BBC News – Public sector ’still expects raises despite recession’

Most public sector workers are still expecting a pay rise in 2010, despite the impending clampdown on earnings in the sector, a survey has found.

I am truely confused by this article. If you read it; it says public sector workers expect 2% pay rise – and private sector expect 3%. Then it goes on to suggest public sector workers are out of touch with reality?

“according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development survey, most public sector workers still expect a pay rise of 2% in 2010.

Workers in private firms predicted that their pay will rise by 3% next year.”

and

“Public sector workers are clearly not sensing that the pay storm clouds are gathering. It looks like 2010 will prove to be the last hurrah of this gilded age.”

Now I’m not suggesting anything about pay rises here – but just reading the article I can’t see it has this bias?

The only other stat in the article – is 20% of Public Sector workers don’t expect a pay rise while 25% of private don’t – so are they using that as the stat to beat up the public sector with? because the other stat suggests it’s the other way?

In reality does this research conclude that their is very little difference between people in these sectors but we need to publicise our story?

like with most news stories of this type I can’t get to the real numbers yet because the Beeb obviously have the report before the company that did it have bothered to put anything on their own website – at this point I could go on a rant about marketing and news releases – but I’ll save that.

My granddad, with two of his younger brothers, outside their house.

My granddad was the eldest of six children, which meant that my dad grew up in something of a clan – he had two siblings, and ten cousins on his dad’s side of the family, to say nothing of a stack of cousins and second cousins who were from his mum’s side. Families in those days had a lot of proximity about them. They all lived within a few miles of one another, in North Liverpool, and the ones who didn’t, didn’t go too far – Aunty Gwen lived in Parbold, Uncle Alf moved to Rainford, but mostly, they were less than ten minutes apart by car. Also, those of them that held on to the faith of their childhoods, tended to stay in the one church.

My dad’s generation, of course, were the baby-boomers (he only discovered this about himself recently, I can’t imagine where he’s been). They were the ones who did the 11+, and saw driving their own car as less of a privilege than a right, and would move towns for a job, and be the first in their family to own a house. My dad’s cousins were much more geographically disparate. We lived in various bits of East Lancashire when I was growing up, and Tim moved from Southport to Altrincham, and Phil spent about fifteen years in London, which was as close to the edge of the earth as made no practical difference to the rest of us.

Some of the cousins lost touch, at that point. There are at least four or five whom I know I would not recognise if I met them in the street – although one of that group is my “friend” on Facebook, and lives ten minutes walk from my house. I’ve not been round, though. A core, who stayed in Liverpool, also stayed in the church, and helped to create a kind of home base there, that the rest of us came back to, periodically. My grandparents and two of their children went for a communal living approach, pooling their resources to put three generations into a lovely big Victorian house in the suburbs. The house became another sort of base – there was always someone in, there, and when you arrived, you instantly felt part of the big family, probably just because a good proportion of the family were there already.

That house is where the Christmas parties were held (Boxing night, every year), with all the little traditions, including the one where Father Christmas arrived, and handed out presents to everyone (for hours…) in return for a rendition of Away in a Manger. One year, my granddad stood in for Santa by appearing in drag as a Christmas Fairy – drag isn’t something I would ever have associated with him, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, and as far as I know, it has never happened before or since. Increasingly, for me, part of generation number three of the ever more separated, and ever more numerous family group, the Christmas party was the only time I ever saw most of those people. We have less and less in common, and less and less to tie us together.

And yet, we are still tied together.

I heard a story, today, of one of my dad’s cousins, who’s immediate family had drifted away from the group, and who, now in her fifties, is missing her family, to the point of feeling quite resentful about it. It touched me. I don’t know this woman from Eve, but if she has discovered a need in herself to reconnect with the Family (that makes us sound like the Sopranos, and nothing could be further from the truth), then I’m pretty sure we have space for her. Why not? She belongs with us. She should have been here all along.

My great-grandma, with her grandchildren at Christmas - the generation before mine!

For various reasons, the Christmas party did not happen last year, and isn’t going to happen this year. It remains to be seen whether two years out will mean the end of it, forever. I’m really not sure how much effort is reasonable to expend, in an attempt to bring together a group of people who otherwise get along fine without each other. To bring any real substance to those relationships, I’m pretty sure we’d have to meet more frequently than that, and I’m equally sure that if someone were to do something off-the-wall, like host a family open house once a month, nobody would show up.

The fact is that our family is too big, now. Including spouses, there are knocking on for fifty living descendants of my great-grandma. So, it’s hardly surprising – the family is losing it’s structural integrity, because in modern life, when we live so far apart, and have such busyness to contend with, it takes all our energy to maintain our closest family links. The second cousins once removed are just once removed too far.

That kind of makes me sad. I’d like to find a way to fix it, to make it possible for the group identity to continue, because it’s a key part of my own sense of identity, and I suspect, I’m not the only one. I’m just not sure that it’s possible.

At the moment it appears you can make a lot of money from writing flash based facebook games that basically turn people into clicky automatons.  So we’ve been thinking, there must be a way for us to enslave people in our own version of a flash based sweatshop – but first we needed to work out just what makes them so successfull.

Drudgery: people apparently enjoy virtual versions of labour intensive jobs that advances in modern machinery and technology has all but eliminated.

So how about Dishville? Where you have to wash the dishes?

Reward: Ruth thinks this won’t work because you need a ‘reward’. Apparently in a certain farming game “oh look i have a picture of some grapes” constitutes a reward, so we need to find a game that gives people a reward.

Sweepville? where you clean the street and at the end you get a reward from a local councillor? … humm maybe not

So what else do we need? Oh yes, the game has to enslave your friends too. Again drawing inspiration from a certain agricultural game, you can apparently guilt people into playing by doing their farming for them. Personally I don’t see why this works but hey ho.

Anyway, we’ve had a bit of a scuba in our thinktank, and ran a couple of things up the ideas runway; and now I can announce the next big thing in the world of doing a boring job on the internet:

PostVillie!

You are a postmaster – so you have to deliver letters, occasionally sell stamps and maybe every once in a while deal with an aggressive pensioner whose pension book has gone missing.

The main bit of the game however will be the enslaving delivery system;

• using the names of everyone playing the game (i reckon we’ll get around 70million) you will get a letter to deliver to someone who might or might not be a friend
• but you can only send it to one of your friends who will then send it on
• when it gets to the right person – the postage cost will be divided between everyone who handled the letter
• so if the letter goes through 5 people you get a fifth of the money

This, I think, is a winner. It has the drudgery of running a post office, combined with the reward of someone saying ‘I got a letter’ and the enslaving of your friends to send the mail.

Now I just have to learn some flash….. but I can’t be bothered, oh well I need another money making scheme.

more piccies over here.

When I first considered Not Sending Her To School, I had spent quite a bit of time reading about what other home educators were doing, and had come to realise that there were about as many approaches as there were families – probably more. Some people get up in the morning, check their timetable, spend half an hour on maths, another half hour on English, switch to Latin, French if it’s Tuesday, History if it’s Thursday, and craft all afternoon. Some people like that level of structure, it makes them feel like they know what’s going on. Other people believe that the most efficient way to educate a child is to stand back and let them get on with it. This approach has a number of labels, including “unschooling”, “autonomous education”, “informal education”, “child-led”, and so on, and so on. Some parents come to this position from a belief in a child’s need for autonomy generally – they don’t stipulate bedtimes, they don’t make them eat vegetables, they don’t engage with punishments (preferring to believe that behavioural example, and concentrating on meeting the child’s emotional needs, will combine to lead them naturally to a place of living peacefully with the rest of the household), and therefore would find it utterly alien and inappropriate to try and tell a child what to learn, and when. The evidence would suggest that supporting a child’s interests (answering their questions, helping them source their own information, taking their lead), without taking control of the learning, equips them perfectly to be able to decide for themselves what they want or need to know, and to learn it. They absorb much, they seek out some, they might even ask for formal lessons in certain things. If the child is in control, then the child has a sense of ownership that enables them to learn very efficiently, because they know that the minute they want to stop, they can.

I always felt that I came somewhere between those points. My general parenting style does not have a problem with laying down the law, or confiscating people’s Nintendo DSs for not doing what I said. Equally, I always felt that, enticing as autonomous education sounded, in its belief that children are naturally configured to learn, and will do so with or without your timetable, it was just a bit Too Scary For Me. I’m something of an approval-seeker, and I was sure I would want to Know. If you follow a curriculum, then you have an easy way of knowing what you have covered, and what you have still to cover before you get to the end. What can I say? I’m a box-ticker.

So I anticipated a sort of 3Rs basics that was structured and organised, because surely, if you have to learn that stuff in the right order, at the right time, otherwise you’ll never be able to function in adult life will you?! Followed by a much more woolly, touchy-feely, what-do-you-fancy-learning-today approach to everything else – history and geography and economics and politics and science, etc, etc. As a plan, it had the advantage of controlling the preparation – I needed to find good books about Maths and English, but take the rest as it came.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

I reckoned not with Daisy. Firstly, Daisy is very like me in lots of ways, but we differ in one key aspect. She is not a box-ticker. Not even slightly. She has the attention span of a gnat (gets it from her father…), and WILL NOT spend a single moment doing anything for the sake of getting it finished. She sees no point. If it is fun and interesting, she might do it for a couple of minutes. If it has ceased to be fun and interesting, she will stop, then and there, and refuse to do another thing. Not that she says, “that’s enough, Mummy, let’s finish it tomorrow”. Of course not. She messes. She draws glasses on the characters in the maths book. She circles every answer in the multiple choice, then scribbles out the question. You may think that I am an extraordinarily stupid mother, but whether I spot this for what it really is, varies enormously from day to day. Sometimes, I say, gently, “Please don’t spoil the book, Daisy. If you’re ready to stop, just say so.” Other times, I get crosser and crosser until I want to tie her to the table until she’s told me that ant begins with a. Which she already knows. And which I know she aready knows, so why did I even waste her time and mine in asking? Because it said it in the book, and if I don’t ask her, I can’t tick the box.

Largely as a result, I suspect, of my pushing her a little too hard, in situations very like the one described above, Daisy has been distinctly resistant to reading of late. I would very much like her to be an Early Reader, because once a child can read (it seems to me, admittedly from a position of having no children who can, yet) everyone gets off your case about whether you’re capable of teaching them. Plus, when they ask you questions, you can hand them a book with the answer in, and go finish the washing up. Reading gives her freedom and independence in her learning, and consequently makes my life easier. Which is, of course, why schools work so hard on teaching them to read when they’re five. Once they can read, they can be given worksheets.

What I am learning, though, is that someone who cannot read at five is not suffering from some sort of disability. To be honest, the chief disability connected with being unable to read is social stigma, particularly while you’re still a child. She doesn’t need to read. She gets everything she wants out of life without it. One day, that will stop being true, and then she will probably be a little more focussed on the task. But for now, the only reason, to her, for learning to read, is that learning to read is fun. And I don’t think she thinks it is. Not currently, anyway.

The other thing I am learning, is that my stubborn, flighty, disinterested little girl is not easily manipulated. In short, I have yet to find a way of persuading her to do what I say that doesn’t end in both of us being extremely angry. Getting her into her clothes in the morning is a big enough job. Getting her to look at a page of words, and decode them, when we both know that she is really thinking about chimpanzees, is completely beyond me.

But it doesn’t matter. Because every now and then, when she relents, and concedes to plough through a page of work book with me, I discover that she has learnt things in the in between times. That, without any evidence of practice, she knows more words by sight, she can sound out more quickly, that she is, in fact, getting there. My daughter is rapidly turning me into an autonomous educator against my own better judgement, because it turns out I wasn’t in a position to give her the control. She already had it, and she’s keeping tight hold, thank you very much.

I can’t escape the feeling that she probably knows best.

Simple i think it’s the broadband provider getting all slow – except it’s not because when you plug a wire directly in it’s OK

Simple I think wireless in our house is broken/slow/getting interfered with. – except i don’t think it is – because copying between the pc’s on the wireless isn’t (that) slow.

At this point I am really annoyed – not at the lack of good broadband, although that does wind me up, but at the fact I don’t know why it’s not working I don’t even have a plausible theory.

So I harumph downstairs, and moan a bit, about it all to Ruth, who if she’s honest isn’t really that bothered – by not knowing what it is.

Despite this Ruth comes up with something I don’t have – a theory, it’s the bit of the wireless between the wireless and the wires, I’m not 100% convinced by the logic but given I don’t have a theory and if I’m honest because I would be really upset if it was right, I troupe back upstairs to try.

(un?)luckily for me that isn’t it – slightly but not much faster copying files from a wired PC to a wireless one.

So now here I am stuck, grasping at any straw that passes, but mostly really annoyed ! I hate it when i don’t know why something doesn’t work. For me getting something working or not isn’t the point of the exercise it’s understanding why and how it does or doesn’t work.

It’s really annoying (did I mention that) and all the time while i write this – I’m reminded I don’t know what’s wrong by the stupidly SLOW INTERNET…. Arggggh

Well, on the domestic front, we’ve just been pottering about. Seeing friends, learning about World War II (Daisy’s very interested, we talked about evacuees, this morning), visiting museums and galleries and whatnot, grabbing opportunities to get into the soft play cheaply, going to Gymbobs and Rainbows… you know, just stuff. Daisy’s in a very Resistant to Formal Education place, but I figure she’s five, she’d (hopefully) be spending most of her time playing even if she was in school, at this age, and the Formal Ed stuff is only to make me feel better, anyway. All the real learning around here goes on when I’m not looking.

On the political front – well, the government have published their education Bill, on the back of this week’s Queen’s Speech, and it represents an unmitigated catastrophe for home education. To summarize:-

• It demands that local authorities maintain a register of home educated children, then lists a comprehensive selection of ways to refuse to put people’s names on it. The Bill lays no duty on the parents to notify the authority that they are home educating (if, for example, their children have never been to school and they are therefore unknown to them), but if they discover you, they can hold it against you (that bit is here). It specifically says that whether or not the education being provided is suitable, should not be considered. The important thing is that you didn’t tell us.
• Similarly, it demands a detailed twelve month plan of how you plan to educate your child at home, to be submitted to the authority and accepted by them. If you deviate from the plan, then you will be judged, not on what you actually taught the child, but on the fact it was different to what you were permitted to teach them. Never mind if you quickly realised that your particular child needed something different – you will be punished for claiming the slightest degree of autonomy, for not taking your rightful place beneath our boots.
• If you have already been refused a place on the register, or had your registration revoked, then that in itself can be used as a reason to deny a reapplication. Once you’re off, you’re off for good.
• One of the reasons allowed for, for denying a child a place on the home education register, is “if the authority consider that it would be harmful to the child’s welfare for the child to become a home-educated child, or[...] to continue to be a home-educated child”. The subjectivity of this question is vast. Since there are local authority officials who believe that all home education is bad, and all children should be in school, then they could make this declaration about anyone. That single clause, there, has the potential to entirely outlaw all home education in England, irrespective of how good it might be. It’s almost enough to make you throw in the towel, isn’t it? For good measure, there are also officials who will see welfare issues for home educating disabled parents, unemployed parents, parents educated to a lower level than they would like, black parents, asian parents, gay parents, religious parents, etc, etc, etc…
• Ed Balls has stated in the House, this week, that there is no compulsory interview alone with the child, but he neglects to mention that the Bill specifically allows for authorities to deny registration if you object. So, I guess he means there’s no criminal come-back, but you don’t get to home educate.
• They have included the line about the child’s “wishes and feelings” about being home educated, both as an excuse to get them alone and ask, and as a BLATANT removal from parents the right to make unpopular decisions on their children’s behalf. How many children would rather not have to go to school every day?! I don’t see the DCSF enshrining THEIR right to over-ride their parents decision in law, do you?

All in all, it’s a very nasty piece of work. The thing I object to most, is the vindictiveness. It’s the idea that the education the child receives is of no importance, because we will use that child to punish you for not conforming to our absurdly convoluted and pointless bureaucracy. Home educators kicked up a fuss, and the Secretary of State appears to have responded by saying “I’ll teach you to argue with me”. Who was it who called him a bully? That’s exactly what violent partners do. They hit you round the head until you’ll agree with anything to make them stop.

Democracy is collapsing around our ears, people. I’m begging you – get up and do something to stop it.

The Philadelphia Story

As ever, this post started life as a Facebook status, and if someone hadn’t gone “Huh? What you blethering about?” it would probably have remained as one. Facebook is bad for my writing, it really is. Anyway.

Today, I watched High Society for the umpteenth time. The film is essentially a remake of the pre-war classic The Philadelphia Story, which is a better film, but doesn’t have the songs. Much of the script is lifted, word for word, but it loses some of the depth, in order to fit in Frank, Bing and Louis Armstrong displaying their jazz wares.

In both movies, we have the rich, beautiful, uncompromising Tracy; the ex-husband and neighbour from her brief first marriage, Dexter; George, the fiancé whom she plans to marry the following day; Seth Lord, Tracy’s father, who has lately separated from his wife to pursue a liaison with a dancer in the city; and the two society reporters, Mike Connor, a cynical Angry Young Man with a chip on his shoulder, relating largely to being too poor write serious literature, and his long-time girlfriend, Liz, who has not yet married him because he “still has a lot to learn. I don’t want to get in his way for a while.”

At the beginning Tracy is angry – angry at Dexter for the failure of her marriage to him, angry at her father for running away with the dancer. She is criticised by both for her unfeeling, uncompromising expectations, both of herself, and of those around her. Indeed, her father subjects her to a speech in which he blames her lack of affectionate understanding of him for his affair. George, on the other hand, is enthusiastic about how “untouched” she is by her previous experiences, and sees her as unblemished and worthy of his adoration.

During the course of the film, and on the eve of her wedding, Tracy gets extremely drunk, and pretty much throws herself at Mike, the reporter, who has, in turn, become somewhat infatuated with her. She resents George’s attempts to cover for her inebriation as intrusive and fun-less, so sneaks out of the party with Mike, back to the house, where they talk passionately, kiss, and go swimming, before she passes out, and he brings her back to the house.

Waiting at the house are Dexter and George. Dexter has guessed enough of the developments to seek to shield Tracy from being discovered by her fiancé, knowing that she would be unlikely to remember events in the morning, in any case. George is mystified, and a little worried, by Tracy’s disappearance from the party, and is looking to reassure himself of her safety. Discovering her in a dressing gown, being carried back to the house by Mike, scandalises him, and he is unable to reconcile himself to her apparent indiscretion.

High Society

George, at this point, sees Tracy’s honour as restored, but she points out that her sustained chastity is due to Mike’s honour, not hers, and as such offers her no credit. That George accepts her because he sees her as still unspoilt, she says, is worth much less than his willingness to accept her as spoilt would have been. She assures him that she is not good enough for him, since she now realises that she cannot live up to his standards for her, any more than she could live up to her own. George leaves, and Dexter steps into the breach, again demonstrating his willingness to both accept her in her fallen state, and to work to help her in that state. She remarries Dexter, promising to be more understanding and accepting of the human weaknesses of both of them.

So, that’s the story. It took longer to summarise than I anticipated, but never mind. The thought that struck me, as I watched it, was that the ultimate lesson of the film appears to be that people are fallible, and should be held to low standards. The scene between Tracy and her father particularly irritates me – how dare he suggest that SHE is to blame for HIS infidelity? It’s not even that he blames his wife, in the classic “My wife doesn’t understand me” mold – he blames his adult daughter for failing to pander to his vanity, his inner need to be thought wonderful by a pretty young girl. It’s all a bit icky, when you think about it, to say nothing of entirely unfair. But ultimately, Tracy comes around to this point of view, and marries the man whom she considers fallible, but who loves her in her own fallibility.

Then I started thinking about the Church. Historically, the Church has fallen into two main theological camps – the “evangelicals” and the “liberals”. Traditional evangelicalism has tended (gross generalisation coming up, bear with me) to value “righteousness”, or sinlessness, very highly, and to tend towards an intolerance of sin, and consequently of the sinner. It’s a stereotypical image, isn’t it, of the stern Free Churchman, preaching against the evils of cinemas, and alcohol, and of playing football on a Sunday? The liberal end of the church, upon which the evangelical wing has been inclined to look with disdain, have more of a history of acceptance of such things (catholic churches are likely to own bars, rather than condemn them), and therefore of people who indulge in them. It comes down to balance. The bible advocates a need for righteousness, for the renunciation of sin, but it also advocates a need for love, for compassion, for forgiveness. Every Christian has, at some point, to work out how to manage the tension between those two essentially contradictory positions. It’s fairly safe to say that in 2000 years of Christianity, no-one has quite got the balance completely right – everyone leans slightly too far in one direction or the other.

So how is that the 1956 musical romantic comedy is playing out these eternal tensions? And, ultimately, the film comes down on the side of 1 Corinthians 13 – “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” Love is a word of complex connotation, in Hollywood, but they use words like “compassion” and “understanding” instead, and they mean the same things. They mean the acceptance of people for who they are, not for who you think they ought to be.

Which makes the film a good deal deeper than I’ve previously given it credit for.

We started off with a requirement to go to London, to join a Mass Lobby of Parliament. We thought about the logistics, decided we would need to stay overnight in the capital, and really didn’t want to, so we settled on a compromise – a day in London, followed by a night at the Travel Inn in Windsor, some time exploring Windsor the next day, and home.  The two things I totally didn’t want to do, were take my kids on the tube (don’t ask me to rationalise, it just sounded like a horrendous idea), and keep them in a hotel in city centre. The route to Windsor from the city is by overland train, and Windsor is a fairly suburban place, with tourist attractions of its own, so it seemed like a solution.

Then it dawned on me that we hadn’t seen our friends on the south coast for a while, and maybe we could spend the preceding weekend with them, making a much shorter drive on the Tuesday morning for the Lobby. They were reasonably enthusiastic, so then we had a plan that looked a bit like a holiday, so when my mum told us about the nice holiday cottage “with stair gates at the top and the bottom” that was not (very) far from Hastings, we started thinking about booking it for the second half of the week, and making a grand tour of it.

Then it dawned on us that the train to Battle only took 20 minutes longer than the train to Windsor, the cottage was cheaper by the night than the hotel would have been, and it gave us a whole house to play with, rather than the four of us trying to sleep in one room. So we ditched Windsor, and booked Birch Cottage instead.

It was much the best idea. I really dislike London, and the relief of knowing we were spending the day there, but sleeping in a lovely little house, a mile from the nearest village, made the whole thing into an adventure that I could enjoy.

Hidden

As a plan, it felt very gallivanty, and unfettered, and I rather liked it. And I have to say, it worked beautifully.  We spent four days with our friends, chilling out in their house, thoroughly enjoying the mildness of the weather, and the seaside, and the woods, and the farm we visitted. Then we piled into the car, and drove across Sussex to Battle, and checked into the cottage, before driving straight across to the station, to go up to London.

We’d planned to get to London in time for a demonstration/picnic affair at 1pm, but the driving across Sussex part took longer than anticipated (“Mummy, I need the toilet,” and “Henry’s being sick!” rather got in the way of our timescales), so we were two trains behind on the plan. I was impressed with myself though, because I didn’t care. I could have got in a tizzy for not being where I wanted to be at the time I wanted to be there, but I opted for doing the things we had to do in the order we had to do them, and if that made us late, then so be it. As a result, we arrived at the Palace of Westminster at about 2.30pm, which was when the Lobby itself was due to start. We didn’t get to talk to many people, but we queued, we went through security, we went to the Lobby, we filled in a green card, we waited for our MP (who didn’t come, but I wasn’t surprised), we chatted with a few people, then we left – calling in at the subsidised cafe on the way out.

Daisy knew why we were there – “To tell the government to leave home educators alone,” and the basics of where we were and what the government do there, and I think she was rather impressed by the sense of occasion. Then we crossed the bridge, and wandered along the South Bank in the sunshine for a bit, by way of some exercise, and seeking some tea. Henry had a nice sleep in the wrap on Daddy’s back, and Daisy watched the skateboarders under the bridge, and we got the 6.50pm train back to Battle, and the cottage.

It was a big day, but it was great. Daisy learned so much, and actually, so did we.

The next day we spent at Battle Abbey, learning things that none of us knew about the Battle of Hastings (like, it happened a good five or six miles away from Hastings, for a start), and again, Daisy amazed me with her interest and engagement with it all. She was gripped by the video in the visitors’ centre, fascinated by the examples of weapons used, and even mostly interested in the walk around the field, to see where it happened, which we were all borderline Too Tired To Do, really. But we coped, and it was good, and there was learning, and today, when she asked me to tell her the story of the Battle again, I was able to give her detailed strategic descriptions, that I didn’t know about a week ago. We found the altar stone in the abbey, which supposedly marks the spot where Harold fell. I have to say, we found the flowers that had been left there, and the little notes referring “our last English king” a little perplexing. It was a thousand years ago – the Normans invaded, and became part of what England is. Get over it.

Hidden

On Thursday, we went to Hastings, and looked at what’s left of William’s castle there, as well as riding on the funicular railway, and working out some of the physics behind that. And throwing stones in the sea, naturally. Then on Friday we visitted Bodian Castle, which has the combined merits of being in very good nick, for a castle, and having its photo in the Usborne Castles book – that probably means nothing to you, but we got very excited.

On Saturday, we had the trip home, but we added a twist. We didn’t intend to add a twist, but as we passed a road sign on the M25 saying “Services 64 miles” at just the same moment as Daisy said, “I need a wee, Mummy,” we suddenly found a need to find suitable amenities outwith the normal motorway servicing system. Instead, we got the National Trust Handbook out, and used the facilities at Claremont Gardens, near Esher, instead. We used the toilets, had a snack in the cafe, used the playground, and stretched the children’s legs by walking around the lake – essentially, all the things we normally do at the motorway services, but in much nicer surroundings.  We were so pleased with ourselves that we were then on a mission to only stop at National Trust properties on the way home, which we just about managed. We had lunch at Baddesley Clinton, which is a stately home near Solihull (there are lots of NT places around that part of the M40, but not all of them have a cafe, and we really needed to eat). Again, we used the facilities, we ate, we did a whistle stop tour of the house (Henry liked the roaring log fire, Daisy got naughty in the library and had to be taken outside), then got back in the car, and carried on driving. At one point I thought we might also stop at Tatton, but we realised that, unlike motorway services, National Trust cafes shut at 4.30pm, so we ran out of day. Anyway, the kids were coping pretty well, at that point, so we just kept on going for home.

It’d definitely do the NT as Services thing again – it added some interest to the day. Whilst the cafes aren’t cheap, you get more for your money than you do on the motorway, and finding suitable properties to stop at is good, clean, nerdy fun.

So all in all, really good week. Good as a holiday, good experiences of Small Children On Long Journeys, good to be counted by the government on the Lobby, good to see old friends, and fantastic Education, all over the place. The kids couldn’t move for all the Education going on, it was fab!

I’m sorry, I’m bored now. I feel like I have spent forever trying to explain to anyone who will listen, and to a great many people who would rather not listen, that Badman is wrong, that his statistical basis lies somewhere between fabrication and fiction, that his proposals undermine the role of parents and families, that he flies in the face of the basic concept of innocent until proven guilty, and so on, and so on, and so on. I’m bored. It doesn’t seem to matter how many people people respond to the reviews, or submit evidence to the Select Committee, or reply to the consultations. With every opportunity to shout at the government, even more people seem to be motivated to do so, and none of it makes any difference. They don’t listen, and they breeze on in their own sweet way.

Ah well. In case anyone is casually interested, this is my submission to the current DCSF consultation into registration and monitoring of home education. The executive summary would be that I’m against it. All of it.

Question 1: Do you agree that these proposals strike the right balance between the rights of parents to home educate and the rights of children to receive a suitable education?

Disagree.

This consultation, and the Badman Review before it, appear to be under the impression that parents and their children both have opposing sets of rights, which are somehow in tension with one another. This is plainly untrue. Parents do not have rights, they have duties and responsibilities, most of which are specifically to protect the rights of their children. Parents do not home educate in spite of a child’s right to education. In most cases, they do so specifically because they found that the child’s right to education was not being fulfilled through attendance at school. In such circumstances, it is the parent’s legal duty to take steps to rectify the deficiency, and provide an education, since the parent remains ultimately responsible, in law, for ensuring that education is provided. There appears to be a belief in the DCSF that the child’s right is to go to school – this is not the case. How education is provided is a decision for the parent to make, based on his or her knowledge of the child, of the available options, and of the needs of the family as a whole.

The DCSF needs to stop talking about home education as if it represents a form of second class educational provision. It is a valid legal choice, which should not incur discrimination and prejudice from government departments and agencies, any more than the decisions to attend church, or to avoid eating meat, should incur government discrimination. The apparent bias against the parents as educators implies a belief that parents cannot, or can only rarely, educate a child suitably themselves. The most important knowledge for a person to have, in order to educate a child, is knowledge of the child – not theoretical knowledge of education. Parents have this knowledge in the most depth, and have the greatest personal investment in the success of the education. They are, therefore, the best placed to educate their own children. Certainly, the research done in the US and Canada suggests that home educated children achieve consistently superior results, when compared to their schooled counterparts – though the research in question did not appear in Mr Badman’s literature review, giving the impression that he did not wish to find favourable reports of home education.

The only people who are consistently claiming that home educated children are not, generally, receiving a suitable education, are Local Authorities, but recent investigation by Home Education campaigners suggests that, in many cases, LAs are making judgements about suitability based largely on prejudice and presumption, that they frequently find it difficult to conceive of a form of education that does not resemble the school model, and that (crucially) their alleged concerns are rarely backed up by the legal recourse available to them – the number of School Attendance Orders being issued is much, much smaller than the number of concerns that LAs told Mr Badman that they had, and one can only assume that this is because the LA staff know that they would not stand up in court. The children are receiving a suitable education, just one that the school-experienced educationalists do not approve of.

The proposals generally would limit the ability of parents to offer an education that was truly suitable to an individual child’s age, ability and aptitude, and reduce them to providing a version of the state’s one-size-fits-all education model, with the added hazards of excessive bureaucracy (which should never have a place in the family home) and the constant threat of registration being revoked for non-compliance.

The state does not own children. Parents are parents, not state-sanctioned childminders. The state should never attempt to place itself between loving, committed parenting, and the child.

Question 2 Do you agree that a register should be kept?

Disagree.

The apparent desire to allow Local Authorities to keep tabs on the educational setting of all children, not just those for whom it is providing the education, is a significant step. To date, LAs have been responsible for a) the provision of state schools for every child whose parents wish to utilise such a service; and b) pursuing any report that comes to them, that a particular child is not receiving a suitable education at all. Through these two functions, they are able to assist parents in fulfilling their legal duty to provide an education, by offering an educational service, and they are able ensure that parents who are discovered to be breaking this law are brought to justice. They have not been, and should never be, directly responsible for the education of all the children within the boundary of their authority. That role belongs to parents, who are legally responsible for providing an education, “either by regular attendance at school, or otherwise”.

In a democracy, parents, along with any other citizen, must be assumed to be complying with the law, unless there is clear evidence to suggest that they are not. To keep a register of those parents who choose, quite legally, to educate their children themselves, is akin to maintaining a register of vegetarians, in case some of them are criminally neglecting their offspring through the deprivation of protein. Home education is a legal choice, sometimes based on personal beliefs and philosophies, and it is clear discrimination for that choice to incur the intrusion into a family’s life, through the compulsory use of personal information in a database. The insulting implication is that home educators are so likely to be breaking the law, that they need to be watched.

Every database which holds information on a person increases the risk of that information escaping into the wrong hands, resulting in individuals being targetted for identity theft, child grooming, and any of a range of other offences. It is impossible for government, indeed, for anyone, to guarantee the integrity of data held in a database. The only way to guarantee its safety, is not to gather it. As a result, a register of home educators, with no obvious purpose, offers an increase in risk to home educators, with no benefit to them.

A compulsory registration scheme merely adds to the bureaucratic workload of home educating parents, detracting from the time and energy they might otherwise have spent educating their children. Registration offers no advantages to the registered, and registration alone (without arrangements for monitoring, etc) achieves nothing at all, except to add to the number of places from which ones personal details can be stolen.

Most home educators currently consider registration with the Local Authority to be avoided if at all possible. This is not because they have anything to hide, in the vast majority of cases. It is merely because registration offers no benefits at all, and inconvenience, bureaucracy, stress and intrusion into family life, that is entirely unwarranted.

In the unlikely event that the case for registration can be proven, it should be noted that a child’s educational setting is already listed in ContactPoint. There seems to be no merit in an additional, separate register of home educators – if such a list is truly necessary, the pre-existing ContactPoint should be the source.

3. Do you agree with the information to be provided for registration?

Disagree.

I have made clear in my response to Question 2, that I consider registration to be intrusive, unnecessary, insulting, and risk-laden.

In addition to these general concerns, I also object to the requirement to provide “a statement of approach to education, and the location where education is conducted if not the home”. Home education is a family function. Just because education is a function most commonly delegated to institutions, is not a reason to expect families to submit to a level of bureaucracy most commonly found in such institutions. It is not clear how much detail would be required from these two statements, or what their purpose would be. However, it is clear that as a first-stage requirement, or even prerequisite to home education, they would be unreasonably daunting to many parents.

Many home educated children are deregistered from school at a time of crisis. Mr Badman, and many of the Local Authorities, are inclined to imply that during a crisis is the very worst time to make the decision to home educate. However, it is not a decision that families take lightly, and in many cases, it is only taken when the family reaches a level of desperation that leaves them unable to see another option. Expecting parents to produce a document adequately outlining what education they are going to provide, in such circumstances as these, is unreasonable, and unrealistic. Even in a home educating family that is enjoying calm, happy, productive times, it is not necessarily possible to predict with any detail what topics will be covered, or what children will learn. Home education is not like school. The level of structure and advanced planning involved varies enormously between families, and even in the most structured of families, a plan or curriculum can be changed completely at short notice, in order to better meet needs of the child concerned. In families who follow a more thoroughly child-led approach, predicting where the child might lead would be little more than an act of clairvoyance. This does not mean that child is not receiving a suitable education. It merely means that the details of that education cannot be easily predicted in advance.

The requirement to give details of the “location where education is conducted” is bizarre, irrelevant, and a betrayal of the school-focussed perspective of the DCSF. Home education is not like school. It does not involve arriving at a venue, spending six hours there, and then leaving to go home. It happens wherever the child happens to be, at any time of the day or night that suits the family as a whole, and the child in particular. It includes clubs and activities, trips out, car journeys, visits to friends and family, and presence at any number of locations and venues. The question would be entirely without meaning to many home educators. If, as I suspect, it is actually intended to mean, “Let us inspect your house,” then I refer to my answer to Question 2. It is discriminatory to demand to inspect the homes of home educators, just because they are home educators. The desire to do so betrays both an assumption that adequate resources are unlikely to be available, and an assumption a government inspector will be able to make value judgements about the quality of a child’s education, either by looking to see if books or a computer are in evidence, or by evaluating when the carpet was last hoovered. In either case, such an inspection proves nothing about education, but is hugely disruptive and intrusive to the family concerned.

Being daunted by the bureaucratic requirements of the registration regime should in no way be considered to indicate unsuitability of a parent to home educate. The skills required to suitably educate ones own child are vastly different to the skills required to jump through government hoops through form-filling. Staff at schools and in Local Authorities are, in part, employed for their ability to negotiate such hoops (though schools regularly complain about the paperwork overwhelming the educational role). Bureaucracy has no place in family life, and should have no part in a parent’s decision to educate their child.

Question 4 Do you agree that home educating parents should be required to keep the register up to date?

Disagree.

As I have made clear, I do not agree with the proposed register, and therefore cannot possibly agree to a requirement for parents to maintain the data held within it. The comparison between the registration system described here, and the types used for prisoners on probation, for example, is distasteful, and insulting to law-abiding home educators. I have been avoiding making sensationalist comparisons with how Jews were registered and tracked in Nazi Germany, for fear of seeming to belittle the events of that time. However, the comparison increasingly presents itself, and I am having difficulty in ignoring it.

Q5 Do you agree that it should be a criminal offence to fail to register or to provide inadequate or false information?

Disagree.

Since the information which the consultation suggests would be required from home educators is so badly defined, so completely at odds with how home education functions, and so discriminatory and insulting to home educators, to criminalise the failure of parents to contribute that information would cross the line from discrimination into persecution. Parents are not responsible to the state for the lawful decisions they make regarding their family life, and neither should they be so.

If the government were to decide to criminalise home educators who did not comply, they would necessarily have to point out the requirement to all parents, presumably at the point of application for a child’s first school place. This could have the effect of introducing home education as a possibility to a wide range of people who would not have otherwise considered the idea. I suspect that such a thing would represent an unintended consequence, and be the very opposite of the original goal of the legislation.

6 a) Do you agree that home educated children should stay on the roll of their former school for 20 days after parents notify that they intend to home educate?

Disagree.

This question is simply not adequately explained, which makes it very difficult to answer comprehensively. It is not clear, either here, or in the Badman report, whether the child would be expected to attend during this 20 day period. It is not clear whether the school and/or Local Authority would spend the 20 days attempting to pressurise the family into cancelling their deregistration. It is not clear how a 20 day cooling off period, in which a child was not attending, would affect a school’s attendance targets. It is not clear whether parents with no intention to home educate would be able to use this “cooling off period” to take their children on holiday during term-time, and then claim to have changed their minds, and cancel their deregistration. It is not clear whether schools or Local Authorities could use this 20 day period to get “troublesome” pupils out of the way, eg, during an Ofsted inspection.

In some, very popular schools, it is possible for a child’s vacated school place to be filled very quickly, preventing the family from changing their minds shortly after the initial deregistration decision. However, the number of unanswered questions surrounding this proposal suggest that a whole new consultation would be necessary, before such a thing could implemented.

6 b) Do you agree that the school should provide the local authority with achievement and future attainment data?

Disagree.

Absolutely not. A child’s achievement and projected attainment information is sensitive data which is personal to them. It belongs to the child, is covered under the Data Protection Act, and should only be made available to the child and his/her parents. Passing such information to the Local Authority is a breach of trust.

The parents are responsible for providing a suitable education for the child. It is the parents, and the parents alone, for whom the school’s opinion on a child’s achievements and future potential is relevant. It is common for parents who have deregistered a child to do so after a long period of disagreement with the school, possibly regarding the child’s ability. For that parent to then be held to ransom by the school’s statements regarding the child’s capability is to compound the problem that deregistration sought to solve.

Q7 Do you agree that DCSF should take powers to issue statutory guidance in relation to the registration and monitoring of home education?

Disagree.

As I understand it, this is simply a way of asking if the DCSF should arrange to make all the changes I have objected to in questions 1 to 6, by means of statutory instruments which would not require the approval of Parliament. Absolutely not.

I have explained in great depth how the proposed registration of home educated children is discriminatory, unjust and anti-democratic. The registration scheme amounts to an appropriation of parental responsibility by government. It fundamentally changes the legal role and position of parents – all parents, not just home educators – in this country, by giving Local Authorities, not parents, the ultimate power to decide on the best way to educate a child. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should such changes as these be nodded through in the form of statutory guidance. The implications are enormous, and warrant a full, public debate, and the benefit of the whole parliamentary process.

Section 7 of the Education Act holds parents responsible for the education of their children, and has done so since 1944. If the government really thinks it wise, appropriate and valid to change this fundamental element of parental responsibility, it should be prepared to do it properly.

For the record, I find the attempt to slip home education monitoring into the Improving Schools & Safeguarding Children Bill, before the current consultation is over, utterly reprehensible. The looming general election is no excuse to bypass due process in this, or any other matter.

On the other hand, I would welcome making the current Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities (2007) statutory. They are actually very good, and obliging Local Authorities to stick to them would be helpful.

Q8 Do you agree that children about whom there are substantial safeguarding concerns should not be home educated?

Disagree.

I find this proposal to be the least logical idea in the whole Badman report. Education and safeguarding are two entirely separate matters. Mixing them up like this helps no-one.

The implication would appear to be that a family home can be safe for a child during evenings, weekends and school holidays, but not during term-time between the hours of 9am and 3pm. That is clearly nonsense. If a child is at risk of suffering serious harm at home, they should not be there. The form of their education is irrelevant. If there is no evidence of such risk, then there is no reason to prevent a family from caring for their children by whatever means they see fit, including with reference to their education.

The assumptions behind this proposal are fundamentally flawed. There is an assumption that a child who is at risk, but is in school, is therefore being kept safe through daily monitoring. The number of abused children who only disclose their abuse after reaching adulthood would suggest that this is not true. There is an assumption that home educated children are kept out of sight of the world, and are therefore invisible to those who might otherwise intervene in their plight, should intervention be necessary. Mr Badman, however, found no evidence at all that this was the case. The vast majority of home educated children are constantly out and about in the community, joining clubs, making friends, taking learning opportunities from all around them. Indeed, some home educators find that they are reported to Social Services by neighbours, simply because their children were noted as not being in school.

I appreciate that the government is trying to limit the damage caused by a series of high-profile child abuse cases. In none of those cases, however, was the child in question “hidden”. In all cases, the children had been reported to Social Services, and/or seen by health professionals, and in all cases, it was the failure of staff to implement the existing procedures that led to the death of the child. Targetting new groups for new procedures will not solve that problem. The government should invest its limited resources in funding, staffing, training and accountability within their existing Social Services teams, regarding their existing case loads. Home education does not represent an increased risk of child abuse – indeed, the statistics gathered by home educators during the summer of 2009 suggest that home educated children are less than a quarter as likely to be abused or neglected as the general population (0.29%, compared to 1.3%).

For the record, Local Authorities who treat a parent’s right to offer evidence of their educational provision by means other than a home visit, as a “safeguarding concern” should be told in no uncertain terms that such a thing is not acceptable. There are many reasons why a parent might prefer to deal with the LA by other means, including personal preference, and they are perfectly within their rights to make that choice. Again, conflating the suitability of the education with the safety of the child is dangerous and unhelpful.

Q9 Do you agree that the local authority should visit the premises where home education is taking place provided 2 weeks notice is given?

Disagree.

I refer to my answer to Question 3: It is discriminatory to demand to inspect the homes of home educators, just because they are home educators. The desire to do so betrays both an assumption that adequate resources are unlikely to be available, and an assumption a government inspector will be able to make value judgements about the quality of a child’s education, either by looking to see if books or a computer are in evidence, or by evaluating when the carpet was last hoovered. In either case, such an inspection proves nothing about education, but is hugely disruptive and intrusive to the family concerned. In any case, “the premises where home education is taking place” is a phrase devoid of meaning to many home educators, and a betrayal of the school-focussed perspective of the DCSF. Home education is not like school. It does not involve arriving at a venue, spending six hours there, and then leaving to go home. It happens wherever the child happens to be, at any time of the day or night that suits the family as a whole, and the child in particular. It includes clubs and activities, trips out, car journeys, visits to friends and family, and presence at any number of locations and venues.

Giving Local Authorities the right to enter private homes as a matter of course is a violation of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights Article 8. Home educators, just like everyone else, have a right to their private family lives, and to be left in peace.

The idea of giving “2 weeks notice” is both rude, and potentially unworkable. Home educators are private individuals with lives and responsibilities. They are not sitting around waiting for their LA to turn up, and in some cases, they are much more inclined to go away for periods of several weeks or months. Does the DCSF anticipate criminalising home educators who choose to take their children away for a month, for not keeping an appointment made with two weeks’ notice?

Q10 Do you agree that the local authority should have the power to interview the child, alone if this is judged appropriate, or if not in the presence of a trusted person who is not the parent/carer?

Disagree.

Absolutely not. The only circumstances under which a child should be interviewed without the presence and support of their parents, are when that child is at serious risk of harm, ie, within the context of the existing legislation that Social Services teams use to protect children. In every other case, the right to interview a child at all should be at the discretion of the parents, and the right to interview a child alone should not even be requested by education professionals seeking to engage in good practice. All children are vulnerable, by their very nature as children, and the suggestion in the question that only the most vulnerable should be allowed any adult support at all, is reprehensible. For the majority of children, parents are the key supporter in times of stress, and such an interview has the potential to be very stressful indeed. The children should not be abandoned to a stranger.

Mr Badman’s implication that children should be given the opportunity, not to disclose abuse, but to disclose their secret desire to be educated at school, flies entirely in the face of the legal role of parents. Children are entitled to have their voices heard in matters that affect them, but it is the role of their parents, not the Local Authority, to decide how that voice will affect the decisions to be taken regarding their education, just as it is the parents who are responsible for making all the other decisions surrounding the running of the family. Not all children are happy with all the decisions made by their parents on their behalf. Arguably, most children are distinctly unhappy with some of those decisions. However, the decisions remain with the parents, whose greater knowledge, wisdom and experience can usually be relied upon. It is, of course, particularly farcical, that no-one would dream of offering schooled children the opportunity to demand to be home educated, even though their enrolment at school was just as much a decision of their parents, with which they may or may not agree.

There is no reason to assume that the hypothetical abuse victim would use their annual interview with a stranger from the LA to disclose the abuse. Children who disclose abuse generally do so to trusted adults, with whom they have built relationships over a long period of time. If the child has not disclosed the abuse to their friends, extended family, Brown Owl or swimming tutor, the likelihood of their doing so in this situation is slim in the extreme.

The consultation, and the Badman report before it, gives no indication of how a child who refused to be left alone with an LA official might be regarded. It is not clear whether the parents would be penalised for such a refusal, or whether they would be expected to force the child to comply – in the latter case, it seems like an odd way to listen to a child’s voice, to ignore their refusal to be interviewed.

Q 11 Do you agree that the local authority should visit the premises and interview the child within four weeks of home education starting, after 6 months has elapsed, at the anniversary of home education starting, and thereafter at least on an annual basis? This would not preclude more frequent monitoring if the local authority thought that was necessary.

Disagree.

I consider the current law to be adequate. It allows for Local Authorities to investigate whether a child is in receipt of a suitable education, and if they are presented with evidence that would convince a reasonable person that that he or she is, they should consider their duty fulfilled. The desire to monitor continuously suggests a belief that parents might provide an education at one time, but then cease to do so. This seems very unlikely to be the case – if a parent is prepared to take the time and trouble to provide an education once, they are very likely to continue doing so.

Monitoring, on the other hand, gives the Local Authority a responsibility for the quality of education that they have not previously had. It opens them up all kinds legal challenges, for undertaking a responsibility that previously belonged to parents.

Local Authorities seem very unwilling to utilise the powers that are currently available to them, through existing legislation. This being the case, their constant demands for greater powers through new legislation are inexplicable. There is no need to make regular monitoring compulsory. There is only a need for LAs to follow the rules and guidelines which already exist.

The DCSF has failed entirely to demonstrate that monitoring would improve the quality of home education, would solve any identifiable problem, or would do anything other than cost a great deal of money to implement. This is a white elephant proposal that should be scrapped.

Those points aside, I feel bound to point out that four weeks is a very short period of time after deregistration for a family, potentially in recovery from a major crisis, to deal with an LA inspection. The time scales, if they must exist at all, should allow a period of at least six months, for a family to recover themselves emotionally, organise themselves practically, and bring themselves to a place of having something to discuss. Nothing is likely to subvert a child’s recovery from a stressful school experience, like a compulsory visit from an official with the authority to send them back to school. The whole idea is abhorrent.