You wrote to me recently to remind me that I had several complaints outstanding and asking me to respond officially. I apologise for not having done so sooner. Since the PCC has given me a combined response incorporating all three complaints, I will do likewise and comment on each paper's response in turn.
Firstly, Janet Youngson's response to my complaint regarding the article in the Independent, dated 12/06/09, PCC reference 092877. In her response Janet Youngson says she has contacted the reporter who attended the Press Conference with Graham Badman, and her letter is informed by the notes the reporter took on the day in question. My response to Ms Youngson is as follows:
a) Other accounts of what was said at the Press Conference do not refer to Graham Badman as stating, as Ms Youngson says
“a review of a 'significant sample' of Serious Case Reviews 'the ratio of almost double' that is of the incidence of serious case reviews in the population of home education children compared with the non home-educated.”
I have been fortunate in that, having complained about other newspapers, I have been given another journalist's 'first hand' account of the press conference. From this other account, the 'almost double' ratio only refers to those home educated children who are known to Social Services in a few Local Authorities, Badman himself acknowledging that significant variations in the proportion of Home Educated children known to Social Services in different Local Authorities.
I contend that the reporter who attended the Press Conference misunderstood what was said by Mr Badman. If such a shocking statistic was available, namely one which showed, conclusively, that Home Educated children were twice as likely to be the subject of a Serious Case Review as their school-educated peers, then surely this would have been in the review.
b) On the subject of the conflation of 'known to social services' and 'at risk', Ms Youngson contends that,
'even if there were some reasons that children were known to the social services that were not for abuse, the disparity between the two groups would mean that there is likely to be more 'risk of abuse' with those who are home educated.'
I feel that this comment, in particular the phrase 'even if there were some reasons … that were not […] abuse' reveals a woeful lack of understanding of the subject, and perhaps betrays the fact that journalists present at the Press Conference did not fully understand what Mr Badman was telling them, and no particular effort has been made on the part of the writer of the article to ensure that he or she did understand. Ms Youngson acknowledged in her letter to a Ms Lloyd that there are other reasons why children may be 'known' to Social Services, and Ms Youngson expands her argument in this direction by stating:
“... it does not detract from the force of the argument as these other reasons for being known would also apply to the general population of non home educated children.”
In saying this, Ms Youngson misses the point that many Home Educated children may be educated at home because they have physical and mental difficulties which make state schooling more than usually problematic or undesirable. Their disability may make them more likely to be home educated AND known to social services, their disability is not a neutral factor likely to have no effect of the location of their educational provision. Furthermore, the writer of the article, and therefore, presumably, Janet Youngson herself, seems entirely unaware of the varying attitudes and approaches to Home Education held by Local Authorities. From anecdotal evidence some Local Authorities refer all Home Educating Families to Social Services as a matter of course, and there may be malicious referrals and misunderstandings from members of the public who are concerned when they see Home Educated children out and about during school time. Families who are contacted and given a 'clean bill of health' by Social Services may also appear in Graham Badman's 'collected data'. They are entirely innocent, but they are still 'known'. Without disaggregation of the 'collected data' which Graham Badman used, the superficially alarming statement of 'double the proportion' is essentially useless.
In conclusion, I do not accept Ms Youngson's offer to amend the title of the article to “Children educated at home are twice as likely to be the subject of a Serious Case Review by Social Services as the rest of the population” as this is simply untrue.
Secondly, the response from Elisabeth Ribbans, Managing Editor of the Guardian, to my complaint PCC reference 092880.
Ms Ribbans' response seem to focus largely on semantics and the intelligence of Guardian readers
“We do not think a reader would be misled into thinking that 'evidence' for a phenomenon was the same as universal proof.”
This appears to miss the original point of my complaint, that 'known to social services' is being conflated with 'at risk of abuse' and in the Guardian article the reporter wrote:
“... they had found strong evidence that child protection concerns are more common among home-educating families.”
I repeat, this is not what the review said, it is not what was said at the Press Conference. The Guardian is presenting inaccurate and misleading information. Journalists at the Press Conferences may have been served up information in a particular way which, either by accident or design, allowed them to continue to misunderstand what was being said to them when presented with Graham Badman's 'collected data', but I believe their duty to the public would suggest that further investigation is required. I am gratified to see that the Guardian has since published two further articles of the subject, and I would gladly present a letter to the Guardian for consideration, but I maintain that the article is misleading and should be changed.
Thirdly, the response from Sally Baker, Feedback Editor of the Times, complaint reference 092908. It is true that statement 'twice as many home-educated children are known to social services as the normal school-age population' which was used in The Times is superficially correct according to the 'collected data' from twenty-five Local Authorities which Graham Badman used in his Review (not published but later appeared as an unpublished Appendix as a result of a FOI request) and referred to at the Press Conference. As already discussed, this data is problematic because we do not know the reasons why children are known to the Local Authorities concerned, and we do not know why data from these particular Local Authorities, and not others, was used. I am disappointed that The Times has not troubled to delve further into the issue, but I suspect that under the precise wording of the Press Code, The Times has provided an accurate account of the misleading 'collected data' as provided by Graham Badman.
In summary, I take issue with the responses from both The Independent and The Guardian, and I believe that my original complaints to these newspapers stands. I acknowledge that, under the terms of the Press Code, The Times does not have so much of a case to answer, although I think it could have taken more pains to make it clear that this 'statistic' only applied to certain boroughs, and care must be taken when considering what 'known to social services' may actually mean. I think it would be in the public interest if the three papers concerned decided to investigate further the problems with the 'proof' that registration and monitoring is needed on the basis of Graham Badman's 'collected data', especially since there is now to be Select Committee Enquiry into the Badman Review and it's findings. The journalists concerned may also be interested to note that data obtained by submitting Freedom of Information requests to all Local Authorities in England and collated into a publicly available document, illustrate that there are extremely wide variation between children 'known' to social services in different Local Authorities. Furthermore, analysis of this document indicates that Home Educated children are actually less likely to be at risk for abuse than their school-educated peers.
Yours sincerely
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21-08-09, 16:54
Badman review: Press Complaints Commission
