Christopher Warren and the British home education scene

Back in March, a man called Christopher Warren posted on the Badman Review Action Group. I raised a few questions about the suitability of such a person being on that list and people got so angry that there was talk of chucking me off. I left, having drawn attention to the dangers of becoming mixed up with such a character. Here are a few links about Christopher Warren:

http://www.nccg.info/fastfacts.html


http://www.nccg.info/jannicke.html


http://www.nccg.info/memberindex.html


Of course, this might all be lies, although there is a great deal about Warren and his cult, the New Covenant Church of God on the Internet. By his own account, he is a very odd man. See his official site here:

http://www.nccg.org/warren.html


Gay readers will perhaps be surprised to learn that they are possessed by demons! I have suspected for some time that this awful man was involved with helping Alison Sauer draw up the new EHE guidelines. If true, the very presence of such a person anywhere near the things is enough to contaminate them and make them unacceptable to anybody who feels strongly about child abuse; which I am guessing includes most of us. Just what is his involvement in the business?

Much of the activity in the British home education scene is shaped and guided by a small number of people. One sees their names crop up again and again, both on lists and forums, in letters to newspapers and at Parliament. Alison Sauer is of course one of these people. She is advised by and has had many telephone conversations about the new guidelines with, Kelly Green in Canada. This American woman got Alison to write an introduction for her book. She runs a blog called Kelly Green and Gold. Apart from Alison Sauer, Kelly Green is in touch with other home educators in this country whose names will be familiar to many. People like Tania Berlow, for instance. Reading her blog enables one to work out who has been involved in drawing up the EHE guidelines. On December 30th last year, you will see this on Kelly Green’s blog:

‘I want to thank Pat Farenga, Alison Sauer, Tania Berlow, Diane Varty, Leaf Lovejoy, Grit of grit's day, and many other correspondents for helping me shape’

Pat Faranga is nothing to do with the case, she thanks him because he gave a glowing recommendation to her book. Alison Sauer, Tania Berlow and Leaf Lovejoy though have all been involved in drawing up the EHE guidelines. This is interesting. But wait, what’s missing from this picture boys and girls? The above quotation is not as it was first posted by Kelly Green. She actually included somebody else in her thanks and then removed his name after I drew attention to him in March. Fortunately, her original post was archived. Try this. Google CCM Warren and Diane Varty and see what comes up. You will find this:

‘ I want to thank Pat Farenga, CCM Warren, Alison Sauer, Tania Berlow, Diane Varty, Grit of grit's day, and many other correspondents for helping me shape my’

See what’s happened here? She has taken one member of the group working on the guidelines out and replace it with another. Out goes Christopher Warren and in comes Leaf Lovejoy. Interesting, no?

I have know about this for some time, but it was only yesterday when Jacquie Cox who also worked on the EHE guidelines confirmed it, that I knew for sure that Warren had been involved in the thing. The question which British home educators need to ask is this. Are they happy to see a dangerous madman like Christopher Warren working at the heart of a project which, if successful, will affect every home educating parent in the country? What does it say about Alison Sauer, the motivating force behind the thing, that she is happy to accept advice and guidance from this man? There are many other questions, but I think that I shall put them into another post, because this one is getting a little too long. I urge readers to look into this for themselves and not to take my word for anything. Check out the New Covenant Church of God, see what you can find out about Christopher Warren and the allegations surrounding him about under-age girls and then ask whether this person should be involved at all with home education in this country. What impression does this give those critical of home education about the sort of people that home educators are prepared to consort with?

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Alison Sauer and Education Otherwise; a correction

Last week, Shena Deuchars of Education Otherwise was very keen to distance the organisation from Alison Sauer, after somebody commented here that she used to work for EO. Shena said, very definitely in response to this idea:

‘"But Alison Sauer did once hold a position within the EO organisation, until recently wasn't it?"

No, she did not. I have phoned her this afternoon to ask. I am assured that she has never been an LC, a trustee or a volunteer in any capacity.'

Now of course, I know perfectly well that Alison Sauer has in the past represented Education Otherwise at national level. I am sure that others also know this. Just look at this piece from The Scotsman:


http://news.scotsman.com/education/Home-educators-failing-children.2470084.jp



I love the dogmatic way that she paints home education in her own image!

‘If you are a professional teacher you don’t know what you are talking about when it comes to home education. We don’t do any teaching. Our philosophy is self-directed learning’

Don’t you just adore that ‘we’ don’t do any teaching? 'Our' philosophy is self-directed learning. Is that official EO policy that she is expounding here? I wonder why Education Otherwise are so keen to disown her now?

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Who actually produced the new guidelines on elective home education?

One of the most curious and disturbing things about the new EHE guidelines is that not one person has so far come forward and admitted to having written any part of them. This is odd. Even Alison Sauer will not confirm that she wrote a single word of this document. Since this might have an enormous effect on how local authorities deal with home educating parents in the future and in view of the controversial nature of the sections on special needs, perhaps it might be worth trying to work out who was involved in the thing.
We know that one member of the team who produced the guidelines was a woman called Rainbow-Leaf Lovejoy. (Stop sniggering at the back; that’s her real name. I have an idea that she is known to Allie who comments here pretty regularly).Tania Berlow was also mixed up in the business, but to what extent is unknown. A woman called Jacqui also worked on the guidelines although, according to her own account, only to find out what was going on.

The secrecy surrounding the guidelines is not accidental. I have been contacted by a number of people who emailed Graham Stuart MP about their concerns. He passed their details on to Alison Sauer, who then got in touch with them. Several people were invited to become involved, but it was made plain that the whole thing was top secret and that they must agree not to tell anybody that they were involved or reveal the names of any others who they got to hear of who were working on the guidelines. This secrecy is alarming, considering that this is a project which might affect many thousands of parents.

I think it is almost certain that Kelly Green, an American living in Canada who writes a blog called Kelly Green and Gold, was also a member of this group. The problem here is that she is a very ignorant woman who claimed on her blog that Graham Badman was a civil servant at the Department for Children, Schools and Families and that I was an adviser to the Department. She knows nothing about British law and I cannot really see how she became involved in the matter. Alison Sauer’s husband Ralph helped to produce an earlier document about the so-called ultra vires practices of some local authorities and so it is possible that he was also involved with the guidelines.

I am very puzzled as to why Alison does not simply release the final draft of the EHE guidelines. She commented on here, telling us that the version at which everybody is currently looking is not the final one, but I don’t know why she does not simply let us see the one which she sent to Graham Stuart. I have a suspicion that when this does emerge, there will be even more irritation and outright anger than was caused by the draft which is currently in the public domain. Otherwise, why not simply show it to us?

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A final, but exceedingly serious, problem with the new EHE guidelines produced by Sauer Consultancy Ltd

I have over the last few days pointed out one or two difficulties which are likely to arise with the new guidelines which have been produced by Alison Sauer. Still, perhaps they won’t be adopted in the end? Even so, a considerable amount of damage has already been done. Influential MPs such as Graham Stuart, Chair of the CSF select committee, and Lord Lucas have learned a lot about home education from their dealings with Alison Sauer. They evidently believe that she has given them an objective view of home education in Britain and they have now passed her views on to Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister. The thing is, they have been given a weird and distorted view of home education and unless somebody sets them straight, the home educating community in this country could be heading for trouble.

I want to look today at how Alison Sauer thinks that home education works in this country. She explains that it is a spectrum with autonomous or child-led education at one end. This is fair enough, although there might be a problem with her understanding of this concept. Still, it is true that some home educators call themselves ’autonomous’ or 'child-led’; it is a genuine trend in British home education. At the other end of the spectrum is, according to these guidelines, ’school-at-home’. Now I have never in my life heard anybody say that they are a ’school-at-home’ educator. That's because this is a pejorative expression coined not by those who follow a structured education, but by unstructured educators who wish to be derogatory about structured home education. Many structured home educating parents are really irritated by being described as doing ’school-at-home’. To use this phrase to describe home educators who actually teach is a little offensive. Has anybody ever heard of a home educator who says, ’We do school at home’?

According to Alison, such parents use a curriculum to cater for the whole of their children’s education. Has anybody ever met such a parent? Even more bizarrely, she claims that such families:

‘maintain a clear distinction between education and leisure, and often keep the school rhythm of terms and holidays’

This is such nonsense that it made me laugh out loud! Has anybody here ever heard a structured home educating parent say, ’No more education for Jimmy for the next few weeks; the local schools broke up for Easter yesterday’?

I can imagine that at this point some autonomous educators are chortling with glee at the idea of structured education being misrepresented in this way. Perhaps before they fall off their chairs laughing, they should read Alison’s description of autonomous education, where they will learn that ’learning takes place without teaching’

The strange ideas contained in this document may well have been accepted by people like Graham Stuart and very possibly Nick Gibb as being the standard model of home education in this country. It is not; it is one person’s idea on the subject. When that person believes that, ‘A Local Authority is responsible for any child of compulsory school age that has been brought to their attention as having, or probably having, special educational needs’, you are in serious trouble. Even if these guidelines end up in the bin, the damage has been done and some in parliament have now a strange and distorted view of what home education in this country is actually about.

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The new EHE guidelines and special needs

Although we are told that the version of Alison Sauer’s new guidelines for local authorities now circulating is not the final one, I have been assured that the section on SEN is unchanged in the final draft which Graham Stuart now has. This was confirmed when somebody helpfully sent me some notes and handouts from a training session run by Sauer Consultancy Ltd for a local authority in the north of England.

My jaw dropped when I read what Alison wished to remind local authorities about in the new guidelines and I am not sure that the implications are yet clear to most parents. She says on page 20:

A Local Authority is responsible for any child of compulsory school age that ‘has been brought to their attention as having (or probably having) special educational needs.
Where such a child comes to the attention of the Local Authority, the Local Authority has a duty to establish whether the child has SENs that are not currently being met.

Now this, although surprising to many home educating parents of children with special needs, is perfectly true. If you are home educating a child and somebody rings up your local authority and says that she believes your child to be dyslectic or have Asperger’s, then the Local Authority have a legal duty to assess your child and see if you are providing for these needs; which may or may not exist. This is a power of which very few LAs are really aware or ever consider exercising. Most home educators are glad about this; they do not want their local authority knocking on the door to ask questions and carry out assessments unless they the parents invite them to do so. This section from the 1996 Education Act makes the situation clear. It is s321 (3):

(1) A local education authority shall exercise their powers with a view to securing that, of
the children for whom they are responsible, they identify those to whom subsection (2)
below applies.
(2) This subsection applies to a child if—
(a) he has special educational needs, and
(b) it is necessary for the authority to determine the special educational provision
which any learning difficulty he may have calls for.
(3) For the purposes of this Part a local education authority are responsible for a child if
he is in their area and—

.....................................
(d) he is not a registered pupil at a school but is not under the age of two or over
compulsory school age and has been brought to their attention as having (or
probably having) special educational needs.

Now the question is, why on earth would Alison Sauer wish to remind local authorities that they are responsible in this way for all home educated children who have, or might appear to have , special educational needs? Do most home educating parents of such children really want their local authorities to assume responsibility in this way for their children? Or have they taken their kids from school precisely because they no longer wish the local authority to be responsible in this way, because they wish to take over that responsibility themselves? I wonder if anybody can imagine the effect that reading the bits quoted above would have upon an overly zealous Educational Welfare Officer investigating a home educated child whom she thought might have special needs? After all, the local authority is responsible for this child and has a duty in law to check that his needs are being met.

I must emphasise that this part of the act is not only concerned with statemented children, but with any child, whether or not at school, who somebody tells the council might have special needs. As I say, few local authorities currently assume this duty, but they still have it legally. The question is, why on earth would anybody involved with home education wish to remind them about this and urge them to start knocking on the doors of all home educated children with special needs so that they can take over responsibility in this way? The 2007 guidelines for local authorities, by comparison, limited themselves to a few words about children with statements and said nothing at all about this general duty. Are the new guidelines an improvement in this respect?

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The new EHE guidelines

The guidelines which Alison Sauer produced may be found here:

http://www.box.net/shared/6lk1826muy

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The new EHE guidelines for local authorities

When Alison Sauer began writing extensive new guidance for local authorities, telling them how they should deal with home educating parents, it was not hard to foresee that it would all end in tears. For one thing, she had no clear mandate to undertake this work on behalf of other home educators and for another, there was an obvious conflict of interest in that she runs a company which trains local authorities in how to deal with home educating parents. In other words, the whole thing looked to many like a job creation scheme for the Sauer Consultancy; the company which she and her husband Ralph set up. A further complication which raised eyebrows was that the job of writing these guidelines had not been put out to tender, but apparently awarded to the Sauer Consultancy under a nod and a wink from the chair of a Commons select committee.
Something which has raised the liveliest suspicions about those involved in this project is that it has all been done on the quiet, with Alison Sauer refusing even to confirm that she is involved in the business at all. This is frankly odd. The story went round that various people were helping with this, including Tania Berlow, who said last year:

I am the only person who has stuck their head above the parapet and has said publicly that I have become one of many who are now inputting into a draft process which will be opened to all HErs once it is drafted.

The allegation is now being made that Alison Sauer alone wrote these guidelines single-handedly and ignored anybody else’s suggestions.
The Sauer Consultancy does not just advise local authorities on home education, but covers a wide range of ’cultural services’, whatever they might be! They provide:

Project Management
Export and Cultural Consultancy
Tenders and Contract Management
Training in Tenders and Contract Management

Their clients include private companies both in this country and abroad; it is not some little outfit just concerned with home education. Just why a commercial enterprise like this was given the job of writing new guidelines for local authorities is something of a mystery. Were any other companies approached and offered the job? Will the Sauer Consultancy benefit if the guidelines are adopted, for example by training local authorities in their application and interpretation? Did Graham Stuart, Chair of the relevant Commons select committee, offer this commission officially or is it just some private project of his? What is his connection, if any, with the Sauer Consultancy? Until these questions are answered, I think that we might all be a little cautious of the new EHE guidelines, regardless of their actual content. The conflict of interest when a business is asked in this way to produce statutory guidelines regarding a field of work in which it is involved is enough to raise cause grave concern.

There is one final problem, one which nobody seems yet to have noticed. The Children Schools and Families Bill 2009 was examined by the Commons Children Schools and Families select committee. This was an impartial examination of the parts of the bill which worried home educators. I know; I was one of the witnesses who gave evidence to the select committee. The job of the select committee is to examine such things. What will happen if questions are asked about these new guidelines? Suppose that some sections of the home educating community cuts up rough about them as they did with the Badman report? The Children, Schools and Families select committee can hardly be expected now to view the matter objectively, because its Chair, Graham Stuart, was intimately involved with producing them in the first place. He could hardly offer an impartial opinion on something for which he was himself responsible. quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

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A new conspiracy theory

The world of British home education is often swept by conspiracy theories, in which the simple and obvious explanations for things are thought to conceal deeper and more sinister motives. I have written of such ideas on here several times. I quite often receive emails from home educators which offer me information or advice; much of it about my personal character and disposition. A number of readers have contacted me, for example, to point out that I am a complete fuckwit. This assessment of my mental abilities, although doubtless meant kindly, is superfluous; my family already remind me regularly of this aspect of my personality. I am nevertheless grateful for all such feedback. On other occasions, people contact me to draw my attention to things that they think I should know about and mention in my blog. Recently, I have had three emails, all suggesting the same thing. Two were from fairly well known names on the home educating scene and so I thought that I would set out the theory they propound and see what others make of it.

I have written before about the strange business of the new guidelines which were being prepared and which were apparently intended to replace the existing 2007 guidelines to local authorities on dealing with home education. Alison Sauer was involved with this project, as were Imran Shah and Tania Berlow. The whole thing was supposedly being done in cooperation with Graham Stuart MP, Chair of the Commons select committee on families and children, who had received the go-ahead from Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister. We were told at the end of last year that a first draft would be ready after Christmas and that we would all be able then to offer our criticism. While this was happening, Alison Sauer and Imran Shah, stopped posting on the various lists and forums, presumably, as it was widely suggested, to avoid answering questions about this business. They then reappeared and nothing was ever said about the new guidelines. That was three months ago and we have heard nothing since. It is assumed that the thing is dead in the water.

A week or so ago, it came to light that the Department for Education intends to implement one of the recommendations of the Badman report, something which was included in Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill; the bit about children's names being retained on the school register for twenty days after their parents have de-registered them.

What my correspondents say is that these two events are linked in some way. The idea seems to be that the story about the new guidelines was a red herring and that while home educating parents were occupied with this, behind the scenes civil servants at the DfE were actually drawing up plans to implement Badman's ideas piecemeal. The hint is being made that either Alison Sauer and her friends knew about this and are hoping for well paid jobs in connection with some new monitoring regime, or that they have been used as fall guys and tricked by Nick Gibb, who all along intended to introduce new monitoring requirements for home education. So in one version of the theory, those working with Graham Stuart are dupes and in the other villains who are selling out other home educators in order to obtain jobs with the DfE. Nick Gibb and Graham Stuart emerge as Machiavellian conspirators, whose plots are of such Byzantine complexity as to bewilder a Borgia.

I can believe that Nick Gibb intends and has always intended to bring in new regulations around home education, but I am not so sure about Graham Stuart, Alison Sauer et al. It would help allay any such suspicions if these people would explain openly what was actually going on last year and what has happened since. In the meantime, I shall keep readers posted of any new developments of which I hear.

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Put not your trust in princes

I feel a little bit sorry for those who were so enthusiastic about the support they thought that they were getting from Graham Stuart MP. In case readers have forgotten, this was the fellow who was very keen to support home educators and swore that he would defend their interests against statist interference by Ed Balls & Co. There is currently a lot of dissatisfaction among some home educating parents at the introduction of one of Graham Badman's recommendations. People have been beetling off to Graham Stuart's Facebook page and urgently soliciting his help. You would have thought this a perfect chance for him to come to the rescue. And yet 'answer came there none'..... There is a very simple explanation for this.

At the end of last year, Graham Stuart had managed to persuade a number of people in the home educating community, Alison Sauer and Tania Berlow spring to mind, that the 2007 guidelines for local authorities needed to be rewritten. He did this in his capacity of 'Friend of the Home Educators' and had spoken to Nick Gibb the Schools Minister about it. We were told in December that these guidelines were almost finished and that they would be published after Christmas so that everybody could offer their views on them. Three months later and there is no sign of these new guidelines. I suspect there never will be. Graham Stuart has found that now his party is no longer in opposition, there is less advantage in embracing fringe causes like this. Michael Gove and Nick Gibb have shown that they are determined to tighten up the situation around home education and Graham Stuart has had to make a choice. Does he (a) continue to hang around with a cranky fringe group who are associated in the public mind with deaths like that of Khyra Ishaq, or does he (b) drop them like hot potatoes and concentrate on sucking up to the ministers in the hope of getting a ministerial post himself in a year or so? It is, as they say, a no-brainer.....

Being in opposition and courting various special interest groups who are angry with the government is one thing. Being in with the chance of rising in the government is quite another and Graham Stuart is now in the latter position. Perhaps angry home educators would do better now to make friends with a few Labour MPs, who will doubtless promise them all sorts of help and support, until they win the next election... You mugs!

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Possible changes in the way that local authorities behave towards home educators

The day after Graham Badman's report was published last year, a time when many home educating parents were very worked up and angry about the recommendations which it contained, somebody wrote the following opinion on the Badman report for Walsall local authority in the West Midlands;

'Having read the Home Education Review written by Graham Badman and published by the DCSF yesterday it appears that the proposed legislative changes adopted by the DCSF and now in consultation until late October will involve changes in primary legislation. There are two basic changes 1. Compulsory registration and 2. Compulsory home visits, including the right of the authority to speak to the child alone.

The first is expected and except for roughly doubling your workload, it will not change the way the system operates. I expect this change will take 12-24 months to enact'

Thank goodness that at least one person was able to keep her head about this while all those around her were losing theirs! Who was this calm and sensible person who looked forward to the implementation of compulsory registration so phlegmatically? Was it a civil servant? A member of the the legal department at Walsall Council? No, it was none of these people. It was in fact a home educator called Alison Sauer. As soon as the Badman report came out, she saw a business opportunity and began touting her services to local authorities with renewed vigour. Increased regulation meant increased training, which in turn meant more business for the company which she and her husband run.

We are currently all waiting to see the new guidelines for local authorities which Alison Sauer and her chums are producing. It is interesting to note that the White Paper due to published soon might well be encouraging local authorities to adopt a more gung-ho approach towards children outside mainstream education. I was not at all opposed to the provisions of Schedule 1 of the CSF Bill, as readers will no doubt recollect! This is however something else entirely. By giving vague encouragement to local authorities to be 'strong champions' and use their 'wider children's services' with regard to those children outside mainstream education, Michael Gove could actually effect a change in the way that local authorities operate without all the bother of changing primary legislation or allowing a select committee to scrutinise what is proposed. If this were to be combined with new guidelines for local authorities which were vaguer and less clear than the 2007 ones currently in use, there could be a great change in no time at all for home educating families who wish to have no contact with their local authority.

Supporting a public enquiry which was scrutinised by a select committee is one thing. I certainly was part of that process and when it was defeated, I was happy to accept that the democratic system had worked, even if I did not agree with the outcome. I am very dubious about what now seems to be happening, which could prove to be a change in the way things operate being made by the back door.

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Kelly Green; the overseas branch secretary of the 'secret group'

I have to confess that I find Kelly Green immensely irritating. It is not so much the fact that she claimed on her blog that far from being a home educating parent, I was really an adviser to the Department for Children, Schools and Families. I suppose anybody might inadvertently spread a falsehood like this. Nor is it that when I commented courteously on her blog correcting this ridiculous lie, she deleted the correction immediately. Why should I worry if she is keen on censorship, opposed to free speech and likes to propagate untruthful and damaging allegations about other home educators? No, these are relatively minor matters. The thing which annoys me about this woman is the confident way in which she shoots her mouth off about things she knows nothing at all about. This is not at all helpful to the cause of home education, particularly in this country. Have a look at this, from her blog Kelly Green and Gold;

http://kellygreenandgold.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/politics-and-paradox/#comments


Several things jump out at one from this post. First, Kelly believes that the Code Napoleon operates in the United Kingdom. She apparently thinks that as in some continental countries, we are limited in our actions to things specifically guaranteed in law. This shows alarming ignorance. She talks of the 'socialist paradise' countries of Sweden, France and Holland. Holland is socialist? Since when? France had a socialist government back in 1993, but even then, I would not have described it as a socialist country. Sweden has not had a socialist government since 2006. Home education in France is growing and has been for years. The situation there is that home education is a guaranteed right in law. Why on earth is she bracketing it with Sweden and the Netherlands, where home education is under threat? Where does this woman get her information? Now have a look at this post:

http://kellygreenandgold.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/a-way-forward-in-a-truly-happy-new-year/


Anything strike you as odd? Wait, Graham Badman is described as a civil servant. This really demonstrates that Kelly Green understands little about what is going on in this country. She says of this country in her post;

'We need to demand that government tells parents up front that this is one of your options when your children reach the age of compulsory education. You can educate them at home. This choice must not be hidden, and should be treated as an equal alternative to public and independent schools.'

Is this meant to be serious? If so, it again shows how little she really knows about the situation in this country. Let's have a look at the Department for Education's website;

http://www.education.gov.uk/popularquestions/childrenandfamilies/parenting/a005376/can-i-take-my-child-out-of-school-and-educate-them-at-home


What actually is being hidden here? How are the government not telling parents up front that this is one of their options? They even go out of their way here to draw parents' attention to the 2007 guidelines. Why does Kelly Green think that this choice of educational provision for children is being 'hidden' by the government? Is she not aware that both this government and the last went out of their way to emphasise that parents had a right to home educate and that there was no intention to change this?

I said earlier that I found Kelly Green's ignorance about home education in Britain and the rest of Europe alarming. The reason that I am alarmed is that this ill informed individual is now intimately mixed up with the group who are writing the new guidelines on home education. Frankly, this could be a disaster, judging by the level of her ignorance. Why would you wish to involve a person who knows nothing about British law when drawing up guidelines to the application of the law in Britain? This should be making us uneasy on a number of different levels.


On the plus side, she seems accidentally to have outed a few more members of the so-called secret group, which is interesting. Most of us knew that she and Alison Sauer have been running a mutual admiration society for a while and chatting regularly on the telephone about the best way of phrasing the new guidelines. In one of her recent blogs though, she thanks various other parents in this country for their help. Tania Berlow is one and we know that she is a member of the 'secret group'. Also mentioned is 'Leaf Lovejoy' (One of these days, I too am going to start using a whimsical name of this sort when commenting on lists and blogs. I can't decide though between 'Dreamcatcher' and 'Flower fairy). I think that Leaf Lovejoy has been doing some proof reading of the guidelines. The other names were Diane Varty and a woman who wishes only to be known as Grit. She has a blog called 'Grit's day'. Mind, I don't say that these two people are definitely members of the 'secret group', but it seems likely.

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The 'secret group'

I have watched with interest as the main representative of the home educating community in this country, at least as far as the Department for Education are concerned, has changed from being Education Otherwise to the so-called 'secret group' led by Alison Sauer. I am sure that we are all aware that EO has been in a somewhat chaotic state lately, but even so this is a remarkable change in perspective.

I was at first a little puzzled when I read the document which Alison Sauer circulated. It had the appearance of something put together a little hastily and rushed out in a hurry. I think that in this case, appearances were not deceptive. Her stock may have been rising very high with the Department for Education, various MPs and Lords and quite a few local authorities; it had however plummeted with many home educating parents themselves, some of whom were viewing her as little better than a Quisling. This was not good. If she wishes to persuade those in the government like Nick Gibb, the schools Minister, that she is their vital link with the home educators, she cannot afford to become too unpopular with the very people she claims to represent. When the business with Suffolk blew up, she saw the chance to rehabilitate herself with some of those parents who were beginning to doubt her motives. As well as rushing out the document denouncing the ultra vires practices of local authorities, she also joined the HE-UK list under her real name. Her posts are a little smug and evasive; she reminds me of an infuriating child chanting, 'I know something you don't know, I know something you don't know!' By an odd coincidence, Ruth O'Hare also joined the HE-UK list under her real name at precisely the same time. For years she has posted as Firebird2110 and now she too is using her own name.

One of the problems with Alison Sauer being accepted as the authentic face of elective home education in this country is that she is actually in opposition to much of what many parents in this country believe in. Let us look at one particular aspect of these differences and see where Alison Sauer's views might be leading her in her negotiations with the administration at Westminster. Many home educating parents are opposed to regular monitoring. When their local authority contacts them after a year or two and asks for further information and to see how the education is progressing, the standard response by many is that nothing has changed and that the LA are only justified in making further enquiries if they think that something has changed. In other words, many home educators believe that the local authority should simply assume that the education is still suitable unless new evidence emerges to the contrary. This is in sharp opposition to what Alison Sauer is teaching local authorities and saying to people as varied as Graham Badman and Graham Stuart. She says;

' Periodic review of provision is allowed for in law (time being a change in circumstance).'

In other words, she believes that it is quite OK for local authorities to come back regularly year after year for new information about the nature of the educational provision being provided. This is because, contray to what is often warmly asserted on the various Internet lists, there has been a change in circumstances after a year or two. For many, this is indistinguishable from regular monitoring.

Actually, Alison Sauer agrees with me on many points and a lot of the things which I have said here and been savagely denounced for are actually identical with her views. Take this:

'Mr Badman confuses rights with duties with regard to education. There is frequent reference to balancing the rights of the child against those of the parent. However there is no conflict. Home education is not a right of parents per se, in fact the child has a right to education in both English, European and International law. In England that right gives rise to a duty on behalf of the parent to provide an education.'

There now, I could not have put it better myself! I am intrigued by what is currently taking place in the world of home education and the shift from Education Otherwise to the 'secret group'. I broadly agree with a lot of what is being planned, but my objection is that it is not being done democratically. If this group of individuals would now declare themselves and state their aims clearly, then I have an idea that although many would oppose what they are doing, others would support them. The problem is that we are not being given the opportunity to do this, because we do not even know who these people are and what they stand for. This makes me profoundly uneasy when their actions may affect so many others. I am certainly not against a change in the legal arrangements for home education, but I would like to see in detail just what is being proposed and who is involved in proposing it.

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Alison Sauer presents the first fruits of the 'secret group'

I have been looking at the document which Alison Sauer has been circulating about certain local authorities. Before I discuss it, I must mention that this has cleared up a puzzling little incident which occurred a couple of weeks ago. On December 8th, Tania Berlow drew people's attention to a website on home education. It may be found here;

https://sites.google.com/site/thehomeofeducation/educational



There was some pretty negative reaction to this website from some members of the EO list and as a result, a few things have been deleted from it. A couple of people said that it came across like a hostile spoof and somebody told me that she thought it could be a deliberate attempt to discredit home education. For instance, the site gave some slogans which it was thought that home educating parents might want to use. Among these was, ''Better Than Sex. Get Turned On with Home Education' . (Don't use this one when local authorities or the NSPCC are fretting about home education being used as a cover for child abuse!) Another one suggested that parents who didn't home educate their children, didn't really love them. This is a great line to take when building bridges with the wider community; tell everybody with a kid at school that they don't love their children. That should make them receptive to anything else you have to say!

The reason that I mention this site is that Alison Sauer's document contains a link to it. As far as I can see, this is where she collected the quotations which she uses. I am assuming this means that she is connected with the site and that she and other members of the so-called 'secret group' wrote the material to be found there.

Looking at the document itself, it is hard to know where to begin. It may be found here;

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnx0aGVob21lb2ZlZHVjYXRpb258Z3g6M2QzODc2MDdhMjQzZWY5ZQ&pli=1


Working as I do in a very diverse part of the East End of London, I was taken aback by one of the very first sentences. This talks of concern about 'ultra vires practices by Local Authorities being deployed against British Citizens'. I work with Asylum Seekers and refugees, many of whom have questionable status. Are the authors of the document saying that ultra vires practices would be acceptable against these individuals, because they are not British citizens? Perhaps saying 'people in Britain' would have been better than 'British citizens.

The next paragraph talks of the cost for local authorities 'in both financial and human capital terms' of their supposedly unlawful actions. 'Financial' means money and so I think that the idea is to tell us how much their activities in the field of home education cost local authorities. I will hazard a guess that 'human capital' means 'people'; if so, why not just say people or staff? Why use this bizarre jargon? Weirdly, after talking of this at the beginning, no attempt is actually made to explain the cost of what the local authorities are doing. The document says that there will be 'G & A' costs and 'Lost-Opportunity cost'. What does this mean? What are 'G & A costs'? What on earth is a 'Lost-Opportunity cost'? Would this be measured in financial terms or in terms of 'human capital'? We are also told that there are 'Implications for Individual Personnel'. What are these implications? The contorted language used here suggests that more than one person was involved in writing it. This is confirmed at the bottom of the thing, where there is a reference to 'authors'. Could Tania Berlow be one of them? It sounds a bit like some of her productions.

This is one of the big problems with looking at this thing. It is couched in a really strange jargon and it is hard to make out just what the authors are trying to prove. The 'ultra vires' actions seem to amount to local authorities asking to visit families and in some cases warning parents that unless they satisfied the authority within fifteen days that an education was taking place, a School Attendance Order would be issued. These are not really unlawful things for the local authority to do. I have in front of me a letter which I received from Essex County Council nine years ago after we had run into a truancy patrol. It says;

'Mrs Joan Barclay, an Education Welfare Officer, has informed me that your daughter Simone does not attend school. I would like to come and talk to you and Simone about the education you are providing. I hope to visit you on the morning of March 18th. If this is not convenient, perhaps you could let me know.'

Now I suppose that this is what is described in Alison Sauer's document as a 'demand to allow access to the home'. Apparently, some parents who have received similar letters have endured, 'six weeks of terror' causing 'sleepless nights, tears and sadness'! I have to say that we were showing this letter to friends and laughing about it. I can't imagine offhand why I would have been, 'bursting into uncontrollable tears' or regard this letter as a 'terrifying threat'. We need to know more about the details here, before we can judge whether or not these are ludicrous over-reactions by parents to ordinary life. In other words, without being told the specific circumstances, we cannot judge whether or not a local authority has behaved unreasonably. It is possible that these are just very sensitive parents who react badly to any sort of questions from anybody who they see as being in authority. One of the difficulties with what are described as ultra vires actions in this peculiar document is that the some of the things are far from being unlawful or ultra vires; they are in fact duties which the local authority is legally obliged to undertake. Take one of the practices which the author complains of; 'written threats of taking legal action to send the children to school unless the parents comply with the demands which were being made'. Now this might be distressing or unwelcome behaviour of the part of the local authority, but it is hardly unlawful. As a matter of fact, they have to do this under certain circumstances. The relevant law says;

'If it appears to a local education authority that a child of compulsory
school age in their area is not receiving suitable education, either by
regular attendance at school or otherwise, they shall serve a notice in
writing on the parent requiring him to satisfy them within the period
specified in the notice that the child is receiving such education'

It is to be hoped that the guidelines for local authorities on elective home education which La Sauer has been writing have been put together with a little more care than the above document. (It would, to say the least of it, be unfortunate if they begin by suggesting that abuses of state power are more acceptable when directed against foreigners and stateless persons in this country than if they were to be used against those who had citizenship!) We must hope too that the guidelines are not littered with jargon such as 'human capital' and 'G & A costs'. None of this bodes particularly well for the guidelines themselves!


For those who cannot access the document via the above link, I reproduce it below.

Ultra Vires Activities by Local Authorities in Relation to
Elective Home Education

Impact Assessment

Part One [Extract 18.12.2010]

Situation Analysis

Impact upon the Victims of Abusive Conduct by Local Authorities
Immediate Victims of Harassment
A Legal Context
The Damage to Children
The Damage to Parents
Impact upon Home Educators in General
Impact upon the Wider Society

Impact upon Local Authorities
G & A Costs
Lost-Opportunity Cost
Implications for Individual Personnel
Human Resource Implications
Liabilities
Legal Costs
Reputational Damage

Summary and Conclusions
Addendums & Appendices

Situation Analysis

Suffolk, Oxford, Birmingham, Gwent. Gateshead and Bournemouth are all recent examples
of ultra vires practices by Local Authorities being deployed against British citizens. These are
citizens that have made the personal sacrifice and law abiding commitment to Elective
Home Education for their children.

The true cost in human terms for the family victims of such abuses and in both financial and
human capital terms for the local authorities is far more significant than most politicians,
members of the public and particularly Local Authorities realise. This document explores
the reasons for both the human cost and financial costs resulting from practices that are not
supported by law and in many cases are contraventions of law.

Whilst remedial changes to guidelines and Statutory Instruments are being considered,
there is a significant need for Local Authorities to recognise all aspects of the damage to
society being caused by ultra vires pursuits.

1. Impact – the Victims of Abusive Conduct by Local Authorities

a. Immediate Victims of Harassment

Serious impact upon the lives of parents of and children occurs with unwarranted and
clumsy interventions into the peaceful harmony of family life, for which there is no legal
basis. It is obvious from LA reactions to complaints that they are oblivious to the impact of
their actions.

b. A Legal Context

A basic tenet of criminal law in the UK is that the threat is no less a crime than action. This
reflects the real impact of threatening conduct. If you use a toy gun to threaten, it has the
same impact as a real gun upon the victim. The Prevention of Harassment Act does not
accept that the perpetrator did not know of the impact that would result. It simply and
rightly rules; they ought to have known. (section ‘7 Liabilities for the LA’ & section ‘8 Legal
costs for the LA’ of this document refer).

i.

Extract from the Prevention of Harassment Act:

1. Prohibition of harassment.
(1)A person must not pursue a course of conduct—
(a) which amounts to harassment of another, and
(b) which he knows or ought to know amounts to harassment of the other.
(2)For the purposes of this section, the person whose course of conduct is in
question ought to know that it amounts to harassment of another if a reasonable
person in possession of the same information would think the course of conduct
amounted to harassment of the other.

ii.

Guilty until Proven Innocent?

An even more fundamental tenet enshrined into British law is the presumption of
innocence until proven guilty. This has been aggressively and wantonly brushed aside by
the recent activities of certain local authorities. (Addendum 1 refers).

c. The Damage to Children

Whilst direct impact upon parents may be shielded from the children in the family, there is
nevertheless an indirect impact upon the children to some greater or lesser extent.

Even when circumstances allow the children to be shielded from the exact nature of the
threat, serious impact upon the children occurs indirectly by causing stress and anxiety to
the parents which of course the children sense.

The psychological effects upon children of such indirect stress are far greater. The impact
caused to parents becomes more real and personal to the child, who is disturbed by seeing
distressed parents. Indirect impact is less understandable to a child and thereby more
troubling. It is less removed and adversely effects the people whom the child has the
greatest emotional and security attachment to in life. Whilst the child may not have the
verbal skills to enunciate their feelings, the feelings of anxiety exist regardless. Such anxiety
manifests its presence to the parents in uncharacteristic behaviour patterns.

In addition and somewhat paradoxically, by deflecting the parents and demoralising them,
the quality of home education is compromised too.

With older children, the seeds of long-term disaffection with the state may well be fertilised.

It is difficult to evaluate the qualitative or quantitative effect of such indirect impact upon
children.

d. The Damage to Parents (and Family)

A third party definition of stress to parents is less meaningful than listening to parents own
description of how they characterise the impact. The following remarks were made by
parents that had varying experiences from, demands to allow access to the home, threats to
bring the police to an unscheduled home visit, demands to prove that education was
‘suitable’ to the LA’s satisfaction, to written threats of taking legal action to send the
children to school unless parents comply with demands that were being made which were
ultra vires in nature. It speaks volumes:-

https://sites.google.com/site/thehomeofeducation/impact-assessment-call


“Completely frightening threats to deprive my children of home education”

“For a law abiding person to be threatened with the police is demoralising and made me
feel really scared”

“They were deliberately intimidating and totally insensitive to my feelings.”

“It was obvious form the very start that they were completely anti-home educators and
showed not even a n ounce of respect to me.”

“It made me very angry and upset to think that people could be like this”

“Terrifying threats from people that are ignorant about home education”

“After everything I have done to help develop well brought-up children, well educated,
safe and happy, it was a point of abject despair to be verbally threatened with the police
and the law courts and worse the thought of my children being forced into a bad
school.”

“Looking back, the six weeks of terror caused sleepless nights, tears and sadness that I
sometimes could not hide from my two children. It has changed my view of Britain being
a fair place to live.”

“I am scarred by the experience.”

“Friends and family were incredibly supportive at a time where I felt devastated.”

“At my son’s birthday party I burst into uncontrollable tears just thinking about it.”

“Deeply disturbing.”

“I guess I never had experience of real fear in my life until then.”

“The implication was that I was not doing the best for my children and it made me feel
inadequate. I lost self-confidence which is still not where it was after all these weeks.”

“I am still frightened and I have cut down the times that I take [name removed] out
during school term.”

“When he said he thought that he would start the legal process against us to get our
children into school, my husband and I both cried together that night.”

“Bitter”

“Home edding our children is the centre of family life. What bloody effect do you think it
had?”

“I was ashamed by the thought that my daughter would be taken to school and didn’t
want to tell anyone. I found a forum on the internet that really helped because I was not
alone.“

“Fear, panic, anger and desperation that’s all I can say.”

e. Impact upon Home Educators in General

Abusive conduct from L.A.’s encourages ‘Defensive parenting’.
It breeds contempt for the L.A. and educational services.
It alienates parents of EHE children from the state (the L.A. is seen as being the
frontline representative of the state).
It encourages those EHE families that are not known to the LA to remain so.
It encourages adopters of EHE to decide in favour of keeping an ‘unknown’ status.

f. Impact upon the Wider Society


It leads to increased distrust and alienation towards the LA for people not even
necessarily directly involved in EHE but aware of it through family or friends.
It alienates those people who are suppliers to, contributors or active supporters of
and EHE families (i.e. relatives).
It spreads bad repute far and wide. Local Authorities are oblivious to the total
number of people involved not just directly but indirectly in EHE. Bad repute
spreads more quickly than good repute.

© 2010 This extracted document and its content are the protected copyright of it authors.
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The new guidelines; a summary to date

Judging from some of the questions being asked on Internet lists, there is confusion about what these guidelines are which Tania Berlow and her friends are working on. Let me just give a brief outline so that people can see what is going on.

The law relating to home education in this country is very muddled and confusing. So much so, that even lawyers cannot always agree on what the situation actually is. In addition to the basic bit of law which allows home education, Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act, there are various old precedents and also a number of more modern pieces of statute law. The Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006, Children Act 2004 and of course a new section added years later to the 1996 Education Act. Section 436A, laid upon all local authorities a duty to identify children missing from education. Section 437 goes on to specify that home educated children receiving a suitable education are not to be regarded as being missing from education. The result of all these laws is that local authorities sometimes get a bit mixed up about what their legal duties actually are when it comes to home education. For this reason, in 2006 it was decided to try and produce some guidelines for the local authorities, government approved guidelines which would explain their duties. Between August and November 2006, York Consulting Ltd. undertook a study for the Department of Education and Science, which in May 2010 became the Department for Education. Their brief was to examine elective home education in England and try to identify any perceptible trends.

The result of York Consulting's work was that in 2007 the Department issued the Guidelines for LAs on elective home education. They can be found here:

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/publications/elective/


The aim of Tania Berlow's group is to rewrite these guidelines. There are two difficulties. Firstly, the guidelines are not statutory. This means that local authorities can ignore them is they wish. The second problem is that the current guidelines could hardly be made more favourable to home educators than they already are. For instance, they say;

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

Some parents may welcome the opportunity to discuss the provision that they are making for the child’s education during a home visit but parents are not legally required to give the local authority access to their home. They may choose to meet a local authority representative at a mutually convenient and neutral location instead, with or without the child being present, or choose not to meet at all.

3.11 Local authorities should bear in mind that, in the early stages, parents’ plans may not be detailed and they may not yet be in a position to demonstrate all the characteristics of an “efficient and suitable” educational provision.

3.14 It is important to recognise that there are many, equally valid, approaches to educational provision. Local authorities should, therefore, consider a wide range of information from home educating parents, in a range of formats. The information may be in the form of specific examples of learning e.g. pictures/paintings/models, diaries of educational activity,
projects, assessments, samples of work, books, educational visits etc.


In fact it is hard to see how these guidelines could be any better from the point of view of home educating parents. They already make it clear to the local authorities what they can and cannot do. Why do they need to be changed? Of course some parents are not happy with the law itself and want that to be changed. This is quite a different matter and there are, as far as we have been told, no plans for this.

So much for the background. The only public face of the changes to the 2007 guidelines is of course Tania Berlow. Two slightly alarming things have been noticed about her more recent posts on the Badman Review Action Group; one relating to form and the other to content. Tania seems to be falling into the habit of emphasising important words by the use of capital letters. Rather like THIS. This is SELDOM a good SIGN and unless she is CAREFUL, she might end up using GREEN or YELLOW ink like another well known home educator! The second and even more chilling feature of her latest post is mention of the New World Order. Now in my experience, once people begin talking of the New World Order it is only a matter of time before we start hearing about Rosslyn Chapel, the Illuminati, Area 51 and Prince Philip being responsible for Diana's murder. It is devoutly to be hoped that there will be no mention of either the New World Order or any of these other topics in the new guidelines!

If Alison Sauer's company, Sauer Consultancy, has been officially commissioned to do some work on behalf of the Department for Education, as York Consulting was in 2006, we should be told. It is high time to drop the secrecy and come out into the open. When York Consulting carried out their work in 2006, work which led to the publication of the 2007 guidelines for local authorities, there was none of this secrecy and I cannot for the life of me see why there should be now. The only reason which I can think which would explain this lack of openess is that something a bit fishy is going on.

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More about the new guidelines

Others have noticed that in the last week or so three questions about home education have been asked in Parliament by Tory MPs. Two of the questions were identical;

'To ask the Secretary of State for Education what his policy is on home education; and if he will make a statement'

A third concerned the A levels and GCSEs passed by home educated children. There are two possible explanations for this flurry of interest in home education. One is that individual MPs are taking an interest in the topic of home education because their constituents are expressing concerns about it. The other and more likely explanation is that these questions have been 'planted' by government whips in order to suggest that people are worried about home education. The planted question of this kind is of course a very popular device in Westminster. If this is the case, then it suggests strongly that the Coalition is intending to do something about home education. The questions is, what are they going to do?

This brings us back to the only activity involving home education which we know is connected with Parliament; the famous new guidelines. Before we go any further, I would like to make it clear that I have no reason at all to doubt that all those dealing with Graham Stuart are doing so for the best of motives. I am sure that they genuinely believe that what they are doing will be for the best interests of home educating parents. This does not of course mean that they are right, nor that they are not being used unwittingly as fall guys or patsies. How could this be?

Here is what seems to me a very plausible scenario. Michael Gove, because of cases like Khyra Ishaq and the Riggi children in Edinburgh, wishes to introduce as a bare minimum compulsory registration for home educators. He is strengthened in this view by the fact that every report and almost all education professionals are in favour of such a move. He encourages, via Nick Gibb and Graham Stuart, a dialogue with various prominent home educators. ideas are generated and provisional rules drawn up. Then registration is included in a White Paper on education, with the intention of making it law. Michael Gove can then claim that a number of MPs have expressed anxiety about home education (via the planted questions) and that home educators themselves have been helping with the process of framing new legislation. Any resultant outrage will be largely limited to the Internet lists and so invisible to the general public. It will be all but impossible to ever establish what the members of the secret group did and did not agree to, because of course everything has been done on the quiet. I doubt whether newspapers are going to bother cooperating with another campaign by home educators against regulation as they did last year.

In order to see whether or not the above scenario is likely, it would help if we had the answers to one or two questions. I know that the people who are actually involved with Graham Stuart are reading this and so they could, if the wished, comment anonymously and reassure those who are worried that this is an undemocratic process likely to have a substantial impact upon home educating parents. The sort of questions that we need to ask are as follows.

Did the initiative for drawing up these guidelines come directly from Graham Stuart or was he encouraged to start this by Michael Gove or Nick Gibb?

Is there any intention, as Tania Berlow has hinted at on the BRAG list, of including anything about home education in a White Paper on education?

Has Graham Stuart given any written assurance that the law on home education will not change as a result of anything currently being done?

Graham Stuart has said that 'leaving things as they are is not an option'. What grounds did he have for saying this? What has he heard about government intentions in the area of home education?

These are four very simple and straightforward questions which could be answered in a dozen words. If the initiative for the guidelines came from Nick Gibb and there is an intention to include something about home education in a White Paper, then the chances are that new legislation is on the cards. Mike Fortune-Wood recently mentioned that he has held training sessions for local authorities and advised them soundly upon the law. They then go off and draw up procedures whish he has advised against and said were not lawful. A similar thing could very easily take place with these present discussions unless they have written minutes of meetings and a clear and unambiguous mandate.

I said in yesterday's post, 'Betsy Anderson, an American lawyer is not directly involved, but gives the odd bit of advice.' This is perfectly true. Without going into any details, Betsy Anderson has suffered something of a disaster which has effectively rendered her homeless. She according has little time to concern herself with these guidelines. She has not had any contact with Alison Sauer for months. Nevertheless, some of those involved with the guidelines have asked her opinion on specific points which are troubling them and she has replied. This is all that I meant and I am happy to clarify this.

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Monitoring and inspection of home education

An awful lot of local authority officers inspecting or supporting home educating parents seem to be ex-teachers. This never used to bother me; nearly all our friends are either teachers or social workers, so one more visiting the house didn't make much difference! Many home educators though have very negative feelings towards schools and conventional education. For them, having a teacher come round to check up on what they are doing is intolerable. I wonder if parents would be more agreeable to the idea of other home educators carrying out such visits, following a protocol agreed between home educators and the local authority?

During the review of elective home education which he carried out on behalf of the Department for Children, Schools and Families, Graham Badman briefly floated the idea of the 'Tasmanian Model', asking if people thought that such a scheme might work in this country. He later changed his mind, conceding that this might have been 'a step too far'. But was it really?

Tasmania is a state of Australia with a population of around half a million, half of whom live in the capital city of Hobart. In 1993, the Minister of Education in Tasmania set up the Tasmanian Home Education Advisory Council (THEAC). This body oversees home education on the island, including registration and monitoring. It has no connection with the Ministry of Education, but is directly answerable to the Minister of Education in person. The council has six members, three of whom are home educators and three who have been appointed by the Minister of Education from the wider community. They pay a small staff to register and monitor home education. At the last count, there were around seven hundred home educators in Tasmania, about the same number as in an average English county. The THEAC employs two people to visit them and check on the provision which they are making for their children. The whole process is devised and implemented by home educating parents themselves.

It is hardly surprising that this idea of a Home Education Advisory Council was rejected out of hand by most parents in this country when Badman suggested it. For one thing, most home educators hoped that if they stood fast, then things would just carry on as before. For another, Education Otherwise was mooted as being the natural partner in such an enterprise. This alone was enough to damn it in the eyes of many. We need not go into the politics of the thing, but the fact is that some home educators in this country cannot stand Education Otherwise and would be as reluctant to allow them in their house as they would officers from their local authority.

A few days ago, I put forwards the idea of locally elected councils of home educators composed partly of local authority officers and partly of parents who had been vote onto this council by other home educating parents. I am wondering how people would feel about the idea of such a council being responsible for the registration and monitoring of home education in their local authority area? I am perfectly well aware that many parents are not keen on anybody checking what they are doing with their child's education, but there is going to be pressure for this from some quarters for the foreseeable future. I am kicking around an idea and trying to see how many parents would be satisfied to deal with a parent who is or has been a home educator herself and therefore knows about the whole business from the inside. Would this be any more acceptable than having an ex-teacher from the local authority asking questions? Or, which is entirely possible, are both unacceptable to the majority of home educating parents? What if this plan, of having former home educators as advisors, were combined with access to various facilities such as free examinations and use of school sports and music facilities, that kind of thing?

I am very interested in knowing how strongly parents here are against any sort of involvement at all with anybody and how far they might compromise if they got something from it. This is not, by the way, an attempt at what is being called 'rent seeking'! I have no interest in the matter other than in debating ideas. So nobody need bother to start describing me as 'a rent-seeking vulture queen' or anything of the sort, as I have seen one well known home educator described on a forum recently! Don't you just hate gendered insults of this sort? I have an idea that a new set of guidelines for elective home education in England is likely to emerge soon from the discussions between Alison Sauer, Imran Shah and a few others. It is less a question of whether change is happening, than what that change will be. For my part, I would like to see democratically elected representatives of home educated parents at the heart of policy making, both at the Department for Education and local authorities. This is not possible at the moment and so people have volunteered to step in and help. This is beginning to cause the most terrible divisions among home educators and the only way that I can see this stopping is if those working on behalf of parents can acquire some sort of legitimacy.

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A rift in the lute

Home educators reserve a special kind of loathing and detestation for those home educating parents whom they see as betraying them by playing footsy with our legislators; some of whom wish to introduce new restrictions on home education. The present writer knows this to his cost!

The fact that Alison Sauer, who is a member of all the main HE lists, has not come forward to deny the rumours circulating about her involvement with Graham Stuart and his new guidelines, makes it a racing certainty that she is, as she has told her friends, tasked with writing them. She has not been doing so unaided. Fiona Nicholson's name has also been mentioned and it is true that she was the first person whom I thought of in this connection. I find it unlikely now. I had quite an amicable relationship with one home educating mother, exchanging emails regularly, until I was unwise enough to crack a light hearted joke about Fiona on this blog. Whereupon my pen-pal was furious, because she was a good friend of Fiona's. This same person has now been asking questions on Graham Stuart's facebook wall. She would hardly be asking about these new guidelines if Fiona Nicholson were mixed up in them. I have been assured by an anonymous person here that Education Otherwise deny having anything to do with this business. This may be so, but if it is then it is odd that they have not issued a public denial, especially in view of the feverish interest in this matter. I can't somehow see EO being sidelined in this way.

There are two points of view about this whole question. The first is a feeling that after the Badman review and the collapse of Schedule 1 of the CSF Bill due to the calling of the election, the government has no appetite for a fight with home educators. They have been warned off by the great opposition which was witnessed and are happy to leave things as they are, at least for the next few years. The other point of view, expressed by Graham Stuart, is that civil servants in the Department for Education are still intriguing for a change in the legal situation. He claims that in order to fight this, he is producing a set of guidelines which will prevent any new moves regarding registration, monitoring and so on. This line does not really add up. The ink on the 2007 guidelines wasn't dry before the agitation started for new legislation. There was barely eighteen months between the publication of the guidelines and the launching of the Badman review. How can Graham Stuart assure anybody that this will not happen with his new, improved guidelines?

This affair is opening up cracks in the home educating community already, before these guidelines have even been seen. Mike Fortune-Wood, whose own Internet list receives only half a dozen comments a day now, is irritated that the Badman Review Action Group list is becoming popular. He has suggested that it is time for this to close down, presumably so that everybody will hang out on HE-UK instead. Some people though are agitating to make the BRAG list the focal point for anything happening about Alison Sauer's guidelines. And as I said above, Education Otherwise has still to say anything at all about this, which is very strange. If, as is claimed, they are nothing to do with it, have they no opinion on the matter?

I suspect that when we see them, these guidelines are likely to prove shocking to some people. I say this for the following reason. The 2007 guidelines are perfectly clear and easy to understand. Home educating parents were very happy with them and they made the legal situation very plain. Since the law has not changed, what is the need for a new set of guidelines? There is only one answer. Under the pretext of averting an even worse outcome, these guidelines will move in the direction of more local authority involvement with home educators. if this were not the case, then there would be no need to draw up new guidelines in the first place; the 2007 ones are perfectly adequate. I am surprised that so many home educators went off into the woods with Graham Stuart. My own feeling is that anybody who would place their trust in this fellow must really bear the consequences. I cannot resist ending with a famous old limerick;

There was an old woman of Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.
They came back from the ride
With the woman inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger.

I feel that those who have gone off for a ride with Graham Stuart in this way might very well find that the smile is on his face when they return!

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Update on the proposed new guidelines

It seems that the person who has been writing the new guidelines in collaboration with Graham Stuart is in fact Alison Sauer, who provides training on the subject of home education for local authorities. I cannot help wonder who is paying for all this; if the taxpayer then there does not appear to have been much transparency! I am sure that now we know one of the people involved, everything will become a little clearer.

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