Every so often home educators catch hold of some phrase and before you know it you are seeing it on every blog, list and forum. Ultra vires is one of these, ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is another. Local authorities must be reminded that home educating parents are ’innocent until proven guilty’ if they should happen to ask about a child’s education. Most home educating parents simply parrot this expression without having the least idea what they mean by it. It ties in with the idea which I explored in a recent post, that many home educators like to feel that they are being persecuted. The idea that the government or local authority should wrongly be treating them as guilty of something fits in neatly with this craving for persecution. Let us look at the idea of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and see just what these characters think they mean by it.
Commenting on a recent post of mine, somebody said:
There is a law that states that we must provide a suitable education. You are either
innocent or guilty of breaking that law. What's so difficult to understand about
that?
This is of course, complete nonsense. Nobody is breaking any law by not providing her child with a suitable education and I have no idea why anybody would believe this. Still, many home educators appear to think that this is so. Perhaps we can clear up this misunderstanding. If I have care of a child aged between five and sixteen and do not cause him to receive an education, I am not committing any sort of offence, either criminal or civil. If somebody suggests that my child might not be receiving an education, this cannot mean that they are accusing me of being ‘guilty’; there is nothing to be guilty of. I am not breaking any law by failing to educate a child, nor can I be arrested nor any civil proceedings be brought against me by anybody. The whole concept of innocence or guilt simply does not apply under those circumstances. Guilty of what, exactly? The thing is meaningless. I am not, even theoretically, guilty of breaking any law.
The only time that the idea of innocence or guilt could possibly enter into a discussion of a child’s education in this country is if the child is enrolled at a school or the subject of a School Attendance Order which names a specific school which he should attend. None of this applies to home educators. Their children are not enrolled at school and as many Freedom of Information requests have established, School Attendance Orders are issued my most local authorities perhaps once every couple of years and even then, hardly ever to home educating parents. Here is the wording used in School Attendance Orders:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1995/2090/schedule/made
It will be seen that the offence would be not failing the duty to provide the child with a suitable education, but one of ignoring the order itself. The offence is created and comes into being only by the serving of the order and relates only to that. No SAO, no offence.
Nobody in this country could ever be taken to court for not providing a child with an education; it is not an offence. Therefore even the most zealous local authority officer could not suspect a home educating parent of committing an offence. The idea of ’innocence’ or ’guilt’ is utterly without meaning. The only time that any offence could ever be taking place would be if the local authority issued an SAO and that simply does not happen. It would only be at the moment that a School Attendance Order was served on a parent that even the very possibility of an offence was created.
As I said at the beginning, this really has more to do with the widespread desire of many home educators to believe themselves victims of persecution than anything else. They want to believe that heartless officials are falsely accusing them of breaking the law. One more time; it is not against the law to keep your child from school and fail to educate him. Nobody could, even in theory, be taken to court for this. The only way that you could fall foul of the law is if your child is a registered pupil at a school or fails to attend the school named in a School Attendance Order. Unless this is happening, you are not breaking any law, nor could anybody even suspect you of breaking any law regarding the education of your child.
One final time, unless any readers have actually been served with a School Attendance Order or have children who are registered pupils at a school and are not being sent regularly, there can be no possibility of any offence and consequently no talk of innocence or guilt. Forget the expression 'innocent until proven guilty'; it does not and cannot apply to you. No mechanism exists for prosecuting anybody for failing to abide by the duty of causing a child to receive a suitable education. Prosecutions can only be brought with regard to failing to send a child to school.
Why local authorities must be allowed to visit home educating families
It is time to draw together the threads of the various themes at which we have recently been looking. In the first place, it is clear that some parents are less able than others to provide an education for their children by themselves. A quadraplegic mother, for instance, who is also deaf, blind, unable to speak and has severe learning difficulties, would not be able to educate her own child. An extreme case, but there are plenty of less afflicted individuals who are unable personally to educate their own children in a satisfactory fashion. (It is important though to remember that the child in a similar condition would still have the right to an education, a point to which we shall shortly return.)
I have complained before of the apparent inability of some home educators to distinguish between rights and duties. The unfortunate individual cited above gives us a perfect opportunity to do so. No matter how disabled a person in this country, he or she is entitled to a fair trial. He has a right to a fair trial. Consider now the case of a juror, though. We have a duty to sit on juries if called to do so. A duty, not a right. Jurors must fulfil certain criteria and if they do not do so, they are not allowed to undertake this duty. Think now of the case of the paralysed woman whom I mentioned above. She cannot see, hear, speak or even think clearly and logically. Such a person would still have the right to a fair trial, obviously. She would not though have a right to be in a jury. This is a duty which she is not competent to undertake. I am sure that none of us would want this person to be deciding on our guilt or innocence.
This case is precisely similar to home education. If parents had a right to educate their children at home, then clearly the mother who could not move, hear, speak, see or think properly, would enjoy that right; just as she enjoys the right to a fair trial. If on the other hand, she has a duty to her child, then it would be reasonable for us to assess whether or not she was capable of undertaking that duty. Another way of looking at this is to consider the child with similar problems. He still has a right to an education, no matter what difficulties he has. Rights are not dependent upon any external circumstances; they exist automatically. We test people for their ability to undertake duties though and quite rightly so.
In short, it is both logically and ethically correct for a local authority to wish to satisfy itself that somebody wishing to undertake the duty of educating their own child is in fact capable of undertaking this duty. The legal situation is a little more complex, but ethically and logically, the case could hardly be clearer. To assess this competence, local authority officers need at the very least to interview the parent and form some judgement of the person's ability to undertake this duty; just as a court will routinely assess the suitability of jurors. Anything less than this would be a gross betrayal of the rights of the children concerned in the matter. To sum up, if we were thinking of checking up on people to decide whether or not they should have certain rights; this would be absolutely dreadful. If we are checking that they are able to fulfill some duty or other, this is not only acceptable; it is necessary. Some home educating parents feel that threats are being made to deprive them of a right. In fact, checks are being made to see if they are able to undertake a duty. The two cases could hardly be more different.
Why do some local authorities lie to and mislead parents about home education?
One of the things which irritates some home educating parents is the apparent willingness of local authorities to lie to them and misrepresent the law about education. This is a recurring theme on some forums and lists.What motive could local authorities have for doing this? Hatred of home educators? Sheer wickedness? I want today to look at an example of this sort of thing known to me and to consider why such tactics may be quite justifiable and in the best interests of children.
In the London borough of Tower Hamlets, where until recently I was doing a lot of home visiting, there are many Bangladeshis and British people of Bangladeshi origin. A lot of them are from the Surma valley and speak not Bengali but Sylheti. It is not at all uncommon for the children of such parents, even those born in this country, to speak only Sylheti when they start school. This is a problem, but not one that anybody will discuss openly, for fear of being called racist. If the parents were not told constantly that the law required them to send their children to school at the age of five, many would not do so. The result could easily be young people who not only could not speak English at five, but could reach the age of twelve or so without speaking anything but Sylheti. This is especially the case with girls.
Here is a perfect example of why I feel that local authorities are both justified in giving out untruthful and misleading information to families and also paying more attention to one minority group, having different rules for them if your like, than are applied to white, English families. The chances of a white child born in this country reaching the age of five without learning to speak English are effectively zero. The chances of a child from a Sylheti speaking family in East London doing so can be high. This is a disaster for the child’s future prospects and he may never be able to take full advantage of the free education which he receives. The educational outcome for children of Sylheti origin is awful. It is disguised by the fact that monitoring often does not distinguish such children from other ’Asians’. Gujarati children tend to do brilliantly at school, better than white English kids and so they raise the average attainment for ’Asians’.
This is one example where a local authority needs to apply stricter rules to one ethnic group than another. It is also why in some areas, parents are told that the law requires them to send their children to school. In coming days, we shall be looking further at the implications of this sort of situation and what it can tell us about the reasons that local authorities often tell lies about the legal position of home education and do their best to discourage some people from undertaking it.
To recap, if a Sylheti family in Stepney decided not to send their daughter to school at the age of five, there is every chance that this child would not learn to speak English. She could remain in the home and marry young, never being able fully to participate in ordinary life. The local authority wishes to prevent this from happening. Should they tell these families that the law requires them to send their children to school at the age of five, which is not true? Or perhaps they should not discriminate in this way against one cultural group. Maybe they should crack down upon anybody who failed to send a child to school and start insisting that they can visit the family and talk to them in person? This sort of stratagy, where all parents are treated in the same way has caused a lot of trouble and ill feeling in some parts of the country, because it treats loving parents who genuinely wish to educate their own children as being potentially negligent. What do readers think? Should we go out of our way to protect girls who are at risk of never receiving a proper education and remaining second class citizens? Or should we on the other hand pursue all parents who do not send their children to school at the age of five and behave as though they are all careless of their children's welfare?
In the London borough of Tower Hamlets, where until recently I was doing a lot of home visiting, there are many Bangladeshis and British people of Bangladeshi origin. A lot of them are from the Surma valley and speak not Bengali but Sylheti. It is not at all uncommon for the children of such parents, even those born in this country, to speak only Sylheti when they start school. This is a problem, but not one that anybody will discuss openly, for fear of being called racist. If the parents were not told constantly that the law required them to send their children to school at the age of five, many would not do so. The result could easily be young people who not only could not speak English at five, but could reach the age of twelve or so without speaking anything but Sylheti. This is especially the case with girls.
Here is a perfect example of why I feel that local authorities are both justified in giving out untruthful and misleading information to families and also paying more attention to one minority group, having different rules for them if your like, than are applied to white, English families. The chances of a white child born in this country reaching the age of five without learning to speak English are effectively zero. The chances of a child from a Sylheti speaking family in East London doing so can be high. This is a disaster for the child’s future prospects and he may never be able to take full advantage of the free education which he receives. The educational outcome for children of Sylheti origin is awful. It is disguised by the fact that monitoring often does not distinguish such children from other ’Asians’. Gujarati children tend to do brilliantly at school, better than white English kids and so they raise the average attainment for ’Asians’.
This is one example where a local authority needs to apply stricter rules to one ethnic group than another. It is also why in some areas, parents are told that the law requires them to send their children to school. In coming days, we shall be looking further at the implications of this sort of situation and what it can tell us about the reasons that local authorities often tell lies about the legal position of home education and do their best to discourage some people from undertaking it.
To recap, if a Sylheti family in Stepney decided not to send their daughter to school at the age of five, there is every chance that this child would not learn to speak English. She could remain in the home and marry young, never being able fully to participate in ordinary life. The local authority wishes to prevent this from happening. Should they tell these families that the law requires them to send their children to school at the age of five, which is not true? Or perhaps they should not discriminate in this way against one cultural group. Maybe they should crack down upon anybody who failed to send a child to school and start insisting that they can visit the family and talk to them in person? This sort of stratagy, where all parents are treated in the same way has caused a lot of trouble and ill feeling in some parts of the country, because it treats loving parents who genuinely wish to educate their own children as being potentially negligent. What do readers think? Should we go out of our way to protect girls who are at risk of never receiving a proper education and remaining second class citizens? Or should we on the other hand pursue all parents who do not send their children to school at the age of five and behave as though they are all careless of their children's welfare?