The Review and Consultation

The review was announced on 19th January by Baroness Morgan, the Children's Minister.

There has been some confusion as to whether this is a consultation or a review.

If it is a consultation then there are certain requirements and safe guards concerning the period it should be open, not less than 12 weeks, and other matters that come under the guidelines for e consultations. If it is a review then these guidelines do not apply.

It seems that it is considered a review despite the fact that it is being conducted on the governments e consultation web site and is clearly defined as a consultation document in the summary.

There are in fact two review/consultation questionnaires. The links above are to the 6 question version for non organisational stake holders. The version for local authorities and other professional and organisational stake holders comprise of 60 questions, this questionnaire is on the "myopinion" web site and is clearly headed Independent Review of Home Education in England.

The short questionnaire will close on the 20th February 2009, the longer questionnaire on the 6th February 2009. The report and recommendations will be published in May.

A detailed scrutiny of the shorter questionnaire can be seen on our one observation about the review page and in more depth at Leading and Misleading.

There are significant concerns over the wording of the questions, the assumptions and inferences made and the limited scope of the information that will be "gathered".

There are equally significant concerns regarding many other aspects of this review.

We are told that it is an information gathering exercise and that all "stakeholders" opinions will be sought.

This is manifestly untrue. Many home educators will be excluded from involvement because:

• of the extremely short period between announcement and the deadline for submission.
• of the failure of the review to allow inclusion by letter or paper response
• to take account of the fact that many families are not internet enabled
• of the emotions that have been generated by the aggressive and unjustified link between HE and child abuse in the coverage of the launch of the review
• this comes only months after the previous consultation on Children Missing Education that concerned home educators responded to in large numbers
• many home educators are independent of large HE organizations and not represented by them
• of the failure of government to recognize the legal rights of the family to privacy and self determination
• it is clear that the focus is on the the information that will be gathered from LA's and other professionals - not people responding to the short questionnaire
• of the manipulative and intentional biased questions
• the outcome has already been decided

The review will be led by Graham Badman , former Managing Director of Children, Families and Education at Kent County Council. He will publish his report in May 2009.

It is stated that this is an independent review. With respect to Mr Badman is is difficult to see how he can be entirely independent. He has had a very successful career as an educationalist and has received an OBE for his work. Whilst he would undoubtedly have no intention of bias how can a person who is clearly supportive of the state system of education fully appreciate and independently offer opinion of a system of education that may, in many cases, be diametrically opposed to what he believes to be valid? If this assumption is wrong then it would be valuable for him to express his understanding and knowledge of the many forms of education that can be found in a non-state model.

Importantly the government continue to intentionally confuse the issues of education and welfare. It is, by virtue of the provisions of the Education Act, the parents of a child who are responsible for the child's education - not the state. That is law.

The very important matter of safeguarding a child from suffering abuse, something which every person would endorse, has nothing to do with education. The LAs have significant powers already to deal with cases where children who may be at risk. The government's program of tracking and recording every person from pre birth to adulthood, ContactPoint, will provide the means to identify and make available to over 390,000 professionals information that will, we are told, make the tragic cases that have been headline news recently a thing of the past.

But all this has nothing to do with education.

If it is believed that there may be cases where an abuser will use Home Education as a cover for their crimes, it will not be prevented by forcing home educators to allow unsolicited entry in to their home and the monitoring of "the educational provision".

The tragic and terrible cases of child abuse that have made headline news in recent years are unconnected with home education and for the authorities to make any link is highly manipulative and dishonest.