Funding college places for home educated children

Graham Stuart and Nick Gibb do a double act and reveal that local authorities can allow home educated children to attend college and then claim the cost back from central government:


http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2011-07-18a.66262.h&s=home+education#g66262.r0

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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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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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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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