Does Schedule 1 include a racist agenda?
I’m solidly and embarrassingly mono-lingual, so this is about as far as you can get from an issue that would ever effect me. However I found myself very uncomfortable listening to the following exchanges yesterday, and reading the transcript today has intensified that feeling.
Mrs. Ann Cryer (Keighley) (Lab): The hon. Gentleman keeps talking about certain aspects of my constituency, but I have been living there for a long time and the children are very dear to my heart. What if an inspector went into a home and discovered that the parent who had decided to home educate spoke no English? What is the hon. Gentleman’s remedy if we are not to have inspectors?
Mr. Gibb: Those issues apply in other parts of the education system. The hon. Lady has been complaining that there are children who are not getting English lessons in the schools that they attend, so I do not think that that is an issue solely related to home education.
Mrs. Cryer: I have never said that children do not get English lessons. They could not possibly join or perform in the school if there were not dedicated groups of reception class teachers teaching them English on arrival. My complaint is that there is no English spoken in the home so they are thrown in at the deep end once they arrive at age four.
Mr. Gibb: I have friends who speak only French in their homes. It is not for me to object to the way those parents bring up their children. We have to be careful what powers we take for ourselves as the state, and this issue treads over the line between the duties that the state has and those that families have for bringing up their own children.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Gibb: I will give way to the hon. Member for Battersea and then the Minister, and then I will crack on, if I may.
Martin Linton: Is the hon. Gentleman saying that he and his party would be happy if children in this country were educated without any knowledge of English?
Mr. Gibb: No, I am not. The issues are very difficult and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath said during the debate on Second Reading, things are not satisfactory at the moment, and we will have to look at this issue. But this is not the right approach to tackle such difficult matters. In the words of an old clichÃ(c), it is a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and it is offending tens of thousands of people. That is the problem. We have to consider this again, more sensitively, to tackle the problems that both hon. Members have highlighted.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (Ms Diana R. Johnson): Will the hon. Gentleman comment on one of the recommendations of the Select Committee? On home education, it believes that the prospect of a child gaining basic literacy and numeracy skills and a breadth of education is right. How does that fit with the hon. Gentleman’s comments on having perhaps only one language in the home, which is not English?
Mr. Gibb: There are many schools in this country where 8 per cent. of young people are not learning to read. The way the Government are trying to tackle such matters is not right. For one thing, it is costing between £130 million and £567 million a year, which will be completely wasted if their approach is designed to change the way children are home educated.
Mr. Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con): I wonder, following the Minister’s intervention, whether—from what she said about the system of local authority inspectors looking to see that a suitable education is being provided— any family who cannot demonstrate suitable English skills will automatically be deprived of the right to home educate? That seems to be the logical conclusion of what the Minister suggested. If that is the message she wants to send out to people in such a situation in this country, perhaps she can say it more clearly.
What kind of logical scrutiny does Diana Johnson’s concern about “a child gaining basic literacy and numeracy skills and a breadth of education” in a language other than English stand? What does she imagine happens in other countries?! Yes, it’s true that children starting at a school where classes are all given in English will probably have problems if they don’t speak good English, but if they’re being home educated in the family language then that problem just doesn’t exist. You can learn numeracy perfectly well in French or Punjabi. I have no direct evidence but suspect that literacy is a much more transferable skill than Ms Johnson thinks and a “breadth of education” whatever that is, is just as likely in Polish as English.
Which leaves me with this uncomfortable feeling that ignorance and racism are at work. Of course the people involved will no doubt throw up their hands in horror and deny such a charge, how DARE anyone accuse them of racism! But still, there they are trying to justify sweeping new powers on the basis of … what? A belief that anyone with a native language other than English is somehow automatically ill-educated and incapable of providing their children with a suitable education?
Katherine Said on February 6th, 2010 at 10:26 am quote
Also seems to me that we have to question the assumption that a child that doesn’t speak English at home, won’t learn it any way. They will be surrounded by it - TV, books, signs, neighbours, shopkeepers etc etc etc. However insular the family English is everywhere in this country.
It will probably come later granted but what actually are the chances that it won’t come at all?
And of course literacy, numeracy and all general knowledge etc can all quite easily be tackled in languages other than English.
Shell Said on February 6th, 2010 at 9:04 pm quote
This little exchange shocked me too. I thought I would blog on it at some point.
One thing for me having worked so long in the Deaf Community is that many hearing children of Deaf families started school without English because they only used BSL at home. Even back then I remember horrible suggestions about removing hearing children from Deaf parents but ALL those children learned English fairly quickly once in school.
The same went for the Vietnamese children who came over escaping the horror of Socialism. I remember having a child of 9 join a class where I was working and she and her 4 year old brother picked up English really quickly.
I am amazed not just at the racism but the sheer lack of expectation of children who can be bi-lingual very quickly given the opporttunity.
Shell Said on February 6th, 2010 at 9:09 pm quote
And as Katherine says; how would children be able to avoid learning English when they are part of the community?
Ex-pat kids learn Spanish and French don’t they? Or is the suggestion that Johnny Foreignor couldn’t do it?
All this follows Badman’s foot in mouth moment where he equated Forced marriage with arranged marriage.
vicki Said on February 6th, 2010 at 10:13 pm quote
I live in a rural area of Wales, we speak English at home, though the area is welsh speaking. We are teaching our home educated child welsh, but it isnt easy, with no real resources in north wales, to use, which are local wales.. However the idea that you HAVE to send your child to school because that is the ONLY place they will learn a language is just insane.. I taught myself, italian, latin and swhalli, as a 16 year old.. Never once had a formal lesson in any of them! When i needed the language i learnt it.. like any tool for a job!