The
Chairman: Mr. Stuart’s question will
have to be the last
one.
Q
68Mr.
Stuart: Could you comment on the provision within schedule
1 that allows parents to object to their home-educated child being seen
alone or to inspectors from the local authority wanting to come into
the home? Proposed new paragraph 19E(4) explicitly states that such
arrangements may take
place “unless
the child or a parent of the child
objects”. However,
could you comment on what the Bill goes on to say? Proposed new
paragraph 19F(1)(e) says that someone objecting can be cause for the
revocation of licence to be allowed to home
educate: “by
reason of a failure to co-operate with the authority in arrangements
made by them under section 19E, or an objection to a meeting as
mentioned in section 19E(4), the authority have not had an adequate
opportunity to ascertain the matters referred
to”. In
other words, there is a right to object but, if you do, you lose your
right to be home
educated. John
Friel: Well, you could change the parent’s
objection under that provision to say, “save when the parents
have given reasonable grounds for their objection.” That would
be a minor amendment but
significant. My
concern about the whole of the schedule is that the matter goes to an
uneducated, independent panel set up by regulation. There is no rush in
such a case, as in exclusion, so we could consider sending it to the
SENDIST, which has the expertise. Both Mr. Lamb and myself
would consider that the majority of home-educated children—not
the vast majority, but a lot of them—would have a special need,
and the tribunal with expertise would be the SENDIST. If we set up a
panel locally, like an exclusion panel, we may have a chair without
legal experience in a complicated matter. The provisions are highly
complex and very litigious, and we may not have members with more than
general educational experience or, indeed, with no educational
experience. I urge you to think a bit about the regulatory power to set
up an appeal. It is questionable whether it ought to be as it
stands. Brian
Lamb: I have three quick
points.
The
Chairman: Sadly, we do not have
time.
Brian
Lamb: It is crucial that whoever goes into the homes
must have expertise in SEN. The panels must also have expertise in SEN,
and that is analogous to my recommendations on exclusions and exclusion
panels.
The
Chairman: On behalf of the Committee, I thank our two
witnesses for giving up their time this afternoon to give evidence. It
has proved to be enormously valuable to the Committee in its
deliberations. Will the next set of witnesses join
us? 5.17
pm
Q
69The
Chairman: The purpose of the Committee is just to gather
evidence from you, so please relax and enjoy the session. Starting with
Graham Badman, will everyone kindly introduce themselves and comment on
the
Bill? Graham
Badman: I am Graham Badman, the former director of
children’s services for Kent. I was invited by the Secretary of
State to prepare the report that led to the legislation. My comments on
the Bill so far and the notes of guidance from the Department for
Children, Schools and Families seem to fulfil, with some amendments
that I welcome, my key
recommendations. Fiona
Nicholson: I am Fiona Nicholson. I am a trustee of
Education Otherwise and chair of the Education Otherwise policy group.
I am a home-educating parent. I have a 16-year-old who has never been
to school. He has not taken exams. He is a fairly up and free-wheeling
autonomous, headstrong sort of person. I don’t know where he
gets it from. Education Otherwise is opposed to schedule 1 and clause
26. We will not be co-operating with any aspects of their
implementation. Sir
Paul Ennals: I am Paul Ennals. I am chief executive
of the National Children’s Bureau. NCB has been involved in
developing a policy on a wide range of the Bill, most notably the PSHE
provision, and I was involved in the advisory group for home education.
I also had involvement in developing the White Paper and some
discussions about the content and style of the pupil and parent
guarantees. Chloe
Watson: I am Chloe. I am chair of the Home Educated
Youth Council. I am a home-educated child, and an educational
researcher. I have just turned 17, and I represent HEYC, which does not
support the Bill and will not comply with anything under
schedule
1. Beth
Reid: I am Beth Reid. I am policy manager with the
National Autistic Society. We have four key areas of interest in the
Bill. The first is to make sure that the home-school agreements reflect
the need of children with SEN. Secondly, we want to make sure that,
under clause 9, children with special educational needs cannot be put
into part-time education when it is not appropriate for their needs. We
strongly support clauses 7 and 8, which were discussed in the previous
sitting, and we want to ensure that the home education parts of the
Bill reflect the needs of children with special educational needs and
their specific case for support.
The
Chairman: Thank you very much. Mr.
Gibb.
Q
70Mr.
Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con): My
questions at this point are mainly to Graham Badman. What was the
principal problem that you were concerned about? Was it the issue of
safeguarding, with home education being a potential cover for abuse, or
were you more worried about the quality of education being received by
home-educated
children? Graham
Badman: On the basis of the quantum of evidence
submitted by local authorities, I think my first concern would be the
sufficiency and quality of the education received by a number of
students. I can give
you some statistics if you wish. Alongside that was a secondary concern
that in a tiny minority of cases, there could be significant abuse of a
child or children within a family. Some notable cases are running
currently. I would not want to prioritise one over the other,
but I have concerns on both
fronts.
Q
71Mr.
Gibb: I think that you must, really. We on the Committee
all need to know your main concern. Was it the quality of education, or
was it abuse? You seem to be telling us that your principal driving
force was concern about the quality of
education. Can
I ask you about a recommendation in your report? You say, “At
the time of registration parents...must provide a clear statement
of their educational approach, intent and desired/planned outcomes for
the child over the following twelve months.” That contrasts with
page 2 of the policy statement just issued by the
Government, which says that parents will be able to follow the wide
range of educational philosophies that they currently adhere to,
including autonomous learning, and will not have to follow the national
curriculum and so on. What do you think of the Government’s
policy in terms of implementing your
recommendation? Graham
Badman: I thought that the existing definition does
not offer a very clear definition of “efficient” or
“suitable”, and I made that point in my report. I talked
about the need for an education that was broad, balanced, relevant and
differentiated, to quote from a report of many years ago, but I argued
fundamentally that children should have an education that equips them
to make choices. Even within the current legislation, although the
definitions are within their own community, it also makes it clear that
within their own community must not preclude other choices.
Much has been
said about autonomous education in the wake of the report’s
publication. It needs to be clear that by no means all home educators
are autonomous educators. Some are highly structured. Some offer a
high-quality, quite formalised system of education. I was maintaining
that even within the loosest definition of “autonomous”,
it should be possible for any parent to say, “Over the next 12
months, this is what I wish my child to achieve, and this is what I
wish to see them do.”
I can cite,
if you wish, an example of an 18-month-old grandchild who I guess
psychologists would argue is at the key autonomous stage. I can tell
you that in the next 12 months, although she is completely autonomous
in her education because she chooses, her vocabulary will grow from
about 10 words to about 1,000. She will go from monosyllabic babbling
to sentences. I know that there are things that she will be able to do,
because I have some form of prediction and a duty of care, albeit as a
grandparent. I expect no less of her
parents.
Q
72Mr.
Gibb: So you are not expecting just two sides of A4; you
are expecting a full curriculum and teaching
plan. Graham
Badman: I think that on two sides of A4, for a young
child, you could set out what you expect of them in linguistic terms,
which is particularly important, and maybe in terms of mathematics.
When the child is much older, as a teenager, would it not be remiss of
any parent, for example, not to ensure that they have access to
information enabling them to judge environmental issues such as climate
change? There should be something within the structure of an education
allowing a parent
to say, “These are the things that are important to us, which is
why we are home educators, and these are the things that we therefore
want for our
child.”
Q
73Mr.
Gibb: One final question. You recommended that local
authorities should have the right to speak with each child alone if
deemed appropriate, or if a child is particularly vulnerable. The
legislation states that the parent or child can object to such a
meeting. Why are you so insistent in your report that the local
authority meets the child alone without the parent being
there? Graham
Badman: I made it clear in my report and in my
evidence to the Select Committee that I viewed the exercising of the
right to see the child alone as a last resort, and I would hope that
there would be very few cases where that would arise. However, there
are occasions when it is important to ascertain the views of the child
and to do so in a quite direct way. The UN convention on the rights of
the child, which was much of the background to my report, does not
confer those rights on the parent. It does not say that you can have
the right to the child preferred to the parent—it confers those
rights on a child, one of which is to express themselves when they are
able to do so. There are some instances where the views of the child
have been subjugated to the views of the parent, and so, in extremis, I
would expect the local authority, if it had significant cause on a
range of other fronts, to be able to ask that question of the child
themselves.
Q
74Ms
Johnson: When you were undertaking your review, did you
meet any groups of people who supported the recommendations that you
were
making? Graham
Badman: Yes, many, and subsequently by e-mail as
well. There was one who gave evidence to the Select Committee, who said
he welcomed registration, and that he already had good relationships
with the local authority. There are many others who welcomed the fact
that were this to become law, home educators would have access to
significant resources, particularly applying to youngsters with special
educational needs. They would also have opportunities to re-enter
schools, sometimes on a flexible basis, and, if they did so—and
many home educators do, at some point in their career—to go back
to a school where their previous career had not been blighted; the
powers of local authorities to offer a new school was very much
welcome. There are a range of reasons.
A number also
welcomed the opportunity to be engaged, particularly in the training of
local authority officers, which was one of their major criticisms, and
to have a voice. I made a recommendation that home educators should
have a
voice. The
report is not critical of home education—if anything, it is
critical of local authorities—but it gives home educators a
voice and an opportunity to disinter some of the good things that I saw
about personalised education that we might learn
from.
Q
75Mr.
David Laws (Yeovil) (LD): Mr. Badman, I want to
start with you as well, for obvious reasons, if you do not mind. I
assume that you have seen the paper that the Department issued today,
setting out some notes about these particular
clauses. Graham
Badman: I confess that I did, half an hour ago, and I
have done my best to read them.
Mr.
Laws: Great. I think we know what you are trying to
achieve—certainly, my party recognises some of the concerns that
you have. However, in the section that deals with registration, there
is six pages’ worth of details of what will be involved in
registration, when it can be rejected and so on. There is a paragraph
that seems to sum up the approach to me, which is paragraph
28 on page 7. It states that regulations will require local authorities
to acknowledge applications for registration to make a decision on
registration within a reasonable period of time. Is one of the reasons
why many home educators object to your report and the
Government’s proposals is that they appear to turn something
that at the moment is a right for people in the country—home
education—into something that they appear to have to not just
notify, but apply to the state for permission to do and to prove their
worthiness to do it? Is that not quite a big tilt in the way in which
the freedom to home educators are set out in this
country? Graham
Badman: I do not think it is. Two pieces of the legal
advice contained within my report makes it clear that under European
law, there is no absolute right to home-educate—the chapter and
verse are given in my report. The process of regulation simply enables
local authorities to determine first of all, how many of these young
people we are dealing with. I more fearful about the numbers that we do
not know about than anything else. One in my reference groups tells me
that the numbers could be way in excess of 80,000. We do not know about
these young people. We do not know if they are safe. We do not know if
they are having a suitable education. The registration process is the
first step in making an inroad into dialogue with the local authority,
which has responsibilities that it cannot necessarily discharge because
the current laws do not give it the
power.
Q
76Mr.
Laws: You accept that in practice it is a lot more than
that. We as a party have no objections with notifying, but on page 8 we
see what the statement will involve. Admittedly, it is fairly brief but
it is nevertheless a substantive statement setting out the educational
needs of the individual child, talking about educational philosophy and
outlining plans for the current year. I am not saying that those issues
are not relevant to the local authority, but the provision is turning
what at present is a right into something for which individuals will
have to apply to the state; they will have to apply for permission to
do something that does not require permission at present. Do you
understand why there should have been strong feelings about it, and why
people should feel that the state is intruding not only by requiring
notification but by requiring registration?
Graham
Badman: I think I understand their feelings. I simply
don’t share them. I see them as someone who has looked in from
the outside. The sort of information that the note issued today offers
is not that complicated.
I would
almost turn your question on its head. Proper and responsible parents
make that decision, often for very good reason. I acknowledge that
there are many good reasons why people should decide on home education.
Equally, they must have some view of what they are going to achieve,
and what are the needs of their child. If they had no idea of the needs
of the child, they might just as well have left them in a school. It
could have been a good school, it could have been an awful school, but
they must have had some insight of what their child needed and how they
could fulfil those needs more effectively through home education. I am
saying only that if a local authority is to exercise its proper duties,
it needs to know that. | 
