Wednesday 22 September 2010

Capita: Still talking about us behind our back



It seems that Capita have organised a conference to discuss children missing education.  It seems that they have not been able to get their brains to register that home educated children are by definition NOT children missing education.

At least one of the "leading practitioners" seems to have been selected on the basis of a shared mental challenge, one that blocks the meaning of information when it doesn't suit their particular agenda.

In fact Helen seems seriously deluded about her role if the following extract from the LA magazine is to be believed.

"What do you do?
Our first task is to monitor the provision made by
parents who exercise their legal right to educate their
children at home. We give advice, but our role is not
to provide resources, administer tests - or teach!
Monitoring usually involves a visit to the child’s home
to discuss plans and materials."

Here is an extract from the brochure which can be downloaded from the bottom right hand side of the web page linked above.
15.05 Engagement and Elective Home Education
• The challenges of local authorities’ rights and responsibilities
• Approaches for engaging home-educating parents
• Supporting home educators of children with Special
Educational Needs
• Coordinating work with CME officers

And here are extracts from the councils HE web page.

What action will the Local Authority take?
Following notification from a school that parents have decided to educate their child at home and ask for him/her to be removed from the role the LA will:


·         ask for written confirmation
·         arrange for a consultant to visit to discuss the educational provision you are offering the suitability of the proposed education programme

And

"What could the curriculum look like?
All LA schools teach the National Curriculum.   Children educated at home do not have to follow the National Curriculum but would be encouraged to do so in subjects where they expect to take a GCSE examination at 16.

They should, however, follow a curriculum which is full time and suitable for their individual needs.   The Government places emphasis on English (literacy), Mathematics (numeracy), Science and   Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

A good education will ensure a child gains attitudes, skills and knowledge that fit them to live in and adapt to the challenges of a rapidly changing world.

a broad education that introduces a child to the skills and knowledge of a range of subjects and types of subject which ensure an opening of the mind
·         a balanced education which ensures no one subject area takes up so much time that there is no room for others, or for creative use of leisure
·         any education must be suitable to the individual needs of the child.   A learning plan should therefore take into account the child's age, aptitudes, ability and any special needs that they may have.
What should your child study? 
A good guide comes from schools where most children study English, Mathematics, Science, Design and Technology, History, Geography, Art, Music, Physical Education and Religious Education.   From the age of 11 they may study a modern foreign language as well. Children also spend time on personal and social issues such as health and sex education and issues relating to everyday life. Citizenship has now been added to the National Curriculum.

Unless parents object, all pupils are taught how to use Information Technology and computer hardware and software. Older children receive careers advice to help prepare them for life after school.

How is your child going to study?
It is important to consider not only what your child will learn but how they learn and what approaches suit them best. Not all learning comes from books or printed sources and where appropriate children should make use of a variety of media, the Internet and educational visits.

Children also need to acquire skills as well as knowledge. For example they need to be encouraged to develop discussion skills, problem solving skills and social skills. Children ought to take part in physical education, games and practical work so that they can develop a range of physical skills.

Often learning involves children taking an active role in their own work. They carry out experiments, conduct surveys, draw pictures from real life, interview members of the public and make studies at real locations.

Remember that good teaching includes regular feedback. Your child needs to know when something has been done well and, if it has not, how it could be improved. Successes and failures form the framework of the learning process and an effective programme recognises this fact." 

It seems that this authority has missed the possibility of creating an extra challenge for itself by mightily pissing parents off, especially the parents of children it has itself spectacularly failed, with this insolent patronising load of garbage.  

And also seems that the local authority has run into that pesky mental challenge thingy again as it seems that the implications regarding it's own behaviour implied by this statement 

"There is, therefore, an obvious need for co-operation and partnership between parents and the LA." 

seem to have completely eluded them and they seem to be in the grip of a Ballsian Delusion which makes them believe that if they imply there is an obvious need for parents to cooperate with the local authority that just writing it down will make it true despite all the arrogant insensitive inaccurate and autocratic rubbish they print on the same page.
Here follows a short fun quiz:

Parents have the responsibility for ensuring that their children get a suitable Education

How many Local authority workers does it take to understand the above statement?

Do you think Capita are so special that they could combine a mental challenge with the ability to carefully select experts specialising in misrepresentation of the law?

Do you think Helena has found it impossible to
understand the guidelines, or could she possible have her own reason for lying to the people she has been employed to serve the people who pay her wages, you and me, the taxpayers?
And lastly can you spot the deliberate mistake in the Who Should Attend list?

A not brilliantly formatted copy of parts of the brochure follows below.


Benefits of Attending
Learn how to continue effective
data sharing post ContactPoint
Evaluate different ways of
developing multiagency
cooperation
Get to grips with methods of
tracking and supporting Looked
After Children’s attendance
Find out how to implement a
Young Carers Policy for schools in
your area
Hear first-hand experience of how
a community engagement project is
tackling attendance problems
Examine ways of developing trust
with Gypsy, Roma, Traveller
families to avoid exclusion from
education
Get guidance on the latest HMI
recommendations and how
Ofsted assess CME protocols
Gain insight into implementing
zero exclusion policies

Who Should Attend Representatives from:
CME Coordinators
Education Welfare Teams
Headteachers and SMTs
Integrated Strategic Services
Pupil Support Teams
Access and Inclusion Teams
Behaviour and Attendance Teams
Partnerships and Performance Teams
Commissioning and Resources Teams
Looked After Children Teams
Early Intervention Teams
Safeguarding Teams and LSCBs
Data and Pupil Tracking
Teams
Elective Home Education
EOTAS Teams
Family Support and Outreach Teams
Pastoral Support Programmes
SEN Teams
Health Visitors and Social Workers
EMAS
Extended Services Teams
Educational Psychology Teams
Refugee Education Services
GRT Education Consortiums
Admissions and Exclusions Teams
Parent Partnership Services
School Transport Teams
Police Liaison Officers
Community Safety and YOTs
Connexions
Sure Start
Third Sector Organisations


Capita’s event management service
Our event management service offers you the opportunity to tap into the resources and skills of a
renowned market leader in the UK conference business. With ten years event management experience,
we have a proven track record in co-ordinating a diverse range of events, from breakfast seminars to
large-scale national policy conferences. Whether you require a complete package or selected aspects,
Capita will tailor its services to meet your organisation’s specific requirements. Contact Liz Brownbill
on 020 7227 6569 or email liz.brownbill@capita.co.uk
CPD
To receive your certificate of attendance for CPD points please email capita.conferences@capita.co.uk
quoting your name, booking reference number and the title of the event.
About us
Capita Conferences is one of the UK’s leading conference providers to the public sector.
For over 15 years we have attracted diverse and cross-cutting audiences from across the police,
education, central and local government, health and the voluntary sector to our events.
We provide neutral forums for learning as well as excellent networking opportunities and
the chance to provide feedback on policy direct to the highest levels. We pride ourselves on our thoroughly researched, incisive programmes (HA HA HA) and have secured speakers including
leading politicians, Government ministers, senior civil servants, directors of charities, expert practitioners and renowned academics. We have built our reputation by working in partnership with, and on the advice of, key government departments, experts and pressure groups.
Forthcoming Events for 2010
NEETs – 11th October – Central London
Safeguarding Children – 29th November – Central London
Behaviour and Discipline in Schools – 30th November – Central London
Children Missing Education
Thursday 25th November 2010 – Central London
Sponsorship and Exhibitor Opportunities
We offer a range of flexible packages which offer your organisation
a platform to network and communicate with key organisations in
the public sector.
For further information please contact Annette Purcell
on 020 7202 0576 or email annette.purcell@capita.co.uk
As a fundamental building block for the Coalition’s aim of
improving educational attainment for all pupils, ensuring and
maintaining attendance at school remains vital.
Capita’s 7th National Children Missing Education (CME)
Conference focuses on practical and effective ways for
professionals to both track and support children currently not
in the school system, whilst tackling the root causes which put
children at risk of missing education.
With collaborative working growing in importance and the
latest research continually emphasising the value of early
intervention strategies, this timely conference explores both
the strategic and practical dimensions of CME. This conference
provides a crucial forum for you to stay on top of changing
priorities.
Informative and interactive sessions will tackle issues including:
Mobilising the community to resolve CME problems
Working efficiently with neighbouring authorities
Understanding Ofsted’s reporting practices
Early engagement with young carers
Successful interagency strategies to support Looked After
Children’s education
Take this opportunity to learn from leading practitioners ways
to build the key skills necessary in continuing to tackle children
missing education as new priorities emerge.isit us at: www.capitaconferences.co.uk
09.20 Registration, Tea and Coffee
09.45 Chair’s Opening Remarks
David Haswell
Head of Education
Action for Children
Opening Keynote Address
09.55 Inspecting and Evaluating Children Missing Education
Practices
Building on the Joint Chief Inspectors’ recommendations
The wider implications of CME: from safeguarding to children
seeking asylum
Ofsted’s reporting practices and its most recent report
Anne Orton HMI
Divisional Manager, Cross Remit Safeguarding
Ofsted
10.20 Questions and Discussion
10.30 Preventative Strategies to Avoid Missing Education
Zero exclusion strategies
Preventing the build up of disengagement: support during
school transitions
Engaging with at-risk groups
Dr Jane Evans
Research and Policy Officer
Barnardo’s
10.50 Supporting the Attendance of Children in Care Across
Organisational and Geographical Boundaries
Tracking attendance of Looked After Children
Identifying and implementing tailored improvement
strategies
Coordinating local authority officers to ensure early
intervention and avoid permanent exclusion
Bernadette Alexander
Head of Virtual School
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
11.10 Session Questions and Discussion
11.20 Tea and Coffee
11.40 Mobilising Community Support to Tackle Attendance Issues
The Community Mobilisers scheme in Milton Keynes
Key barriers to improving attendance
Engaging the community to support attendance
Katy Simmons
Chair of Trustees, Advisory Centre for Education
Lecturer, Open University and
Project Evaluator, Community Mobilisers Scheme
Katy will be joined for the session by a Community Mobiliser to
share first-hand experience
12.00 Questions and Discussion
Information Sharing and Partnership Working
12.10 Data Sharing and Security
Moving beyond ContactPoint at a local level
Setting up Westminster City Council’s Children’s Hub
Julie Pappacoda
Head of Integrated Children’s Information Systems
Westminster City Council
12.30 Questions and Discussion
12.40 PANEL DISCUSSION: Removing the Barriers to Effective
Interagency Cooperation
Locating identified children missing education
The limitations of information sharing
Managing transitions
How best to format enquiries and approach the police
The panel includes:
Viv Sales, Education Welfare Officer
Warwickshire County Council
Jane Rhodes, Detective Superintendant Head of Specialist
Investigations, Sussex Police and
Julie Pappacoda, Head of Integrated Children’s Information
Systems, Westminster City Council
13.15 Lunch
Vulnerable Groups – Putting Strategy into Practice
14.15 Young Carers Missing Education
Strategies for identifying young carers at risk of missing
education
Multiagency working to support young carers in school
Re-integrating young carers back into the schooling system
Daniel Phelps, Policy and Development Officer (Young Carers)
The Princess Royal Trust for Carers
14.35 Starting Early: Engaging with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller
Families
Preventative strategies to avoid children missing school
Building relationships to support attendance
The trust element
Joe Bishop, Early Years Advisory Teacher, Traveller Education
Cambridgeshire County Council
14.55 Session Questions and Discussion
15.05 Engagement and Elective Home Education
The challenges of local authorities’ rights and responsibilities
Approaches for engaging home-educating parents
Supporting home educators of children with Special
Educational Needs
Coordinating work with CME officers
Helena Bowen, Elective Home Education Consultant
Suffolk County Council









15.25 Questions and Discussion
15.35 Chair’s Closing Remarks and Close of Conference


Blog post still under construction!

20 comments:

Carlotta said...

"insolent patronising load of garbage"

Thank you for having the patience to work through it, Maire. These people are so profoundly ignorant, it beggars belief that they should set themselves up as experts.

Anonymous said...

and Helen knows she has the support of a lot of people at the education department in London! Penny Jones is one of the who would spend a lot of time with M.Gove M.P! untill we see some of these people removed from the task of briefing on home education very little will change and i see no sign of Gove changing this so far?

Bruce Stafford said...

A key part of the policy making process is about setting the policy agenda. This sort of event helps create the conditions, a 'window', which makes a proposal to change policy more likely. That it based on a misunderstanding of the current position and does not acknowledge autonomous education is worrying.

Anonymous said...

Penny jones of education department wants to change policy on home education M.Gove M.P would see here a lot in London be briefed by her why its got to be done she will keep on at him wear him down!

Maire said...

And if the event creating the conditions to change policy is attended and run by honest intelligent people with honour and integrity we would have nothing to worry about.

However this is just the sort of event that will be informed by the view of the Heads of Children's Services
http://maire-staffordshire.blogspot.com/2009/11/home-educators-have-association-of.html

and attended by the likes of Badman and Peter Traves.

http://maire-staffordshire.blogspot.com/2010/02/peter-traves.html

I would imagine that the lobbying that produced the fertile ground that allowed the insult to every parent in England that was the Badman Review took place in the smoke free coffee bars and corridors of just such a conference.

I am willing to be pleasantly surprised are very much hope that they are all as well intentioned as you Bruce despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Carlotta, patience isn't the driver, lol. It is annoying enough when undertrained and ignorant people give you grief in daily life when trying to buy a product or access services and I am more and more appalled and concerned by how this is now more the norm than the exception.

When some random individual sits in their cosy office, working for an institution that fails to meet many of its own obligations and lacks the information to prevent the very structure of its institutions from promoting the abuse of children with invisible disabilities and spouts forth this sort of dangerous nonsense survival hormones kick in.

Anonymous, I know you get a lot of grief re the style rather than the content of your comments, but they are always welcome here, and your opinion and experience is valued highly, I suspect that you are right about dirty penny.

Lets see that as a challenge to our intelligence and ingenuity, her jackets would look much more appropriate behind the counter in a department store, bet she would enjoy the change.

Maire said...

May have dirty pennys and gorgons mixed up there but too busy to worry about it, feel free to provide ideas for a more suitable job choice for her

Anonymous said...

Anonymous, I know you get a lot of grief re the style rather than the content of your comments, but they are always welcome here, and your opinion and experience is valued highly, I suspect that you are right about dirty penny.

at last some one who understands a little of what we been though! we do have a lot of experience right the way though to having an SAO served on us the whole proccess! including the role Penny Jones/ The education department works hand in glove with LA's! i have information thats states we have to agree with LA over any view it may have over the home education of a child!

Maire said...

Would you consider blogging that information Anonymous?

It would stop any speculation as to accuracy (not on my part but well known others) and be a very useful contribution to getting the truth out there imho.

Anonymous said...

i will look for it as we have a great deal of paperwork over all of this a cupboard full it but i will find it soon. t i just asked our M.P Mr Damain Hinds to look into Penny Jones and why we have not had a reply to a email we sent to Mr Gove on 1st september 2010 asking if he is going to bring in any new laws on home education! your supposed to get reply with in 20 days but we had nothing!

Maire said...

Excellent, I have been hoping that there was a lot of activity going on below the surface and that is yet another confirmation that I am right.

Be interested to know what reply he gets.

Maire said...

Not excellent that he has not got back to you but I think we need to persist. And blogging that he has not got back to you at least help to contradict any public claims made.

Do you get that I am asking you if you think you should start your own blog.

Anonymous said...

Appalling lot. Crapita, not you guys. I like Anonymous too - there's a lot of fire there.

It's about time that they cleared this den of snakes out.

Danae
who mutters that Penny Jones, Penny Jones again in disbelieving tones

Anonymous said...

And blogging that he has not got back to you at least help to contradict any public claims made.

Do you get that I am asking you if you think you should start your own blog.

i dont know how you start a blog! and you guys seem to do it so well you put it in writing so well all of you! would any one read my writing ? thanks to other anonymous about fire being there! There sure is after what we been though.Im convinced that Penny Jones is behind a lot of this but it runs right though the education department.so far no word from our M.P Mr D Hinds i give him a couple of days then chase him!

Maire said...

Anonymous I would read your blog, you have a lot of information that would be very useful in the public domain.


If anyone criticises your grammar or spelling then they are guilty of considering form more important than content, so automatically morons in my book, except for my very good friends who are sticklers for accuracy whom I will forgive solely because of their other outstanding qualities.

If you would like some assistance in the early days when it is all confusing I am happy to help.

It was no clearer to me how it worked, I am just experienced in learning new technology through play and exploration so don't let it put me off.]


it is just that I have been winging it for a very long time, so long that I remember the excitement at the first interactive disk which was the size of an LP and very limited in its capacities, must have been nearly 30 years ago.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous I would read your blog, you have a lot of information that would be very useful in the public domain.
if you would like some assistance in the early days when it is all confusing I am happy to help.

Thanks Marie i would have one reader then! I think your right we have a lot of information experience of how LA and government work and ombudsman there all work hand in glove!

how do you start a blog then? and where would i start?

No word from Gove or our M.P yet!

Maire said...

@Anonymous
Very excited at the thought that you are actually going to blog and more than happy to support you through the setting up process and any issues that arise, that I have managed to resolve for myself.

Will email you next week as inundated with total crisis here.

Anonymous said...

Thank you Marie yes please do email when you have time.im sure i need plenty of help/support advice! Lets hope people will read my blog! i no idea where you start but i give it a go!

Maire said...

@Anonymous, sure they would, a much more effective way of getting the truth our there than arguing with illusions.

Anonymous said...

do i just go create blog to start?

Alison Sauer said...

These conferences happen every year and there is some cause to cover EHE but not in the way they are doing. Helen isn't the first person who was asked to talk at the conference. some very good LA folk were asked but refused not least because there was no recompense involved other than a "free" place at the conference!

At one of the first CME conferences EO went and did not make a very good show of themselves, not least because of answering mobile phones whilst on the podium - I heard second hand from quite a few LA folk!

I doubt many EHE LA folk will go given that the EHE element is now down to 20 minutes (used to be much more)......you can't cover much in 20 minutes

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