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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Michael Gove writes to the local authorities

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, has written to all local authorities, tipping them the wink about the new White Paper on education. He expects local authorities to act as 'strong champions', looking in particular at the needs of 'vulnerable children' in their area. Gove says that they will have a strengthened role;

'Supporting vulnerable children – acting on behalf of groups of children who need extra support, including children with special educational needs, looked after children and those outside mainstream education. Local authorities will use wider children’s services responsibilities to ensure that children are able to get the most from their schooling.'

Using 'wider children's services' to support children 'outside mainstream education'. There may not be much appetite at the Department for Education for another crack at primary legislation after the fiasco of Schedule 1 of the CSF Bill, but encouraging local authorities to use 'wider children's services' in this way could very well have much the same effect. Without entering into a long debate about this, many local authorities already feel that they have a duty to ensure that home educated children have access to the five ECM outcomes. This could prove very interesting.

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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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Michael Gove and the home educators

I have always taken it rather for granted that Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, is a bit of a weasel. His appearance is distinctly musteline and he is after all a career politician. Still, he was the darling of the home educators during the run-up to the election. He valiantly denounced Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill and promised that the Tories would always stick by home educators. In January he said:

' I do not believe that the current system is perfect, but it is fundamentally important that we respect the rights of home educators first and that we ensure that any change to legislation is conducted in accordance with their wishes and interests.'

I found this pretty awful actually, emphasising the rights of parents without mentioning the rights of children, but there, I admit that I have a bee in my bonnet about children's rights. And why on earth should we , ' ensure that any change to legislation is conducted in accordance with their wishes and interests.'? Just because a group of people choose to follow some activity, does that mean that we must always automatically ensure that any legislation affecting them is in accordance with their wishes? Does that apply to fox hunters and vivisectionists as well? Or the owners of shotguns and pit-bull terriers? The logic of this escapes me utterly. In February he was promising that a Conservative government would repeal any legislation on home education which Labour passed. There was no doubt at all that Gove was the people's choice at least as far as the home education community was concerned.

In May Michael Gove became Secretary of State for Education. Home education was certainly safe in his hands. We could all breathe a sigh of relief and carry on educating or neglecting our children according to whichever particular strand of home education we favoured. Well at least for the next month or so, until Ofsted's report on Local authorities and home education was released in the middle of June. He suddenly seemed a good deal less sure about his opposition to new legislation about home education. The DfE announced that;

' We note Ofsted's findings and recommendations and ministers will shortly be considering if changes need to be made to the existing arrangements, given the strong views expressed by both home educators and local authorities.'

This was the first hint that Gove might be changing his position slightly. Note the words well, 'considering if changes need to be made'. Observe that crucial word 'if'. A mere five weeks later and the Serious Case Review on Khyra Ishaq's death was published. Michael Gove said;

' We respect the right of parents to educate their children at home and most do a very good job, some of them picking up the pieces where children have had problems at school. Clearly lessons need to be learned by the tragic events in this case, and I will consider the letter I expect to receive from Birmingham shortly, to see what changes need to be made to the existing arrangements and reply in due course.'



What's changed in this picture boys and girls? Can you spot the difference? Well in June he was, ' 'considering if changes need to be made'. Now in July he will, 'see what changes need to be made to the existing arrangements ' See what's changed? The 'if' has vanished. The statement earlier this week is saying in effect that changes need to be made. The only question is what those changes will be, not if they need to be made. In other words, the arrangements around home education are going to change.

You can't altogether blame Gove for this abrupt volte face. Everybody gets upset about dead little girls and the immediate impulse is to do something about it. Now that he is in government, the obvious thing to do is pass a law which will stop any parents in the future torturing their children to death in this way. This is the standard response to such tragedies. Victoria Climbie's death produced the Every Child Matters document, the Soham murders produced the Independent Safeguarding Authority and now Khyra Ishaq's legacy may also be a new law. This is what governments do when they can't think of anything else. I think that matters are now balanced on the edge of a knife and it would only take one more case involving the abuse of a home educated child to tip the balance. The rumour is that just such a high profile case is about to hit the courts in the next month or so.

That there has been a shift in public opinion on the subject of home education seems clear. When Alan Thomas had a piece in the Guardian a couple of days ago, the comments were interesting. Usually one would expect to hear a contrapuntal murmur from Guardian readers of 'creeping surveillance society...statisim.... liberty' and various similar expressions. In fact everybody apart from the home educators seemed to be in favour of a crackdown on home education. I found this surprising.

How would Gove go about changing the law without encountering the same sort of fuss that Ed Balls did with his CSF Bill. Perhaps by going about it piecemeal, instead of demanding everything at once. It would not, at least to begin with, need an entirely new bill. Little bits and pieces are constantly being tacked on to things like the 1996 Education Act, sometimes years later. I should think that something along the lines of The Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006, Statutory Instrument 2006 No. 1751 might meet the case to begin with. As I say, Gove would be unwise to start a row by doing everything at once. To begin with, a simple requirement for home educating parents to register with their local authority would probably have the support of almost everyone except home educators themselves. Then it would just be a matter of adding other provisions every six months or so. I don't know of course if this is what will happen, but I would not be at all surprised.

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Michael Gove's dilemma

One has to feel sorry for Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education. He played a blinder when he was in opposition by pretending to be outraged at the plans for regulating home education. Who can blame him? It was such a fantastic chance to embarrass the Labour government and help scupper one of their flagship bills. Still, it is looking increasingly as though this unprincipled piece of realpolitic will be coming back to haunt him in the future.

Gove apparently thought that his Academies Bill, about to be rammed through parliament at breakneck speed, would be a real godsend for home educating parents. The fact that he believed this shows that he no more understands home education than Ed Balls did. Gove is puzzled that so few home educating parents seem interested in setting up so-called free schools. To him, it is the perfect solution and he has told colleagues that he is bewildered that the home educators are not queuing up to start their own schools and abandon this mad idea of educating their own children at home. Combined with the fact that after the passage of his wise and good measures all the schools in England will become world class academies, he really can't understand why anybody wouldn't want their kids to go to school. He does not seem to realise that most home educating parents wish to educate their children at home and not send them to some hastily rebranded comprehensive.

June was not a good month for Michael Gove and his dealings with home education. His announcement that groups of parents would be able to set up free schools on the 'Swedish Model' in disused shops and garages coincided with news from Sweden that home education was to be banned entirely and that the free schools would be obliged to follow a state imposed curriculum. Is that the kind of 'Swedish Model' that he had in mind? At the same time, Ofsted published their survey of home education and local authorities, in which they called for compulsory registration of all home educators. Gove's response was to say that his department was examining the current situation. In the next few days, the Serious Case Review into the death of Khyra Ishaq is due to be published. It is quite possible that this will try and blame unregulated home education for the child's death, thus piling on the pressure for Gove to do something. As if that was not bad enough, the rumour is that another high profile case of abuse in a home educating family is due to hit the headlines in the next month or so.

This then is the bind in which Michael Gove finds himself. On the one hand he has said publicly that he admires the fantastic job done by home educators. On the other hand, there is hardly a teacher, social worker, local authority officer or civil servant in the country who does not believe that the practice of home education needs to be regulated in a new way. This dilemma is matched by another. On the one hand the coalition is talking of handing power back to the people and ending the statist approach which characterised the Labour government, but on the other hand Cameron and his cronies are populists, always seeking to give the people what they think they want. Listening to the reactions to Khyra ishaq's death, I am guessing that what ordinary people want would be increased regulation of home education in order to prevent further tragedies of this sort.

In the normal way of things, this would be the signal for the launch of a government enquiry. But hang on a moment, didn't we have one of those last year? Of course we did and it recommended increased regulation of home education. Any new enquiry would certainly say the same thing, because that is the view of everybody working in the field of education.

I shall be interested to see how Gove deals with the question of home education in the coming months. He would look like a right one if after all he said in opposition he then went ahead with new laws on home education. On the other hand, an announcement in the wake of some new tragedy that the government were determined to take a tough line on this would certainly play well with the vast majority of voters. My guess is that he will, at least for now, sit tight and hope that he can forget about the business entirely.

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