Badman government report

[sieglinde]

The Oxon HE email group has just received information about recommended changes to legislation and school withdrawal, with barely any time for responses from the HE community, apparently. Does anyone here know any more about the Badman report? I myself know nothing at all. I add below the Oxon HE posting:

For anyone who has not read about this on the national lists.

Emails (short ones or long ones) to [email protected]

media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/p/pupil%20registration%20regulations%20-%20handout.pdf

"Parents deciding to Home Educate ? Graham Badman's report on his Review of Elective Home Education in England, published in June 2009, recommended that when parents are thinking of deregistering their child from school to home educate, schools should retain such pupils on roll for a period of 20 school days so that should the parents change their minds, the child could be readmitted to the school. This period would also allow for the resolution of such difficulties that may have prompted the decision to remove the child from school. This recommendation was supported by the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee Report on Home Education published in December 2009.
We propose to add a regulation so that where a parent has de-registered their child from school to home educate them, the school will retain the child on the admissions register for a period of 20 school days. To ensure that the school?s absence statistics are not affected by this we propose to change the definition of the absence code Z so that schools may use it to mark the register over the 20 day period (Code Z is currently used as an administrative tool that allows schools to put new pupils on the Admissions Register in advance of them starting at the school, rather than having the burden of putting them all on at the same time, and not have to mark them as absent in the register)."

and see also
www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/correspondence_with_graham_badma

Hi

At the beginning of 2009 the Government announced a Review of Home Education in England to be led by Graham Badman. At the end of May 2009 Badman produced his report, basically saying that home educators ought to have to register and submit plans for approval before they could home educate. There were also some cock-eyed suggestions for "helping" home educating families which frankly were never going to happen, not least because it was going to cost several hundred million pounds to bring in the inspection and registration scheme.

In early June 2009 the Government responded by saying they were going to change the law on home education to incorporate most of the bad bits of the Badman Report. The Government Select Committee decided that the Badman Report was pretty dubious and held an enquiry into it. The Committee published its own Report saying Badman was a bit rubbish. Meanwhile the Government proceeded to introduce draft legislation to parliament (Nov 2009) introducing the bad bits of Badman. Home educators lobbied MPs and Members of the House of Lords. At the 11th hour (April 2010) the Government dropped all the proposals, which was rather a nice day and home educators raised a glass to celebrate.

Now some home educators fear that everything which we thought had been defeated may come back bit by bit.

Thanks, Fiona. Is there reason for the fear, though?

Hi sieglinde, that's a difficult question! I think constant vigilance is the price of freedom but you could live your whole life just thinking that the dreadful thing you are anticipating hasn't happened YET, but it WILL, and you could take every moment of calm as the eerie quiet before the storm and interpret everything as a portent of the deluge to follow. I must say I had quite a few emails the day the news broke about the proposed changes to the pupil registration regulations, with seasoned home educators saying gloomily "right, this is it then" or "here we go again". Other people were asking me (because I was heavily involved in lobbying against the Badman Report and changes to the law) whether I thought this was just the start and what else did I think the Government could slip through. For my own part I think this particular proposal is driven by statisticians and is part of a tidying-up exercise. I don't myself think there's a group of civil servants or politicians who have a list of the Badman recommendations and are planning to cross them off one by one, not least because the Department for Education is far too preoccupied with free schools and academies and not being sued over cancelled schools building projects. But other home educators may well take a different view! sieglinde

Thanks, Fiona. I agree with your diagnosis, but am also vigilant! I doubt this government will spend a penny it doesn't have to spend, but equally it hasn't called off its expensive LEA attack dogs. As long as they are there, they will argue for a bigger role.