Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
MONDAY 12 OCTOBER 2009
GRAHAM BADMAN
CBE, MS DIANA
R. JOHNSON MP AND
PENNY JONES
Q1 Chairman: I welcome Graham
Badman, Diana Johnson, the Under-Secretary of State for Children,
Schools and Families, and Penny Jones from the Independent Schools
and School Organisation, DCSF. Thank you for coming. I am sorry
that there has been a delay. One of the problems with trying out
something new, such as the appointment of a Children's Commissioner,
is that one does not realise just how complicated the process
is, if it has never been tried before. So real apologies to you
who have been waiting, and to the people who have taken great
interest in our inquiry. It is nice to have such a full gallery.
I hope that you will all enjoy the session. The normal rules apply,
and we want to get straight on to the questions. Graham, we have
chosen this topic for a short inquiry because there is great public
interest in it, in terms of wanting to make sure both that every
child in our country has the full possibility of a good education,
and that they are protected during their childhood. On the other
hand, there is a strong movement towards home education, and a
significant proportion of our school-age children benefit from
home education. You have conducted a swift inquiry into this—I
believe it took five months—and you have been doing some
further research. That is why we have chosen this topic. We hope
that we can help at this juncture, before legislation is introduced.
Graham, I shall ask you, the Minister and Penny Jones to say a
couple of words, if you wish, about where we are at the moment.
Who would like to start?
Ms Diana R. Johnson: Thank you, Mr Chairman,
and members of the Committee. I am pleased to be here this afternoon.
I would first like to set out the Government's position in a basic,
plain way. It remains that it is a fundamental right that parents
should be free to educate their child at home, if they wish to
do so. We acknowledge that views on home education are polarised,
with home educators feeling that local authorities do not understand
the range of approaches that they can take, and home educators
unwilling to accept that in a minority of cases home education
may not be up to scratch. In 2007, the Government published non-statutory
guidance on monitoring home education which set out the legal
requirements, and the approaches that we expected local authorities
and home educators to take in working together to ensure that
home-educated children receive a good education. However, it became
clear during 2008 that neither home educators nor local authorities
felt that the guidance was working, and that is the reason for
the review. Graham's recommendations fall into three broad categories:
first, registration and monitoring; secondly, providing far greater
support to home educators; and, thirdly, mechanisms for home educators'
needs to be considered explicitly in local authority strategies.
I need to say at this point that I am not able to go into very
much detail about the proposals on monitoring and registration
today. As you know, they are out for public consultation, which
ends on 19 October. We will have to consider carefully the consultation
responses before proceeding. I would like to emphasise that no
firm decisions have yet been taken. Home educators have repeatedly
asked for additional support, and I am pleased to say that we
have listened to them. I hope that members of the Committee had
an opportunity on Friday to see the response from the Secretary
of State to the recommendations in the report. Before January,
we will clarify our advice to local authorities on claiming pupil
funding to make it clear that they may claim funding for children
with special educational needs educated at home in receipt of
significant services from a local authority, or those attending
college. From 2011, funding will be available for other home-educated
children who use local authority services, which might be examination
centres, brokering work experience or using the county music service.
If we proceed to legislate, we intend to require local authorities
to broker arrangements so that home educators who want to take
public examinations can do so at centres reasonably close to where
they live and at no cost. We will also put arrangements in place
for authorities to consider home educators' needs strategically,
so that they are systematically considered and appropriate service
is provided. Finally, if and when the recommendations of Graham's
review are fully implemented, home educators will still have a
considerable degree of freedom. They will not be operating outside
the law, as is the case in the Netherlands and Germany where home
education is illegal. They will not have to sit national tests,
as in Finland and Norway, nor follow the National Curriculum,
as in Denmark. England will still be one of the most liberal countries
in the developed world in its approach to home education, reflecting
the careful balance we have to strike between a child's right
to education and a parent's right to educate their child in conformity
with their beliefs and philosophies. I very much look forward
to the report that you will produce after you have taken evidence.
Q2 Chairman: Thank you for
that, Minister; it got us off to a good start. Is there anything
you would like to add, Graham?
Graham Badman: My thanks for this
opportunity. I have not actually said anything about my report
since I submitted it to the Secretary of State, and there are
some good reasons for that. There were lots of invitations to
talk about it, but I chose not to because I thought it would be
prejudicial to an open process of consultation. To echo the Minister's
comments, if all the recommendations are implemented, there is
nothing to stop home educators, many of whom I have met who do
a thoroughly good job for their children, continuing. They would
be subject to registration and to what I regard as light touch
monitoring, but as the Minister has pointed out, in one of the
most liberal regimes in terms of a developed education system,
we now have greater access to a range of services. I stated in
my report that it seems perverse for any government to express
concerns about this group of people, yet not offer any resources
to them. If I were before you, Chairman, as a Director of Children's
Services and you asked me, "What do you know about the 80,000
children in your care?" and I replied, "I'm awfully
sorry, but I can't tell you very much about them," I suspect
that I would not remain in the post for very long. That, frankly,
is the situation in relation to elective home education. That
doesn't mean to say that it is bad; it means to say that we don't
know. Children have a moral right to education; I place great
emphasis on that. My report, I hope, sets out to balance the rights
of the child with the rights of parents. It seems timely on the
20th anniversary of the UN convention that we seek to examine
whether or not this sector of the community actually honours children's
rights as expressed in the UN convention. I spent some time in
my report discussing this and placed the recommendations in that
context. All that being said, if anything, the report is most
critical of local authorities. If implemented, it will hold them
to account through an audit regime for their systems of monitoring
elective home education. I think it raises real questions about
the support they have given and should give to statemented pupils;
about their training, or the absence of it, of staff; and it crucially
requires them to determine and analyse why those children left
school in the first place. Ask that question: why did they leave,
if indeed they ever attended? I tried very hard to represent the
views of the countless elective home educators who often spoke
of their despair—I do not use that word without some caution,
but it was genuine despair—at the schooling system. They
had concerns about the understanding of local authority officers
who did not appreciate the aims of elective home education. Elective
home educators often viewed elective home education as a place
of last resort where their children could escape bullying. They
felt that many young people, particularly those with special educational
needs and those on the autistic spectrum, were not being catered
for. Added to that, there was a whole group of parents who had
a philosophical belief in educating at home. There was a clear
conviction on the part of many of them that they could do it better,
and I respect that belief. But in turning now, to safeguarding,
I recognise that this was the most controversial element of the
report. Many parents felt that the initial press coverage of the
review found them guilty, and they had to prove their innocence.
I regret that, because I don't think that is true, and I cite
what they said to me—that hard cases make for poor legislation.
Where there was no evidence—for example, on forced marriage,
where I actually looked at the report that went to the Home Affairs
Committee—where I could find no evidence, I said so. In
regard to safeguarding I simply ask two questions about well-being
and safety. They are on page 28, paragraph 8.2. Basically, my
two questions were, "Are the concerns for child protection
over-represented within the elective home educators community;
and if so, what could have been done through better regulation
to ameliorate those effects?" Finally, with regard to education
itself I recommended further work to be done, to determine, in
the context of what constitutes not 21st-century schooling, but
the 21st-century education system that is required, what is suitable
and efficient, now. The definitions that we have are only defined
by case law. They are not legal, and they are pretty woolly. Although
I came to no firm conclusions I recommended that further work
be done on that. Indeed, in the same way that I recommended that
we explore more about autonomous education. We don't know enough;
we don't know enough in terms of research, particularly on what
are the outcomes for young people as a consequence of that. I
began by saying that I'd written this report in seeking to balance
the rights of children with the rights of their parents. I hope
that, if implemented, it gives children a voice. I know that in
itself is contentious. But I have also tried to give elective
home educators a voice. I recommended that they be engaged in
the process of determining what is efficient in education, that
they be involved in training, that they be involved in all the
things that follow, and that, crucially, local authorities create
a forum whereby they regularly hear from elective home educators
about the services that are provided. I believe that the EHE community
has much to offer in developing our understanding of the effectiveness
or otherwise of the schooling system. It holds a mirror up to
the schooling system, and to that end, I have to say, Chairman,
I have been somewhat surprised by the reaction of a vociferous
minority—and I do think it is a vociferous minority; I can
actually count the number of people who have done it. I have found
the remarks of some of them offensive, but I draw comfort from
an academic friend of mine who says that often personal attacks
are made when logic has been defeated. I don't regard those people
as a majority. I think that I have benefited enormously from learning
of their experiences, but I actually think that the change in
regulation and greater scrutiny is essential for the children.
Chairman: Thank you Graham. We are aware
that there are great passions on this subject. This Committee,
indeed, decided earlier this afternoon that we would make a particular
effort to meet a whole group of home educators, and that will
be part of our inquiry. Penny, would you like to say something?
Penny Jones: No.
Q3 Paul Holmes: Like lots
of other MPs, I am sure, this summer I have met with home educators,
in my constituency of Chesterfield, and they were very concerned,
as you just pointed out. They feared that your report or the way
the press reported it had labelled them as abusers, basically,
so it is very welcome that you have gone to considerable trouble
just now to say that is clearly not what the report is saying,
and that there is lots more in the report about the raw deal that
home educators get from the system, and so forth. So that is all
very welcome. Just to help further with the process of clarifying
that and setting people's minds at rest, one of the concerns was
paragraph 8.12 of your report, where you said that "the number
of children known to children's social care in some local authorities
is disproportionately high relative to the size of their home
educating population." What home educators feel is that we
need some clarification about this. Who is classified as being
known to social care? Lots of children in home education—certainly
lots of children I have met over the years—have left the
mainstream system because they have special educational needs,
and therefore would be known to the education and social care
system, but not because of any danger to them. They're known to
the system because they have a problem, and that problem has led
to them being bullied at school or not being dealt with properly,
and so they've been taken out of the system. So, how do you define
"known to social care"? Who comes under that category?
Graham Badman: It is a term in
common parlance, "known to social care". I understand
why there needs to be some clarity around it. There are three
sections. Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 gives a duty to
safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need, including
disabled children. Section 37 refers to the powers of family court
proceedings in which a court can direct an authority to carry
that out. Section 47 refers to the duty to safeguard and promote
the welfare of children who are at risk of significant harm. In
other words, it leads into a child protection investigation. From
the original data, what became confused—I want to clarify
it now—is that of the original small sample of local authorities,
41 young people were subject to a child protection plan. In other
words, we did not take any account of those who were known because
of a disability—they did not feature. There were 41 young
people who were the subject of a child protection plan. Let us
be clear about it—this is the highest level of protection
we can afford children. But it was argued that that was a relatively
small sample and that there was a glitch in the data, and so we
went back and reworked the data. When it originally came out,
I said I was cautious about it, in terms of that number from that
authority, because proportionately it represents a population
of elective home education that is about twice an ordinary population.
In fact, on reworking that sample, and I didn't produce it in
the first place, I can tell you now, the figure is actually five
times. The proportion is five times. But what we did in anticipation
of this Select Committee, because I guessed this would come out,
we went out to local authorities again and asked for further information
about elective home education. Let me stress again that these
children are not those who are just known; they are the ones who
are subject to a child protection plan. And this time, from 74
local authorities, the figure confirms the original findings—namely,
that on the basis of 74 local authorities it is slightly in excess
of double the percentage. In other words, there is a significant
risk attached to it. What I also recognise from your question
is that before invoking a section 47 inquiry, there will be a
number of strategy meetings. There will be families that give
cause for concern on what is sometimes good evidence, sometimes
not. A strategy meeting will be held; there might be a core group
that is formed; that strategy meeting might go nowhere. A further
strategy meeting might take place again, and then it could be
that no section 47 inquiry is held, or if it is held, that there
is no finding that there is a need for a child protection plan.
The ones we are reporting to you are subject to a plan. They have
the highest level of protection this land can afford. That is
not to say that they are permanently enshrined in that. One point
I think it is really important to get across is that assessment
is a process—it is not an event—and the mistakes that
are causing local authorities to be chastised on their child protection
at the moment, I would suggest to you, are often because section
47 assessments have become an event rather than a process, something
that is subject to a continual review. So there are two ways of
looking at it. One is that this figure is not static, because
they are in the process of continual review. Secondly, there might
be other families who will come into this as statutory meetings
continue to take place. Clearly, what my report does is to draw
attention to those five key morbidities that we know are so important
in terms of child protection—drugs, alcohol, substance abuse,
domestic violence and learning difficulties—as possible
precursors to need in regard to the child's education, not of
a one-to-one relationship. We are just saying there is a risk.
All my report tries to say is that local authorities must be diligent
in pursuing that risk and determining whether or not it is a risk
that needs action or a risk that can be managed. And so, although
there will be, if this report goes through, the power of local
authorities to refuse registration, they do not necessarily have
to do so. And certainly some of the categories that you spoke
about earlier would not invoke that right.
Q4 Paul Holmes: You mentioned
disability. Are you saying that the figures for children in home
education who are known to social care do not include children
who are known because they have a disability?
Graham Badman: That is correct.
Paul Holmes: You are talking strictly
about—
Graham Badman: I was talking strictly
about those who are on a child protection plan.
Q5 Paul Holmes: Your initial
findings, and then the later September wave of requests that you
made, showed huge disparities between different local authorities
on what these percentages were. How would you explain that?
Graham Badman: Without going back
to those local authorities, that is difficult. Not all children's
social services departments work in the same way, as we have discovered.
I suspect that there will be a variation in terms of the elective
home education population because they are not spread universally
across the country. There are concentrations of home educators.
Equally, I would imagine there are some issues around deprivation
that would be important. There are also issues around the quality
of schooling in that if you can create a schooling system which
satisfies everybody, the movement to elective home education would
probably be less. It is a question worthy of further asking. The
aggregate figure is correct and I stand by it. It is slightly
in excess of double the proportion. But yes, if one of my recommendations
is carried out, namely that local authorities reflect on why children
have left, they also might want to reflect on what they don't
know about them and whether they are assessing that risk adequately.
I said in my report that I had considered serious case reviews.
The identification of serious case reviews was quite difficult
because it is not axiomatic that serious case reviews name the
place of education. It is not always known. There were, in fact,
only four where elective home education was a feature. I will
not go into the detail because some of it is confidential. Two
of them were stark in their concerns for those young people. All
of them made recommendations to make changes in regulation to
provide greater powers of scrutiny. Some of the evidence, and
certainly that offered by local authorities, was that they were
hampered in their task. So it may well be that the disparity in
local authority figures was because some local authorities don't
know what they don't know.
Q6 Paul Holmes: If you are
saying that the figures are fairly robust because they don't include
children with disabilities or special educational needs, what
about false reporting? A neighbour might ring up and say that
these children have been kept off school and so forth and it turns
out that they are being legitimately home educated. Does that
appear as a child investigation?
Graham Badman: There is always
false reporting in children's social services. Whenever you get
the situation that I have dealt with in another way in terms of
Haringey, you always get an increase in that false reporting.
But good strategy meetings will sort that out. You won't get that
section 47 inquiry on the basis of false evidence. That will be
tested by the strategy group. It will be tested by the core group.
Remember, too, that when you get a section 47, parents have the
right to be there. Authorities have the right to exclude them,
but I know of few circumstances where a child is subject to a
child protection plan where parents or carers do not have an opportunity
to speak. So I would be surprised if false reporting in any way
accounted for those figures.
Q7 Paul Holmes: Finally, one
of the concerns of home educators is the speed at which all this
has happened. They put in freedom of information requests so that
they could look at your original data and then they have not had
time to do that for the September data. Will all this data be
put on the website so that home educators can go through it and
come up with counter-arguments? Perhaps the Minister can answer
that.
Chairman: Minister?
Ms Diana R. Johnson: Freedom of
information requests are being dealt with. I think that more than
150—
Penny Jones: Yes, 150.
Ms Diana R. Johnson: More than
150 freedom of information requests have come into the Department.
That is clearly a lot of work. With that volume of requests things
have not happened as quickly as they need to. We are well aware
of the need to get on and sort out the freedom of information
requests. There has been a huge number.
Q8 Paul Holmes: Can you not
just put all the responses up on the website so that people can
read it directly anyway?
Ms Diana R. Johnson: As I recall,
these FOI requests are all slightly different. There is no common
thread.
Penny Jones: FOI requests cover
quite a broad range. We have put up an analysis of the second
report. That was up with a letter from Graham, so that is all
up on the website for everybody to see. We go into quite lot of
detail, giving graphs of the spread of findings and that sort
of thing. The general line that we have taken is that we do not
release the information that individual authorities have sent
to us because the numbers tend to be small, and there is always
the danger that an individual child can be identified, and then,
of course, there are exemptions that apply for the protection
of those children who are vulnerable.
Q9 Mr Stuart: Overall, what
percentage of children are subject to child protection plans?
Graham Badman: On the basis of
the new data—the new data include issues of concern such
as whether a child is in education, training or employment and
whether the family is co-operating—the national figure is
about 0.2%. The figure among elective home educators is 0.4%.
Q10 Mr Stuart: You have slightly
lost me there. Having gone to all the local authorities, I thought
that what you were basing the doubled risk assessment on was the
very hard measure of child protection plans. In other words, it
wasn't anything to do with the expression that has previously
been used about contact with social services. This is now very
much at the hardest end—although it happened to align with
your original position.
Graham Badman: Absolutely.
Q11 Mr Stuart: Just now, you
said something about other issues.
Graham Badman: What I was saying
is that they were among the data set that was given to the Chairman
of the Committee as well as being published. We went out to local
authorities and asked other questions as well. Just to be clear,
the data sample was from 74 authorities. The percentage of the
population of elective home educators from those 74 authorities
who are on child protection plans is 0.4%. From the same group
of all children, it is 0.2%. So, it is double. It is double proportionally
and not double in terms of the actual number.
Q12 Mr Stuart: Sure. As you
mentioned in those figures, it is also very important not to give
the impression that there is a very high number of children in
child protection plans among the home-educated community. Obviously,
it did feel as if the initial publicity suggested that home educators
should be viewed with suspicion.
Graham Badman: I am not arguing
that at all. I am saying that proportionally there is a higher
percentage. I do not regard any home educators in that way with
suspicion. Indeed I met a number of home educators whose children
were so accomplished I thought that they should be justly proud
of them. All I am saying is that you cannot say—certainly
from the view of those whom I met—that all children are
safe, particularly as there is no security about the number of
children who are known to us. The best estimates that have been
put forward are around 20,000 or so. Most local authorities believe
that it is at least double that in terms of those who are unknown
and not registered. Certainly members of my reference group put
that figure much higher again. All I am saying is, no, you should
not treat home education in that way. You should not view it with
suspicion, but you should know that the risk factor is proportionally
double.
Q13 Mr Stuart: In any case
in which a child is known to be on a child protection plan, will
it, by necessity, mean that that child is known to the local authorities?
Graham Badman: Yes.
Q14 Mr Stuart: So, if the
numbers that were formally known about were approximately double
your best estimate, it would take us back to almost precisely
where we started, at the average of the population as a whole.
Graham Badman: I'm sorry, I don't
understand the question.
Q15 Mr Stuart: Well, if there
are twice as many children in home education than are formally
known about, which by definition includes all those for whom there
is a child protection plan, it would suggest that, roughly speaking,
you were back to 0.2% of the home-educated population having a
child protection plan, which would put them in line with the national
average.
Graham Badman: I think that it
propels the figures the other way. It would actually make the
proportion higher, because they are already included in the overall
population and in the subset of the population, which would mean
that the percentage will be fractionally higher. It works the
other way.
Q16 Mr Stuart: I am probably
being rather slow here. Take me through that again. I am obviously
not understanding this.
Graham Badman: Well, if 0.2% is
all population and that includes elective home educators, then
that figure actually depresses the overall figure. If you have
them separated out, it would make it proportionally worse. If
you take out home educators from the first figure, it makes that
figure 0.2% lower.
Q17 Mr Stuart: Ignoring that,
because the number of children who are home educated is statistically
insignificant in the overall population, so the 0.2%. can be left
roughly where it is, the point is how many home-educated children
have child protection plans? If those who are formally known about
are only half of the number of children who are estimated by you,
the leading expert on the subject, to be home educated—local
authorities likewise think that they know about only half—that
suggests that, roughly speaking, they are about the national average.
Graham Badman: Forgive me. It
is me who is being obtuse. I understand your point absolutely
now, but who is to say that they are safe? If you don't know anything
about them, a high proportion of those who are unknown may be
unsafe.
Q18 Mr Stuart: Absolutely
right, and people rightly worry about safety, but first one must
deal with data as they are. From what you said, the data seem
to be that there are no more children with child protection plans
among home-educated children, if it is in fact twice as many as
those that are formally known about, than in the wider population.
To put in context the previous Minister's remarks about the risks,
which caused a lot of offence among the home education community,
unless there were very good data to back them up, they were wrongly
stigmatised as having a higher incidence of child abuse, or the
threat of it within their families. I am putting to you a fairly
important point, not least to them, that perhaps on your own numbers
a home-educated child is no more likely to be abused than anyone
else in the population.
Graham Badman: You are asking
me to determine a causal effect that I cannot. All I can say to
you is to repeat the evidence that I have, which is that on the
basis of the information provided by 74 authorities, twice the
percentage of young people have child protection plans among the
elective home-educated population than in the general population.
What you would consider in terms of an assessment of risk about
a family before you decide that you are going to bar them on safeguarding
grounds, is a range of other reasons and data drawn from a strategy
group, if you had gone to a section 47 inquiry, or whatever you
had gained in terms of intelligence from your officers visiting.
If you want me to clarify the statistical interpretation of those,
I will gladly write to you afterwards.[75]2
I also draw your attention back to the second set of data, because
local authorities asked us to raise other issues in terms of their
assessment of whether children were receiving an appropriate education,
whether it was not suitable, whether they were co-operating and,
crucially, in terms of the data that we have given you, the percentage
of the elective home-educated young children—young people—who
were not in education, employment or training. We are concerned
about outcomes as well. The report is not just about safeguarding;
it is also about the quality of education that they receive.
Q19 Mr Stuart: Sticking with
NEETS, I am glad that you raised them because whenever education
Ministers are in front of us, I say that the crude proxy analogy
is to see whether the system is working. I normally point out
that it is not, because we have more NEETS now that we had 12
years ago, which suggests failure. What is the number of NEETS
in the home-educated community?
Graham Badman: I cannot say about
the whole community, but I can tell you about the 74 responses
that we have.
Chairman: That is about half.
Graham Badman: Yes. In a reported
population of 1,220; 270 of those children were not in education,
employment or training, which is 22%. The national figure for
NEETS is 5.2%.
75 2 See Ev 31-35. Back
|
