No-one could possibly have predicted that

Well, no-one could possibly have predicted that: Secondary school pupils 'not eating enough' according to the BBC headline. No, it's not an article about child poverty and malnutrition.

It turns out that...

For example, in 2004 43% of pupils had chips with their lunch compared to just 7% in 2011.

And almost all schools have ditched the sale of chocolate, sweets and crisps.

...if you remove the provision of food which is both tasty and provides lots of energy...

School Food Trust research suggests pupils get a quarter of the recommended daily intake from lunch, rather than the third that is advised.

[...]

"Despite huge improvements to what's on the menu, teenagers are still not choosing food combinations that will give them enough energy and nutrients to stay alert all afternoon."

...the people eating that food will be short on energy.

Apparently...

[the research] found significant improvements in the nutritional value of meals offered by secondary schools and healthier choices made by pupils.

It may well be true that the vitamins and other nutrients are
better provided than they were a decade ago. But as regards basic
energy, complaining that students aren't getting enough when there's
been a near-ban on the foods best at providing energy is absurd.

But then, this is a society where some "energy drinks" are actively
marketed as "low calorie"¹, so perhaps it shouldn't be all that
surprising that nutritionists are acting baffled at the reduction of
calorie content leading to a reduction in energy.

Footnote

¹ Because the way that calorie content of food is
calculated bears very little resemblance to most human's metabolic
processes², I can believe that it's very possible to
produce an energy drink which metabolises well but doesn't test high
in calories.

² Essentially: set fire to the food, see how much energy
this releases, then apply some 19th century adjustment factors to
vaguely account for composition. Modern
measurements skip the "set fire to the food" step and just
calculate based on broad composition approximately how much energy
would be released if one did set fire to it, but the underlying
principle is the same. People with furnace-based instead of
chemically-based digestive systems will probably get reasonably
accurate results from this.

Government-mandated weight. The inevitable consequence.

[trigger warning]

Unfortunately, I'm not at all surprised that this has happened. A UK Council is taking steps to have four of a family's seven children forcibly adopted (or fostered without contact).

Why? Because the children are fat, and have continued being fat against the local government's demands. Clearly the solution is to take them away from their parents - and perhaps away from each other, too - in the hope that the massive added stress will cause weight loss.

According to all the press reports, the family have "faced no accusations of deliberate abuse or cruelty". Their solicitor has previously stated that "obesity was the main reason for the children being taken from their parents".

The rather flawed research on "obesity" is a contributing cause, but this goes way beyond that. I'm unimpressed with the government's research on "obesity" in children. But, even if that research is accepted at face value, the only detectable effects of "obesity" in children are "low self-esteem and behavioural problems" and a greater chance of being "obese" in later life.

On the basis of that research - even accepting that research as high quality and accurate, which I don't - there is absolutely no cause for intervention in this case. Either:

1. Weight is largely not under a person's control. In this case, adoption won't change their weight. But it probably will harm their psychological state, especially since there's no reason to do it. Despite this stance being supported by the scientific literature, "everyone knows" means that more likely the council believe option 2...
2. Weight is entirely under a person's control. In this case, the effects of being heavy at their age are comparable to the effects of being adopted. There being no evidence of abuse or cruelty, the only effects are psychological - which must be compared with the psychological harm of adoption, including the effects on their older siblings. The children, when they get to adulthood, can then "choose to be thin" and suffer no long-term effects.

In either case, there's no reason to forcibly remove them from their family. Which should be obvious.

The only case where it isn't obvious is where you believe that "obesity" is basically an evil zombie cult. Fat people will exist near you and brainwash you into being fat. It's therefore imperative to get those children who could be un-brainwashed away from their family as soon as possible. Accepting that premise, Dundee Council's actions seem reasonable.

It's also not impossible that the Council's actions have been completely misreported. With multiple news entries several years apart, a verifiable trail in public record for at least some of the events, and several different news organisations covering this in different ways, though, that seems less likely. The Council hasn't denied any of it - merely issued a vague statement that "The council always acts in the best interests of children, with their welfare and safety in mind." which seems to be the well-known PR tactic of "lying outrageously" rather than a severely misreported case.

Big Fat Blog has contact details for four senior Council officers. I've sent them the following message.

Dear Sirs,

The recent news that Dundee Council is planning to place four children from a family of seven to either be adopted or fostered without contact, for the sole reason that they are heavier than the Council approves of, and in the absence of any deliberate abuse or cruelty by their parents, are, if accurate, extremely disturbing.

I hope that if the press reports are accurate you will be reconsidering this decision and the policies which led to it immediately, as it seems to me to be a strong infringement of the family's rights, and not in the interests of any of their seven children.

I realise that you are unable to comment on the details of any individual case for the family's privacy, and so therefore I am confining my questions to general Council policy. If the reporting is inaccurate, then your policies should provide sufficient evidence of this without the need to discuss this specific case.

1) Under what circumstances, if any, does the Council take the weight of a parent or child into account when deciding what interventions are necessary?

2) Under what circumstances, if any, would the Council require an individual to alter their weight?

3) If there are any circumstances as described in my first two questions, could you explain the reasoning behind these policies, and provide me with any research used in developing these policies.

Thank you

Since I don't live anywhere near Dundee, which is itself in a different legal and administrative jurisdiction to my own, I doubt I'll get a reply.

Sex education and rape prevention: consultation response

[trigger warning]

Earlier, the Department of Education recommended this new consultation regarding the department's work on rape prevention.

Here's my response - if you have any opinions on this issue, or additional evidence for them to consider, I strongly recommend that you send a response to them as well (the consultation is open until the end of November). Many of the questions relate to details of the curriculum or teaching process, or request case studies for best practice, neither of which I'm able or qualified to provide. There were a few more general questions as well, though.

I am responding to the consultation Review of Personal, Social, Health and Economics (PSHE) Education. This is a response to question 2, though elements of this answer have relevance to questions 1 and 6c as well.

I believe that the teaching of sexual consent needs to be significantly extended, and begin (in age-appropriate terms and levels of detail) at a young age. A discussion and debunking of the various common myths around sexual consent should take place before any of the children are likely to become sexually active with their peers, and this should be reinforced throughout the PSHE curriculum.

The current guidance, while covering the concept of consent, does so only in broad terms. Discussion of sexual violence is largely limited to that perpetrated by adults against children, with sexual violence perpetrated by children against each other ignored.

Children should be encouraged to see consent as an active rather than a passive state ("Yes means yes" rather than "No means no", colloquially) and to avoid tolerating a disrespect for consent by their peers.

Research supporting this view:

Lisak and Ivan found that sexually aggressive men were considerably more likely to believe the various myths about rape and consent (e.g. that flirting indicates consent to sex). By making sure that these myths are firmly and consistently counter-acted throughout schooling, the number of people believing in them could be reduced, thereby reducing the numbers of rapists and potential rapists in the population.

Weinrott and Saylor found that the vast majority of convicted rapists were serial rapists with an average of around 10 victims. Studies on undetected rapists (e.g. Lisak and Miller or McWhorter et. al.) show a similar pattern, though with a lower average. Many of these rapists had begun their offending during adolescence. It is therefore important to begin education about consent early, before the idea that sexually aggressive behaviour is normal takes hold.

Lisak goes on to say:

the research on undetected rapists tells us that actually a very small percentage of men - serial sexual predators - are responsible for a vastly disproportionate amount of the sexual violence in any community. These men cannot be reached or educated. They must be identified and removed from our communities. Our prevention and education efforts must be focused on the vast majority of men who will never themselves cross the line into criminal behavior, but who by their participation in peer groups and activities either actively or passively provide support or camouflage for the sexual predators in their midst. By laughing at their jokes, by listening uncritically to their stories of “conquests” and “scores,” men become facilitators or passive bystanders of criminal behavior.

Educating children early enough that they do not become serial sexual predators themselves, and have the confidence to avoid creating a supportive environment for those that do, is therefore vital in reducing the current high levels of sexual violence among adolescents and young adults.

Statistical dehumanisation

[trigger warning]

Dorset, Leeds, and now Nottinghamshire. Yet again, applying a century-old statistical population measure to individuals gives an utterly meaningless result.

I've already said what I want to say about the science behind this, so I'll just link to that and summarise below. I still have more to say about the attitudes, though.

[Director of Public Health Chris Kenny] said: "Obesity is on the rise in this country and what this weight management programme is designed to do is to raise the issue with parents.

"I wouldn't want this one particular case to undermine the whole programme."

Nor, I suppose, would he want the fact that the "science" he's using is not actually supported by the evidence to undermine his programme.

Or the fact that it's counter-productive and bullying of children who really should be considered too young¹ to be given My First Body Issues sets.

The problem isn't really the horribly flawed science. That's bad - and there's a serious group-think problem within the "obesity research" field that stops this getting much time.

The problem is the attitude to people that current "public health" schemes seem to regularly get sucked into.

"Public health" is not an easy job. Done well, it can save lives, improve health, and free up valuable funds that are no longer needed to deal with preventable diseases. However, it's something that only really works at a population level.

The infamous bacon cancer study found that the risk of a particular group of cancers increased from 5% to 6% through increased consumption of processed meats. Now, as was pointed out at the time, this means that for 99% of people, whether or not they eat bacon will make basically no difference to their risk of cancer. For many of those people, bacon is a tasty food, and giving it up or cutting back will make them unhappy.

From an individual perspective it's highly unlikely to be a good deal - permanently give up bacon now, to marginally decrease your chances of getting cancer thirty years later? Most of the people who would take that deal probably didn't like bacon that much in the first place, and so probably didn't eat enough for cutting it out to make a difference.

From a public health perspective the calcuation is completely different. If everyone stopped eating bacon, rates of this group of cancers would drop about 20%, saving millions of pounds a year, and saving thousands of lives. Who wouldn't want that?²

The conflict comes between the individual view and the population-statistics view of public health policy. It's very easy to forget that those statistics are made of individuals, all of which - even if they're identical on the measured statistics - have their own very different lives.

Population statistics is the "easy" way to do "public health". It's also - because it reduces people to a few broad numbers - inherently dehumanising. With that, it becomes easy to see why they won't be dissuaded from this course: they're saving [abstract] lives, so if a few [real] lives are harmed as a result, it's still worth it.

Because the underlying attitude is itself dehumanising, some bad science that reduces health to a couple of convenient numbers is very attractive. Rather than looking at individual health, fixing the numbers becomes the goal - and if your numbers are "wrong", that makes you a problem. For people who are already dehumanised regularly on an individual level, the effects combine very strongly

The "hard" way to do public health does also happen, and there are professionals working very hard towards it - providing green spaces, looking at food availability, considering safety issues, and so on - rather than blaming individuals for making the "wrong" choices. An approach that humanises rather than dehumanises is not only more compassionate, it's also more effective.

Not surprisingly, those public health professionals don't make the news for things like this.

Also not surprisingly, the government is quite happy to, for instance, cut funding to local councils and so force them to close leisure centres (something that is certainly bad for public health), but continues paying for schemes like this to shame people with non-approved bodies.

Footnote

¹ No, there isn't an appropriate age. The product failed safety tests.

² Given the current high unemployment, anyone whose job depends on people eating bacon, for a start.

Kyriarchy for kids

Durham County Council has recently put out this press release, which was reprinted in the local free paper and probably elsewhere.

The search is on for young people in County Durham with an outstanding school attendance record.

Durham County Council is tracking down all final-year primary and secondary school pupils who have never taken a day off.

The council is planning a special celebration to reward young people with a 100 per cent attendance record at either primary or secondary school.

Maureen Clare, Durham County Council’s head of countywide services, said: “Never missing even half a day of primary or secondary school is a fantastic achievement and one we want to reward.”

Unauthorised absence from school is a problem, but there are serious problems with this plan.

[trigger warning]

Pupils spend six or seven years at primary school, and five (optionally seven) at secondary school. School is generally open 5 days a week, 39 weeks a year - so that's an unbroken absence record for over 900 days (primary) or over 750 days (secondary). This includes no absences for the various authorised reasons.

According to the Department for Education, there are just under 36,000 primary-age pupils in County Durham (so probably around 5,500 in their final year), and around 30,000 secondary age pupils (so probably around 6,000 in their final year). I suspect the odds of never missing a day are well over 1 in 12,000.

Managing this is a "fantastic achievement" only in the sense that winning the lottery is a "fantastic achievement". I very much doubt that they'll find anyone. I hope they don't find anyone. Rewarding someone for that combination of luck and privilege sends entirely the wrong message.

A partial list of children who - through no fault of their own - will not be getting the prize.

Health and disability

• Those who were seriously ill for at least one day out of several hundred. Even with a great immune system and full vaccinations that's going to be tricky to achieve. I don't know anyone who didn't miss at least a couple of days of school for general illness - stomach bugs, severe colds, etc.
• Similarly, anyone who's seriously injured. Break an arm? Tough. No prize for them unless they splint it with their school ruler and carry on. Break their arm while playing rugby for the school? Still tough.
• Disability or other condition requiring medical treatment, or making continuous school attendance difficult? Nope. No prize for you.

Yet again we have "being ill is immoral". The same attitude permeates government at all levels, and society in general, with well-documented effects.

Family situations

• Bereavement? Family member terminally ill? No taking time off to visit them in hospital or attend their funeral. They should have the decency to die at a weekend and so not harm productivity. Similarly for happier family occasions.
• Family moves in or out of the county? I suppose the Council might try to chase up attendance records from other education authorities, but I doubt it. In or out of the country? No chance. Similarly for people who were home-educated at any time - it's legal, and rightly so, but that doesn't mean the government likes it.
• Abusive family so they run away from home? Or get placed in care? Not conducive to a perfect attendance record. The Council is fully aware of this

Bullying and other peer abuse

• Bullied to the extent of needing time off to recover from injuries (physical or mental)? See above.
• So (justifiably) terrified of the bullying that they make up an illness to avoid going in, or are ill because they're so worried, or just don't go in without telling their parents¹, or their parents rightly refuse to send them in? No prize for them.
• Sexual violence? Still the victim's fault.

LGB kids, or fat kids, or neuroatypical kids, or really, any kid that doesn't conform to the exact social stereotype, tend to be even bigger targets for bullies, but it can and does happen to anyone and we somehow accept it as largely inevitable; there are no equivalents of Trades Unions to speak up for childrens' rights here, and children who go on strike in protest... well, that's an unauthorised absence.

Even worse, there's nothing in this section to stop the bullies themselves having a perfect attendance record and getting the prize. "Trample those beneath you to raise yourself up" is perhaps not the ethos schools should be trying to instil.

Miscellaneous bad luck

• The last couple of winters have been extremely harsh, with schools closed several days for snow. There will have been days when the school wasn't closed but children living in more isolated parts of the county will have been snowed in anyway. Didn't walk three miles through over a foot of snow? Tough.
• Foot and mouth outbreak causes your farm to be quarantined? As usual, that's no excuse - you should break the law and come in anyway.

The TUC were very critical of the employers who expected their staff to come in, at risk to their life, during the severe weather this winter. Again, apparently this is something that starts early.

Closing thoughts

There's nothing unusual about these proposals. The value of attendance - whether you should be there or not, whether you're productive there or not, whether your attendance causes more problems later or not - is insisted upon by many employers and starts off at school. The idea that people who are ill, or disabled, or victims of assault and bullying, are somehow morally and otherwise inferior, or brought it on themselves - it's an idea probably as old as humanity, but that doesn't make it right.

There's another bit of point-missing, too. The reason that Councils have a legal responsibility to provide education and to require attendance at some form of education, is for the benefit of the children, who will have better chances in life, on average, if they receive education.

The children who attended every day have already, by that logic, received their reward - an education - and don't need an extra reward. The children who were missing are surely the ones who need more attention and help. It's far easier to reward attendance - useful attendance or not - of course.

I've sent the following letter to the Council itself, and to my two local councillors.

I write regarding the scheme described in your April 28, 2011 press release "Search for 100 per cent school attendees".

I fully understand that unauthorised absences from school can be a serious problem, and one which the Council has a legal responsibility to deal with. However, I do not feel that this plan is an appropriate part of that strategy.

Not missing a single day - out of the several hundred that must be attended - is only a "fantastic achievement" in the same sense that a lottery win is a "fantastic achievement". Not only must the winning child - I will be very surprised if you find even one, given the odds - not have had any unauthorised absences, which is quite possible, but they must not also have had any authorised absences either.

Not needing any authorised absences is, however, largely a matter of luck. People get ill. Children, who generally have less well-developed immune systems than adults, get ill even more often. Getting through over 750 days of schooling without being ill even once requires a perfect immune system, which is largely a matter of genetic luck and other factors outside the child's control.

Children with disabilities, chronic health conditions, cancer, or other conditions requiring regular treatment would find it impossible - through no fault of their own - to win the prize being offered. Effectively the Council is declaring that the genetic luck of being in perfect health is "an achievement" - which implies that it is something that the children had a choice in and control over. That is not a pleasant implication.

While luck of birth is one factor the winner or winners of this prize will need, they also need other sorts of luck too. The County's schools all have anti-bullying strategies, but these strategies are not fully effective, and one reason for unauthorised absence can be an entirely justified fear of bullying. (Being bullied can also affect one's physical and mental health, causing authorised health-related absences)

LGBT children, children with disabilities - including learning difficulties or mental health conditions, and children who don't "fit in" for any other reason are more likely to be targets for bullies, again, through no fault of their own.

Not being bullied is not "an achievement" - rare as it is - and to treat it as such is to blame the victims of bullying for the bully's actions. Worse still, the bully could still attend every day and be eligible for the prize while their victims are not!

There are many other good reasons for absence too - a bereavement in the family, being snowed in during the winter's bad weather, road accidents, and many more - for which describing it as "an achievement" to have avoided them is wrong and extremely insensitive. Think of a pupil who had an otherwise "perfect" attendance record, but took a few days off when their father died to grieve and attend the funeral. How will they feel if they hear about this prize?

I understand why the Council wishes to encourage attendance at school, but this is very much the wrong way to go about it, and I urge you to withdraw the scheme.

Yours sincerely

[cim]

Footnote

¹ The only item on this list that actually counts on school records as unauthorised absence, I believe.

Coalition: untrained and stressed workers better for the economy

On 6 April 2011, parents of children aged 17 were to be given the right to request flexible working from their employers. Not the right to have flexible working, understand - just the right to request it.

The coalition intends to cancel this regulation before it takes effect.

From that press release.

The Government is committed to extending the right to request flexible working to all employees in due course, as set out in the Coalition Agreement.

The aim behind delaying the extension of flexible working is to allow businesses breathing space in the current economic climate.

Flexible working is currently available for parents with children 16 and under and carers.

Okay. So, let's go through this more slowly.

1. The right to request flexible working is currently available for parents of children 16 or under, and carers. Employees do not have to grant flexible working - ever - but the employee has the right to ask and have their employer consider it, and the employer must have a good reason to say no.
2. On the 6 April, the number "16" in that sentence would have changed to "17".
3. But to reduce red tape by keeping the number and complexity of regulations related to flexible working exactly the same, it now won't.
4. This will save the economy, because rather than worrying about whether all their employees with children aged exactly 17 (many small businesses have exactly zero employees fitting that description) were suddenly going to descend on them and ask for flexible working, employers will be able to ... um ... er ... Profit!
5. Later, if the economy is better, they will increase red tape again by simplifying that regulation even further so that it says "all employees" rather than "all employees meeting conditions X, Y, Z"

No surprises for guessing that this sort of change will harm non-default employees - women, disabled people, working class people especially - far more than it harms the default ones (who weren't going to request flexible working much anyway)

And don't think about developing your skills either

Similarly, the right to request time off to train will be removed for employees of businesses with under 250 people.

Most economists would say that increasing the skill levels of your workforce improved productivity and so led to increased economic growth - but not Vince Cable and the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS): they know the truth. Their next step will presumably be to rename themselves to the Department of Business, Stagnation, and Lack of Skills, to better reflect what the country needs right now.

Has DBIS said anything economically sound recently?

Hmm... it was also Cable's department that was responsible for the economically bizarre plans for tuition fees:

1. Make students take out at least a "very large" loan to go to university at all
2. Set the repayment terms such that for most of them (except the ones who get rich enough not to care) the total repayments will be exactly the same for a "very large" loan and a "really very large" loan.
3. Let the universities choose whether their students will need a "very large" or "really very large" loan (but give the universities more money per student in the "really very large" case)
4. Act incredibly shocked when every single university says "really very large".

Perhaps they've already fired all their well-trained economists, and aren't letting their replacements read any textbooks in case they learn something. This would explain rather a lot about their recent policy announcements.

Computer says "lose weight, fatty"

[trigger warning]

The government continues its campaign to give every child their very own unhealthy relationship with food. The complaints about their plan only make the news - as in this case from February, or this one yesterday - when the child is fit and active and only just above the threshold at which the letters are triggered, but of course that doesn't mean that the letters actually make sense.

According to this earlier article [trigger warning: full of unchallenged fat hatred], letters are sent out to parents after measurements of 4-5 year old children and later of 10-11 year old children.

As a general principle, the National Child Measurement Programme is a good idea. Getting this sort of broad statistical information - and being able to compare it across years and decades - lets you track changes in the population and adjust accordingly (by making door frames taller as height increases, for instance)

This particular application of it, on the other hand, is absolutely terrible.

There are so many things wrong with the idea it's hard to know where to start, but for example:

1. BMI was designed as a population statistic measure. Since it's being used in a population statistics assessment, that's not unreasonable. However, it was never designed to be applied to individuals and has a number of extensively documented flaws for those who try.
2. Among those flaws is that it is designed for adult humans rather than the rapidly varying body shapes of children in early puberty or pre-puberty growth. Even if it was semi-meaningful for adults, it makes no sense for children at all.
3. Children tend to gain weight in early puberty anyway, which then often gets converted into energy to gain height later on. That's what's supposed to happen.
4. The letters seem to be sent out based on a point cut-off. So in the February article, we have:

   ... said that for a young girl, this meant she was 1% outside the healthy category and could be at risk of heart disease and cancer.

   There is not - obviously to anyone with any grasp of anatomy, medicine, or even basic statistics - any sudden step change in risks as you cross the arbitrary and suspiciously round number of the heavy edge of the government-mandated weight zone. (It's furthermore - as I've mentioned previously - not even clear that the risk gradient is upwards at this point). It's a hopelessly broken idea anyway, but applying this sort of step cut-off is absurd.
5. Equating health with weight and nothing else is as usual totally wrong, which is just obvious enough that the "but my child does ten different forms of regular exercise" stories make the news, but not quite obvious enough in UK culture that the rest of the logical conclusions get made.
6. As usual, it's going to completely ignore anyone who can't exercise for whatever reason, whether that is disability, a lack of local facilities, lack of time, or something else.
7. While there is a correlation in older adults between weight and some health conditions, it's not yet been shown that there the weight causes the conditions: for many it's more plausibly a symptom. Furthermore, of course, there's no known correlation between weight as a child and gaining these conditions in later life, certainly no correlation between weight as a young child and childhood incidence of these conditions, and people's body shapes and BMIs gradually change - sometimes quite significantly - over the years anyway.
8. The advice given, as the articles make clear, is going to be counter-productive. Exercise is all very well, but only for those people who can actually do it. Putting children on diets - or worse, permanent "weight-loss" surgery - will usually actively harm them, either through childhood malnutrition (which is strongly correlated with a bunch of nasty health conditions), or causing an eating disorder, or both).

I wonder if the coalition could be tempted into making an "efficiency saving" in the NHS and stopping sending out these letters. At about 1.8 million children in the relevant age bands, "most" of whom are surveyed and presumably receive a letter, that's potentially quite a bit of money saved.

Making a rough guess that the cost of sending the letter, not counting any costs that would have been incurred by the useful bits of the programme, is about £1 for the envelope, bulk postage rate, paper, printer ink, additional wear and tear on equipment, and staffing costs, that's around 1 million pounds a year that could be spent on either hospital equipment and staff, or on an effective and useful public health initiative.

The coalition so far hasn't said much on the "obesity epidemic" and neither party mentioned it in their manifestos. The Health Secretary rightly criticises the approach of Jamie Oliver, which seems to have been as counterproductive here as when he was temporarily exported to the USA. So perhaps there's a chance that this policy could be dropped.

Crime, children and statistics

The British Crime Survey has been mentioned quite a bit recently. One of the things that I noted was that it only covers crime against adults. They're currently looking at surveying children as well, which this BBC article covers.

There's a fair amount of trivialisation of crime against children going on in the article and to a lesser extent in the research too. The research summary (PDF) is on the Home Office website.

[trigger warning]

Using the "adult" definition of crime, they found that around 2.2 million personal crimes (theft and non-sexual violence) were committed against children aged 10 to 15 in England and Wales in 2009, which is around four times the adult rate.

They then looked at various exclusion categories:

• Ignoring incidents defined as "childish behaviour". Some of these are things that would probably be ignored by most adults, too, but some are fairly serious incidents of bullying. This cut the figures down to 1.1 million (but note that it excludes some things that the children themselves considered to be crimes committed against them, and some things that were an interaction of the same sort to take place between two adults there would be no doubt that it was "really" a crime)

• Another exclusion was to ignore all incidents that take place at schools. Down to 0.6 million, ignoring theft, assaults that left children bleeding, and probably some other nasty stuff.

  The interesting thing about this: ignoring incidents at school takes out almost three quarters of the crimes. What does this say about the safety of our schools for children and their ability to stop bullying?

  They say about these incidents in the PDF

  [...] the matter remains within the school's internal disciplinary processes. This is likely to result in most low-level incidents being dealt with by school authorities and not recorded as crimes by the police.

  Or ignored by school authorities and not recorded by the police, perhaps.

• The final type of exclusion is to include only those incidents that the child themselves classifies as a crime, which only counts 0.4 million. Remember that children will probably have received less education than adults as to what counts as a crime, and that even with adults it has long been recognised that describing behaviours rather than naming specific crimes gives far more accurate results.

Now, I absolutely agree that prosecuting the offenders, who are also often children, in many of these cases is not in the public interest, or even in the interest of the victim (and unlikely to help reform or rehabilitate the offender either). Other options would need to be used, which might include the school's internal disciplinary processes.

I'm also, looking at the massive drop in estimated crime if incidents at school are dropped, even more convinced (as if I wasn't already) that schools view bullying as a natural part of school life, and are not anywhere near as serious as they should be about stopping it, given that they set up an environment where it is very likely to happen.

The pilot didn't cover sexual assaults and related crimes, which also happen to children a lot, but this is also true of the main BCS

The back pages of the PDF (29 and 30) have some consultation questions and an address to send responses too. It's worth sending something in, if you have any opinions on the matter.

Parents have more sense than BBC journalists, then

From the BBC, another reprint-the-press-release article, this time with the headline Parents 'more worried about murder than obesity' threat.

On the whole, this seems like a sensible balance. Murder may be rarer than "obesity" but the consequences are significantly more severe.

The findings, in a YouGov poll of 1,244 parents, contrast with data showing the risk of a child being killed by a stranger is a million to one.

The risk of severe health problems for children due to lack of exercise is one in three, figures have suggested.

"Figures have suggested". No mention of what figures, or how reliable, or anything. Also note the addition of the qualifier "by a stranger", which is necessary given that the risk of being killed - at any age - by someone one knows is considerably higher.

As mentioned before, research shows that - for Western industrialised populations at least - the death rate is not significantly correlated with weight (and in so far as it is, the government-mandated weight is correlated with a higher risk of death within a particular time period than heavier weights).

The article does talk more about "long-term health problems" than death as a consequence of obesity, but what's not mentioned is that the evidence that the correlation is causative is sparse. Indeed, for many "obesity-related" conditions, there is more evidence of the reverse - that weight gain is either a symptom of an underlying condition or caused by an underlying factor that also causes susceptibility to that condition.

That lack of evidence of causation is of course a serious problem for the government policies developed around this. It's much like the government, upon discovering that people with blonde hair were more likely to have a particular health condition, recommending hair dye - except that in this case some of the suggestions for hiding the symptom are actively harmful to health.

The article doesn't, at least, mention restrictive diets for children as a possible "solution", instead advocating more exercise and walking to school. The problems with "more exercise" and "walking to school" as a solution have been repeatedly said elsewhere, so to summarise:

• Not every child can exercise that much, because of disabilities, and/or a lack of suitable or sufficiently cheap places to exercise near where they live, and/or a lack of free time.
• Similarly, it's not practical for every child to walk to their primary school, due to the distance, or lack of time, or inaccessible routes.
• The effects of exercise on weight are not particularly clear in adults. I don't know if there have been useful studies specifically for children.

So that's the conclusions, but what about the data used to conclude them? Going back to the article, it's fairly clear that - despite YouGov being a reputable survey company - the questions that they were given to ask were clearly set with the aim of producing the press release in mind. From the BBC article.

But only one in 20 picked concerns about poor health in later life due to the child's levels of physical activity.

Here's the options for the question, which was "which of these do you fear most for your child?"

• They are injured or killed in a road traffic accident - 30%
• They are abducted or murdered - 30%
• Poor health in later life due to your child's current levels of physical activity - 5%
• None of these - 21%
• Don't know - 7%
• Prefer not to say - 7%

This is not a good question.

Note that the survey - unlike the press release and the article - doesn't qualify "abducted or murdered" with "by a stranger". Given how prevalent abusive relationships are, that makes the "million to one" statistic pretty much irrelevant. It's like asking someone whether they're scared of being bitten, and then laughing at them if they say "yes" on the grounds that hardly anyone is attacked by sharks.

The important thing to note is that the survey only gives those three options, plus a few standard "none" options. If the survey was repeated, but with a more substantial list of plausible fears (and perhaps some that the surveyors believed less plausible), then this would give a very different result. People tend to go more for options that they're prompted for, rather than "Other". Of the three options, especially as worded, the third is - regardless of relative risk - considerably less scary.

It wouldn't surprise me if they wrote most of this press release before the survey results were back, and just added the exact numbers later.

So, bad data collection, and then conclusions that aren't really supported by the data anyway, and then reprinted pretty much from the press release without any challenge. Exactly the "standards" I've come to expect from science reporting, in fact.

"False" allegations in schools

[trigger warning]

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers has recently released the results of a study about "false allegations" made against its members. Reading the reports in the news, I couldn't help feeling the discussion was moving in an all too familiar direction.

The comparision with allegations of false allegations of rape seems rather obvious, not least because there's going to be an unpleasant range of overlap between "allegations of misconduct by school staff" and "allegations of rape and sexual assault", and it seems to be attracting much the same dubious lines of argument.

So, similarities. The teachers are in a position of power, the pupils are not. The consequences of reputation for false allegations are strongly emphasised (and I don't dispute, incidentally, that it would be very stressful to be in that position), whereas the effect on the children of incidents that lead to true allegations are barely mentioned: in the ATL press release (1250 words), only these 25 mention the possibility that accusations might be true: "We all accept the protection of children is paramount, but that should not be at the expense of natural justice - school staff have rights too."

Their statistics seem rather dubious, too (which is another similarity). Ignoring the "don't know" responses (which is being generous, I think), the ratio is 50:18 believe that a false accusation has taken place in their school.

28% say that they have a false allegation made by a pupil against them personally, and 17% say that they have one made by a family member. We can assume some overlap between these two categories, though the results don't say how much. 368 of 1155 responded to the question asking how the allegation was treated, which is 32%.

Let's assume, for internal consistency, that everyone who had an allegation made against them answered 'yes' to "someone in my school has had an allegation made against them".¹

So, if we take these figures at face value, about a third of staff have had a false allegation made against them. Of those who have not, then about a quarter know that someone else at their school has been the subject of one, about a quarter are confident enough that no-one has to say so, and half don't know for certain.

Let's take a large primary school with around 24 teaching and teaching-related staff. On average, 8 of those staff will have had a false allegation made, and 4 of the other staff will know of at least one of these cases. For a secondary school with around 120 staff, 40 will have had a false allegation, but only 20 others will be aware of any of these. (Incidentally, if these figures are accurate, then the confidentiality around the cases must be holding really well, which makes reputational damage less likely)

This seems somewhat unlikely. The press release doesn't say anything about how the survey data was gathered, but there's no polling/survey company named, which suggests it was internal, which makes me suspicious. ATL has 160,000 members, so 1155 is less than 1% of them. Looking around their website, it seems that their normal survey method is to rely on voluntary responses.

This, of course, means that there's no attempt at getting a representative sample, and there's far more incentive for people who have been the subject of a false allegation to reply to the survey. I think it's incredibly likely that the survey is going to significantly overstate the scale of the problem.

Similarly, the quoted situations in the press release are presumably near to the worst case (for the teachers - the worst case for a pupil makes most of those seem mild), rather than a representative sample of what actually happens.

The BBC article also includes the following, presumably from a previous press release:

Last year, the union, which has 160,000 members across the UK, said pupils who made malicious false allegations about teachers should be placed on a school register to protect other staff.

The union said these records should be forwarded if a pupil moves.

It also called for charges to be brought against children as young as 10 who made false allegations.

Given that schools do not have a good record on dealing with bullying, and given that there's already a significant inevitable power imbalance between teacher and pupil, I don't think it's at all a good idea to place more risks and obstacles in the way of someone wanting to report misconduct. Seriously, charges?

The ATL claims from the survey that 50% of false allegations were dismissed instantly. I wonder what percentage of true allegations are also dismissed instantly and mistakenly.

¹ The survey asks about their current school in one, and them personally in another, so if the allegation happened to them at a previous school and they didn't know of any at their current school, they could answer "inconsistently". On the other hand, the strict wording of the question is not "has this taken place at your current school" but "has it happened to anyone working at your current school".

More fat-hate

So, from the BBC, comes the news that fat children reject the idea of weight-loss surgery. Well, it's not known to work for actual long-term weight loss, weight loss isn't known to be good for health (and in many cases can be bad), and has a significant risk of killing the patient. Maybe our education system isn't as bad as the papers say.

42% report being bullied for their size, 58% think that their weight will stop them getting a boyfriend or girlfriend and "a similar percentage" believe that it will harm their career prospects.

Given the relentless media imagery of "fat is bad", those percentages are actually better than I expected. Expect government intervention to increase size-related bullying and condemn fat sexuality shortly.

A Department of Health spokesman said: "Obesity is the biggest health challenge we face.

Really? A condition that's arbitrarily defined, has no statistically significant effect on lifespan for most groups, and is undoubtedly less harmful than malnutrition or starvation, is the biggest health challenge we face? I worry about that mindset.

The school said what?!

The Children's Legal Centre, among others, are calling for stricter legislation against bullying in schools. BBC News has an article on this. The article describes a particular case of bullying, which is horrific enough in itself - but the school's response just makes things worse.

[trigger warning]

In a BBC Breakfast News report Debbie (name changed to protect her children) said she had no choice but to consider legal action against the school her two teenage children used to attend.

She claims teachers stood by and watched as her son was attacked - in front of her - by about 40 other pupils.

"They had these temporary metal road signs the triangular ones and they just attacked him with it, beating him.

What would a failure to address serious violent attacks be without some victim-blaming.

The school says Debbie's child's special needs were behind many of the problems, and any bullying took place outside the school.

This doesn't appear to be a direct quote, but if it is a reasonable summary of the school's stance, it's extremely clear what's actually behind the "problems".

Good news and bad news on leave for new parents

The government is finally announcing a timetable for the introduction of paid paternity leave longer than two weeks. It's the same plan they've had for a while, and placed in the 2005 manifesto - to allow the mother to transfer months 6-12 of their leave to their partner (contrary to the reporting on the issue, and the implications of the name "paternity leave", this need not be the father, and applies equally to same-sex couples). It's not great, but it is a significant improvement on the current situation.

In worse news, that The Times appears to be the only news organisation to lead with, the government's promise from the same manifesto to make all 12 months of maternity leave paid has been abandoned. It's not entirely surprising, since doing this would cost tax revenues the government isn't currently getting - whereas the paternity leave change is neutral in terms of government spending, but it would be nice if for once it wasn't a plan that primarily benefited women that got axed for cost reasons. Harriet Harman MP, one of the few openly feminist cabinet members (and she gets a huge amount of criticism from the media for it), was apparently overruled by Lord Mandelson.

The response from some of the business organisations has been fairly predictable.

David Frost, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said it would be a good idea to allow fathers up to six months' leave "when the economy is working at full tilt" but it would harm businesses struggling with the recession.

"This is not the time to do it. It is a huge burden to plan for both a male and a female employee being away," he told the BBC News Channel.

If businesses can plan successfully for a small number of their staff to be unexpectedly ill for several months - and they have little alternative, they can plan for a small number of their staff to be expectedly absent for a well-defined period of time to look after their new children.

The major reason in favour of introducing extensive paternity leave (as has been done in a few other European countries such as Sweden, Finland and Iceland) is that it takes away from the culture that childcare is a woman's¹ role and work is a man's (all three of Sweden, Finland and Iceland do noticeably better than the UK on measures of gender equality). It will obviously take a few years before any significant number of men start taking up the opportunity (and the way the leave is going to be set up isn't ideal), but it should help to erode that stereotype. More leave, better paid leave, and more flexible allocation, as those other countries have, would be better, but this is an important first step.

I do wonder how much of the opposition from businesses comes from "we can't hire a woman, because they might take maternity leave, and now you're saying that we can't hire men either? Who are we supposed to employ?" attitude.

The new leave would be available from April 2011

¹ While the mother isn't necessarily a woman, and their partner isn't necessarily a man, it's by far the most common case, and it's unlikely that the "childcare is a woman's job" crowd are particularly considering any other family situations.

It starts very young

[trigger warning]

From BBC News, the results of an NSPCC and Lottery-funded report on violence in teenage relationships. 90% of teenagers (13 to 17) have been in an intimate relationship. Of those:

One in six [girls] said they had been pressured into sexual intercourse and 1 in 16 said they had been raped. Others had been pressured or forced to kiss or sexually touch.

A quarter of girls had suffered physical violence such as being slapped, punched, or beaten by their boyfriends.

[...]

Girls also reported that they suffered more repeatedly in relationships and at a younger age.

[...]

Unlike most boys, girls often felt they had little choice but to put up with the abuse because they felt scared, guilty, or feared they would lose their boyfriend.

It's not, perhaps, surprising that violence in relationships starts so young, and occurs in teens as much as it does in adults. This, though, is apparently the first detailed study of it, which did surprise me. I wonder if any follow-up studies on younger children are planned.

It makes it very obvious that people need teaching very early - before 90% of them have already been in a relationship - what a healthy relationship looks like and what an abusive relationship looks like. Expecting them to learn by example just doesn't work.

(It's not clear from the NSPCC press release whether the report considered same-sex relationships, since all the examples they give are heterosexual, and I can't find the report itself on their website)

Edited to add: A comment at the F-Word article gives the report. Currently only the executive summary is available. It's worth reading (and yes, they did cover same-sex relationships)