Phillipson is Letting the Blob Run Rings Around Her

Bridget Phillipson has been accused of allowing the Education Blob to run riot with her Schools Bill, slipping in all the horrors that the Tories rejected time and again. This is certainly true in regard to parental duty. If adopted, the proposals would shift the British education system onto the illiberal German foundation that allowed the Nazis to monopolise children’s minds, and which MPs rejected decisively for that reason in 1944.

The charge against the Secretary of State

Bridget Phillipson is fast becoming the story. This is not good for any Secretary of State, but especially not for one who had been heralded for some time as the future Queen of Education. Within weeks of rushing her ‘landmark’ Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill into Parliament, her ability to do the job is in the spotlight.

The rug under Phillipson’s feet was given a massive jerk by Katharine Birbalsingh who, having gained the reputation of ‘Britain’s strictest headteacher’, published her letter to the Minister in full after the two met on February 3rd. Ongoing media criticism caused the Department for Education (DfE) to publish the official Government minutes of the meeting eight days later. Its efforts however have failed to stem the flow from her critics. Writing in the Standard, Toby Young of this patch and the co-founder of West London Free School, aptly described Phillipson’s plan for education as “Nobody is allowed to win“.

A week later Will Hazell and Richard Vaughan amplified her failings with a story headlined ‘How “naïve” Bridget Phillipson’s education U-turns left her battling for her job‘. They cited an unnamed “Government insider” as accusing Phillipson “of presiding over dysfunction”.

Describing the education system as a long-established battleground between the ‘traditionalists’ and the ‘progressives’, the authors assert that some traditionalists are now accusing Phillipson of “bowing to a resurgent ‘Blob'”. Pointing to the similarities between the current Bill and the failed Conservative Schools Bill (birthed and laid to rest in 2022), they emphasise the significance of this:

The parallels between the two bills have led to claims that the DfE is quietly but persistently pursuing its own agenda to impose new controls over academies. One Government source told the i paper: “Ministers can say they want to do X or Y and officials can often say it may be too difficult or unworkable and then just suggest a plan they have straight from the drawer.”

Whilst acknowledging that “it is difficult to verify such claims”, they reported comments from an ex-employee of the department that “some parts of Phillipson’s bill… were repeatedly proposed by officials in the department under the Tories, but always rejected”. This would appear very plausible, given that the two bills are so similar, with the current incarnation apparently having been fed on steroids compared with its predecessor.

In loco parentis or in loco civitatis?

In my previous article I owned up to being a long-time home educator at heart. As such, I have been following the political debate around the under-valued but vital civil liberty which has guaranteed family-based learning as a legal choice in Britain for over eight decades. Its roots go back further than that though, as recently explained by Rhys Laverty in the Spectator, in an article titled ‘The problem with Labour’s home-school crackdown‘. Spelling it out, Laverty explains that “in the UK it has always been very simple: centuries of English common law mean that if a parent wishes to keep their child at home to be educated it is none of the Government’s business”.

At this juncture it’s necessary to turn our attention to the bill’s ‘small print’, namely the accompanying ECHR Memo. This lengthy document explains how the department reconciles the bill’s provisions with human rights legislation. Two sections of the bill seek to introduce extensive proposals in regard to “Children not in school” registers and bring “independent educational institutions” under close Government oversight.

In order to justify “any interference with Article 8 and 14 rights” in some of these proposals, the authors of the Memorandum cite a European Court judgment, Konrad v Germany (2006) app. 35504/03. This case was lost by the Konrad parents, who had argued that EHCR Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 guaranteed their right to ensure an education for their children in conformity with their own religious convictions. The court found this not to be the case, based on grounds that both German Basic Law (Constitution) and the Baden-Württemberg School Act – the state in which the family lived – both made school attendance compulsory for the majority of children (with limited exceptions permitted).

Relying on this judgment, the DfE asserts in paragraphs 161c and 178c of its memo that “the state can insist on compulsory education, in school” adding that so doing is “within a country’s own ‘margin of appreciation'”.

That this direction of travel is absent from the face of the bill raises significant cause for concern. For a start, it shows a departmental lack of appreciation of the very different legislative foundations of education in England and in Germany. Simply put, officials cannot surreptitiously change British law through non-statutory guidance and the small print of memoranda. It is not to Phillipson’s credit that she has failed to challenge her staff on this matter, especially when it appears that previous Tory incumbents did so.

The difference between British and German law is striking. Article 6(2) of German Basic Law states:

The care and upbringing of children is the natural right of parents and a duty primarily incumbent upon them. The state shall supervise them in the performance of this duty.

Further, Article 7(1) grants the state supervision of “the entire school system”. These two provisions were also embedded in the 1919 Weimar Constitution, as Articles 120 and 144.

According to Felizitas Küble however, writing (in German) in 2017, private education at home was not prohibited, though such articles had existed in previous constitutions from 1717. She cites the unadopted Frankfurt Constitution (1849) as stating, “Home schooling is not subject to any restriction”, a position which remained in place through to the Prussian Compulsory Schooling Act of 1927. Claiming that this settled position “changed under the National Socialist dictatorship”, she illustrates her point by quoting in full paragraph 453 of Mein Kampf, and stating that Hitler’s autocratic views were implemented in the Reich Compulsory Schooling Act of 1938 and have remained in place post-war.

Protecting liberty for successive generations

The dangers of the German approach to education were uppermost in the minds of British politicians in Churchill’s war Government as it was drafting the 1944 Education Act. This was steered through Parliament by ‘Rab’ Butler, a Conservative MP and President of the Board of Education. On March 21st 1944, during the Committee Stage, MPs debated Clause 34 which fixed in legislation that common law cornerstone of the British understanding of education, as identified by Rhys Laverty in the Spectator. It read:

Duty of parents to secure the education of their children.

It shall be the duty of the parent of every child of compulsory school age to cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable to his age, ability and aptitude, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.

This foundation remains intact in our current 1996 Education Act (Section 7), and places the responsibility for education firmly on the shoulders of a child’s parents, not in the hands of the state. This was intentional, and with good reason, on the part of the Government of the day. Frustrated that amendments to this clause had been disallowed, a few MPs did try to have it deleted because they objected to the “or otherwise” component.

Their main objection will be familiar to any readers who follow today’s political narrative around education. The first speaker in 1944, Hugh Lawson (Skipton, Common Wealth Party) declared that it contained “a bad principle because it still leaves the two systems of education which we have in this country today”. He later asserted that the choice was between “a society based on class privilege” and “the abolition of class privilege”. Familiar sentiments even today, but whilst it may have been seen at the time as enabling the rich to engage private tutors for their children, today’s British home educating communities are one of the most diverse cohorts in society. Many families exist on a single salary and therefore cannot possibly be classed as materially privileged.

Lawson and a small band of co-belligerents were firmly rebutted by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education, James Chuter Ede (Labour, South Shields). Responding to the debate and several interjections, Ede stated:

Let us realise that what the hon. Members are asking is a state monopoly of education. Surely we have seen enough in Europe during the last few years to indicate the danger of that. … I do not believe, and the Government does not believe, that it has the right to prescribe the only form of education that shall be given in this country.

Members left the dissenters in no doubt of their support for the primacy of parents over state, voting Ayes 216, Noes 4, “That the Clause stand part of the Bill.”

Undermining the foundations

Eighty years later, bubbling up from within the matrix which is the Education Blob, has come a serious suggestion that without thorough Parliamentary scrutiny of proposed primary legislation, officials have the authority to impose compulsory schooling on all children.

There is clear evidence that this is not some new idea Phillipson has sold to them since she took up her role. No, it has been on their shopping list of reforms for some time. In October 2021, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) report into Child protection in religious organisations and settings investigation was published by Parliament. Home educators were somewhat astonished to find that their futures had been discussed in these sessions, when Kate Dixon, then the Department of Education’s Director of Schools, had appeared as a witness before the panel in August 2020. Details of what she said in regard to the department’s objectives concerning home education, which had not been spelt out at the time, are explained here, though there is no mention of the department’s attitude to the human rights of home educated children and their parents.

As Dixon’s appearance was drawing to a close, the chair opened up the session for questions from the panel. Prof Sir Malcolm Evans asked her for the department’s thoughts on how to make its intentions “compatible with the obligations under the protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights on the state when it assumes responsibility in relation to education to ensure that such education is in accordance with parental, religious or philosophical convictions”. Whilst confident that this had been considered, Dixon did not have the explanation to hand and promised to write to the panel with the answer.

The department’s additional evidence was published on IICSA’s website in March the following year. The document addresses four issues, with the item of interest in this context being Section C, starting on page 4. The second paragraph reads:

The rationale that these proposals are consistent with the article rely on the judgment in Konrad v Germany (2006), a case on home education. This case makes the points that :..

Essentially, the rest of the response has been copied into the current Bill’s ECHR Memo twice over, including the affirmation cited above:

The state can insist on compulsory education, in school, and that the aims of ensuring acquisition of knowledge and of integrating minorities into society are legitimate justification for insisting on this, within a country’s own ‘margin of appreciation’.

Preserving the bulwark is essential

Here then is evidence that Hazell and Vaughan were correct to report suggestions that Phillipson allowed “a resurgent ‘Blob'” to hand her a raft of policies which had been repeatedly rejected by Tory ministers, and she did little more than sign them off.

If this is so, then it would indicate that she is indeed not up to the job she has been given. Of far greater concern however is her lack of understanding about what makes the British education system the polar opposite to its German counterpart. The principle that the state has primacy in the education of children failed to protect the Germans from a totalitarian regime which forced every child into school in an attempt to mould them into its leader’s narrow mindset.

Even if we don’t see such an outcome ourselves in the next few years, if Phillipson’s Blob-inspired bill is not disarmed, it could easily be seized upon by any future despotic Government, Left or Right, and employed for its own ends. Unless, of course, British people – not just home educated ones – stand up and defend their established British liberty to opt out of compulsory state indoctrination.