quality of outcomes in terms of citizens?

GB: Not to my knowledge. CoE...

Edward Timpson (ET): EHE despair of system but also because they believe they can do better. Does stmt not mean that state can regulate the education as opposed to having freedom, not strait-jacketed by NC, etc.?

GB: Broad, balanced, relevant, differentiated - from red book. Minister said that we would not be constraining like other European countries. Cannot pin down EHE - enormous variety. Curriculum model would not work. Need a working group to work it out. We want all children to have achieved something (football, music, chess, whatever) - have to be able to spell that out. Cannot leave it laissez-faire.

ET: Light-touch monitoring, light-touch curriculum. Given examples of countries where it is regulated. How about countries with light touch?

GB: Tasmania. EHE involved in monitoring. UK EHE rejected it. However, EHEers have an opportunity to shape what is happening to them.

BS: Closed session.