My letter to LEA

Ok - not totally sure about the legalities/moralities of posting this letter here, but I thought I'd stick it up and ask for comments! After yesterday's meeting with Doncaster home-edders and the local EO contact, we've decided not to deal with our Inspector, one Mr Richard Eyebal (name changed to protect the innocent -well, spelling has been changed anyhow... lol), until he shows willing to acquaint himself with our methods, philosophies, etc and to at least show a glimmer of understanding as to why we do the things we do. To this end, I'm cancelling the visit that was arranged before Christmas. And, thanks to Ian Dowty and few 'suggestions', I have put together the following letter. Thanks to Jax too for her assistance in the matter. :) The letter is going to be sent out to Mr Eyebal, the Cheif Exec of the LEA and a couple of other people, probably the Mayor and a council bod or two, not that they are any use! lol

"With reference to Richard Eyebal’s letter dated xx December 2004, I must now cancel the arranged home visit of Mr Eyebal for 25th January 2005.

After discussion with numerous other home-educating families in the Doncaster area, it has been decided that we, as a group, will be declining all home visits from Mr Eyebal for the foreseeable future.

This is due to a number of reasons, the majority of which have been addressed in a letter addressed to you from Gary Podmore, the Education Otherwise contact for South Yorkshire. However, there are a number of more personal points that I wish to raise, arising from Mr Eyebal's last communication.

He stated that “The education provided has to be: ‘efficient, full time and suitable to the child’s age, abilities and aptitudes and to any special needs they may have’. Efficient means having purpose and moving forward; fulltime is fairly obvious but is defined as ‘similar in hours to school hours’ and suitable to the child’s abilities and aptitudes means appropriately demanding.”

The first part is a direct quote of law and is correct. However, the interpretation of it is incorrect, and appears to be a personal definition. ‘Efficient’, in this instance, has been defined by a Crown Court judge as “achieving that which it sets out to achieve”. This will be defined by a family’s educational philosophy. Similarly, ‘full-time’ is only definable within the parameters of the educational philosophy. If a family has chosen an autonomous route of education, then following school hours is counter-productive unless the child herself has chosen to adhere to a set timetable. Stating that ‘suitable’ means ‘appropriately demanding’ is a value judgement and this should not be given in the context of explaining the law.

He goes on to say “The role of the LEA is to see the evidence that persuades it that the child’s education is suitable and to take action if it is not in order to ensure that the child has a suitable education.”

Having spoken with a solicitor, this is not what S437 of the Education Act 1996 says at all. The LEA is allowed to make informal enquiries into the educational provision of the child. If, after making informal enquiries, the Inspector came to the conclusion that no “suitable education” was being provided, then he can require that suitable evidence be produced.

The next point he raises is “A home-educated child does not have to study the whole of the National Curriculum. However, she needs to have an education that opens up the future and does not foreclose it, so it is founded on a base of English, maths, science and ICT. After that, what is studied is the choice of the parent and child.”

This again is a value judgement and should not be stated as a fact of law. It is very prescriptive and does not take into account the educational philosophy of a family. Some families may have religious or philosophical grounds to object to these ‘core subjects’, such as a desire to teach creationism as opposed to a more Darwinistic point of view. There are also families that do not use computers.

In my previous letter, I had informed Mr Eyebal that my daughter was still in the de-schooling process. To this he responded “I find the concept of de-schooling a little curious and usually rather ill-defined.”

There has been a great deal written about de-schooling in the past few years, as more and more children are removed from school for a variety of reasons. If Mr Eyebal finds the process ill-defined, he obviously hasn’t done much in the way of research into the subject. Education Otherwise would be the best place to obtain references from to satisfy his curiosity. To quote from “Deschooling, Unschooling and Natural Learning” by Beverley Paine (1999): "Deschooling specifically refers to that period of adjustment experienced by children removed from school settings. It also can include the process of deschooling parents; that is, the unlearning of concepts and beliefs about the nature and purpose of education. School based methods of instruction and thinking rarely translate directly into the homeschool. […] It often takes many months, and sometimes even a year, for the process of deschooling to unfold.”

There are numerous other points in Mr Eyebal’s letter but as these are more of a subjective nature and do not relate directly to educational law, I shall let them pass. His tone, however, leaves a great deal to be desired, and more than one person who I have solicited help from has commented on its threatening nature.

In order to fulfil our legal obligation, we will be providing the LEA with an educational philosophy, a report on our methods of applying it and a précis of what educational work is being done. This will mainly be in the form of a diary, as, although we hope to have some written work to include, we are not pushing D to produce written material at present."

So - any suggestions? Add more, take some away? I haven't mailed it yet - will wait until Friday so I can get as much feedback as I can.

Off for a run now - will tell all about today's dirty day out later! lol