We are all agreed that education and welfare are separate issues and should be treated as such. But why the confusion within Badman's review?
Sadly, I think we are where we are at least in part because several high profile cases have shared two common features:
- Fundamental failings in statutory services, despite each of the children being known because of their vulnerability (not to mention the inquiries, Every Child Matters and new legislation following the death of Victoria Climbie)
- The children not being in school, or having been withdrawn from school, at the time of their deaths
And so, because we live in a world where correlation is automatically accepted as causality without scrutiny - and because that world contains certain individuals who are fundamentally incapable of
being accountable for their actions if it means a loss of power or face, it is far easier to blame the deaths of those children on their absence from school. A high profile review into that tiny but disparate segment of society that chooses to home educate fits the bill just nicely as a legitimate scapegoat mechanism.
So that's the PR part.
But then, ask someone like Graham Badman to head up the review, and the issue of education is bound to rear its ugly head. Look at his
background. Imagine what someone like that is going to think when faced with evidence to demonstrate that he has, for a significant chunk of his life, actually been dispensible. That learning is not necessarily education is not necessarily teaching. Heresy!
So that's the expert agenda part.
I don't really believe that the government has an explicit, socialist-stylee master plan to control everything that we learn. I think it's actually more concerned with firefighting in the face of impending collapse. But do I think that the idea of such control appeals? Yes, especially if offered on a plate. Do I think that the political and statutory body arena is peppered with people who think that they know best what information we should be given, for our own good? Yes.
So Balls scratches Badman's back and Badman scratches Balls' (thank heavens for that apostrophe). Perfect. No wonder the
document is a
contradictory mess that
many of us are
picking to pieces. But as I commented on Gill's blog yesterday:
"The real challenge will be tackling the people who do not want to see the obvious problems with this - they simply want the intended outcome and will therefore have a vested interest in failing to see the evidence in front of them, no matter how obvious and/or clearly presented."
Both the assault on education and on our family privacy are civil liberties issues. Some diligent people have been working extremely hard to remind us about this threat to education as we air our concerns about the more headline-grabbing aspects of the report.
It is far easier for someone to understand an objection to a local authority officer entering a home or interviewing a child without supervision on presumption of guilt. Even if they don't reach the conclusion that, by extension, it could happen to them. Even if they don't home educate. Even if they don't have children.
It's harder for people to understand the objection to the state (or other authority) becoming ultimate arbiter of suitability of education, because that's so often a role it takes on without resistance. It's often approaching impossible to explain something like autonomous learning, for example, because it challenges so many assumptions that many of us (including Very Important Experts such as Graham Badman) hold about the world. Surely that's reason enough to protect it?
I agree that we cannot lose sight of this threat to education, otherwise we may end up escaping the enforced home inspections and the unsupervised access to our children but nevertheless be compelled to demonstrate age-specific minimum standards or a "broad and balanced" approach to home education. Which, I suspect, the majority of people will consider wholly reasonable, if not actually desirable. And even if the "evidence" of this education could be submitted on paper, once a year (and likely fudged if necessary) to ask for it or expect it is just plain wrong.
The implications of trying to judge suitability of a unique education in this way (ie. against an externally defined, specific, one-size-meets-all framework) are exactly the same as they would be if parenting was assessed against the same. Despite cultural, philosophical, religious and individual differences, for all parents to be held to a single framework of suitability, decided by someone else? There would be uproar.
Although, steadily and surely, we are getting there in any case - starting with the most vulnerable, naturally. Young parents, single parents, low income parents - only the most naive would consider themselves immune to this professionalisation of parenting. We're all in this together.
More to follow...
