Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Cardiff Backs Off From Home School Law

A consultation report on a possible law to regulate home schooling has come in for severe criticism and been rejected as a good idea by over 80% of respondents.

The Education Minister launched a consultation on whether introducing legislation to force parents to register and engage with local education authorities had support amongst the public and LEAs.

Over 80% of parents responding to the consultation rejected the proposals, which included a possible legal right of entry into parents' homes.

As a result, the Minister has backed-off from introducing legislation, highlighting the very clear battle line drawn between parents, who overwhelmingly saw the moves as "state interference", and LEAs, who thought they'd like to start pushing their weight around inside people's homes because there could be welfare issues to consider.

A dark undercurrent in fact flows through the position of the LEAs.  Their responses show a clear prejudice against the whole concept of home schooling.  LEA responses seem to apply a suspicion that those parents who pull their children out of what are, within Wales, often dire schools, must have some motive other than alternative educational provision. 

As is usual for just about any public body trying to get its own way these days, the words "health and safety" are used as justification to enter homes and inspect just what's going on inside.  However, laws already exist to allow intervention where there is no evidence of reasonable educational efforts going on at home.  Similarly, there are laws to deal with those tiny minority who may be hiding something sinister by keeping their kids from school.

But this is clearly not enough for the LEAs.  Rather than accept the doctrine of innocent until evidence shows otherwise, they want to label everyone a criminal who must prove their innocence.  They very much want to see parents as suspicious simply for wanting to home school.  Their responses show a deeply troubling attempt at an extension of their mandates as educational authorities to something much more like a combination of police and social services.

One parent made the point, and I can confirm the sentiment, that dealing with a local authority was "the most stressful and time-consuming" thing she'd ever done. Across Wales, we have stories of authorities making false claims against parents, poor relations between schools and homes, and almost all 22 LEAs failing to meet those expectations for which they are paid handsomely to achieve.


Parents angrily made the point that LEAs don't, themselves, have a good definition of what a "suitable education" actually is, typically have a bias against home schooling for no good reason other than for being different, and cannot, in most areas of Wales, themselves deliver a suitable education.  Witness the PISA results over many years to find justification for this view.

The Minister has, for his part, exercised what can only be termed good judgement in immediately pulling back from legislation in this area.  Forging ahead would have led to an inevitable and rapid digging of deeper trenches between a state that wants to interfere deeper and deeper with personal lives, and those who are self-sufficient and see the Welsh education system for the total failure that it is.

The message from parents is clear: if the government provided education to an acceptable standard within Wales, they wouldn't have to sacrifice their lives to home schooling.  The LEAs must look at their own, appalling record sheet of failures before they start telling parents they don't know what they're doing.

In the end, the parent has a legal duty, not just a right, to ensure the suitable and sufficient education of their children.  That has always meant they have a choice to educate outside the state provisions, and even outside any formal school organisation.  This must never change, and local authorities must never be allowed to be judge and jury in their own cause.






Saturday, May 10, 2014

Gwynedd Council - A Failure of Government

Gwynedd Council, strapped for cash (but not for those in 'important positions') has announced it will reduce bin collection frequency to once every three weeks from October.

Appearing on BBC news, a councillor (elderly, not very good at speaking english, you know the sort), asserted that "we can't keep on putting rubbish in the ground, those days are over."

Only three weeks to go before bin day...

Well, he has a point, of course.  But let's think about this for a while.  Putting things into the ground has been a legal aim for councils for very, very many years.  Legislation originating in Europe was complied with quite quickly across the member states, apart from one laggard - the UK.  Being a former imperial colonist, the UK knew better than everyone else, so just kept putting it off.

Now, the solution to not putting things into the ground is rather more complex.  But what's blatantly obvious is that you can't do it just by not collecting bins quite so often.  You don't generate less rubbish simply because the bin men aren't coming.  You just delay its entry into landfill, not avoid it.

The main reason Gwynedd won't end-up with less landfill with a three week collection period is that the people who generate all that packaging - the manufacturers - have never meaningfully been targeted by government.  No, they are a bit too difficult to tackle, and we have a free market, and so on.  So, here, have more cellophane around an individual biscuit, wrapped in three further layers of plastic, just in case.

As usual, it's a mild case of 'when there's a problem, hit the poor public'.  It is bad government, with very little thinking other than 'must save money' behind it.  Maybe, if councils stopped signing-up to expensive contracts with private companies who must make a profit, they could save money that way.  But, oh no, that would mean someone in the council would have to get up off their arses, instead of being made to feel important by private companies for doing very little other than holding sway over where the contracts go.

So, the challenge is to see (a) how much money Gwynedd really do save with three week collections and (b) by how much landfill volumes fall as a sole result of three week collections.  Oh, and (c), how much more fly tipping and toxic burning will take place, and how CCTV shut-downs will allow perpetrators to do so with impunity.

And all that's without even touching on the health effects of a bin, sweltering away for three weeks in the summer sun.

Nice one Gwynedd!  Another example of why local government is such a joke.




Monday, May 5, 2014

Anglesey: Vive la Revolution!

Here we go again!

As predicted and expected, Anglesey Council is well underway to ripping itself apart again.

Taken over by direct control from Cardiff a couple of years ago, a newly-elected council, drawing on re-drawn ward boundaries, is already splintering.

Anglesey: the latest, and unlikely venue for a 'revolution'.


Jeff Evans and Peter Rogers have formed a new 'Revolution' group, claiming that cuts and closures are a "fait accompli".  This, they claim, leaves councillors as mere bystanders as the hard line from Westminster is, for the first time since the financial crisis began, becoming sorely evident to Joe Public.

If the motivations are as they say, then Evans and Rogers are to be congratulated in focusing on super-critical analysis of what cuts are proposed, and what alternatives may exist.  The Council, on the other hand, seems intent on getting as many cuts through as quickly as possible, in order to meet their financial projections.

Rumours have it that a senior officer of the council has been suspended, pending an investigation surrounding an allegation of failure to cooperate with councillors.  As a result, the council seems to be on a sure course to self-destruction and so, one might even hope, setting itself up nicely for absorption by Gwynedd.