Page Last updated 9 May, 2006
Consultation with the DfES On: Proposed changes to the Pupil registration Regulations 1995 (sent May 8th 2006)
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Page Last updated 9 May, 2006 Consultation with the DfES On: Proposed changes to the Pupil registration Regulations 1995 (sent May 8th 2006)
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Introduction of a minimum two day delay in deregistration of a child to be home educated.Many home educators in the UK are extremely concerned that conclusions of the, "Review of the regulations governing the registration of pupils in schools" undermine the rights and duties of parents choosing to home educate their children in England and Wales. Two home education support groups contributed to the consultation along with 80 LEAs, 60 schools and 40 others, totalling 182 responses. Planned changes to the Regulations appear to be based on percentage positive replies to questions, which therefore clearly sidelines home educators' opinions and concerns. It also diminishes the effect of their important supporting comments. Part of the consultation was designed in such a way that participants could be misled into agreeing to a delay in deregistration for those choosing to home educate, whilst appearing only to be agreeing to LEAs being notified of such deletions (Consultation Paragraph 59 and Response Document Question 21). Deletions for the purpose of home education are already subject to a 10 day notification period so did not need including in this section at all. This was either a deliberate manipulation aimed at increasing apparent support for a delay in deregistration or a clumsy, unwitting error that has the same effect. Ministers agreed, in 1995, that delayed deregistration for home educators was inappropriate. Furthermore it is a common experience, substantiated by LEA comments (www.he-consult.net/html/consultation_responses.html), that many LEAs are hostile toward home educators and would prefer to see all 5 to 16 year olds in school. Under current regulations a child should be deregistered upon parental notification of home education and the LEA informed by the school within ten school days. Many LEAs, allegedly supported unofficially by the DfES, already illegally delay deregistration ¹ and often during this time put pressure on families to return their child to school. However, in the ten years since the 1995 regulations were introduced, we are not aware of a single prosecution for this failure. It appears the DfES now wish to officially sanction this abusive practice by introducing a delay in deregistration, of unspecified length, into the Regulations. If a school fails to deregister a child, then under section 444 of the Education Act 1996, the parent is not ensuring regular attendance and is criminalised despite their best efforts to abide by the law and do the best for their children. To be marked absent with leave at this time is an untrue representation of the facts with which it is offensive to expect home educators to collude. Two invalid reasons are given for introducing a minimum 2 day delay. One is for the LEA to receive notification at a time which corresponds with the deregistration, so that no child can go "missing from education". When a parent has notified the school that they are home educating, it is an insult and discriminatory prejudgement of a parent's provision, to infer that the child may be missing from education. In comparison, when a parent removes a child stating that they are moving to another school, similar assumptions are not made and a delay not proposed. It is also impossible to see what difference it can make to the LEA to receive this information very shortly after the event, rather than before the event, unless it is the intention to have time to intervene and try to prevent the deregistration. The other reason given is to provide those parents who make a hasty decision to withdraw a child, with time to reflect before losing the school place. This scenario is easily resolved by delaying reappointing that place rather than delaying deregistration for all parents, including the vast majority who have fully considered their decision. Furthermore
the proposals, in taking away from the parent the decision when to deregister,
contradict the right under Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 to determine
where and how their child is educated and undermine the position of parent
as primary carer. They place the LEA as primarily responsible for ensuring
the child's right to an education, whereas in law this is the parent's
responsibility, and the state should only be considered a parent of last
resort. The concern about gradual erosion of rights is not based in paranoia or unwarranted mistrust, but in an historical context: "Crime and Disorder Act 1998 - Police Power to Remove Truants - Guidance". Assurance secured from the Home Office that home educators were not subject to this legislation, and should during truancy sweeps be disengaged with upon stating that they were home educated, was eventually drafted out of the guidance ³. Home educators were in this way denied, even after the event, the defence previous guidelines had offered and many have suffered harassment, intimidation and a virtual curfew from the outset. They continue to do so despite many subsequent representations and complaints to both national and local government. This is why we cannot rely on a Guidance document, as suggested to Education Otherwise, but must ensure that the legislation itself is robust. The foregoing expresses why the "Report on the Results of the Consultation" has been viewed with alarm by many home educators. We seek reassurance that a delay in deregistration for home education will not be introduced into the Regulations and that Guidance will include an explicit statement, as the present regulations do, that a child should be deregistered immediately on notification from the parent of alternative provision. 1
Appendix 1 Appendix
1 "The
Education (Pupil Registration) Regulations 1995 provide for a pupil's
name to be deleted from the admissions register if: "…when the parent has given written notification to the school that they are educating the child "otherwise" than at school. The headteacher must then inform the LA's Monitoring Officer for "Education Otherwise" in QLS who will advise on exactly when the child's name should be deleted." Appendix
2 "he has ceased to attend the school at which he is registered and his parent has satisfied the authority that he is receiving efficient full-time education suitable to his age, ability and aptitude otherwise than by attendance at school" The problem with this situation is that while a child is registered there is a legal obligation to send them to school. To get them deregistered you have to satisfy the authority that the child is receiving a suitable home education. They cannot be receiving a suitable home education until they are not obliged to attend school. This was a catch 22 which also contradicted Section 36 of the 1944 Education Act that stated that a parent could choose to use a school or otherwise, not that the LEA could make or delay that choice. Appendix 3 A case study of the British government's application of the Orwellian 'memory hole'. This account traces the history of home educators' representations to parliament upon recognising that we would be oppressed when encountering truancy patrols conducted under the powers contained in the Crime and Disorder Act. It has been a brutal lesson in the uselessness of ministerial assurances and government guidances that are widely ignored, and of the necessity for our rights to be safeguarded in legislation. As the Crime and Disorder Bill progressed through parliament, in the summer of 1998, home educators realised that new powers to stop and question all school age children in public during school hours would inevitably oppress home educated children and their families, for whom no school hours or dates apply, and for whom there is therefore no time when being out and about for their own purposes is legally preventable. We feared that LEAs would inevitably misuse encounters with home educated children to 'register' them, for which there is no legal requirement. We also feared that home educated children and/or their parents would be disbelieved by officers conducting these patrols when they said they were home educated. We feared the net result of the operation of these powers, conducted in widespread ignorance of the very existence of home education, would result in a de-facto day time curfew on home educated children, seriously curtailing their legitimate freedoms to be out and about in the world where much of their education takes place. Despite the best efforts of home educators, our worst fears have been realised, and this oppression has been widespread and commonplace. The following is an account of how assurances given to us by the minister were written into the Home Office guidance on the conduct of the new powers, and how they were subsequently written out, and the very abuses we feared replacing them as 'best practice'. In denying home educators specific mention of exclusion from these powers in the Act itself, the minister, in June 1998, chose instead to include them in the Home Office guidance: Lords
committee by The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home He also stated: "The
Home Office and the Department for Education and Employment will, So there is no problem for home educators since the new power simply doesn't apply, and the guidance would be our promised safeguard properly informing those on the ground. Meanwhile, back in the real world…. It was a few years later when this author's family were rudely and threateningly treated on two occasions by these patrols, that I discovered as a result of our official complaint about our disgraceful treatment, that officers are only ever verbally briefed for five or ten minutes before an action, and that they never read guidances at all. There also appeared to be no mechanism by which the safeguards contained in the guidance were transmitted to those conducting the briefing. The guidance might as well not have been written for all its worth in preventing ignorance of even the existence of the home educated as well as their routine mistreatment. As if this scandalous state of affairs were not bad enough, by November 2003, it was discovered, quite by accident that the DfES had published a so called summary of this HO guidance 14 months earlier in September 2002. This document, at the time of writing can still be found, 3.5 years later at: www.dfes.gov.uk/schoolattendance/uploads/TruancySweepsGuidance.doc It still contains the same dead link to the HO guidance document of which it was supposed to be a summary. This was brought to DfES attention when it was discovered at the time, and no help or redirection to correct the original link has been made, then or since. The following is the core assurance taken from the original HO guidance which home educators worked hard to procure:
This reference is absent from the DfES 'summary', and in its place are a couple of references merely mentioning the existence of home educators, but careful to avoid any actual guidance as to their treatment:
And that's it! The guidance fails to guide the LEA at all, leaving it up to them to determine what to do about such encounters. More of a negation of the purpose of a guidance it is hard to imagine. But the guidance does in fact guide by reference to another document: There is a valid link however, to a report on the conduct of truancy patrols: The
full URL direct to the document is still valid 3.5 years later:
Ah,
so this is where we will find the good practice towards us described Oh dear: There are no specific references to home educated children whatsoever! What there are, are references to children "not on a school roll" which obviously includes all the home educated:
Which is about as far away from the minister's assurance as it is possible to get that home educated children are not pupils, therefore this power does not apply to them, and "The power is to be used only with respect to children who are absent from school without authority" Note also the disgusting assumption of guilt until proved innocent, and by a means incapable of doing so: "Any young person claiming not to be registered"…….. is to be routinely disbelieved! This is a total inversion of the minister's assurances, the constitutional presumption of innocence, and the need for suspicion to be reasonable. Is this the state's idea of child protection? It looks more like institutionalised child abuse, and that is certainly how it is often experienced. Under: 'The approach':
There is nothing to prevent these actions from being inappropriately applied to us, in fact it is a clear incitement to do so. The assumption that the LEA will possess all names and addresses, or acquire those it does not have in these encounters is now explicit, whereas the fact that this will not be the case was clear in the original HO guidance. Under: 'Other follow-up conducted with pupils':
By now the distinction that the home educated child is not a pupil within the meaning of the act, and not the subject of these powers at all, has ceased to exist. They are simply "missing children", and indistinguishable from any child "fallen out of the education system". Needless to say home educators tend not to see their children in such a criminalised context of neglect or worse, and bitterly resent the system's seemingly determined blindness to our valid existence, except in so far as the consequences of such blindness seem calculated to oppress us. Four years and five months was the length of the 'best before date' on parliament's assurances. Not only were they torn up at this point, but the very abuse they provided 'important safeguards' against were being held up as best practice. Clearly the minister was wrong when he assured us that "there is no need, therefore, for an Amendment" It is a mistake home educators are keen not to have to repeat. The length of this report on the truancy sweeps is 13,627 words, whereas the HO guidance, slipping down the back of the filing cabinet is 4,080, so saving the busy officer reading time, (who doesn't read guidances anyway), would not seem to be the motive behind DfES publishing their own so called 'summary'. That motive appears unstated and a mystery, apart from getting rid of the inconvenience of having to take into account the existence of home educators of course. Eighty-two LEAs contributed 'best practice' to this report, and not one of them it appears had anything to say about how they treated the home educated they encountered. It is scarcely believable that not one of those eighty-two LEAs ever encountered a home educated child during their truancy sweeps, while during this same period, news of these encounters was flooding in to the home educator's online forums. In fact not a few home educators realised that their own encounters fell within that sample of LEAs in the report. So from us not being 'the target group' of these actions, encountering us is now instead a "positive spin off of the sweeps". In this way, a power originally stated to be for one purpose is extended into areas assurances were given it would not be. Those assurances were worthless from the outset, as practice on the ground was never as promised, and guidance simply took another four and a half years to endorse what appears to have been intended to be 'best practice' all along. During all that time home educators fought a hopeless rear guard action, both locally and nationally to address this new source of officious and illegal harassment in their lives. That this was deliberate, is finally demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt if we move forward to the present, and take a look at the current guidance, and whether it has restored those important safeguards as requested. We are now in April 2006, and the original Home Office guidance that fell down the back of the filing cabinet in September 2002 has finally made it right down to the incinerator at the bottom of the memory hole as expected. The DfES have since revised their guidance at least twice, but despite the 2002 version still being where it was in 2002, it now has a new version to compete with it, dated September 2005 and entitled "TRUANCY SWEEP EFFECTIVE PRACTICE AND ADVICE" This gives the game away completely. Following an all too familiar format for this type of document, this one starts off promisingly, before rapidly deteriorating:
Just to get government to a point of publicly admitting that 'school is not compulsory' has been a history spanning decades, and includes having once taken them to law over that misrepresentation. 1.
"It is important that all of those involved in a truancy sweep, are
aware of, and understand, the basic practicalities of the sweep before
it takes place. These include:………….." This is where government clearly reveal their preference that we do not exist, and indeed the logic of the operation of truancy patrols always required that there be no legitimate exceptions to its operations. This it now engineers:
CHILDREN NOT REGISTERED AT SCHOOL If there could be any doubt as to this intention, the next relevant statement removes it decisively, and explains why this has to be:
Children educated outside the school system Home educators are not stupid, and we know very well the meanings that are intended to be conveyed by carefully crafted words that lie by omission or intended inference. The first paragraph, ironically by now, re-states that we are not the target group, while at the same time making it perfectly clear that if our children are not engaged in education related activity such as attending the library, sports facilities or 'other services', the second paragraph provides the framework for pursuing doubt based on this spurious limitation. It is also a clear inference that merely being in a shopping centre or place where a truancy sweep is being conducted is enough by the criteria here to give rise to suspicion as to status. So home educated children may not be the target group for these sweeps, but they have been cleverly manipulated into not being allowed out during school hours unless engaged in what the LEA would recognise as legitimate educational activity. This is a clear incitement to breach their human rights, and makes a mockery of the minister's original clear assurances. The original words can still be found, or most of them, but their meaning has been subtly negated and obscured, and not surprisingly it has taken more words to do so than was taken to make a clearer and more honest statement of the true position in the original guidance. Education Otherwise specifically requested the reinstatement of this paragraph, and this meaning inverted mangle would appear to be the hostile response. Even reference to the fact that home educators are not bound by school hours is in there, but its corollary that there is no obligation only to be pursuing education during school hours, is carefully obscured, and the opposite meaning held forward. The statement concludes with fresh intimidation to 'volunteer' for registration and carry ID in order to avoid the bad time those without will inevitably receive. There is no available check as to status, so to imply that there is, is a clear incitement to disbelieve the child whose parents have not 'voluntarily' registered him/her with the LEA. The word for this is bullying, and that's child abuse! In law education is the responsibility of the parent, not the state (1996 Education Act s7). A distinction the citizen could be forgiven for not being aware of, but not the government, which seems determined to usurp this responsibility. Home educators know from bitter experience exactly what meaning hostile LEAs will take from these carefully crafted words, and it is clear to us that so did their author. They are nothing less than a deliberate, calculated incitement. It's a clever piece though; precisely because it is written in such a way as to allow for different meanings to be taken from it. The perpetrators of this piece of doublethink can defend their words by pointing out that it does state that we are not the target group, and that we are often educated outside school hours, and that our interpretation was never intended. But it is only necessary to put their new version up against the old, and to know the true situation, and the intended inferences are clear. This dastardly manipulation of the minister's assurances would be worthy of Goebells. If this new culture of the police state, and children's curfew cannot be enacted without doing this kind of violence to the human rights of legitimate groups in society, most especially children themselves, then perhaps this is a clue that it should not be being pursued at all. In conclusion, I would like to say to government: We read the book too you know. We took it as a warning; you seem to have taken it as a blueprint to further perfect. 'It
exists!' he cried. ………….'There
is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the past,' he said. 'Repeat
it, if you please.'
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