My Draft Consultation Response

[fionan]

I downloaded the Council's consultation form and made some notes under the different headings. I was trying to upload it but I can't get the forum to accept the attachment.

So I've put it on my server at this link edyourself.org/lancsconsultFNresponse.doc

[jo70mo]

When I click the link I get page not found on your website. It may just be cos I am using my phone but it looks like it has followed link correctly. Thanks for taking the time to prepare a response.
Jo

[fionan]

sorry! try this link edyourself.org/lancsconsultresponseFN.doc

I realised after I uploaded it that I haven't yet said anything about how CME guidance DOESN'T oblige the Council to make annual visits or ask for annual reports so that the child may be allowed to stay on the EHE database. So that needs to be added.

[jo70mo]

Thanks Fiona,
I'm trying to get my head around a way to discuss the issue that they say that they cannot legally require parents to have visits, provide evidence etc but they will ask for enough evidence as would satisfy a reasonable person and their discussion forms are all subject and planning based. Thus though they state they cannot legally require it they seem to have it as their decision making framework. They do not seem to have a clear framework for requesting info and decision making at what Ian calls stage 1 enquiries and that will easily lead them into assessing education against their own view of education and believing that those who just say how they are educating must provide further evidence or info before they can be sure that they have no concerns!
Not only is that level of evidence not required legally, asking for it will surely confuse any decision making framework at this level. They are caught up in how can they know they do not have concerns if they are not given lots of info/evidence about the education.

[fionan]

Hi Jo

From the outside it looks like this:

The Council USED to believe that they had to assess every child who came into home education to make sure that their education was satisfactory. (Which is INCORRECT)

They followed this assumption by a further mistaken belief that they had to see the child a/ to make sure the child was safe and b/ to make sure that the child was being educated. (AGAIN INCORRECT)

Following the defeat of the Badman proposals and the indefatigable efforts of Lancs Home Ed Forum, plus the fact that all Councils are very strapped for cash and they were hugely behind on the visits schedule and people weren't co-operating etc etc, Lancs pragmatically conceded that actually not all families had to be visited.

But this isn't actually very much of a concession because they now seem to be saying "if you aren't going to accept a visit - which is really what you SHOULD be doing - you need to provide all this other evidence which would stand up in court and you need to provide it every year."

The guidelines say that local authorities should ask parents for some information. It then says that parents are under no duty to reply but quotes Donaldson as saying they would be sensible to do so.

I'm trying to think of an analogy. OK, if someone asked me about my approach to parenting, I'd waffle on for a few minutes and if they didn't like it, tough. (Or I might say mind your own business, so the analogy falls down already!)

But if I was looking to foster or adopt someone else's child I'd have to fill out all sorts of forms and every aspect of my life would probably come under scrutiny, because someone would have to give me "permission" to do it and I'd have to try and second-guess what the person thought was "acceptable" and I might have to give an undertaking to do certain things in a certain way, and at the end of it all, I might still be rejected as not suitable.

I think this IS maybe how Lancs sees it. When I went to see Lancs a couple of years ago, the Councillors in the room came from Looked-After-Children background. They were talking about "the child should have a voice" as though this could be translated from children in care to children in their own homes with their own parents.

[fionan]

trying to upload my latest draft consultation response. hope this works!

Attachments:

[jo70mo]

it worked for me - thanks

[fionan]

It's finally dawned on me - doh - that filling in the Lancs consultation form is not a good way to try and squash all the points I want to make into the boxes because when I read it back, I might notice that something is wrong, but I'm much less likely to notice that something is MISSING.

Also it makes my Libre Office crash all the time.

So what I've decided to do instead is to paste the whole draft consultation response into a VIM-based text editor and then add html so that the whole consultation response can be viewed as a web page. Because then it's so much easier to see what's going on.

I'm about two thirds of the way through doing this now and hope to have a link to give tonight.

Has anyone else found a user-friendly way to fill in the Council's consultation document?
www.lancashire.gov.uk/corporate/web/viewdoc.asp?id=75604&mode=edit

[jo70mo]

not yet! I have been going through the draft document in word and adding comments but that won't work if they print the doc off to read. Or at least I don't think it will. Also I know people don't always know how to read the comments like that.
I would be inclined to take each section and put it at the top of a new page in a word document maybe.
They do say we don't have to use their response form.

[fionan]

edyourself.org/articles/lancs.php

OK this needs more coding but could people have a look to get the general idea?

I've got to take my mum out for the day and am late for the bus so will have to do more tonight.

[archelaus]

Nov 5, 2011 9:55:50 GMT 1 fionan said:

It's finally dawned on me - doh - that filling in the Lancs consultation form is not a good way to try and squash all the points I want to make into the boxes because when I read it back, I might notice that something is wrong, but I'm much less likely to notice that something is MISSING.

Filling their form is too restrictive. It doesn't have boxes for all sections, e.g. links, and it's not easy to read back through or refer to sections from the doc.
The letter sent out to families said:
'We have prepared a consultation response form for convenience but if you prefer to submit your comments in a different way it would help if could still group comments under each section heading, to assist us in compiling responses.'

The biggest problem with responding to a document by going through each section is you tend to comment on what you read and not step back and look at the whole thing.
As an example, it is easy to get drawn into a discussion of the details of how parents can demonstrate a suitable education to the LA, should visits be the norm, dated marked work, etc. when really the issue is whether or not the LA should be looking/asking for the info in the first place.

To do it properly we need to take time to look through the EHE guidelines and other LA's policies to see what Lancs has omitted and then ask why they have, is it not necessary, is it sort of covered elsewhere or have they deliberately missed them to suit their needs.

jo70mo - to make your comments still obvious once it's printed in b&w, use a very different font or italics and indent it or put it into a text box or grey their text and leave yours as black.

I haven't looked in detail at the structure of the form. Could the LA have done it that way to allow them to automatically strip the responses out, e.g. pull all responses for a section into a single doc ? If that's the case, how are they going to handle responses not on the form - will they be skimmed, overlooked or read properly ?

[fionan]

Nov 5, 2011 13:47:54 GMT 1 archelaus said:

I haven't looked in detail at the structure of the form. Could the LA have done it that way to allow them to automatically strip the responses out, e.g. pull all responses for a section into a single doc ? If that's the case, how are they going to handle responses not on the form - will they be skimmed, overlooked or read properly ?

It is worth looking at the form. The headings simply mirror the headings in the draft policy.

www3.lancashire.gov.uk/corporate/atoz/a_to_z/service.asp?u_id=388&tab=1

Principles and Policy Statement; The Law Relating to Elective Home Education; The Lancashire Context and EHE; Children with Special Educational Needs; Safeguarding Responsibilities; Cross Border Issues; Procedures; Additional Comments.

Therefore the consultation response (as web page or word doc or whatever) just needs to do the same, in a format that can be copied and pasted.

[fionan]

"Lancashire has asked for comments on the Council's draft home education policy. The consultation closes at the end of November 2011. The Council would like comments to be grouped under the following categories: Principles and Policy Statement; The Law Relating to Elective Home Education; The Lancashire Context and EHE; Children with Special Educational Needs; Safeguarding Responsibilities; Cross Border Issues; Procedures; Additional Comments.

From 2008-9 Lancashire Council undertook a review of Elective Home Education. During the review I attended a meeting with Lancashire Council in 2009 in my position Chair of Education Otherwise Government Policy Group. The report was published in 2009. www.lancashire-he.org.uk/docs/Lancs%20CC%20Task%20Group%20report.pdf.

Mid-way through the Lancashire review, the Government asked Graham Badman to conduct a national review of home education. The Badman Report, published in June 2009, recommended a number of changes to the law. It was clear that Lancashire Council supported the Badman recommendations and councillors and staff were confident that the Badman proposals would be enshrined in new laws. With this expectation in mind, the Council called off discussions with the local home education community and began to prepare for the changes to the law. However, as everyone will be aware, the Education Select Committee was highly critical of the conduct and findings of the Badman Report and the Government subsequently withdrew the proposed legislative changes in early April 2010.

The home education service was in difficulty before the 2008 review, mainly because of capacity issues where staff were wrongly being required to conduct a formal assessment of each child as part of routine monitoring. Deadlines were constantly missed, largely because the Council misread the law and imposed unnecessary and impossible targets, with parents being viewed as obstacles to be overcome or circumvented by whatever means possible. The 2009 Report shows that the Council also aspired to limit the number of children entering home education and to use safeguarding procedures to reintegrate children into mainstream schooling.

I have followed subsequent developments in Lancashire with dismay. It appears that for a considerable period of time there has been no one in charge of updating procedural documents to bring them into line with the current law so whenever the local home education community has forced the issue, via formal complaints procedures etc, the Council has resorted to the incorrect Badman Era policies discussed above."

Currently this is how my consultation response opens. Read more here
edyourself.org/articles/lancs.php