Home educating parents object to council’s home visit plans
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Version 0 of 1. “It’s a general mistrust of the population. We are not citizens any more – we are all terrorists,” says Rachel Graham, with irony. “Or child abusers,” her friend Leslie Barson exclaims. “We are a danger. We need to be checked and controlled.” This is a meeting of parents who decided to educate their children at home rather than send them to school, and they are angry because their local authority has introduced a monitoring regime for home educators, which they say infringes their civil rights as parents. The parents – some of whose children are long grown up – have gathered in the cafe of a central London department store to discuss home education in the context of growing concerns about safeguarding children. They feel they have become the victims of a national hysteria surrounding child safety, partly as a result of headlines about child abuse, partly because of the fallout of the “Trojan horse” plot in Birmingham. Their local authority, Westminster in central London, wants to visit families who are educating their children at home once a year. The council says it makes no apologies for “trying to look after the welfare of children or for seeking to ensure that they receive the highest standard of education possible”. The parents say, however, that the authority has no jurisdiction to inspect or approve home educators, and accuse Westminster of threatening to take parents who do not comply to court. “Parents are responsible for their children’s education,” says Barson, a mother of two now grown-up children who were home-educated. “They ramp up safeguarding – ‘if it saves just one child’ – but this is not a safeguarding issue. There is no duty on a local authority to approve home education – it’s a parental responsibility. This is about approving and monitoring. “I feel an inspection is an illegal infringement of my rights as a parent. The law says I’m responsible for my children’s education. The authority’s responsibility starts if there’s evidence of a problem or a concern. They think our children are at risk because they are not being seen daily by a teacher. But children are not safe just because they are at school.” According to Ed Yourself, a home education consultancy, in July 2014 local authorities were aware of 27,292 children being home-educated in England, a 17% increase on 2013, but others claim that many more children are out of school and off the radar. In December, Labour Co-operative MP Barry Sheerman called for a parliamentary debate on home schooling early in the new year, claiming that the whereabouts of up to 100,000 children were unknown. “In an age when we are ever more worried about child abuse and child protection, may we have an early debate, because that area has got out of hand?” Tory MP Graham Stuart, who succeeded Sheerman as chair of the cross-party education select committee, is supportive of the Westminster parents, calling on the authority to improve support and resources available to home-educating families, rather than imposing a monitoring regime. Until last year, the Westminster parents had a home-education policy, formally approved and adopted by the full council in February 2010, with which they were happy. It changed to include the annual visit when Westminster joined forces with Hammersmith and Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea in a tri-borough arrangement to share services. Rachel Graham, a former primary-school teacher who has home-educated four of her five children, aged from nine to 21, objects to the home visits: “If you have got someone coming into your home to look at what you are doing, they are making a judgment. But who are they? You don’t know what their background is or who they are.” Helen White, another former teacher who is home-educating her two children aged 10 and 14 and campaigns with the Westminster group, though she no longer lives there, adds: “Everything is: ‘We do not trust the parent. You have to prove to us you are innocent. You have to do it on our terms.’ I find it quite insulting, to be honest. It’s an abuse of their power.” According to the 2007 legislation, local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis. However, under section 437(1) of the Education Act 1996, local authorities can intervene if it appears that parents are not providing a suitable education. Danny Chalkley, Westminster city council cabinet member for children and young people, says the majority of the 109 families home-schooling their children in the borough are happy with the support the council offers. “We fully respect the right of any family to home-educate children and, in accordance with guidance approved by the Department for Education, we want to meet them and offer advice where it is needed. “We are keen to build positive relationships with all families who educate children at home, and a working group has been set up to ensure good lines of communication are continued.” |