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Thoughts on the Khyra Ishaq case and home schooling; tackling problem pubs, and the dangers of loneliness

Full coverage: the Khyra Ishaq serious case review

Death Khyra '\\ "to prevent the", says review

Extracts from the Khyra Ishaq serious case review

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Khyra Ishaq and home education: a few thoughts

Home Schooler parents, who, as a group, so to speak, passionate amateurs, won t ', like it one bit. But Khyra Ishaq independent serious case review asserts that the lack of regulation around home schooling was a major contributory factor in failing to prevent Khyra's death, and demands changes in the law to enable the authorities to properly assess and monitor families who educate their children at home. It calls the current arrangements:

"A major safeguarding flaw."

This could well be true. But was it the major factor in this particular case? Or were individual failures of judgment to blame? The review contains a detailed and persuasive analysis of home schooling legislation and its shortcomings in the context of safeguarding, on pages 79-83 of the review report. It later concludes (page 86):

\\ "No doubt, legal armor of the Education Act 1996, supported by DCSF choice of Home Education Guidelines for local authorities in 2007 included a mother to confront the achievement of professional intervention and said the alleged impotence of professionals to intervene."

But the report also accepts that the home schooling assessment carried out by two Birmingham council Education Otherwise officials was "poor". The framework for assessment is "tick box" and does not enable proper assessment of parental capability or suitability, it says. But in this case, were the officials negligent? Assessment visits are normally carried out by a single official. In this case it seems they knew enough about Khyra's aggressive intimidating mother, Angela Gordon, to go as a pair. Should not this in itself have been a vital sign of her unsuitability?

The review notes (12.5.7) that their subsequent statement giving the formal go-ahead for home education was "worrying". The review points out that a month before approval for home schooling was given, the Education Otherwise adviser had been:

"Provided with information from [an education social worker] on 30 January 2008 to clarify the range of concerns held by the school and the referrals that had been made to children's social care in relation to this family."

This suggests officials approved Gordon's home schooling application, even though they had in their possession a significant body of evidence that this would be a very bad idea. They knew teachers had reported concerns to children's social care that the children had unexplained absences from school, were stealing food from other children and that their appearance was "very slender". They also knew that Gordon was unco-operative and aggressive. So why did Gordon get the green light to take her kids out of school, the only place where their fragile wellbeing could be monitored?

What the review implies is that the official bar for rejecting a home schooling application is so high that even someone as patently questionable as Gordon can sneak in beneath it almost without challenge. What's not clear is whether the officials concerns and ability to act on them were held back by rigidity of the law (which clearly favours Gordon) or whether they still had the means to refuse Gordon's application, but through meekness or misjudgment declined to enforce it.

This first ever serious case review to be published in full may give us a more comprehensive picture of what happened but it does not give us a satisfactory answer to this question.

The education secretary, Michael Gove, fetishises parental choice and abhors regulation of families and private individuals. He will not instinctively welcome the recommendations of the serious case review that tighten the official oversight of some families. On the other hand, he also subscribes to the current highly-regulated "no risk" child protection agenda, and agrees that safeguarding professionals should be free to use their "common sense" to intervene in cases like this. He doesn't want another Khyra tragedy on his watch, but neither does he want to offend the home schooling lobby. How does he respond?

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