\n\t\t\tAn angle I hadn’t considered before on recent struggles around UK education law.\n\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\tWe had about 45 minutes’ discussion, and we didn’t waste time, so we covered a lot of ground. There was other useful stuff which I may return to in another post. But here I’ll home in on an area which felt especially helpful to me in understanding what’s going on.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tFor Alan, if I understood correctly, there are two key themes of concern informing his support for the home-ed-related part of the Bill:\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\tFamilies with a belief that girls only need to know how to raise children and keep house.\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\tParents who think of their children as a kind of property. (By way of example, he referred to child custody battles where the parents’ attitude is “I created 50% of this child, therefore 50% belongs to me” – irrespective of what’s best for the child as a human being, or whom they<\/em> would rather live with.)\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n \n\t\t\tIn principle, I agree that neither of those scenarios is ethically desirable, and also that such families and parents undoubtedly exist (though not necessarily at a higher ratio in UK home ed communities).\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tIn practice, some questions occur to me about the girls getting inadequate education on religious\/traditional grounds: \t\t\t<\/p>\n Is there any kind of evidence base for this issue?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Could such cases not be addressed under existing law, and if not, why not? (In the UK, parents already have a legal duty to “cause their children to receive” education.)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Who could tell me more?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n \n\t\t\tand, of course:\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\tWould these situations be addressed by the licensing scheme proposed in the Bill?<\/em>\n<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n \n\t\t\tIn the Badman Report, nearly all the references to religion are about religious or philosophical beliefs as a reason<\/em> to choose non-school education, including the Human Rights law relating to that choice – not about the resulting education itself.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tThere’s one oblique allusion to religion as a possible limitation, in section 4.8, a quote from the British Humanist Association:\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tsome of those who choose to educate their children at home for religious reasons may not be providing schooling that is adequate, either\taccording to the Every Child Matters agenda or the principles of Article 29\tof the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \n\t\t\tThat’s the whole quote, and the author doesn’t elaborate on it. Note the “may”; no facts supplied.\n\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tDoing “Find in document” on terms “gender”, “girl” and “tradition” doesn’t turn up anything, so I don’t think<\/em> Mr Badman addressed the subject anywhere else either, though I confess I haven’t re-read every word to check.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tThe Equalities Impact Assessment for the Bill makes no mention of religion; the only groups discussed are (a) children with “special educational needs” and (b) Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tThe evidence base and practical questions definitely warrant more investigation. But meanwhile, I went off in a slightly different direction.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tYou see, something about this rang a bell for me. Some time in the last couple of years, somewhere on one of the community lists, I’d read a post where someone said something like: “What the Government is really<\/em> worried about is the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, but they can’t come out and say that, so they have to pretend it’s about all of us.”\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tWell, so this popped into my head in the meeting, and I quoted the gist of it to Alan. And he corrected me straight away: it’s not just Islam.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tWhich is obviously correct of course (and to be fair, I may have misremembered the original post too, especially as I was reading about Islamophobia in another<\/a> context<\/a> recently<\/a>). There are lots<\/em> of cultures which prioritise boys’ education over girls’, or steer girls away from certain areas – are there any<\/em> that don’t have that in them at all? It’s part of sexism. (Example English meme: “Girls don’t need an education; they’re only going to get married so then it will go to waste”.) Conversely, it’s well known that Aisha, third wife of the Prophet, was a scholar and highly respected for her learning<\/a>, and there are plenty of Muslim communities where young women get the best education within the families’ grasp.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\tAnd there are parents in at least several faiths who would rather their children weren’t influenced by “secular values”. In the US, there’s an enormous Christian home-schooling movement, which is fairly famous. \t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t(In the UK, my impression is there is something of a Christian home-schooling contingent, but on nothing like the same scale. I’m not sure to what degree people erroneously assume it’s the same over here; I do recall a story of someone commenting in surprise that so few of the English home-edders they met had that background. I’m also not sure what the actual stats are.)\n\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\tInterestingly, the UK Government nowadays makes a point of lying to all immigrants:\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tThe law states that children between the \n\t\t\tThat’s from page 30\tof the “Life in the United Kingdom handbook”, which all immigrants “must read” as part of preparing for their “Life in the UK” test<\/a>. It’s the first sentence under “Education”.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\tI find myself wondering if, for some* supporters of the home ed interference, one of the driving forces behind it is about fear of parallel non-British cultures, and fear of the role of home-based education in enabling families not to assimilate into Britishness<\/a><\/strong>.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t(* I don’t mean that I think Alan thinks this.)\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\tMy new intuition is that for many if not most of the supporters of the Bill, their point of reference<\/strong> is that hypothetical girl from a religious\/traditional family, whose education would be limited by sexist tradition – and maybe her brothers too. That’s whom they’re thinking of when they’re trying to invent how licensing and monitoring would work.<\/em>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\tAnd for some people that’s purely about that girl’s education in the practical sense: reading, writing, history, general knowledge. But I suspect that for others, what’s behind that, or hand in hand with it, is her not being allowed to grow up unexposed to proper Britishness<\/strong>.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\tDoesn’t that just somehow seem to make more logical sense than the dramatic<\/a> but non-factual<\/a> justifications we have<\/em> been hearing about abuse and educational outcomes?<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t1. School doesn’t guarantee that children won’t be abused, or even much help to stop it<\/strong>. Most abuse is not immediately obvious; most children won’t disclose to a teacher; many teachers say they wouldn’t know what to do if they suspected a child was<\/em> being abused; and in many cases the school<\/a> is<\/a> the<\/a> site<\/em><\/a> of<\/a> \tthe<\/a> abuse<\/a>.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tAnd there’s the school holidays… and there’s the fact that if you’re this worried about children “of school age” not in school, you’ve got no excuse for not doing the same checkups on children too young for school…\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\tYes, there are occasions when someone at a school helps a child.* But as a “safety net” for abuse, school is always going to be full of holes, and anyone who’s thought about the territory in any detail can see that.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tIt’s Social Services which is meant to be the primary safety net, and i.m.o. it’s misguided to be throwing millions of pounds in secondary directions before the most glaring malfunctions<\/a> of that have been fixed. (Hard to say how many millions it would really be for the home ed licensing scheme, as the sums for the costs and benefits include both questionable assumptions and mistakes<\/a>.)\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t* I haven’t been able to find UK stats comparable with these ones from the US<\/a> (showing 16% of abuse investigation referrals were from teachers), but I’ve heard from someone who used to be a child protection social worker in the UK that more referrals came from neighbours or relatives than from schools. And that makes sense to me, because teachers see very little of parents actually interacting<\/em> with their children. Neighbours overhear things.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t2. State schools in the UK don’t guarantee children a good education<\/strong>. Thousands leave school with no qualifications<\/a>.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t(Yes, I know that qualifications aren’t the be-all and end-all – e.g. some young people move from home-based education directly into further education or employment using only portfolios and CVs. But since mainstream school is aimed very strongly at<\/em> GCSEs, the lack of them is not too far-fetched a measure of how poorly school served those young people.)\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\tWhat is it that school does<\/em> guarantee<\/strong> – provided it’s a mainstream school?\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\tSchool guarantees that children are exposed to mainstream culture<\/strong>.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\tIs it just me, or does that fit in like the long-lost missing piece of a jigsaw?\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\tNow I’m not saying that community<\/a> cohesion<\/a> isn’t a worthwhile thing to discuss<\/a>. I think there are some thoughtful and wise angles to it as well as probably some pretty xenophobic ones.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\tWhat’s got me suddenly so antsy about this whole angle is the fact that, as far as I’ve noticed, it isn’t<\/em> being discussed (in this context). It seems like one of those “elephant in the room which nobody’s mentioning<\/strong>” scenarios.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t(Though, thinking about it, I have a suspicion that this motivation might become more obvious if\/when the Government’s intended discussions begin about redefining “suitable education”. What’s the betting there will be some attempt to insert “British values” into that?)\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tI’m also not suggesting that this is the only<\/em> thing which the supporters of the Bill have on their minds. People do have other reservations about home-based education too.\n\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tA lot of people have strong beliefs relating to state education as a “social leveller”. (That too is at least partly about cultural cohesion, but if I understand the history correctly, it’s been more about eradicating or compensating for class and wealth differences rather than other kinds of difference.)\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tBy way of subset of “children as property”, Alan also alluded to parents who take children out of school in order to “hot-house” them in the academic sense, potentially putting a lot of pressure on the children. (though I think there’s a big difference between “child was bored in school and is genuinely happier following their curiosity” and “push the child to excel in order to prove what a successful parent I am” – which can also happen in conjunction with school.)\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n \n\t\t\t\tI might have temporarily forgotten some other arguments\/reservations. I therefore leave this item optional as an “exercise for the reader” :-)\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n \n\t\t\tAnd\tof course the “must save them from being trapped in their homes with only their parents to talk to!” thing is an extremely prevalent stereotype applied to all<\/em> home ed children – even the English-for-generations ones… even the ones who in fact have to specially make an effort to spend time at home because their social lives are so busy :-)\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tSo it’s not that I think the Britishness-assimilation thing is the only force at play. I just suddenly have this feeling like it’s a significant part of the motive power, and yet we’re not talking about it.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tSo even though, like I said, Alan and I discussed some other things too, this whole Britishness\/immigrants\/religions\/traditions thing went on resonating in my mind all the way home from the meeting and all the rest of the evening, with a feeling of things clunking into place CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tAnd on the one hand I was thinking: Aaagh – if this is how they’re thinking, then nothing we can say is going to change their minds, is it? We are dooomed to this invasive and dysfunctional licensing scheme, and it’s going to be a horrible mess.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tAnd yet on the other hand I was feeling much better because I felt so de-mystified! Like “Now<\/em> I get it. This<\/em> is what’s been going on.”\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tAn underlying “social cohesion” motive would explain why the Government is so oddly unmoved by the fact that every single one of Mr Badman’s stats falls to bits as soon as you look at it! Those were only about the supposed<\/em> reasons – abuse risks and educational outcomes.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tAnd it would explain why they don’t even care that the supposed “savings” predicted in the Impact Assessment have a big glaring mistake in the sums which mean the imagined theoretical financial benefit probably doesn’t exist.<\/a>\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tNow I might be wrong of course. This might all be a figment of my imagination. (And I might be wrong about being dooomed too.)\n\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\tBut if this is<\/em> a significant factor in how legislators are thinking, we need to start talking about it. There’s limited usefulness in demonstrating how mistaken people are about issues “X” and “Y” if the sticking point is really “Z”!\n\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tAnd, either way, we need to start talking specifically about the risks to girls in families of limiting religious &\/or traditional gender-roles. What are the risks? And how well would a Badmanesque licensing scheme work for girls in that situation? How much good would it actually do them? I’ve seen nothing addressing that specifically.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tPart of the shift in how I’m perceiving the whole territory now is that I’m less sure how much of the agenda is aimed at all <\/em> families in home-based education.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tI mean, there doesn’t seem much doubt that some<\/em> of it is; “a DfES spokesman” was quoted in 2007 as saying “we believe the best place to educate a child is actually in school.”<\/a> The quote did continue “we respect a parent’s right to choose home education for their children”, but “we respect your right to do something we believe is second-best” is perhaps not the most respectful or reassuring kind of respect that there could<\/em> be :-\/\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tAnd I know that some people have felt that the main agenda is to put all children under the yoke of the National Curriculum and under Government control. Lord Adonis said it was an “anomaly” that “The state does not currently prescribe what form of education parents should provide.” (Or, as the Pet Shop Boys put it<\/a>: “You’re not integral \/ to the project”.)\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tBut now I’m wondering if, from another angle, it’s more like: the main agenda is about cultural cohesion, and anything that happens to the not-particularly-religious, English families is “collateral damage<\/a>“<\/strong>.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tNow I definitely don’t want to do some kind of “Well our<\/em> children are OK so there isn’t a problem”. The one way you could<\/em> convince me that licensing is a good idea is by demonstrating that the overall effect for all children collectively would be better.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tBalancing risks like that includes both assessing the magnitude of the risks, and<\/em> a subjective weighing-up of how they counterbalance each other. (And there’s never no<\/em> risk.)\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tAn example from breast cancer screening: Is it better for a thousand women to have unnecessary surgery and unnecessary fear so that one woman can have ten extra years of life? That’s a hard question even if you know exactly what the ratios are<\/em>. People need to know the facts and then<\/em> talk about those hard questions<\/strong>.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tBut if you’re not even starting<\/em> with facts, the balance might be dangerously wrong.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t“False positives” aren’t only bad because of the disruption and stress to the people who were OK – which in this case would be substantial. (That’s a big topic in itself and this post is long enough already, so won’t go there now.)\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\tAn equally or more important factor in the disastrous effect of “false positives” is that they’re like hoax fire alarm calls<\/strong>. While the fire brigade attends the false alarm, someone else somewhere else in a real fire might be burning to death. Sending social workers round to investigate children who were fine includes exactly that kind of problem, just on a slower timescale where the connections might be less obvious.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tI am angry with the DCSF about the amount of lying and misdirection that’s gone on this year, arguably at the expense of talking about the real stuff. Hundreds of hours of people’s time have been wasted just getting back to zero – demonstrating that all the statistical “evidence” that Mr Badman came up with (and the DCSF so uncritically endorsed) is fictional.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tIf girls from some particular backgrounds are at especial risk of missing out on education, then we should have spent part of this year finding out the facts about that<\/strong> and then having the difficult conversations based on those facts<\/strong>.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tWhat do we know about that hypothetical girl in a family of limiting gender-role traditions? What does she need? Would she get it from the currently proposed legislation? Is there a way to address her needs without<\/em> it being at the expense of thousands of other children?\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tand how many of her are there in reality?\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tThe “we” of “we should be finding out the facts” doesn’t mean just activists from EHE communities. It should be part of everyone’s thinking about education law. But I wonder to what degree we the activists can put this territory explicitly “onto the table”. And I wonder to what degree other people “on the side of sensibleness and truth” might pick up the factual questions.\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tAnd if none of what I’ve described is an issue, I’d appreciate it if someone could prove that to me :-)\n\t\t<\/p>\n Here, have an index… <\/body><\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An angle I hadn’t considered before on recent struggles around UK education law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,23,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-gender-politics","category-non-school-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>Key themes<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
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<\/a>What did Mr Badman say?<\/h2>\n
\n
<\/a>Making a connection<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Another clue<\/h2>\n
\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tages of 5 and 16 must attend school.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/a>I seem to be seeing a grey thing with tusks<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Social cohesion<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Hot-housing, social levelling, other issues<\/h2>\n
\n
<\/a>Clunk<\/h2>\n
<\/a>We need to talk<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Collateral damage<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Ethics, risk and evidence<\/h2>\n
<\/a>What next?<\/h2>\n
Top of document<\/a>
Key themes<\/a>
What did Mr Badman say?<\/a>
Making a connection<\/a>
Another clue<\/a>
I seem to be seeing a grey thing with tusks<\/a>
Social cohesion<\/a>
Hot-housing, social levelling, other issues<\/a>
Clunk<\/a>
We need to talk<\/a>
Collateral damage<\/a>
Ethics, risk and evidence<\/a>
What next?<\/a><\/p>\n