Councillor Ford makes an apology for remarks

"Parents, Mencap and the National Autistic Society have complained about Cllr Ford’s remarks during meetings where Cheshire West and Chester Council decided to bill parents of special educational needs (SEN) children £880 a year towards the £5,200 school transport costs."

"Pupils up to four-years-old or between 16 and 19 years or with medical needs are eligible for the charge from September, which is reduced to £660 for the first year only. Low income families pay half."

"Cllr Ford (Con, Helsby), who has since apologised for any offence, told the April executive meeting: "We have a burden, as everybody does, when you have a person like this in one’s family."

"Parents were also offended by the phrase ‘the state of that child’, when he told the March executive meeting: "Every parent has a duty to get their children to school, irrespective of the state of that child, whether it be SEN, autism or whatever."

"Explaining why he used the term ‘burden’, Cllr Ford told The Chronicle : "It’s our burden, not theirs, because we have to pay for these people."

http://www.chesterchronicle.co.uk/news/chester-cheshire-news/cheshire-west-chester-council-deputy-7025284

Dr Hibbert seeks revenge on mothers

"Dr George Hibbert was regarded as one of the country’s leading experts on child abuse, had lectured at Oxford and had advised MPs on the family courts system."

"When Keira agreed to work for him, it was at one of his Family Assessment Centres — places where families who had come to the attention of social services departments were referred. They were placed under round-the-clock observation while it was determined what should happen next."

"It was a very intrusive set-up, but Keira assumed that Dr Hibbert — who was highly trusted (and very well paid) by a string of local authorities — knew what he was doing."

"But protecting children is one thing. Ripping families apart — apparently for little reason — is another. Yet this is what Keira claims Dr Hibbert did, and on a scale that is staggering."

"Alarm bells first started ringing when she felt Dr Hibbert wanted his staff to concentrate on recording only the negative aspects of what they observed. And she became dismayed when the parents were set bizarre and, she felt, unfair tasks, to assess how they coped..."

"Quite how routinely babies were removed from their parents as a result of Dr Hibbert’s practices is not yet known. But Keira was not the only one to fear that her boss was abusing his powers."

"Earlier this year, Dr Hibbert offered to surrender his doctor’s licence when the General Medical Council launched an investigation over accusations that he had deliberately misdiagnosed mothers as suffering from mental disorders to fit in with the view of social services."

"The GMC refused to accept Dr Hibbert’s offer, and is investigating his fitness to practise."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2136388/Dr-George-Hibbert-worker-I-saw-observing-parents-children-The-woman-said-forced-babies-mothers-expert-played-God.html

Updates can be found on Researching Reform:

http://researchingreform.net/2014/04/23/dr-hibbert-cleared-of-malpractice-but-seeks-revenge-on-the-mothers-who-spoke-out/?relatedposts_hit=1&relatedposts_origin=4041&relatedposts_position=0

http://researchingreform.net/2014/04/25/concerns-over-dr-hibberts-conduct-post-fitness-hearing-confirmed/

FBI investigation of child abuse at Southbank International School

An elite London school has become embroiled in an FBI-led international child abuse investigation into a highly regarded teacher who is believed to have molested more than 90 boys.

William Vahey, a 64-year old American who taught at the Southbank International School in Westminster between 2009 and 2013, killed himself in Minnesota in March after confessing to drugging and molesting children while on field trips.

He had been found with a memory stick that contained sexually graphic images of at least 90 boys who appeared to have been drugged...

The FBI said that Vahey was jailed in California in 1969 for child molestation, but Woodhead said that nothing showed up on criminal record checks or references taken in the UK and abroad by the school, where Vahey had taught history and geography.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/23/london-private-school-child-abuse-investigation-teacher-confession

No criminal record checks for teachers from overseas

HUNDREDS of teachers from overseas who want to work in Scottish schools will no longer be required to provide criminal records checks under controversial proposals. The regulatory body for teachers is considering plans to scrap the requirement because of the difficulties in securing checks from some countries.

More than 500 teachers from overseas have applied to work in Scottish schools over the past five years. Eileen Prior, executive director of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, said: "The regulation around disclosures for anyone working with children in Scotland is something we often say is overdone, but in this case we believe parents expect that anyone working in a school would be checked.

"Parents would be surprised that some teachers coming from other countries would not be asked to provide criminal-records checks. "There may not be a level playing field, but removing checks from those who can provide them does not seem to be a reasonable solution."

Iain Ellis, chairman of the National Parent Forum of Scotland, added: "We believe that checks should be as robust as possible for all teachers working in all Scottish schools and that no-one should be exempt from these checks."

Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland teaching union, also expressed concern. "Clearly, the suggestion of some overseas applicants to the GTCS register potentially not being criminal-record checked is an issue that raises concerns.

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/sp/?id=2014-03-26.2.0

Scottish parents are being monitored and data mined by the named person before a child is born and all the way up to the child`s eighteenth birthday. It makes no difference whether or not they have a criminal record. The proposal to forego criminal checks for teachers from overseas cannot be justified but does make a nonsense of keeping children safe with the GIRFEC approach.

McKenzie friends to pay court costs

　

An American woman, crippled after being beaten up by staff in Holloway Prison, was deported by the UK Border Agency, to be left in her wheelchair at Washington airport without money or a passport.

Since Sir James Munby stepped up last year to become head of our family courts, he has been making heroic efforts to restore sanity and justice to what had become an indefensibly secretive and dysfunctional system. His latest move, just when cuts in legal aid are forcing ever more parents to represent themselves, aided by unpaid legal advisers or "McKenzie Friends", has been to issue new guidelines to ensure that this does not leave them seriously disadvantaged against the serried ranks of taxpayer-funded lawyers on the other side. But the latest recruit to his High Court team, Mrs Justice Ingrid Simler, has now issued a ruling that threatens to tilt the scales of justice against such parents more than ever.

Last September I reported the case of an American woman, crippled after being beaten up by staff in Holloway Prison, who was deported by the UK Border Agency, to be left in her wheelchair at Washington airport without money or a passport. She was originally imprisoned for taking her mildly autistic son from foster care, after social workers had removed him because they said he needed speech therapy which she thought unnecessary. Because she and her son had different names, after she changed hers to avoid detection for overstaying her UK visa, she was charged with having abducted someone else’s child, to which her state-funded barrister advised her to plead guilty. Although DNA tests later confirmed that she was the mother, it was this damning false allegation that led to her being beaten up. Photographs of the boy show how, after a year in "care", her once happy, healthy son now looked lost, miserable and ill. 

After being stuck for weeks at Washington airport, sleeping on benches because she had no money or the documents that would have allowed her to apply for accommodation or look for work, the mother was advised by friends in Britain, including Sabine McNeill and Belinda McKenzie, who run the Association of McKenzie Friends, to apply for a judicial review of her case, which an experienced lawyer told them was full of legal irregularities. Unable to return to the UK without a passport, she drafted a statement with the help of her advisers, which they presented to the High Court in December. A judge adjourned the hearing for them to "validate" their right to speak for her.

This month, however, when none of them could be present, Mrs Justice Simler ruled not just that their case was "totally without merit" but that the lay advisers were now considered to be "parties to the case", and must pay more than £4,000 in court costs. They would have a chance to challenge this, but were told that, if the court found against them, their costs would be even higher. In effect, the judge was sending a warning to all such lay advisers that, by offering help to litigants, they now risk severe financial penalties if their case is lost. As John Hemming MP recognises, "if lay advisors are to be threatened with hefty costs merely for helping victims of a miscarriage of justice, then the rule of law is under threat". This ruling appears so flatly to counter Lord Justice Munby’s latest attempt to achieve a fairer balance between lawyers paid by the state and those "McKenzie Friends" that it would be very interesting.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10775631/Costs-ruling-in-family-court-penalises-those-helping-wronged-parents.html

As well as cuts in legal aid to parents, limits to expert evidence allowed in court, and the intimidation of McKenzie Friends through financial penalties, other family justice reforms also ensure that the system is being streamlined to allow children to be removed from their parents faster than ever without parents having the means to defend themselves or their children.

Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division, said: "Today marks the largest reform of the family justice system any of us have seen or will see in our professional lifetimes.

"Taken as a whole, these reforms amount to a revolution. There has been, indeed there had to be, a fundamental change in the cultures of the family courts. This is truly a cultural revolution." 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27106066

Many are surprised that Sir James Munby has not spoken out against these draconian reforms that work against parents and their families given his previous pronouncements.

http://alicemooreuk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/by-christopher-booker-651pm-bst-27-jul.html

Data from the National Pupil database is being sold off

Thanks are due to the Vox Political reader who flagged up the fact that, while plans to sell British citizens’ health records and tax details are currently delayed or in consideration, confidential information about our children is already being sold on to private companies.
Researchers and third-party organisations can apply for detailed information from the national pupil database (NPD), covering pupils at schools and colleges in England.

This includes test and exam results, details of prior attainment and progression at different key stages for pupils in the state sector, attainment data for students in non-maintained special schools, sixth-form and further education colleges, and information on pupils in independent schools, where available.

The database also includes information about pupils’ characteristics, such as gender, ethnicity, first language, eligibility for free school meals, special educational needs (SEN), and pupil absence and exclusions.

Why would anyone want to use such information commercially?
Extracts of this data are available for use by any organisation or person who, "for the purpose of promoting the education or well-being of children in England", are conducting research or analysis, producing statistics, or providing information, advice or guidance. To whom?

http://mikesivier.wordpress.com/category/children-2/

Turning 120,000 troubled families around

4Children is the national charity which runs Sure Start Children`s Centres as well as family and youth services across Britain. They are the Government`s strategic partner for early years and co-produce policy with the Department of Education. It is no surprise therefore that 4Children finds an important place for their services in the `early interventions` approach approved by the Government.

Commenting on the charge from the Public Accounts committee that the Government are not going to be `turning around` 120,000 troubled families by 2015 Anne Longfield, Chief Executive of 4Children, still backed the idea:

The Troubled Families Programme is an important programme which has the potential to transform the lives of some of the most vulnerable families in the country who have multiple, complex needs.

Without clarifying what is meant by turning a family around, she goes on to say that it is not clear how many families have been `turned around`. "The Government needs to publish the results in the interests of transparency."

The Troubled families programme needs to be at the heart of local programmes for change for families and communities. Families are helped best when services and professionals, including social services, health, housing and Job Centre Plus, work closely together to provide the joined-up and personalised support that families need.

http://www.4children.org.uk/News/Detail/4Children-comment-on-Public-Accounts-Committee-report-on-Troubled-Families-Programme 

In `Removal as Class War` Portes reveals the official definition of a `troubled family`. It is one with at least 5 of these 7 features

(a) no parent in work (b) poor quality housing, (c) no parent with qualifications, (d) mother with mental health problems (e) one parent with longstanding disability/illness (f) family has low income, (g) family cannot afford some food/clothing items’. 

He observes, ‘… none of these criteria, in themselves, have anything at all to do with disruption, irresponsibility, or crime. Drug addiction and alcohol abuse are also absent. A family which meets 5 of these criteria is certainly disadvantaged. Almost certainly poor. But a source of wider social problems? Maybe, but maybe not – and certainly not as a direct consequence. In other words, the "troubled families" in the Prime Minister’s speech are not necessarily "neighbours from hell" at all. They are poor.’  

http://www.fassit.co.uk/pdf/child-removal-as-class-war.pdf 

Professor Ruth Levitas in `There may be `Trouble` Ahead: What we know about those 120,000 `Troubled` families` has said: 
 

… Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is reported as saying: ‘120,000 families are a big problem for this country. If you live near one you know very well who they are.’ …  The original research on which these figures are based is a report for the Social Exclusion Task Force. ...in the survey the actual numbers of families with five or more of these disadvantages was very small and the figure assumes an accuracy that is spurious:

As we have seen, ‘troubled families’ discursively collapses ‘families with troubles’ and ‘troublesome families’, while simultaneously implying that they are dysfunctional as families. This discursive strategy is successful in feeding vindictive attitudes to the poor.

Read the full PSE paper: There may be 'Trouble' Ahead: What We Know About Those 120,000 'Troubled' Families, by Ruth Levitas.

Frightening children about climate change

Eco-Schools Scotland, part of the Keep Scotland Beautiful charity, introduces itself:

Eco-Schools is an international initiative designed to encourage whole school action on sustainable development education issues. It is an environmental management tool, a learning resource and a recognised award scheme. It empowers young people to take action towards an economically, socially and environmentally just world...

Over 98% of Scotland's local authority schools now participate in the initiative, as well as many more independent and early years establishments.

http://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/sustainable-development-education/eco-schools

`CLIMATE CONTROL: Brainwashing in Schools` discusses eco-activism in more negative terms:

We find instances of eco-activism being given a free rein within schools and at the events schools encourage their pupils to attend. In every case of concern, the slant is on scares, on raising fears, followed by the promotion of detailed guidance on how pupils should live, as well as on what they should think. In some instances, we find encouragement to create ‘little political activists’ in schools by creating a burden of responsibility for action on their part to ‘save the planet’, not least by putting pressure on their parents.

The National Curriculum has recently been reviewed by the government, but the proposed changes seem unlikely to prevent such practices. Surveys show that many children are upset and frightened by what they are told is happening to the climate.

http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2014/04/Education-reducedportrait-5.pdf

Some teachers appreciate that climate change, and what policy makers should do about it, is still a contested issue amongst scientists. Is climate change driven by the sun or is it more likely to be the consequence of the build-up of greenhouse gases? That is a simple question which at the moment has not been resolved but the question is totally ignored by those in charge of the education of children. 

Instead, schools are encouraged to use resources from charities which ensure that children are alarmed from the earliest age about an impending global catastrophe.

A compassionate teacher who has blogged about the issue explains how children`s fears about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were allayed by providing them with more information. Never having been taught that carbon dioxide is actually essential for photosynthesis and is an important building block for life, these facts brought great relief to the children.

It seems important that climate change is taught in schools, but surely it must be taught in context. To teach it to primary school children, who are still incapable of grasping the underlying science, is pedagogically ignorant and therefore negligent. At the very least, climate change should be taught as a secondary science unit, after students have learnt basic biology, chemistry and physics. Only then do they have a chance of accurately assessing the issue, and only then can they receive a safe, healthy psychological upbringing.

How not to teach climate change

Apart from the impoverishment of their education, it is abusive to instill fear into vulnerable children that the planet upon which all life depends is under great threat. Even if it were true, which many reports suggest not, children are actually powerless to do anything about it. Since wellbeing is at the heart of Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) and Curriculum for Excellence - this should not be happening in Scotland. 

See Climate change reconsidered II

Dumbing children down

THE theory behind the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence is so vague and woolly it is said that pinning it down is like trying to nail jelly to the wall. Unlike the 5 - 14 curriculum for which the resources were supplied there is none available for CfE and teachers are encouraged to supply their own; so standards vary from school to school.

The notion of active learning is at the heart of the new curriculum and is about encouraging children to work together. They become very good at working co-operatively but few can now work on their own for more than 10 minutes.

As the children move up the school, we have noticed a lack of thinking skills and a deterioration in written work. They find difficulty transferring what they have learned to the written page. For example, they know a sentence begins with a capital letter and ends in a full stop but, when you put the paper in front of them, they don’t do it.

The new curriculum discourages the use of textbooks in the classroom. Absolutely...Now they want us to download resources from the internet which are not tried and tested and adapt them to lessons.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/teacher-says-new-curriculum-is-failing-1116543

"What is actually happening with the lowering of standards of children’s literacy and numeracy skills is being hidden by these fixed levels — for example all pupils moving into secondary school are classed as level 3 developing, regardless of ability.

"The new qualifications are a dumbed down version of Standard Grades so don’t stretch more able pupils.

"Only having one school year to complete work means less able pupils can’t keep up with work, or have the chance to improve as they could with Standard Grades."

An SQA examiner agreed with the "dumbing down" notion. He said: "The old system worked well — there were good courses that kids enjoyed. I feel the new exams have been dumbed down."

And an education worker from Aberdeen said: "CfE’s undoubtedly worse than Standard Grades. Activities and examinations are dumbed down. Some pupils will leave school without sitting an exam. Teachers have vague guidlines to work from.

"Employers and universities will be unhappy about the standard of pupil schools are producing."

http://www.sundaypost.com/news-views/scotland/curriculum-for-excellence-is-causing-massive-confusion-all-over-scotland-1.157229

The University of Stirling report found the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) "does not clearly articulate questions of what should be learned and why" and warned against pupils being taught "skills" instead of academic knowledge.

Many teachers are worried the first pupils experiencing the new system are "guinea pigs" whose education will suffer, it concluded.

More teachers agreed than disagreed the CfE will harm some children’s prospects, according to an accompanying survey, and less than a third of teachers said they were "positive" about the curriculum’s development.

New National exams, replacing Standard Grades and Intermediates, are supposed to start in 2014 to complement the CfE. Both elements are less prescriptive about using traditional academic methods and focus on teaching pupils life skills.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9198231/Scottish-teachers-floundering-over-Curriculum-for-Excellence.html

Biometrics banned in Florida schools

Kevin Townsend in his blog comments on Florida`s decision to ban the use of biometrics in schools.

We do not need biometrics to provide secure identity. However, once it is widespread within a system, its value is less as an access or identity device, but more as a tracking device. Consider movement around a campus. If students need an eye or palm or fingerprint scan to enter the library, board a bus, or buy a snack in the cafeteria, then the system knows who is where all of the time.

Then imagine this writ large across the nation. The authorities will know where everyone is, all of the time. The problem with introducing biometrics into schools is that we are breeding a generation that will be comfortable with and fully accepting of total government surveillance. And that is something we need to prevent now rather than redress when it’s too late.

http://kevtownsend.wordpress.com/2014/03/29/why-we-must-keep-biometrics-out-of-schools/