There is currently considerable disquiet on one of the home education Internet lists about the case of an apparently home educating mother in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. She has been referred, under circumstances which remain obscure, to social services. The assumption is that the referral was prompted by her home educating, rather than any other concern. Of course, without knowing a good deal more about the family than the mother chooses to reveal to an Internet forum, it is impossible to know what is really going on here. Let us assume for a moment though that the case is as presented and that somebody in Barking and Dagenham's education department has tipped off social services about the home education and raised it as a concern. What are we to make of this? I know a little about the situation in this borough because, as I have mentioned in the past, my wife works there in a role which brings her into contact with many exceedingly dysfunctional families with young children. I would not say from what I have heard that home education is very common in this East London borough, but what is not at all rare is parents not sending their children to school, which is an entirely different matter. A number of parents drift into the habit of not sending their kids to school regularly because they have chaotic and disorganised lifestyles. They stay up late, take their children out visiting with them until one or two in the morning and then neither the kids or the parents wake up in time for school the next day. If this happens a few times and nobody takes any firm action, some parents simply stop sending their children entirely after a while. The school sometimes colludes with this and it has been known for schools to hint that if parents were to tell them that they were moving, that it would then be possible for the school to remove the child's name from the register. This suits the school, who don't want a load of fuss and extra paperwork and also the parent who does not want to have to get up early to take the kid to school. Truancy reflects badly on the school as well as the parents and most schools like to avoid having too much truancy. It suggestes that there is something wrong with their school and if a way can be found to remove a persistent truant from the register, many will jump at the chance.
Of course this is not home education at all; it is a child missing from education. However, without looking into such families a little and visiting the home, talking to the child and so on, it is impossible to gauge the true state of affairs. Children from this sort of home background often are at risk in one way and another. The mother might be in the habit of leaving the kid at home while she goes out in the evenings; I also know of several cases like this where the mother was on the game or using drugs.
In a number of local authority areas now, a child not at school is being regarded as being, prima facie, at risk. This is not a desirable state of affairs and yet a very understandable reaction among those who wish to protect the interests of vulnerable children. Often, a single home visit is enough to filter this sort of family our from genuine home educators.
Parents like this are not the only ones who fail to send their children to school. There are a lot of foreigners living in Barking and Dagenham these days, particularly Albanians, and some of these families do not want their children to attend school. There are various reasons for this, none of which involve home education and this is another group who cause concern. I am not really at all surprised that the mother who has posted about being referred to social services has had a visit of this sort. The aim is always child protection and there is no sinister agenda which entails the persecution of real home educators. The goal is simply to check that this is a home educating parent and not one of the other categories of parents who simply do not send their kids to school.
