What’s wrong with the recommendations of the Badman Review

Quick summary

• The review recommendations are completely over the top. A steamroller to crack a nut. And there’s no evidence that the nut even exists. This is not a safety net (waiting to catch us if we fall) it’s more like a butterfly net (trapping us and controlling our movements).
• This is not about parents’ rights vs children’s rights, it is about the government not trusting parents to meet our responsibilities. Educating our children is a duty, not a right, of parents. It is not the business of the state to tell us how to do it.
• Making a minority choice is not a crime. This is like saying all vegetarians have to register and have their dietary plans approved, or all Muslims should have their houses searched in case they are planning a terrorist attack.
• The proposals would give a green light to local authority officers to exercise their prejudices. Annual registration means that parents would have to apply each year for permission to educate their own children. The grounds on which permission could be refused are extremely broad, and depend purely on the assessment of local authority officers, who may not even have worked with the family as a whole.

NEW: Download a detailed briefing about the Review – useful to give to MPs, journalists, local councillors etc.

General points about the review

Still no evidence of a problem

Having been specifically asked to look for evidence that home education could be used as a cover for abuse, forced marriage or domestic servitude Graham Badman found no evidence that this was actually happening.  In paragraph 8.14 of the report, he stated:

“I can find no evidence that elective home education is a particular factor in the removal of children to forced marriage, servitude or trafficking or for inappropriate abusive activities.”

Nevertheless, he is proposing draconian measures, including the right for local authority personnel to interview children alone.  The reason he gives for this drastic change is:

“on the basis of local authority evidence and case studies presented, even acknowledging the variation between authorities, the number of children known to children’s social care in some local authorities is disproportionately high relative to the size of their home educating population.” (para 8.12)

This is a very dubious basis on which to overturn our families’ right to privacy.  Points to consider are:

• This is not proper evidence.  Given that the size of the home educating population is not known, in any local authority, nobody can know the proportion that are known to children’s social care.
• Through Freedom of Information requests, home educators have discovered that only 90 local authorities were asked about home educated children known to social care, and only 25 replied. Both of these were self-selecting samples and cannot be taken as representative. The full figures have still not been released for public scrutiny.
• What does “known to children’s social care” mean?  Many home educators are erroneously referred to social services by well-meaning (or malevolent) neighbours or professionals, who don’t understand that home education is a legal choice.  Are all these families included in those “known to children’s social care”?
• An analysis of the responses of 122 local authorities to Freedom of Information requests has revealed that the rate of abuse among children known to be electively home educated is in fact less than half of that in the population as a whole.
  See
  http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rbrk5-GEdrUdcmfi670Mihg&gid=2

Parents’ rights and children’s rights

The review report and the DCSF consultation both talk about balancing the rights of parents and the rights of children, as if these two things are contrary to each other.

As well as being completely illogical, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way education law in England works.

In 2006, Lord Adonis wrote on behalf of the government to set out his reasons for opposing an amendment that would enshrine in statute a positive right of children to a suitable education.  It is worth reading the full text of his letter. (opens PDF)

Key points are:

• The duty to ensure that children receive an education rests first and foremost with parents. Lord Adonis referred to the “fourfold foundation” of current education law, and quoted Lord Bingham in the Ali case (Ali v Lord Grey School [2006] UKHL 14), who said:
  “This fourfold foundation has endured over a long period because it has, I think, certain inherent strengths. First, it recognises that the party with the keenest personal interest in securing the best available education for a child ordinarily is, or ought to be, the parent of the child.”
• Children’s right to education (already enshrined in English law through the Human Rights Act) is not a positive right to an education of any particular type or standard, but is phrased negatively (“no one shall bedenied the right to education”)
• Legislating for a positive “right to education” might mean that local authorities were obliged to offer a particular type or standard of education. Lord Adonis was advised by his lawyers that this would not be a good thing.

The recommendations

Recommendation 1. A compulsory register of home educators

We will be required to present ourselves to the authorities every year and inform them if we move house, as if we were criminals on probation.

Worse still, this recommendation also includes the following:

“At the time of registration parents/carers/guardians must provide a clear statement of their educational approach, intent and desired/planned outcomes for the child over the following twelve months.”

For autonomous educators, being asked to make plans for the following twelve months, and state the outcomes we expect at the end of that time is nonsense.  A 2009 survey of home educators in the Brighton & Hove area found that autonomous and child-led approaches are the most common among local home educators.

Points to consider are:

• Summerhill School is not expected to supply planned outcomes for each pupil.  If they can operate their school following a philosophy which allows children autonomy, we should have the same freedom.
• In a healthy democracy, there should be room for disagreement and debate over educational approaches.  Effectively outlawing one (highly effective) form of education is an act worthy of a dictatorship.

For a fuller explanation of why this requirement is a big problem for autonomous educators, see:

• “Where’s your plan?”, says Mr Badman, by Allie at Reflections in the Greenhouse
• Autonomous learning can’t be planned, by Gill at Sometimes its Peaceful
• Why the Badman Report is not ‘reasonable‘, by Lucy at Free Ranger

Recommendation 7: Monitoring, compulsory visits, right to interview children alone

Some points to consider:

• Increased surveillance is not an effective way to tackle child abuse.  If the government wants to keep children safe, it should work to strengthen supportive communities, not give extra duties to already overloaded councils
  See http://www.radical.org.uk/barefoot/heducation.htm
• Two recent surveys of opinion among home educated children have shown that around 77% do not wish to discuss their education with local authority staff.  If local authority officers are required to visit and interview home educated children who do not wish to see them, they will be directly contravening the requirement placed on them by section 53 of the Children Act 2004, to, where reasonably practicable, take into account the child’s wishes and feelings with regard to the provision of services.
  See
  http://www.ukhome-educators.co.uk/Survey/childsurvey0609.htm
  and
  http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/results-of-poll.html
• The powers recommended by Badman for local education officers exceed those currently entrusted to child protection social workers, who have to apply to a court for a child assessment order if parents do not consent for their child to be interviewed alone.  Children being interviewed by the police under suspicion of having committed a crime are entitled to have an appropriate adult present, but home educated children (unless they are particularly vulnerable) will not be allowed this right.

Recommendation 23: Power of LAs to refuse or revoke registration

Recommendation 23 is:
“That local authority adult services and other agencies be required to inform those charged with the monitoring and support of home education of any properly evidenced concerns that they have of parents’ or carers’ ability to provide a suitable education irrespective of whether or not they are known to children’s social care, on such grounds as

• alcohol or drug abuse
• incidents of domestic violence
• previous offences against children

And in addition:

• anything else which may affect their ability to provide a suitable and efficient education”

Regarding the first three bullet points, if the concerns were there and sufficiently evidenced then surely the family would be getting the support they needed – if they then felt HE was appropriate why is there
an issue?

If the children are unsafe with this hypothetical family they shouldn’t still be there, if they are safe there is no problem.

The first three points are therefore redundant, and whole point of this recommendation is the final catch-all point. The final point is subjective, and not only calls on the LEA person to judge the parent / carer, but also to decide what is suitable and how it should be achieved.

This is an invitation for LA officers to exercise their prejudices, and will lead to harassment and victimisation of some families.