Racing Demon is, as its name suggests, a game of beating everyone else with speed and in that sense, it’s a very poor example of a social game because it breaks all the rules of turn-taking and patience! However it is absolutely brilliant for sequencing, toning those reaction times, for visual attention, concentration, memory, spatial organisation, fine motor skills and maths....and all without a playstation in sight!
Better still, the way we play it, everyone actually has a very good chance of winning. In fact even my 90 year old grandmother occasionally used to win, much to the extreme amusement of everyone including herself.
Honesty is a vital ingredient but of course, that should go without saying amongst the wonderful bunch that we are! It should be noted that a bit of card counting in this game is regarded with a certain degree of awe, and is not strictly dishonest, although there may be some players left with seething, resentful questions as to whether this should be so!
Any number of people can join in: the more the merrier. We used to play with approx 20 peeps of all ages and ability around a table. Pure unadulterated fun and a manic order in apparent chaos.
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HOW TO PLAY
Each player starts with a complete pack of cards. It’s important that each pack has a different design or colour on the back.
At the word "Go" the games starts. You play as fast as you can from now on!
First off, each player deals a pile of 13 cards face up. This is called the "Pile”. The object of the game is to get rid of your Pile before anybody else does and you do this in a number of different ways. (See below). If you do manage to get rid of your Pile before anyone else, you shout "OUT" as frantically and as loudly as seems necessary. All play stops immediately and you earn an extra 10 points for winning.
After dealing your Pile of 13, four more cards are then dealt out in a line face up next to the Pile. This is known as the "Line of 4"
The rest of the cards are kept in your hand.
Look at your Pile and Line of 4. Have you got an ace amongst them? If you have, put it into the middle of the table, quick as you can of course - there's not a moment to lose! If the ace has come from your Line of 4, replace the ace card with one from your Pile, so that you still have a Line of 4, thus reducing your Pile to 12 cards - Hooray, you are on your way to winning!
The aces in the middle are now available for everyone to use. They become the basis of a "Stack." Everyone can stack on anyone else's aces, going from the ace, to two, three, four, five, six etc, up to Jack, Queen, King. You must follow the suit of the ace at the base of the Stack. So if someone has put out an ace of hearts, it must be followed by a two of hearts.
Should you happen to have a two of hearts in your Line of 4 or on top of your Pile, slam it down on top of the ace of hearts before anyone else does. Get there as quick as you can for you can be darn sure that some other sod will be trying to beat you to it!
And don't forget, if the two of hearts came out of your Line of 4, replace it with a card from your Pile, thus reducing your Pile and getting closer to winning.
Remember...(unless you have just won and got rid of your Pile), you should always have your Pile and a Line of 4 in front of you.
If someone else does beat you to that two of hearts, tough! You will have to wait for someone to put out another ace of hearts.
OK, back to looking for at your Pile and Line of 4. If there is nothing you can put out in the middle, you can look to do something else to reduce your Pile. This is called "Laddering". With Laddering, you pile onto your Line of 4. Unlike making the Stacks in the middle, Laddering does not follow the suits and does not go upwards. With Laddering, you go down in number and use alternate colour cards. So if you have a black seven and a red six in your Line of 4, you could put the red six on your black seven, and replace the missing card (the six) in the Line of 4 with another from your Pile. (Hooray...even closer to winning). If you then should happen to have a black five, say on the top of your Pile, you could put that on the red six etc. (You can ladder from your top card on your Pile too.)
Still no joy or are you now stuck, ie: you can neither Stack in the middle nor Ladder? Now you use the rest of your cards in your hand....known as the "Pack". Go through your Pack three at a time and as quickly as possible, of course. If you come across a card that can be used either for building up the Stacks in the middle or for helping with your Laddering, pop it on, pdq.
All the time you are going through your Pack, keep watching for opportunities to move any cards from either your Line of 4 or your Pile onto the Stacks in the middle.
Keep going through your hand as quickly as you can, piling upwards on the Stacks and Laddering. Every card you put out onto a Stack will count as one point in your final score, so try to get as many cards out on the Stacks as you can.
There is a picture of what the game could look like here. (They seem to have got it right, despite calling the game Nerts and calling the piles by different names!)
When a Stack approaches completion, get really alert! The last card on a Stack is of course, the King, and if you manage to put the King on the Stack, you claim the Stack and remove the Stack from the middle, keeping it somewhere near you. I usually quickly put it on the floor. Once you have put the king on the Stack, this Stack is known as your "King" and it counts as an extra five points at the end of the game. This is why getting the King is a good idea.
Once someone has managed to get rid of their Pile and has shouted "OUT", play stops immediately.
All of the players who didn't win should then count up how many cards they have left in their Pile. They must remember this number. The number of cards they have left in their Pile will be subtracted from the rest of their score.
Each player should then bunch his Pack with the remaining cards in his Pile and Line of 4, and put this bunch aside for the moment.
The players should then sort out the cards from the Stacks and the Kings that have been removed from the table, and players should then collect their own cards from this sorting. They should then count these cards. Each card counts as one point. If they made a King, they should add 5 bonus points to this score.
They then should subtract the number of cards that were left in their Pile from the total that they made in the Stack. It is perfectly possible, even if you aren't 96, to make a minus number. There is not necessarily much humiliation in that! (See below for the handicapping system).
The winner though will definitely be quids up. He will have nothing to subtract, (as he got rid of his Pile), and he will add his bonus 10 points to the number of cards he got out on the Stacks.
- - - - - - - - - -
HANDICAPPING.
Someone familiar with the scoring system can manage this. Don't worry about it if you are new to the whole thing and have enough to think about already.
Handicapping is a great system if you have players of very different skill levels as it gives everyone a reasonable chance of winning at some stage.
How it works:
Create a score board, with players names/initials at the top of columns.
After the first game, write down the scores that everyone made in the appropriate columns.
The person with the highest score in the first game, ie: nearly always the person who shouted "OUT", will then be required to put out 14 cards in his Pile in the next game. The person who made the lowest score will only be required to put out 12 cards in the next game. Make a note of the changes to the number of cards a player will need to put out in his next pile next to his score.
After the second game, write down the scores from the second game and total them up with the first game too. The winner of the second game will be required to put one more card in his Pile for the subsequent game. The person with the highest total number of points overall will also be required to put one more card in the Pile in the subsequent game. If this one and the same person, this person will be required to put 2 more cards into his Pile in the next game.
The loser in the second game will be required to put out one less card out in his Pile. The overall loser will also be required to put out one less card. If this is one and the same person, he can put out 2 fewer cards in the next game.
The scorer should make a note of these requirements next to the players' scores.
It has been known for the very new, young or generally infirm to get down to a pile of O, in which case they can say, "GO" then "OUT" and score a bonus of 10 immediately, whilst all around them will be minus their pile. Tee hee...not such a bad plan!
- - - - - - - - -
Good luck and have fun. And one fine day, I plan on beating my dear mama in a straight match.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Save Your Child
If your child is in the same situation as the protagonist in this story, protect them from the same fate, contact Cruel at School and think very seriously about home education. It has proved to be the answer for many a bullied child.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Summerhill on CBBC
Home educators' reactions to the CBBC series of Summerhill, first two episodes here (shortly to be deleted) and here, have been strongly favorable, for whether or not the series is a reasonable representation of Summerhill, it certainly puts across some theories of autonomous education and evidence for its efficacy very effectively. "When children want to learn, they go like rockets" says the science teacher of the 14 year old who after studying chemistry for under a year, is doing A level standard work. Yes, in the HE community we see this happening over and over again.
Quite a few HE kids watching the film, recognised the themselves in it: the familiarity with taking responsibility for their lives, for deciding how to work in groups, with understanding the function of rules and with thinking creatively about how to make rules workable, the wrestling with moral issues etc. In fact, the lives of the children at Summerhill seem very similar to home educators' experience of HE meetings, camps and festivals, bar the presence of parents.
It seems almost inevitable that the Telegraph should be very ambivalent about the series. In this article, they plump firmly for the idea that the whole thing is a propaganda exercise, but in another report, they quote the directer Jon East talking about Golding's "Lord of the Flies":
"That single book did more than anything else to damage people's faith in the essential decency of children," says Jon East, head of drama at CBBC and director of Summerhill. If repressed public schoolboys who are used to being caned are suddenly left unrestricted on a desert island, it's not surprising that these terrible instincts are unleashed. However, I think that if Summerhill pupils crashed on to the same island, they'd soon have a meeting, set up a committee, find wood, make food and be basking in the sun, entirely happy."
Yep, he has it! And the great thing about this is that Jon East is none other than the Head of Drama at CBBC. He says:
"An awful lot of drama is set in schools - and yet each series only reinforces the dominant paradigm," he says. "What we're trying to say in this drama is that there could just be another way of doing things."
There could indeed. More of this please, Mr East!
Quite a few HE kids watching the film, recognised the themselves in it: the familiarity with taking responsibility for their lives, for deciding how to work in groups, with understanding the function of rules and with thinking creatively about how to make rules workable, the wrestling with moral issues etc. In fact, the lives of the children at Summerhill seem very similar to home educators' experience of HE meetings, camps and festivals, bar the presence of parents.
It seems almost inevitable that the Telegraph should be very ambivalent about the series. In this article, they plump firmly for the idea that the whole thing is a propaganda exercise, but in another report, they quote the directer Jon East talking about Golding's "Lord of the Flies":
"That single book did more than anything else to damage people's faith in the essential decency of children," says Jon East, head of drama at CBBC and director of Summerhill. If repressed public schoolboys who are used to being caned are suddenly left unrestricted on a desert island, it's not surprising that these terrible instincts are unleashed. However, I think that if Summerhill pupils crashed on to the same island, they'd soon have a meeting, set up a committee, find wood, make food and be basking in the sun, entirely happy."
Yep, he has it! And the great thing about this is that Jon East is none other than the Head of Drama at CBBC. He says:
"An awful lot of drama is set in schools - and yet each series only reinforces the dominant paradigm," he says. "What we're trying to say in this drama is that there could just be another way of doing things."
There could indeed. More of this please, Mr East!
Friday, January 25, 2008
Brighton and Hove
"The responsibility of the council is to ensure that parents provide their children with a suitable education."
It is hard to believe it, but yes, various councils from around the country seem quite happy to go about creating their own litigation nightmares. This time it's Brighton and Hove.
Thankfully, home educators in the area are trying to put them right.
"We say: this is not true. The law gives parents the responsibility to ensure that children receive a suitable education, not the local council."
Go there, HEline. Looks as if you have plenty of work on your hands helping some remedial students develop the skills of accurate reading, comprehension and ability to think through the consequences.
It is hard to believe it, but yes, various councils from around the country seem quite happy to go about creating their own litigation nightmares. This time it's Brighton and Hove.
Thankfully, home educators in the area are trying to put them right.
"We say: this is not true. The law gives parents the responsibility to ensure that children receive a suitable education, not the local council."
Go there, HEline. Looks as if you have plenty of work on your hands helping some remedial students develop the skills of accurate reading, comprehension and ability to think through the consequences.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Vote to Support German Homeschoolers
From various UK home educating lists:
On a German website where people can put questions to Angela Merkel, someone has asked why homeschooling is not possible in Germany. Only those questions with the highest number of points will be answered. You can support this questioner by adding to the number of points.
By way of a rough translation of the full question:
The questioner is asking the authorities to change the legal situation so that homeschooling is permitted in Germany. She says that the legal judgement and behaviour of the authorities will result in more families leaving Germany and that this is not in the interests of the country. She asks if homeschooling is really a security risk for the country or a risk for children, and says that there is nowhere else in the EU where homeschoolers are persecuted as they are there.
She says that her own daughter is unable to attend school but that she would certainly send her to school if she did not know that the effects of doing so would be negative, but that she would like the legal option of keeping her daughter at home until she is able to handle school. She says there have been positive developments in education in the last 20 years but that it would be unfortunate if those children who need it were unable to refuel at home until they were able to handle the large class groups. She asks to be informed by the co-workers (of the person she's writing to) what is necessary for legalisation of homeschooling to occur.
Go here if you would like to support the fight for legalisation of home education in Germany. Simply click on the + sign. That's it.
If this link is broken, go to the home page and click on "Beiträge Abstimmen". This will take you to a number of pages with questions. Somewhere in these pages, you will find the following amongst the questions there:
"Von Susanne Volkmann Über Bildung Am 20. JanuarWarum ist Heimunterricht nicht möglich? Sehr geehrte Frau Bundeskanzlerin, ich bitte Sie von Herzen, die gesetzlichen Bedingungen dafür zu schaffen,dass Homeschooling in Deutschland legalisiert wird. mehr..."
Click on "mehr" and on the next page (where the whole of the question appears) click on the right hand side of the coloured line, where the + sign is.
That's all folks! Good deed done.
Forced Marriages and Home Education. The "Evidence" so far.
Nazir Afzal said: "We (the Crown Prosecution Service) have identified thousands, probably, of young girls between those ages, 13 and 16, who are no longer in education. Very many of them are, allegedly, being home-schooled and very many of them are not being home-schooled at all
because there is no means of being able to check what is happening to them. Very many of them will end up being-well, they are victims already, I would say-victims of forced marriage or honour-based violence. I know that a number of institutions are receiving freedom of information requests to get the full information. At the moment I do not have that in the way that you would like, but I am sure we can give you what we have." (all the oral evidence the Select Committee took is in the second volume of the report available at
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmhaff/263/26
3we01.htm at Q 137).
But the Home Affairs Select Committee were also told by Jasvinder Sanghera of Karma Nirvana and District Judge Marilyn Mornington about examples of children who were missing from school registrars whose whereabouts were unknown. For example, The Forced Marriage Unit recorded that "250 girls aged between 13-16 were taken off the school roll in Bradford during 2006 because they failed to return from a trip abroad" (para 154).
There were also other examples of children being kept at home from school for long periods of time. Shazia Qayum, a victim of forced marriage told the Select Committee: "When I refused to get married I was told that I would not be able to finish my education. At 15 it was very important for me because it was my GCSE time. I was kept at home for a whole year; no one from the education welfare, no one from social services asked the question where I was. My parents handed in a sick note from the family GP telling them that I was not well enough to
attend." (cited in the second volume of the report available at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmhaff/263/26 3we01.htm at Q 103)
3 - Finally your question re: paragraph 169, 'I cannot identify any such link being made by "experts" except the allegation made by Mr Afzal. Please tell me what other experts identified such a link and where I can find information about this.'
The other witness who gave evidence mentioning Home Education was District Judge Marilyn Mornington.
because there is no means of being able to check what is happening to them. Very many of them will end up being-well, they are victims already, I would say-victims of forced marriage or honour-based violence. I know that a number of institutions are receiving freedom of information requests to get the full information. At the moment I do not have that in the way that you would like, but I am sure we can give you what we have." (all the oral evidence the Select Committee took is in the second volume of the report available at
http://www.publications.
3we01.htm at Q 137).
But the Home Affairs Select Committee were also told by Jasvinder Sanghera of Karma Nirvana and District Judge Marilyn Mornington about examples of children who were missing from school registrars whose whereabouts were unknown. For example, The Forced Marriage Unit recorded that "250 girls aged between 13-16 were taken off the school roll in Bradford during 2006 because they failed to return from a trip abroad" (para 154).
There were also other examples of children being kept at home from school for long periods of time. Shazia Qayum, a victim of forced marriage told the Select Committee: "When I refused to get married I was told that I would not be able to finish my education. At 15 it was very important for me because it was my GCSE time. I was kept at home for a whole year; no one from the education welfare, no one from social services asked the question where I was. My parents handed in a sick note from the family GP telling them that I was not well enough to
attend." (cited in the second volume of the report available at http://www.publications.
3 - Finally your question re: paragraph 169, 'I cannot identify any such link being made by "experts" except the allegation made by Mr Afzal. Please tell me what other experts identified such a link and where I can find information about this.'
The other witness who gave evidence mentioning Home Education was District Judge Marilyn Mornington.
Will They Ever Learn?
Below - a list of organisations which asked for home educated children to be included in the scope of new guidance on sex, relationships and alcohol education:
British Association for Sexual Health and HIV: 'The needs of those educated at home should be considered. The assumption may be that they are not a high risk group, but this is not known. Can resources be provided for those home-educated?'
Central Lancashire PCT: 'Why will this not affect children and young people educated at home?'
East Sussex County Council: 'The omission of home-educated children is a concern; this cohort includes some very vulnerable children and young people. Perhaps guidance could address LEA supervisory/advisory duties for this cohort, and liaison with home educators' associations e.g. 'Education Otherwise' could be useful.'
Healthcare Commission: 'CYP not educated at home may not be covered under the elements of the guidance which is delivered but perhaps (hopefully) they will have access to provision through youth, voluntary and community services. Information for home educators could still be provided through voluntary networks. Could explain provision for 0-4 is through other channels and cite (perhaps that's for the guidance when published!)'
Jo's Trust: 'Children and young people educated at home should be covered by any guidance.'
Sex Education Forum: '"Groups not covered". It is unclear why this document would not be relevant to children educated at home.'
To every which one of these, one would say: thanks for the offer but home educating families would rather not be included. Firstly, they are almost always perfectly capable of managing this on their own without any government initiatives on the matter. They know they are responsible for managing this aspect of education. They know they can't delegate these responsibilities to some half-baked crusade in schools. Secondly, despite the fact that there is no statutory basis for enforcement of this guidance, local authorities may well try to use the guidance to pry into extremely private areas of family life.
Moves are afoot in the home educating community to try to remove the offending phrase from section 4.1.1, but should this not pan out, LAs should be aware that any attempt by them to insist upon monitoring HE families for this provision will be met with strong resistance and many a suggestion that they go and remind themselves of Protocol 1, article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights which states that:
"In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religions and philosophical convictions."
British Association for Sexual Health and HIV: 'The needs of those educated at home should be considered. The assumption may be that they are not a high risk group, but this is not known. Can resources be provided for those home-educated?'
Central Lancashire PCT: 'Why will this not affect children and young people educated at home?'
East Sussex County Council: 'The omission of home-educated children is a concern; this cohort includes some very vulnerable children and young people. Perhaps guidance could address LEA supervisory/advisory duties for this cohort, and liaison with home educators' associations e.g. 'Education Otherwise' could be useful.'
Healthcare Commission: 'CYP not educated at home may not be covered under the elements of the guidance which is delivered but perhaps (hopefully) they will have access to provision through youth, voluntary and community services. Information for home educators could still be provided through voluntary networks. Could explain provision for 0-4 is through other channels and cite (perhaps that's for the guidance when published!)'
Jo's Trust: 'Children and young people educated at home should be covered by any guidance.'
Sex Education Forum: '"Groups not covered". It is unclear why this document would not be relevant to children educated at home.'
To every which one of these, one would say: thanks for the offer but home educating families would rather not be included. Firstly, they are almost always perfectly capable of managing this on their own without any government initiatives on the matter. They know they are responsible for managing this aspect of education. They know they can't delegate these responsibilities to some half-baked crusade in schools. Secondly, despite the fact that there is no statutory basis for enforcement of this guidance, local authorities may well try to use the guidance to pry into extremely private areas of family life.
Moves are afoot in the home educating community to try to remove the offending phrase from section 4.1.1, but should this not pan out, LAs should be aware that any attempt by them to insist upon monitoring HE families for this provision will be met with strong resistance and many a suggestion that they go and remind themselves of Protocol 1, article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights which states that:
"In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religions and philosophical convictions."
Monday, January 21, 2008
Calling Home Educating Inventors (ages 9 - 11)
Six Home Ed in Kent Blog has the details of a competition which is now also available to home educated children.
Good work The Newsteads!
Good work The Newsteads!
Saturday, January 19, 2008
The Atheist Home Educator's First Aid Kit
If, like me, you found yourself flagging after the New Year, perhaps to the point where you almost felt a twinge of envy at the thought of all those parents being freed up when the schools reopened - if you felt you simply couldn't face helping anyone play shop any more or build another lego model, or bake another loaf of bread; if you wondered as to the meaning of it all, the point of Christmas, whether it really is worth the effort, I have the perfect answers which come in the form of a very small reading list.
Yup, if fleshing out the non-theistic but spiritual side of rational parenting is what you fancy, you couldn't do much better than "Everyday Blessing: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting" by Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn. For the parent who takes their child seriously, there may be a few passages that you might want to re-write, but overall, the principle of respect for the autonomy of the child is taken as paramount, and better still, self-sovereignty is given it's proper emotional and spiritual significance. Faciliting the autonomy of the child is recognised as being truly extraordinary work, as enriching for the parent as it is for the child.
I have to admit to a past history of miserable failure when it comes to meditative techniques. I would sit around with ants-in-my-pants, itching to get going, to engage someone in my latest thought, or to scream with boredom, whilst all around me seemed eminently capable of achieving authentic bliss with what seemed like absolutely no effort at all. This book has however managed to get me much closer to an understanding of how to achieve a meditative state and this at least partially because the authors readily concede that for many the meditative process is incredibly difficult, which of course immediately made it significantly easier.
The authors manage to link meditative practice to parenting in a convincing and liberating way. The balance and peace that is generated in those few moments of meditation where one feels freed from the urgency and dictatorial nature of one's thoughts, it can spill into one's parenting, making one more able to think creatively, to give up on the first inclination more easily, and at the same time to see one's child more clearly and more lovingly. Yup, this is perfect nourishment that might be the necessary sequel to The God Delusion.
And as to the point of Christmas, (and thanks so much to the kind Christian person who opened my eyes to the possibility of this one), instead of celebrating the birth of Christ, how about using the festival to celebrate one's own family? To marvel at and relish their existence and to honour the sovereignty and to recognise one's sacred duties in facilitating it.
For the second course for the flagging home educator, I would highly recommend Barbara Tizard's Young Children Learning, which without an apparent agenda, demonstrates that conversation with a very close adult (here the mother) is likely to be far more illuminating and educational for the child than the learning environment of the nursery school. If you need to wake up to the richness of those apparently inane or idiosyncratic conversations that you have with a young person, this is the book for you. In those seemingly banal conversations about what one should wear, about the contents of garden sheds and library fines, whether or not drivers should jump a red light, about who should have which bit of lego, it is the energy of the child to know, the richness of the shared knowledge and the freedom to explore without the imposition of pre-determined objectives which contributes to the growth of a wealth of knowledge, and leads the authors to conclude that teachers should learn from parents rather than the other way round.
This should be compulsory reading for any policy maker connected with the Early Years Foundation Stage. By rights, it should mean they simply throw their hands in the air, concede that all the government directives in the world are unlikely to solve the essential problems of nursery schools, and that parents should keep on educating their children in the wider world.
Yup, if fleshing out the non-theistic but spiritual side of rational parenting is what you fancy, you couldn't do much better than "Everyday Blessing: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting" by Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn. For the parent who takes their child seriously, there may be a few passages that you might want to re-write, but overall, the principle of respect for the autonomy of the child is taken as paramount, and better still, self-sovereignty is given it's proper emotional and spiritual significance. Faciliting the autonomy of the child is recognised as being truly extraordinary work, as enriching for the parent as it is for the child.
I have to admit to a past history of miserable failure when it comes to meditative techniques. I would sit around with ants-in-my-pants, itching to get going, to engage someone in my latest thought, or to scream with boredom, whilst all around me seemed eminently capable of achieving authentic bliss with what seemed like absolutely no effort at all. This book has however managed to get me much closer to an understanding of how to achieve a meditative state and this at least partially because the authors readily concede that for many the meditative process is incredibly difficult, which of course immediately made it significantly easier.
The authors manage to link meditative practice to parenting in a convincing and liberating way. The balance and peace that is generated in those few moments of meditation where one feels freed from the urgency and dictatorial nature of one's thoughts, it can spill into one's parenting, making one more able to think creatively, to give up on the first inclination more easily, and at the same time to see one's child more clearly and more lovingly. Yup, this is perfect nourishment that might be the necessary sequel to The God Delusion.
And as to the point of Christmas, (and thanks so much to the kind Christian person who opened my eyes to the possibility of this one), instead of celebrating the birth of Christ, how about using the festival to celebrate one's own family? To marvel at and relish their existence and to honour the sovereignty and to recognise one's sacred duties in facilitating it.
For the second course for the flagging home educator, I would highly recommend Barbara Tizard's Young Children Learning, which without an apparent agenda, demonstrates that conversation with a very close adult (here the mother) is likely to be far more illuminating and educational for the child than the learning environment of the nursery school. If you need to wake up to the richness of those apparently inane or idiosyncratic conversations that you have with a young person, this is the book for you. In those seemingly banal conversations about what one should wear, about the contents of garden sheds and library fines, whether or not drivers should jump a red light, about who should have which bit of lego, it is the energy of the child to know, the richness of the shared knowledge and the freedom to explore without the imposition of pre-determined objectives which contributes to the growth of a wealth of knowledge, and leads the authors to conclude that teachers should learn from parents rather than the other way round.
This should be compulsory reading for any policy maker connected with the Early Years Foundation Stage. By rights, it should mean they simply throw their hands in the air, concede that all the government directives in the world are unlikely to solve the essential problems of nursery schools, and that parents should keep on educating their children in the wider world.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Home Education is Not the Problem.
Spot the trend:
Here in the UK, we hear of the tragic case of Danielle Reid and in the US, we read of the sorry tale of the Jacks family.
The implication behind both stories: that neither situation implicates the social services involved since they had insufficient powers to intervene with home educating families and that they therefore require more powers to monitor and intrude upon all home educating families.
The truth of the matter: that the children in both families were known to social services. They were known to be at risk. Social services have adequate powers to follow up and act in such circumstances. They made bad calls.
Protests from UK HEors got the offending BBC article cached and re-written but the damage continued with Judith Gillespie of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council putting it about on radio and making the same ill- researched assertions and drawing poorly thought-out conclusions.
Message for welfare- and edu-crats everywhere:
Stop blaming home education and get on with your jobs. We cannot possibly live with the level of state scrutiny that you seem to be proposing. You're talking about our PRIVATE LIVES.
Here in the UK, we hear of the tragic case of Danielle Reid and in the US, we read of the sorry tale of the Jacks family.
The implication behind both stories: that neither situation implicates the social services involved since they had insufficient powers to intervene with home educating families and that they therefore require more powers to monitor and intrude upon all home educating families.
The truth of the matter: that the children in both families were known to social services. They were known to be at risk. Social services have adequate powers to follow up and act in such circumstances. They made bad calls.
Protests from UK HEors got the offending BBC article cached and re-written but the damage continued with Judith Gillespie of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council putting it about on radio and making the same ill- researched assertions and drawing poorly thought-out conclusions.
Message for welfare- and edu-crats everywhere:
Stop blaming home education and get on with your jobs. We cannot possibly live with the level of state scrutiny that you seem to be proposing. You're talking about our PRIVATE LIVES.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Petition Against Early Years Foundation Stage
Open Eye has been doing sterling work in protesting against further government micro-management and meddling that is the Early Years Foundation Stage.
From a circular:
"Please, please, please . . . if you have a problem with 3 and 4-year-olds HAVING to learn to read and write (outrageously, this becomes law in the UK in 9 months time for ALL nurseries – not just state-funded nurseries), then please sign the following Downing Street petition: click on this link and follow the instructions.
They (the gov't) just haven't got it. They think the sooner a child starts something, the better it will be; the notion of age appropriateness doesn't seemed to have crossed their mind. There is masses of evidence (e.g. formal schooling in Germany starting age 6/7, etc) demonstrating that delaying formal learning and letting children learn through just playing is no hindrance to later literacy. In fact it helps.
If you want to sign the
Get signing, I'd say.
From a circular:
"Please, please, please . . . if you have a problem with 3 and 4-year-olds HAVING to learn to read and write (outrageously, this becomes law in the UK in 9 months time for ALL nurseries – not just state-funded nurseries), then please sign the following Downing Street petition: click on this link and follow the instructions.
They (the gov't) just haven't got it. They think the sooner a child starts something, the better it will be; the notion of age appropriateness doesn't seemed to have crossed their mind. There is masses of evidence (e.g. formal schooling in Germany starting age 6/7, etc) demonstrating that delaying formal learning and letting children learn through just playing is no hindrance to later literacy. In fact it helps.
If you want to sign the
Get signing, I'd say.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
New Scottish Home Education Guidelines
...were published yesterday.
The TES has the story.
Schoolhouse has once again done admirable work on this. Hopefully they will continue to campaign for the unequivocal freedom for parents to educate their children as they see fit. It has sadly proved to be the case that Scottish LAs have caused considerable heartache and stress to prospective Scottish HEors by abusing their role in delivering consent for children to deregister from schools. In so doing, local authorities are in effect acting in loco parentis. They should think rather more carefully about the consequences to themselves when they do this.
On the same theme, the BBC reports that
"Some education directors, meanwhile, have been concerned a fast decision would amount to a rubber stamp - and lay them open to legal action from children who in later life feel their education has been lacking."
Sigh. Once again, IF YOU TAKE OVER AS PARENT and become RESPONSIBLE FOR EDUCATION AND WELFARE, you will be in BIG TROUBLE. Ergo...don't do it.
The TES has the story.
Schoolhouse has once again done admirable work on this. Hopefully they will continue to campaign for the unequivocal freedom for parents to educate their children as they see fit. It has sadly proved to be the case that Scottish LAs have caused considerable heartache and stress to prospective Scottish HEors by abusing their role in delivering consent for children to deregister from schools. In so doing, local authorities are in effect acting in loco parentis. They should think rather more carefully about the consequences to themselves when they do this.
On the same theme, the BBC reports that
"Some education directors, meanwhile, have been concerned a fast decision would amount to a rubber stamp - and lay them open to legal action from children who in later life feel their education has been lacking."
Sigh. Once again, IF YOU TAKE OVER AS PARENT and become RESPONSIBLE FOR EDUCATION AND WELFARE, you will be in BIG TROUBLE. Ergo...don't do it.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Are Local Authorities Behaving?
Whilst the current version of Elective Home Education Guidelines appear to demonstrate that the DCSF took representation from home educators at least partially seriously, HEors are nonetheless very well aware that there is plenty of ambiguity in the writing which would allow for serious abuse of HE families by local authorities. Members of Action for Home Education have already let it be known that the guidelines are considered unfit for purpose and have asked that home educators report incidences of abuse by LAs to the HE community, not only so that individual families may be supported, but so that such incidences may be used as yet further proof that the guidelines need, in many areas, to be rewritten much more precisely. Check out Barbara's comment here.
It would be extremely optimistic to hope that Local Authorities will stop abusing home educating families as a result of these new guidelines, particularly when you consider the angles that many of them took in their responses to the consultation on the creation of guidelines. The latest catalogue of errors comes to us courtesy of Notts LA. Take these gems by way of some examples:
"Lead officers of Nottinghamshire Local Authority believe that the draft guidance represents a missed opportunity to draw upon the Every Child Matters framework which sets out the criteria by which ALL children’s well being should be measured (whatever their background or their circumstances).There is no reference to this major piece of legislation which requires that children should be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and, in due course, experience economic well being."
Honestly, where does one start! And how could you, in your right mind, be happy to let someone into your home who appears to think that they have such power over your lives and who demonstrates such a woeful understanding of the law of the land.
Anyhoo...let's have a go at picking it apart. For starters, where, oh where in the Children Act 2004 does it say that all children have to be measured? And if it does say this (and I have somehow developed a previously unknown form of partial sightedness), where does it say who should do the measuring? And who sets the standards for passable well being? And how does anyone suppose that they should monitor for such a subjective criteria? And where in the Children Act is it a requirement that all children must achieve this or that standard? As most of us read it, these were objectives, not requirements. And if all of these outcomes are really requirements, which it is up to the LA to measure and to cater for, how on earth can they account for stories such as this one.
Are you still with me? I don't blame you if you aren't. Critiquing gobbledygook is a mind f**k. Sadly there is a lot more where that came from, eg:
"It would be helpful if home education support groups would also advise parents that the involvement of the Local Authority as a partner in their child’s education is nothing to be feared."
Pfhaa! And:
"Under the draft guidance, the Local Authority remains vulnerable if the child later accuses the LA of negligence in failing to ensure their educational needs were effectively met. Although this has not yet happened there is an increasing culture of litigation in society as a whole and it is reasonable to assume that this could happen in the future. "
Well, if LAs really are going to be responsible for the education and welfare of every child in the land as Notts LA would seemingly have it, then they sure will be in BIIIIGGGG trouble. Take the story of Ben for example.
It would be extremely optimistic to hope that Local Authorities will stop abusing home educating families as a result of these new guidelines, particularly when you consider the angles that many of them took in their responses to the consultation on the creation of guidelines. The latest catalogue of errors comes to us courtesy of Notts LA. Take these gems by way of some examples:
"Lead officers of Nottinghamshire Local Authority believe that the draft guidance represents a missed opportunity to draw upon the Every Child Matters framework which sets out the criteria by which ALL children’s well being should be measured (whatever their background or their circumstances).There is no reference to this major piece of legislation which requires that children should be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and, in due course, experience economic well being."
Honestly, where does one start! And how could you, in your right mind, be happy to let someone into your home who appears to think that they have such power over your lives and who demonstrates such a woeful understanding of the law of the land.
Anyhoo...let's have a go at picking it apart. For starters, where, oh where in the Children Act 2004 does it say that all children have to be measured? And if it does say this (and I have somehow developed a previously unknown form of partial sightedness), where does it say who should do the measuring? And who sets the standards for passable well being? And how does anyone suppose that they should monitor for such a subjective criteria? And where in the Children Act is it a requirement that all children must achieve this or that standard? As most of us read it, these were objectives, not requirements. And if all of these outcomes are really requirements, which it is up to the LA to measure and to cater for, how on earth can they account for stories such as this one.
Are you still with me? I don't blame you if you aren't. Critiquing gobbledygook is a mind f**k. Sadly there is a lot more where that came from, eg:
"It would be helpful if home education support groups would also advise parents that the involvement of the Local Authority as a partner in their child’s education is nothing to be feared."
Pfhaa! And:
"Under the draft guidance, the Local Authority remains vulnerable if the child later accuses the LA of negligence in failing to ensure their educational needs were effectively met. Although this has not yet happened there is an increasing culture of litigation in society as a whole and it is reasonable to assume that this could happen in the future. "
Well, if LAs really are going to be responsible for the education and welfare of every child in the land as Notts LA would seemingly have it, then they sure will be in BIIIIGGGG trouble. Take the story of Ben for example.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Unschooling Theory
In case you missed it in his links, there is a beautifully succinct description of unschooling by the David Friedman, who I am pretty sure is the author of Machinery of Freedom and son of Milton.
He explains it all, bar the bit about why the brain works best when it is not subject to coercion. (Lest we forget: that the mind of the learner must act first in every act of learning and that all successful learning is therefore autonomous. That coercion may be defined as being forced to enact a theory that is not active in the mind, and that this reduces the capacity for creativity, criticism and rationality. )
He explains it all, bar the bit about why the brain works best when it is not subject to coercion. (Lest we forget: that the mind of the learner must act first in every act of learning and that all successful learning is therefore autonomous. That coercion may be defined as being forced to enact a theory that is not active in the mind, and that this reduces the capacity for creativity, criticism and rationality. )
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Tim and David on Homeschooling
These would be big-time blogger Tim Worstall and libertarian homeschooling virtuoso David Friedman. Comments to both posts are revealing on the subject of how home education is viewed by the wider world.
Friday, December 28, 2007
If You Home Educate and Live in Bromley....
...get out fast, for otherwise you will find that your family is no longer your responsibility.
From the woeful misreading of current legislation that is the Bromley Safeguarding Children Board Guidance on Home Education...(check out the bit in red for the quite extraordinary appropriation of parental duties by the state):
"Safeguarding Issues:
....Being out of school means the child does not have the routine monitoring of their welfare and day to day contact with a range of professionals that is afforded to children at school. This will require all agencies in contact with home educated children to ensure that the child’s welfare is being promoted.
Safeguarding Children in Education (DfES 2004) states:
“responsibility for children who are educated at home by their parents are not solely education issues. These matters are best dealt with by a multi agency approach and should be addressed in locally agreed procedures in accordance with the principles set out in ‘Working Together’ and the Assessment Framework.”
The ‘Every Child Matters’ 2004 framework sets out the criteria by which all children’s well being should be measured. That is that they should be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and, in due course, experience economic well being. Attendance at school plays an important part, not just in ensuring that a child achieves academically, but it also providing routine health surveillance and opportunities for social interaction that promote greater awareness of safety issues and wider contribution to the community. It is therefore implicit that, as well as ensuring a child receiving home education is meeting the needs of the education curriculum, the local authority should ensure that outcomes for home educated children in all dimensions of the Every Child Matters agenda are promoted.
To this end Bromley Safeguarding Children Board requires agencies within Bromley to ensure they promote the well being of home educated children in all aspects of their development.
Process within Bromley: (from October 2006)
When a parent elects to home educate the relevant school will pass details of the child to the Education Welfare Service, who will complete a Common Assessment Framework checklist within 10 days. If the checklist indicates immediate concerns the EWS will either undertake a CAF or refer the case to Social Care, if the case meets Social Care referral thresholds. If the CAF checklist does not indicate any immediate concerns for the child then the EWS will complete a CAF within 6 weeks. Completing the CAF will allow the EWS team to ensure that those aspects of a child’s life outside of education that would normally be promoted through school are being addressed. If, after the completion of the CAF it is clear that all of the home educated child’s needs are being met then the EWS Team will undertake the continued monitoring of the educational arrangements for the child. The EWS Team will request that monitoring of the child’s education takes place within the family home and that the child is part of the discussions around their education. This will enable the team to ensure that the Every Child Matters 5 outcomes are being met.
If the initial CAF assessment raises concerns about how some aspects of the child’s care might be met or there is knowledge of past or current concerns in relation to a child whose parents have elected to home educate, then the EWS assessor will convene a CAF meeting (advice/assistance can be accessed from the CAF Team) to plan how best the needs of the child can be addressed in line with section 17 of the Children Act 1989. This puts a duty on Local Authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children within their area who are in need and to provide a range and level of services appropriate to those children’s needs. This may include requesting that Children's Social Care undertaking an initial assessment, under the ‘Framework for the Assessment of children in Need’.
Where there are previous or current concerns regarding the child but the parents do not co-operate with an assessment under the Common Assessment Framework or an initial assessment by Children’s Social Care then it will be deemed that the parent is not behaving as a reasonable parent and Children’s Social Care will consider whether the threshold for convening a child protection conference has been reached.
Where any agency comes into contact with a child being educated at home and has concerns for their welfare then they should follow the procedure outlined in What To Do If You’re Worried A Child Is Being Abused – HM Government 2003 and refer to an appropriate agency.
September 2006.
From the woeful misreading of current legislation that is the Bromley Safeguarding Children Board Guidance on Home Education...(check out the bit in red for the quite extraordinary appropriation of parental duties by the state):
"Safeguarding Issues:
....Being out of school means the child does not have the routine monitoring of their welfare and day to day contact with a range of professionals that is afforded to children at school. This will require all agencies in contact with home educated children to ensure that the child’s welfare is being promoted.
Safeguarding Children in Education (DfES 2004) states:
“responsibility for children who are educated at home by their parents are not solely education issues. These matters are best dealt with by a multi agency approach and should be addressed in locally agreed procedures in accordance with the principles set out in ‘Working Together’ and the Assessment Framework.”
The ‘Every Child Matters’ 2004 framework sets out the criteria by which all children’s well being should be measured. That is that they should be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and, in due course, experience economic well being. Attendance at school plays an important part, not just in ensuring that a child achieves academically, but it also providing routine health surveillance and opportunities for social interaction that promote greater awareness of safety issues and wider contribution to the community. It is therefore implicit that, as well as ensuring a child receiving home education is meeting the needs of the education curriculum, the local authority should ensure that outcomes for home educated children in all dimensions of the Every Child Matters agenda are promoted.
To this end Bromley Safeguarding Children Board requires agencies within Bromley to ensure they promote the well being of home educated children in all aspects of their development.
Process within Bromley: (from October 2006)
When a parent elects to home educate the relevant school will pass details of the child to the Education Welfare Service, who will complete a Common Assessment Framework checklist within 10 days. If the checklist indicates immediate concerns the EWS will either undertake a CAF or refer the case to Social Care, if the case meets Social Care referral thresholds. If the CAF checklist does not indicate any immediate concerns for the child then the EWS will complete a CAF within 6 weeks. Completing the CAF will allow the EWS team to ensure that those aspects of a child’s life outside of education that would normally be promoted through school are being addressed. If, after the completion of the CAF it is clear that all of the home educated child’s needs are being met then the EWS Team will undertake the continued monitoring of the educational arrangements for the child. The EWS Team will request that monitoring of the child’s education takes place within the family home and that the child is part of the discussions around their education. This will enable the team to ensure that the Every Child Matters 5 outcomes are being met.
If the initial CAF assessment raises concerns about how some aspects of the child’s care might be met or there is knowledge of past or current concerns in relation to a child whose parents have elected to home educate, then the EWS assessor will convene a CAF meeting (advice/assistance can be accessed from the CAF Team) to plan how best the needs of the child can be addressed in line with section 17 of the Children Act 1989. This puts a duty on Local Authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children within their area who are in need and to provide a range and level of services appropriate to those children’s needs. This may include requesting that Children's Social Care undertaking an initial assessment, under the ‘Framework for the Assessment of children in Need’.
Where there are previous or current concerns regarding the child but the parents do not co-operate with an assessment under the Common Assessment Framework or an initial assessment by Children’s Social Care then it will be deemed that the parent is not behaving as a reasonable parent and Children’s Social Care will consider whether the threshold for convening a child protection conference has been reached.
Where any agency comes into contact with a child being educated at home and has concerns for their welfare then they should follow the procedure outlined in What To Do If You’re Worried A Child Is Being Abused – HM Government 2003 and refer to an appropriate agency.
September 2006.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Jesus was Home Educated
The lead article in the Christmas edition of the Spectator continues in the time-honored tradition of deriving pretty much any lesson you care to think of from the gospels.
"The awesome mystery of Christmas is contained in the dual nature of the infant Jesus: the knowledge of His almighty power, juxtaposed with the spectacle of His absolute vulnerability in the crib..." blah.
However, in order to avoid being too Scrooge-like about the spirit of Christmas, I thought I might join in. According to this site, Jesus was probably home educated.
"Supposedly, universal education for Jewish boys from age six wasn't initiated until 63AD, by Joshua ben Gimla. So Jesus's early education was probably mostly in the hands of his father, and the other men of the village."
OK, you wouldn't want for your child to end up the way He did, but He didn't do so badly along the way. From the pulpit therefore: emulate the holy family. Home educate your child.
The Spectator leader does pull itself together however. They write that in response to the Unicef report that British children are having the worst time of all children in the developed world, the government has launched the ten-year Children's Plan:
"...when such policies are announced, it is wise to step back and ask who is truly responsible for the welfare of children - and to remember the sage warning of Sir Keith Joseph that 'the very first words that a British baby is apt to be taught to utter are that "the government should do something about it" ' "
"...better child-care is hailed as the answer to everything. ...The government wants all primary schools to provide facilities between 8 am and 6 pm. Thus will these public institutions of learning become a network of glorified creches. "
"Of course, for those who have to work to make ends meet, child-care provision is essential. But is should be treated as a second-best necessity rather than a cause of celebration. There is a growing body of research that demonstrates the adverse consequences for children - emotional and educational - who spend too many hours a week away from their parents and their home. The pioneer in this field is the controversial Professor Jay Belsky of Birkbeck College, London. But more familiar experts, such as Dr Penelope Leach are reaching similar conclusions. Their findings do not sit easily with modern liberal values. But parenthood is not designed to suit the lifestyle preferences of the adult. It is a sacred, lifelong obligation, as well as an unparalleled blessing."
Amen to that!
"The awesome mystery of Christmas is contained in the dual nature of the infant Jesus: the knowledge of His almighty power, juxtaposed with the spectacle of His absolute vulnerability in the crib..." blah.
However, in order to avoid being too Scrooge-like about the spirit of Christmas, I thought I might join in. According to this site, Jesus was probably home educated.
"Supposedly, universal education for Jewish boys from age six wasn't initiated until 63AD, by Joshua ben Gimla. So Jesus's early education was probably mostly in the hands of his father, and the other men of the village."
OK, you wouldn't want for your child to end up the way He did, but He didn't do so badly along the way. From the pulpit therefore: emulate the holy family. Home educate your child.
The Spectator leader does pull itself together however. They write that in response to the Unicef report that British children are having the worst time of all children in the developed world, the government has launched the ten-year Children's Plan:
"...when such policies are announced, it is wise to step back and ask who is truly responsible for the welfare of children - and to remember the sage warning of Sir Keith Joseph that 'the very first words that a British baby is apt to be taught to utter are that "the government should do something about it" ' "
"...better child-care is hailed as the answer to everything. ...The government wants all primary schools to provide facilities between 8 am and 6 pm. Thus will these public institutions of learning become a network of glorified creches. "
"Of course, for those who have to work to make ends meet, child-care provision is essential. But is should be treated as a second-best necessity rather than a cause of celebration. There is a growing body of research that demonstrates the adverse consequences for children - emotional and educational - who spend too many hours a week away from their parents and their home. The pioneer in this field is the controversial Professor Jay Belsky of Birkbeck College, London. But more familiar experts, such as Dr Penelope Leach are reaching similar conclusions. Their findings do not sit easily with modern liberal values. But parenthood is not designed to suit the lifestyle preferences of the adult. It is a sacred, lifelong obligation, as well as an unparalleled blessing."
Amen to that!
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
How Children Learn
This one is now on my wish list.
With yet more completely autonomously educated teens slotting easily into their desired life choices, and in fact many of them doing high level academic courses without any previous attempt at even structured, let alone coerced learning, it should remain only a matter of time before books such as the above become the mainstream.
With yet more completely autonomously educated teens slotting easily into their desired life choices, and in fact many of them doing high level academic courses without any previous attempt at even structured, let alone coerced learning, it should remain only a matter of time before books such as the above become the mainstream.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Lone Parents and Home Education
From page 113 of the Department for Work and Pensions' Ready for Work document:
"It was strongly felt that increased conditionality was not appropriate for...parents who choose to home educate".
This from the section on the consultation responses to the new welfare reform proposals whereby lone parents who can work will be required to actively seek work once their youngest child is 12 or over from October 2008, 10 or over from 2009 or 7 or over from October 2010.
However, as far as we can see, there is no news on whether the government will take this part of the response to their consultation seriously.
.
"It was strongly felt that increased conditionality was not appropriate for...parents who choose to home educate".
This from the section on the consultation responses to the new welfare reform proposals whereby lone parents who can work will be required to actively seek work once their youngest child is 12 or over from October 2008, 10 or over from 2009 or 7 or over from October 2010.
However, as far as we can see, there is no news on whether the government will take this part of the response to their consultation seriously.
.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Education Everywhere
...is the great title for a new telephone helpline service which is staffed by experienced home educators who can offer advice on all matters to do with educating everywhere.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Some Psychiatrists on School Refusal
From the Royal College of Psychiatrists "fact sheet": Mental Health and Growing Up, Third Edition. Children who do not go to school :
"You and your child's teachers should encourage your child to go back to school as quickly as possible. Keeping your child off school will make the problem worse. "
No, you are wrong or not by any means always right. Please don't pretend this is a fact sheet.
"If you sort out any underlying problems, like bullying or school work, many of the symptoms will improve."
And if you don't sort it out? Er, not sure. It seems, for wont of any other apparent solution, that children still do have to go back to school. Right, but let's not forget that there are a substantial number of child suicides every year that are specifically related to school problems. Is that not on your conscience, oh you royal grandees?
And just in case anyone is still tempted to think that this is likely to be the child's fault and not the school's, you don't have to go far to find people who were miserable, just miserable to the point of being suicidal in schools, and yet who have not had problems in the rest of their lives.
What is the matter with these eminences who pretend to so much knowledge? Why are children the only class of humans in this country, apart from prisoners, who are apparently compelled to spend huge amount of their time in a particular place that is not of their choosing? Why is being imprisoned in a place you hate, good training for the rest of your life? Why is leaving school and seeking an education elsewhere not evidence of perfectly adaptive and creative problem solving?
Get with it, the RCP.
"You and your child's teachers should encourage your child to go back to school as quickly as possible. Keeping your child off school will make the problem worse. "
No, you are wrong or not by any means always right. Please don't pretend this is a fact sheet.
"If you sort out any underlying problems, like bullying or school work, many of the symptoms will improve."
And if you don't sort it out? Er, not sure. It seems, for wont of any other apparent solution, that children still do have to go back to school. Right, but let's not forget that there are a substantial number of child suicides every year that are specifically related to school problems. Is that not on your conscience, oh you royal grandees?
And just in case anyone is still tempted to think that this is likely to be the child's fault and not the school's, you don't have to go far to find people who were miserable, just miserable to the point of being suicidal in schools, and yet who have not had problems in the rest of their lives.
What is the matter with these eminences who pretend to so much knowledge? Why are children the only class of humans in this country, apart from prisoners, who are apparently compelled to spend huge amount of their time in a particular place that is not of their choosing? Why is being imprisoned in a place you hate, good training for the rest of your life? Why is leaving school and seeking an education elsewhere not evidence of perfectly adaptive and creative problem solving?
Get with it, the RCP.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
ContactPoint Updates
Writer Dave Hill has set up a Facebook Group entitled "Dump ContactPoint (The "Children's Index" Database) with plenty of links to good articles. Spread the word among your Facebook friends.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Seven Things About Me
I was recently tagged by the Clues Academy with the "Seven Facts You Don't Already Know about Me" meme. This was a good thing in some ways. It was particularly good to hear that there are other atheist libertarians out there and that some of them are out and proud. May this particular meme continue to grow!
It wasn't such a good thing in that with a little introspection, I realised that regular readers of this blog would already know about the bits I regard as interesting and open to the public, that the really juicy bits would have to remain a matter for pillow talk only and that the rest was too boring to blog.
However, in the hope that there is just a little bit of slack in the above, here goes:
Seven facts that you may not already know about me:
1. My book of the year, without a doubt, is Richard Dawkins' God Delusion, the essence of which is conveyed very effectively in this TED Talk. Both of these give me the kick I need to stop faffing around and declare my atheism with pride. As with all good ideas that I truly treasure, the theories in the "God Delusion" carry explanatory force. They are not contradictory. They match the evidence. They fit with other good explanations and in Dawkins' scheme of things, you don't even have to declare the infallibility of your atheism in order to call yourself an atheist. So phew - atheism can be said to be compatible with the acknowledgment of the tentative nature of knowledge!
There are only two slightly substandard sentences and a couple of dodgy sentiments in this book, and you only notice them as the rest of it is so peerlessly written and so powerfully argued.
2. My moment of the year: attending the birth of someone so precious to me. Seeing her strength. Feeling so good that I didn't get to hold baby for about 12 hours, cos mum didn't see the need to let go of her. Seeing all the skills of proper parenting coming back home to rest. Realising that my own parenting skills are now good and proper in many regards. Feeling proud that we have, with the help of so many people and organisations, learned these skills.
3. Another huge moment: the birth of another miracle baby: a child born against so many odds it is even now, two months later, hard to believe she actually made it here. A beautiful soul who babbles away with amazing virtuosity.
4. I've spent a significant amount of this year being blown away by the things DH gets up to. Walking into a room where he had been working, and thinking "how on earth did you manage that!" Being so perennially grateful that he has such pronounced skills in so many areas where I have none at all, not least in being a huge risk taker. Bother, have just bitten a nail.
5. Our TV programme of the year? Scrubs. It is a huge common preference in our household. I think the children started to watch it since it works on so many levels. They started out enjoying the physical comedy, but they quickly started to derive a huge amount from the more complex parts, such as the insights into human nature and the frequent perfection of the plotting. You forgive the lapses into sentimentality, cos the characters are believably sentimental. Humans are, I guess - witness the two dodgy sentences in the "God Delusion" and of course there's this post...yup, I shan't forget walking on on Dd whilst she was practicing her dancing in front of the computer, courtesy of a master of fun dance, Dr Turkleton himself.
6. Talking of spilling effortlessly into the sentimental, I shall also never forget hearing Ds patiently and good humouredly repeating the phrase "splendid old chap", even if his version didn't exactly carry the precise timbre that could have been expected by his American interlocutors. I shall also not forget hearing him explaining for the umpteenth time that quite a few Brits, himself included, actually have very good, clean, straight teeth. Funnily enough, I think his education so international that I am surprised that people realise he is English at all.
On a related point, he talks and types and completes seemingly impossible tasks so quickly, that I wonder what education in the information age is doing to his mind.
7. I haven't done a sudoku puzzle in a month, though I still wake up in the middle of the night to do a Kakuro puzzle. I don't know which comes first. The insomnia or the Kakuro.
Ignoring the rules of the meme...tag yourself if you want to!
It wasn't such a good thing in that with a little introspection, I realised that regular readers of this blog would already know about the bits I regard as interesting and open to the public, that the really juicy bits would have to remain a matter for pillow talk only and that the rest was too boring to blog.
However, in the hope that there is just a little bit of slack in the above, here goes:
Seven facts that you may not already know about me:
1. My book of the year, without a doubt, is Richard Dawkins' God Delusion, the essence of which is conveyed very effectively in this TED Talk. Both of these give me the kick I need to stop faffing around and declare my atheism with pride. As with all good ideas that I truly treasure, the theories in the "God Delusion" carry explanatory force. They are not contradictory. They match the evidence. They fit with other good explanations and in Dawkins' scheme of things, you don't even have to declare the infallibility of your atheism in order to call yourself an atheist. So phew - atheism can be said to be compatible with the acknowledgment of the tentative nature of knowledge!
There are only two slightly substandard sentences and a couple of dodgy sentiments in this book, and you only notice them as the rest of it is so peerlessly written and so powerfully argued.
2. My moment of the year: attending the birth of someone so precious to me. Seeing her strength. Feeling so good that I didn't get to hold baby for about 12 hours, cos mum didn't see the need to let go of her. Seeing all the skills of proper parenting coming back home to rest. Realising that my own parenting skills are now good and proper in many regards. Feeling proud that we have, with the help of so many people and organisations, learned these skills.
3. Another huge moment: the birth of another miracle baby: a child born against so many odds it is even now, two months later, hard to believe she actually made it here. A beautiful soul who babbles away with amazing virtuosity.
4. I've spent a significant amount of this year being blown away by the things DH gets up to. Walking into a room where he had been working, and thinking "how on earth did you manage that!" Being so perennially grateful that he has such pronounced skills in so many areas where I have none at all, not least in being a huge risk taker. Bother, have just bitten a nail.
5. Our TV programme of the year? Scrubs. It is a huge common preference in our household. I think the children started to watch it since it works on so many levels. They started out enjoying the physical comedy, but they quickly started to derive a huge amount from the more complex parts, such as the insights into human nature and the frequent perfection of the plotting. You forgive the lapses into sentimentality, cos the characters are believably sentimental. Humans are, I guess - witness the two dodgy sentences in the "God Delusion" and of course there's this post...yup, I shan't forget walking on on Dd whilst she was practicing her dancing in front of the computer, courtesy of a master of fun dance, Dr Turkleton himself.
6. Talking of spilling effortlessly into the sentimental, I shall also never forget hearing Ds patiently and good humouredly repeating the phrase "splendid old chap", even if his version didn't exactly carry the precise timbre that could have been expected by his American interlocutors. I shall also not forget hearing him explaining for the umpteenth time that quite a few Brits, himself included, actually have very good, clean, straight teeth. Funnily enough, I think his education so international that I am surprised that people realise he is English at all.
On a related point, he talks and types and completes seemingly impossible tasks so quickly, that I wonder what education in the information age is doing to his mind.
7. I haven't done a sudoku puzzle in a month, though I still wake up in the middle of the night to do a Kakuro puzzle. I don't know which comes first. The insomnia or the Kakuro.
Ignoring the rules of the meme...tag yourself if you want to!
Friday, December 07, 2007
Calls for the Scrapping of ContactPoint
...are growing louder by the day. Liberty and an alliance of independent school heads are now in on the job.
If you haven't done so already, the petition against the establishment of the database could do with your signature. Blogdial explains strongly and succinctly why you should sign.
If you haven't done so already, the petition against the establishment of the database could do with your signature. Blogdial explains strongly and succinctly why you should sign.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
The Abusive State
As previously noted, one of the most worrying areas of concern in the new Elective Home Education Guidelines is that they fail to make it sufficiently clear that there must be a good reason to suspect a significant degree of harm or risk of harm to a child before social workers have a right (and a duty) to come knocking on people's doors.
The argument from the DCSF seems to be that because home educated children are not necessarily seen regularly by statutory services, that they are therefore necessarily at risk. Indeed this is precisely the argument that a LA seem to have used very recently when they demanded to see a home educating family not very far away from us. There was no reason to suspect that this home educating family were at risk other than that they hadn't been seen by any statutory services recently. The social workers came a-visiting, but left agreeing that there was no case to pursue. Sadly this satisfactory outcome was only achieved after the family had had to deal with the stress of the intrusion, make arrangements for a Home Educating advocate to attend the meeting, make a sound case for themselves, ask whether it was strictly necessary for the social workers to go digging in their children's medical records and resist the calls for them to undertake a Common Assessment.
Is this the future for home educating families everywhere in England? It would seem a little unfair when you consider that the only statutory service that school children necessarily come across is their school. The idea here is presumably that teachers will reliably be able to spot abuse. Yet we hear from a survey conducted by CBBC's Newsround that:
"In a crisis, 76% would turn first to their mother for help, 11% would choose their father and 2% would go to a teacher".
Perhaps social work departments shouldn't just be picking on HE families. Perhaps they should go knocking on the doors of every family in England.
Conversely, it would be interesting to know if the aforementioned HE family has grounds for complaint, either directly via the local authority complaints procedure, or via the Local Government Ombudsman.
The argument from the DCSF seems to be that because home educated children are not necessarily seen regularly by statutory services, that they are therefore necessarily at risk. Indeed this is precisely the argument that a LA seem to have used very recently when they demanded to see a home educating family not very far away from us. There was no reason to suspect that this home educating family were at risk other than that they hadn't been seen by any statutory services recently. The social workers came a-visiting, but left agreeing that there was no case to pursue. Sadly this satisfactory outcome was only achieved after the family had had to deal with the stress of the intrusion, make arrangements for a Home Educating advocate to attend the meeting, make a sound case for themselves, ask whether it was strictly necessary for the social workers to go digging in their children's medical records and resist the calls for them to undertake a Common Assessment.
Is this the future for home educating families everywhere in England? It would seem a little unfair when you consider that the only statutory service that school children necessarily come across is their school. The idea here is presumably that teachers will reliably be able to spot abuse. Yet we hear from a survey conducted by CBBC's Newsround that:
"In a crisis, 76% would turn first to their mother for help, 11% would choose their father and 2% would go to a teacher".
Perhaps social work departments shouldn't just be picking on HE families. Perhaps they should go knocking on the doors of every family in England.
Conversely, it would be interesting to know if the aforementioned HE family has grounds for complaint, either directly via the local authority complaints procedure, or via the Local Government Ombudsman.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
City Councils Still Wanting to Act as Parents
In an otherwise inspiring article about home education in The Western Daily Press, we sadly find Bristol City Council still wittering on:
"The Department for Education and Skills has been discussing how to regulate home education with several groups representing home educators and with local authorities. Bristol City Council welcomed the idea of more guidelines to protect children who are educated at home. A spokesman said: "Parents who educate their children at home are subject to almost no regulations."The council welcomes any new measures which work in the interest of Bristol children."
Oh for goodness sake, catch up, Bristol CC. Firstly, it is not the DfES anymore. It has been renamed the Department for Children, Schools and Families since 28th June 2007.
Secondly, most home education groups have been discussing why regulation of home educators is damaging rather than how to regulate us.
Thirdly, the new guidelines are out. Your article was already a day late because it would otherwise be clear to you that guidelines haven't changed anything by way of enabling the "state to protect children from their parents. "
Fourthly, guidelines cannot change the law and the law of the land is clear: education is the responsibility of the parent, protecting a child from harm is the responsibility of the parent, and social workers don't have a right to doorstep us unless there is reasonable cause to suspect a significant degree of harm or risk of harm to the child. The state cannot and should not try to act in loco parentis, for it will be screwed in so many ways if it does. This on top of doing endless damage to families.
Fifthly, (does anyone else do lists when cross?), the new guidelines make it quite clear that the government think that the current level of legislation surrounding this area is perfectly adequate to the task of protecting children.
Sixthly, I personally have already felt that worrying a little less about what LAs may get up to has made a significant difference for the better in our home education experience.
ie: it would be nice if the LAs would stop moaning, realise the limits of their responsibilities, that they don't have certain duties and that they are therefore not going to be held liable. They could also realise that their jobs are at times necessarily difficult, and that they should just got on with it, for in doing so, they would make life significantly better for large numbers of families.
"The Department for Education and Skills has been discussing how to regulate home education with several groups representing home educators and with local authorities. Bristol City Council welcomed the idea of more guidelines to protect children who are educated at home. A spokesman said: "Parents who educate their children at home are subject to almost no regulations."The council welcomes any new measures which work in the interest of Bristol children."
Oh for goodness sake, catch up, Bristol CC. Firstly, it is not the DfES anymore. It has been renamed the Department for Children, Schools and Families since 28th June 2007.
Secondly, most home education groups have been discussing why regulation of home educators is damaging rather than how to regulate us.
Thirdly, the new guidelines are out. Your article was already a day late because it would otherwise be clear to you that guidelines haven't changed anything by way of enabling the "state to protect children from their parents. "
Fourthly, guidelines cannot change the law and the law of the land is clear: education is the responsibility of the parent, protecting a child from harm is the responsibility of the parent, and social workers don't have a right to doorstep us unless there is reasonable cause to suspect a significant degree of harm or risk of harm to the child. The state cannot and should not try to act in loco parentis, for it will be screwed in so many ways if it does. This on top of doing endless damage to families.
Fifthly, (does anyone else do lists when cross?), the new guidelines make it quite clear that the government think that the current level of legislation surrounding this area is perfectly adequate to the task of protecting children.
Sixthly, I personally have already felt that worrying a little less about what LAs may get up to has made a significant difference for the better in our home education experience.
ie: it would be nice if the LAs would stop moaning, realise the limits of their responsibilities, that they don't have certain duties and that they are therefore not going to be held liable. They could also realise that their jobs are at times necessarily difficult, and that they should just got on with it, for in doing so, they would make life significantly better for large numbers of families.
Friday, November 30, 2007
The Guidelines - The Nitty Gritty
After reading what appear to be the finalised Elective Home Education Guidelines for England yesterday afternoon, the children and I went about home education with lighter hearts, for the guidelines appear to be almost as good as we could reasonably expect. They at least make it seem as if we will be able to continue with our chosen form of education, even if they haven't entirely eradicated the fear that some irrational LA bod is lurking out there who will try to take it all away from us. For whilst the guidelines do indeed appear to remain within the law, (for which I think we should thank the hundreds of home educating individuals and groups who responded to the DCSF consultation, since I suspect that this powerful rejoinder compelled the DCSF to listen to their lawyers), they are still only guidelines. Local authority workers may push them to legal limits wherever they find some ambiguity or may even ignore them completely.
On the plus side, there is much to celebrate and much that home educators may use in our dealings with LAs. Bold type seems to be employed as a means of shouting at the LAs, many of whom had so clearly demonstrated that they'd forgotten their statutory and ethical limits in their consultation responses.
"The purpose of these guidelines is to support local authorities in carrying out their statutory responsibilities. "
"The responsibility for a child's education rests with their parents."
"Local authorities shall intervene if it appears that parents are not providing a suitable education."
Further on the plus side, it is made quite clear that
"Local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis";
"Where a parent elects not to allow access to their home or their child, this does not of itself constitute a ground for concern about the education provision being made";
Better still, the variety of educational provision is explicitly acknowledged as acceptable.
"2.5.... Local authorities should recognise that there are many approaches to education provision, not just a "school at home" model. What is suitable for one child will not be for another, but all children should be involved in a learning process."
and:
"3.14 It is important to recognise that there are many, equally valid, approaches to educational provision. Local authorities should, therefore, consider a wide range of information from home educating parents, in a range of formats. The information may be in the form of specific examples of learning e.g. pictures/paintings/models, diaries of educational activity, projects, assessments, samples of work, books, educational visits etc".
However, there are some areas which are ambiguous enough to allow abusive Local Authorities to continue with abusive practices. Particularly notably:
"2.15 As outlined above, local authorities have general duties to make arrangments to safeguard and promote the welfare of children (section 175 Education Act 2002 in relation to their function as a LA and for other functions in sections 10 and 11 of the Children Act 2004). These powers allow local authorities to insist on seeing children in order to enquire about their welfare where there are grounds for concern. (Sections 17 and 47 of the Children Act 1989)."
Hang on a mo there - given that we suspect that the LAs either don't know the law or choose to ignore it, and also appear to hope that home educators don't know it either, it looks as if the guidelines should have clarified that there have to be specific conditions before a local authority has a duty to investigate. Section 47 of the Children Act 1989 states that a child who is worthy of investigation must be:
(i) the subject of an emergency protection order; or
(ii)in police protection;
or that there must be
(b) reasonable cause to suspect that a child who lives, or is found, in their area is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm.
It would have been helpful if this section had been included in the guidelines for it will not be sufficient for LAs simply to have vague concerns about low level problems. There must be reasonable cause to suspect a significant degree of harm. Home Educators everywhere will have to know their law and be reading it back to any doorstepping social workers.
Gill has a further take on the guidelines.
On the plus side, there is much to celebrate and much that home educators may use in our dealings with LAs. Bold type seems to be employed as a means of shouting at the LAs, many of whom had so clearly demonstrated that they'd forgotten their statutory and ethical limits in their consultation responses.
"The purpose of these guidelines is to support local authorities in carrying out their statutory responsibilities. "
"The responsibility for a child's education rests with their parents."
"Local authorities shall intervene if it appears that parents are not providing a suitable education."
Further on the plus side, it is made quite clear that
"Local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis";
"Where a parent elects not to allow access to their home or their child, this does not of itself constitute a ground for concern about the education provision being made";
Better still, the variety of educational provision is explicitly acknowledged as acceptable.
"2.5.... Local authorities should recognise that there are many approaches to education provision, not just a "school at home" model. What is suitable for one child will not be for another, but all children should be involved in a learning process."
and:
"3.14 It is important to recognise that there are many, equally valid, approaches to educational provision. Local authorities should, therefore, consider a wide range of information from home educating parents, in a range of formats. The information may be in the form of specific examples of learning e.g. pictures/paintings/models, diaries of educational activity, projects, assessments, samples of work, books, educational visits etc".
However, there are some areas which are ambiguous enough to allow abusive Local Authorities to continue with abusive practices. Particularly notably:
"2.15 As outlined above, local authorities have general duties to make arrangments to safeguard and promote the welfare of children (section 175 Education Act 2002 in relation to their function as a LA and for other functions in sections 10 and 11 of the Children Act 2004). These powers allow local authorities to insist on seeing children in order to enquire about their welfare where there are grounds for concern. (Sections 17 and 47 of the Children Act 1989)."
Hang on a mo there - given that we suspect that the LAs either don't know the law or choose to ignore it, and also appear to hope that home educators don't know it either, it looks as if the guidelines should have clarified that there have to be specific conditions before a local authority has a duty to investigate. Section 47 of the Children Act 1989 states that a child who is worthy of investigation must be:
(i) the subject of an emergency protection order; or
(ii)in police protection;
or that there must be
(b) reasonable cause to suspect that a child who lives, or is found, in their area is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm.
It would have been helpful if this section had been included in the guidelines for it will not be sufficient for LAs simply to have vague concerns about low level problems. There must be reasonable cause to suspect a significant degree of harm. Home Educators everywhere will have to know their law and be reading it back to any doorstepping social workers.
Gill has a further take on the guidelines.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Elective Home Education Consultation Results
From Cruel at School
Perhaps Dr. Tanya (see post below) has been persuaded by items such as this one from Cruel at School.
Respect to Bev and Tiah!
Respect to Bev and Tiah!
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Change of Heart?
Well, blow me down! Psychologist Tanya Byron, with a previous record for rather rigid behaviorist techniques, recommends home education as a possible solution for bullying in school.
"You can take your daughter out of school and give her a break until the school sorts things out (get support from your GP who can also provide letters about your child’s stress), or you can move her to another school. You have the right to educate her at home and you can set the curriculum with the help of organisations such as education-otherwise.org. "
Wonder how that all fits together then.
"You can take your daughter out of school and give her a break until the school sorts things out (get support from your GP who can also provide letters about your child’s stress), or you can move her to another school. You have the right to educate her at home and you can set the curriculum with the help of organisations such as education-otherwise.org. "
Wonder how that all fits together then.
Delays for the Children's Database.
Feeling optimistic this am. Perhaps this represents the beginning of the end for ContactPoint.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Looking for Clues
...as to how the Elective Home Education consultation results and guidance will pan out, we have this which comes by way of a response to the e-petition:
"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ensure that all parents are informed of their legal right to home educate their Children."
"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ensure that all parents are informed of their legal right to home educate their Children."
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Children's Database Petition
In the light of the recent database security fiasco and prompted by posts such as this one by ARCH, it might be worth checking that you have indeed signed the petition to abandon plans to create a children's database (aka: Information Sharing Index and ContactPoint). (Deadline to sign: 20th December).
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Idiot Policy
Good grief. Have not blogged this story for a number of days, as have been waiting to feel sufficiently calm to comment appropriately. Ahem, breathing deeply....
It seems that whilst the struggle in the Spectator and other arenas continues between the paternalistic and the libertarian strands that present an on-going tension in Conservative politics, it is clear from the news that Mr Cameron thinks that all children should be reading by the time they are six, that education remains firmly within the paternalistic fold.
What are they thinking? Apparently only those children with serious learning difficulties will be exempted from this target. Duhhhhhh...(sorry, be calm....another deep breath.) The Tories need to know that this could well cause an awful lot more children to be labelled with serious learning difficulties when they actually have nothing of the sort. They need to know that many perfectly normal children are simply not neurologically ready to read at six. Phonics will be neither here nor there to these children. Yet give their brains a chance to mature, and they learn to read incredibly quickly - within the space of months. So instead of labouring away for years to get them to a certain standard of reading, as teachers do in schools, you wait till children are reading ready, and they then can do it in a TINY NUMBER OF HOURS.
Over and over again I have actually witnessed this for myself. It is the case that many children in the HE community who have no ostensible learning difficulties of any sort whatsoever, don't learn to read until they are 7, 8 or even much older and yet once they've started, are reading incredibly efficiently within a very short space of time. And just in case you are wondering, since their learning isn't predicated upon reading - yes, it is true - information can arrive in other ways, these children don't fall behind.
The Observer article mentions the fact that there are plenty of highly successful people who didn't learn to read until later than is currently expected:
"it was revealed that Zenna Atkins, now chair of the schools inspection authority Ofsted, was illiterate at the age of 11 and 'couldn't read the back of a cornflake packet's instructions'. "
Again I know this to be perfectly likely. A very successful businessman with accountancy credentials recently told me that he would never have got into grammar school at 11, his reading and writing were so poor. He was only grateful that there used to be a second entry exam at age 13. I wonder how profitable it would have been to have labelled this man a failure at a young age.
Actually, there are so many examples of successful people out there who did not learn to read at the required times, that it could almost make you wonder if there are some problems with early reading. Perhaps it means that one doesn't develop a satisfactory auditory memory, or it could alter one's eyesight for the worse, as is currently thought to be the case in the some Far Eastern countries, where children do close work from a very young age, and up to three quarters of them now need glasses.
Oh well, even if the Conservative party cannot make the leap towards leaving it up to the learner, at least James Bartholomew, (of Spectator fame) has made the connection between home education and educational freedom.
It seems that whilst the struggle in the Spectator and other arenas continues between the paternalistic and the libertarian strands that present an on-going tension in Conservative politics, it is clear from the news that Mr Cameron thinks that all children should be reading by the time they are six, that education remains firmly within the paternalistic fold.
What are they thinking? Apparently only those children with serious learning difficulties will be exempted from this target. Duhhhhhh...(sorry, be calm....another deep breath.) The Tories need to know that this could well cause an awful lot more children to be labelled with serious learning difficulties when they actually have nothing of the sort. They need to know that many perfectly normal children are simply not neurologically ready to read at six. Phonics will be neither here nor there to these children. Yet give their brains a chance to mature, and they learn to read incredibly quickly - within the space of months. So instead of labouring away for years to get them to a certain standard of reading, as teachers do in schools, you wait till children are reading ready, and they then can do it in a TINY NUMBER OF HOURS.
Over and over again I have actually witnessed this for myself. It is the case that many children in the HE community who have no ostensible learning difficulties of any sort whatsoever, don't learn to read until they are 7, 8 or even much older and yet once they've started, are reading incredibly efficiently within a very short space of time. And just in case you are wondering, since their learning isn't predicated upon reading - yes, it is true - information can arrive in other ways, these children don't fall behind.
The Observer article mentions the fact that there are plenty of highly successful people who didn't learn to read until later than is currently expected:
"it was revealed that Zenna Atkins, now chair of the schools inspection authority Ofsted, was illiterate at the age of 11 and 'couldn't read the back of a cornflake packet's instructions'. "
Again I know this to be perfectly likely. A very successful businessman with accountancy credentials recently told me that he would never have got into grammar school at 11, his reading and writing were so poor. He was only grateful that there used to be a second entry exam at age 13. I wonder how profitable it would have been to have labelled this man a failure at a young age.
Actually, there are so many examples of successful people out there who did not learn to read at the required times, that it could almost make you wonder if there are some problems with early reading. Perhaps it means that one doesn't develop a satisfactory auditory memory, or it could alter one's eyesight for the worse, as is currently thought to be the case in the some Far Eastern countries, where children do close work from a very young age, and up to three quarters of them now need glasses.
Oh well, even if the Conservative party cannot make the leap towards leaving it up to the learner, at least James Bartholomew, (of Spectator fame) has made the connection between home education and educational freedom.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Answering the Local Authority Case
In recent weeks, the HE community has had sight of a number of responses to the consultation on Elective Home Education Guidelines from LAs and Safeguarding Children's Boards which have had the effect of producing a collective exasperated sigh, then a reality-seeking headshake. Eeeeuuuughhhhh, bwbwbwwbbwww.
Yup, guess what: most of these responses set out with the premise that there are some terrible child abuse situations in the HE community that the local authorities know about and that therefore they should be monitoring all HEors to make sure that this isn't happening.
Ho hum...right oh. In a bid to answer the charges laid at the HE door, it looked as if we needed to know just a little bit more about at least some of these cases that the LAs supposedly know about. Interestingly, it has proved very, very difficult to ascertain whether these cases are in many instances genuine. A home educator of admirable tenacity issued a Freedom of Information request to a group of professionals with a safeguarding remit who made a response to the EHE consultation containing some vague allegations, from which it emerged that the person who wrote the response didn't actually have the details of the cases to which it referred. There is worse to come: this same response was offered up and used as a basis for responses from many other LAs. In other words, when LAs made allegations about problem HE families, they may not actually have any direct experience of such cases.
All that aside, the thing is that in all the problem cases where more details were given, it was transparently clear that LAs already do have perfectly sufficient powers to act and should not therefore, be needing to call upon the DCSF for more powers to intervene in HEors lives on this basis alone.
Of course, despite what they may be saying in their responses, the problem cases they know about aren't the real issue for the LAs. The real point of difficulty is when an HE family provides them with a perfectly acceptable philosophy of education and a description of work done: LAs are left wondering about whether it is safe to leave such a family alone. Could this family actually be abusing their children and superficially be managing to disguise it very well?
There are however, perfectly satisfactory answers to this perceived problem. The first, of course, is that HE families do not live in a vacuum. If these families know the HE community and if their problems are severe, almost inevitably the HE community can't deal with it, and one way or another someone refers this family to the services, faux de mieux. If the families aren't known to other HEors, other family members, neighbours, or the school from which they have de-regged, refer them to SS. In fact in many HEors experience, the bar for referral to SS is set ridiculously low: many more HEors get referred to SS than is necessary.
This still leaves the families that somehow have managed to live in a vacuum, hiding their children away under the stairs for years at a time. I think the chances of such a family managing to do this are vanishingly small. The chances of such a family not being known to other family members or neighbours is vanishingly small. The chances of them being able to produce an adequate ed. phil are small. (Most HEors who produce a satisfactory ed. phil are in contact with other HEors, and therefore, if they have serious problems, the HE community is likely to know about it.) Doctors with their new database are likely to get alerts when a child is not being vaccinated and hasn't visited them about this and the new ContactPoint (children's database) should be doing something to detect this sort of a problem.
If we really are going to try to build a properly risk averse society, we should not be spending huge amounts of time, effort and money preventing problems that are very unlikely to happen, we would be far better off putting all our efforts into preparing for something that is actually likely to happen, like building flood defences. We should also be focusing on coping with something that we already know is actually happening, such as dealing with the abused children we already know about. LAs will be wasting an awful lot of public money if they insist on looking through the whole of the HE haystack looking for that needle of a family. It would be far more efficient to let the community continue to work to produce the evidence.
Of course, it isn't all about welfare concerns. We also have to deal with the other myth that seems to be doing the rounds following on from a particular LA HE inspector regularly repeating the same refrain that 25% of HEors are not educating their children properly.
Of course, the knee-jerk reaction - impossible to resist...tu quoque. Since when were 75 % of school children properly educated? But actually the more mature response is that this particular HE inspector is very, very unlikely to have a clue what she is talking about.
Many HEing families don't go down a conventional school route. They don't emulate school at home. They don't sit down with workbooks and force their children through exams they don't want to take and yet, despite all this, their children are educated entirely appropriately, according to their age, ability and aptitude. The HE community has now seen way too many individuals who have been autonomously HEd, go right through and end up with all the life skills and college courses they could possibly need, not to know that this is the case. The repeated failure of many LA HE inspectors to understand this is precisely why the HE community is making this whole stand in the first place.
Yup, guess what: most of these responses set out with the premise that there are some terrible child abuse situations in the HE community that the local authorities know about and that therefore they should be monitoring all HEors to make sure that this isn't happening.
Ho hum...right oh. In a bid to answer the charges laid at the HE door, it looked as if we needed to know just a little bit more about at least some of these cases that the LAs supposedly know about. Interestingly, it has proved very, very difficult to ascertain whether these cases are in many instances genuine. A home educator of admirable tenacity issued a Freedom of Information request to a group of professionals with a safeguarding remit who made a response to the EHE consultation containing some vague allegations, from which it emerged that the person who wrote the response didn't actually have the details of the cases to which it referred. There is worse to come: this same response was offered up and used as a basis for responses from many other LAs. In other words, when LAs made allegations about problem HE families, they may not actually have any direct experience of such cases.
All that aside, the thing is that in all the problem cases where more details were given, it was transparently clear that LAs already do have perfectly sufficient powers to act and should not therefore, be needing to call upon the DCSF for more powers to intervene in HEors lives on this basis alone.
Of course, despite what they may be saying in their responses, the problem cases they know about aren't the real issue for the LAs. The real point of difficulty is when an HE family provides them with a perfectly acceptable philosophy of education and a description of work done: LAs are left wondering about whether it is safe to leave such a family alone. Could this family actually be abusing their children and superficially be managing to disguise it very well?
There are however, perfectly satisfactory answers to this perceived problem. The first, of course, is that HE families do not live in a vacuum. If these families know the HE community and if their problems are severe, almost inevitably the HE community can't deal with it, and one way or another someone refers this family to the services, faux de mieux. If the families aren't known to other HEors, other family members, neighbours, or the school from which they have de-regged, refer them to SS. In fact in many HEors experience, the bar for referral to SS is set ridiculously low: many more HEors get referred to SS than is necessary.
This still leaves the families that somehow have managed to live in a vacuum, hiding their children away under the stairs for years at a time. I think the chances of such a family managing to do this are vanishingly small. The chances of such a family not being known to other family members or neighbours is vanishingly small. The chances of them being able to produce an adequate ed. phil are small. (Most HEors who produce a satisfactory ed. phil are in contact with other HEors, and therefore, if they have serious problems, the HE community is likely to know about it.) Doctors with their new database are likely to get alerts when a child is not being vaccinated and hasn't visited them about this and the new ContactPoint (children's database) should be doing something to detect this sort of a problem.
If we really are going to try to build a properly risk averse society, we should not be spending huge amounts of time, effort and money preventing problems that are very unlikely to happen, we would be far better off putting all our efforts into preparing for something that is actually likely to happen, like building flood defences. We should also be focusing on coping with something that we already know is actually happening, such as dealing with the abused children we already know about. LAs will be wasting an awful lot of public money if they insist on looking through the whole of the HE haystack looking for that needle of a family. It would be far more efficient to let the community continue to work to produce the evidence.
Of course, it isn't all about welfare concerns. We also have to deal with the other myth that seems to be doing the rounds following on from a particular LA HE inspector regularly repeating the same refrain that 25% of HEors are not educating their children properly.
Of course, the knee-jerk reaction - impossible to resist...tu quoque. Since when were 75 % of school children properly educated? But actually the more mature response is that this particular HE inspector is very, very unlikely to have a clue what she is talking about.
Many HEing families don't go down a conventional school route. They don't emulate school at home. They don't sit down with workbooks and force their children through exams they don't want to take and yet, despite all this, their children are educated entirely appropriately, according to their age, ability and aptitude. The HE community has now seen way too many individuals who have been autonomously HEd, go right through and end up with all the life skills and college courses they could possibly need, not to know that this is the case. The repeated failure of many LA HE inspectors to understand this is precisely why the HE community is making this whole stand in the first place.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Home Education Post 16
Education Otherwise have secured the necessary assurances in the face of the raising of the age of compulsory education and training to 18.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Site of the Day
Free Rice. Donate rice and increase your vocabulary. Is sensitive to skill level.
New fav word: "concinnity".
New fav word: "concinnity".
Saturday, October 27, 2007
No Answer to Privacy Problems
Baroness Walmsley in a recent debate in the House of Lords raised a number of pertinent points with regard to the privacy of children and families in the face of the establishment of the Contactpoint and eCAF databases. With regard to Contactpoint, she asked:
"Is the Minister aware that young people are very anxious about this database and believe that their privacy is being interfered with? I was at a meeting of young people yesterday; it is run by the all-party group and BT and is called Seen and Heard. One of the main issues raised was that, although those who know about the database are very concerned about it, many young people have no idea what it is all about. What are the Government going to do about that? One young person also told me that her boyfriend visited a school where the database was live and was shown it. She was concerned that security was very relaxed. It is vital that this system is available only to authorised users."
So much for all those government reassurances about security then and so much for the main stakeholders being happy about all this. Seems as if things are not panning out quite as the government would wish in this regard.
She raises another consequence of the database:
"Experience demonstrates that families seeking to keep under the radar will often not contact specialist services..."
Sadly her implied solution is to ensure that generic services do supply accurate information for ContactPoint , thereby rendering any attempt to maintain family privacy null and void, particularly since it is easy to imagine that families who do try to hide will probably find themselves on the eCAF database with every intimate corner of their lives on record and this simply for making the error of trying to keep below the radar.
She says of the eCAF database:
"I move seamlessly to my third concern—the new electronic common assessment framework. It is extraordinary that throughout the whole debate on the regulations for ContactPoint, the Government did not once mention their intention to create a second, parallel, national electronic database containing sensitive assessments of children seeking services. All our concerns about the security of ContactPoint are amplified in relation to eCAF. It is simply not possible to keep such a large database secure. It will have thousands of users, quite conceivably as many as ContactPoint. While arguments about the potential insecurity of ContactPoint have been countered with assertions from the Government that it will contain only minimal information, the same cannot be said about eCAF. It will contain detailed personal information about children seeking services and clear indications of their vulnerability. The Government have insisted that eCAF is a consent-based process, but my informants, Action on Rights for Children, have been contacted by several practitioners involved in the pilots, who tell them that consent to share eCAFs is not being sought and that families are being told that they will not be able to access services unless they agree to an eCAF. That is disgraceful."
Quite right. And what did Lord Adonis have to say by way of an answer?
This is what ARCH Blog had to say on the subject:
"And now here comes the fog: Lord Adonis replied by talking at length about Contactpoint (the other national database, formerly known as the Infomation Sharing Index, that acts as glorified directory of all children). He talked for so long, answering questions that hadn’t been asked, that - oh, whoops:
"I am almost out of time, so I will have to respond to many of the other points in writing. A number of concerns have been raised about eCAF, to which I will also respond in writing, as I think that some alarmism has been generated.
This tactic of defaulting to Contactpoint whenever awkward questions arise about any of the other databases must have been decided centrally. It’s a straight repeat of our exchange with Beverley Hughes in the Telegraph letters page shortly after publication of the FIPR report to the ICO on children’s databases. "
"Is the Minister aware that young people are very anxious about this database and believe that their privacy is being interfered with? I was at a meeting of young people yesterday; it is run by the all-party group and BT and is called Seen and Heard. One of the main issues raised was that, although those who know about the database are very concerned about it, many young people have no idea what it is all about. What are the Government going to do about that? One young person also told me that her boyfriend visited a school where the database was live and was shown it. She was concerned that security was very relaxed. It is vital that this system is available only to authorised users."
So much for all those government reassurances about security then and so much for the main stakeholders being happy about all this. Seems as if things are not panning out quite as the government would wish in this regard.
She raises another consequence of the database:
"Experience demonstrates that families seeking to keep under the radar will often not contact specialist services..."
Sadly her implied solution is to ensure that generic services do supply accurate information for ContactPoint , thereby rendering any attempt to maintain family privacy null and void, particularly since it is easy to imagine that families who do try to hide will probably find themselves on the eCAF database with every intimate corner of their lives on record and this simply for making the error of trying to keep below the radar.
She says of the eCAF database:
"I move seamlessly to my third concern—the new electronic common assessment framework. It is extraordinary that throughout the whole debate on the regulations for ContactPoint, the Government did not once mention their intention to create a second, parallel, national electronic database containing sensitive assessments of children seeking services. All our concerns about the security of ContactPoint are amplified in relation to eCAF. It is simply not possible to keep such a large database secure. It will have thousands of users, quite conceivably as many as ContactPoint. While arguments about the potential insecurity of ContactPoint have been countered with assertions from the Government that it will contain only minimal information, the same cannot be said about eCAF. It will contain detailed personal information about children seeking services and clear indications of their vulnerability. The Government have insisted that eCAF is a consent-based process, but my informants, Action on Rights for Children, have been contacted by several practitioners involved in the pilots, who tell them that consent to share eCAFs is not being sought and that families are being told that they will not be able to access services unless they agree to an eCAF. That is disgraceful."
Quite right. And what did Lord Adonis have to say by way of an answer?
This is what ARCH Blog had to say on the subject:
"And now here comes the fog: Lord Adonis replied by talking at length about Contactpoint (the other national database, formerly known as the Infomation Sharing Index, that acts as glorified directory of all children). He talked for so long, answering questions that hadn’t been asked, that - oh, whoops:
"I am almost out of time, so I will have to respond to many of the other points in writing. A number of concerns have been raised about eCAF, to which I will also respond in writing, as I think that some alarmism has been generated.
This tactic of defaulting to Contactpoint whenever awkward questions arise about any of the other databases must have been decided centrally. It’s a straight repeat of our exchange with Beverley Hughes in the Telegraph letters page shortly after publication of the FIPR report to the ICO on children’s databases. "
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Consultation Results Delayed
As if the nerves weren't frayed enough already, from the DCSF:
"As you know the consultation on home education guidelines closed on 31 July. Although we had aimed to publish a summary of the consultation results and guidelines this week, due to the large number of responses we received, this is now scheduled to take place by the end of next month. (That's end of November presumably). The consultation results will be published on the Department's e-consultation website http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for providing us with valuable feedback on the guidelines. "
"As you know the consultation on home education guidelines closed on 31 July. Although we had aimed to publish a summary of the consultation results and guidelines this week, due to the large number of responses we received, this is now scheduled to take place by the end of next month. (That's end of November presumably). The consultation results will be published on the Department's e-consultation website http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for providing us with valuable feedback on the guidelines. "
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Problems for Legislators with Definition of Education
Further on the 2006 DfES consultation on a proposal to provide further guidance as to what constitutes full time education in independent schools to which many home educators responded, we have a follow-up consultation which, amongst some other sources of contention and alarm, does little to solve the original problem of how one ascertains who is the main provider of an education.
The problem with the first consultation was that if the phrase "main provider of education" is to mean what it apparently says, then presumably a private pupil who accumulates more theories from his parents than from his school will be counted as home educated and will therefore be excluded from regulations that apply to private schools. Of course, quite how the state proposed to make such an assessment was utterly baffling and demonstrated very neatly the poor epistemology that underpins much of the legislation on education.
However, for the purposes of this next consultation, the DCSF have changed the phrase from "main provider" to "main organiser" of education, presumably hoping to shift the balance from the need to demonstrate from whence the majority of a child's theories have been acquired, to an apparently more quantifiable task of working out who plans and implements the majority of the education of the child. It doesn't work though, since you still have to answer the impossible question of from whence the child acquires the greater number of his theories since this is the only way to ascertain who (or what) is the real main organiser of his education.
However, it looks as if we will be required to suspend disbelief in this regard since the DCSF
"have concluded that the best approach is to adjust the definition of an independent school so as to specify that an independent school is the main organiser of a programme of education for children of compulsory school age, unless provision is excluded through regulations."
and
"We would propose that regulations exclude:
schools maintained by a local authority;
non-maintained special schools;
temporary provision e.g. summer schools;
any institutions providing less than 12.5 hours per week tuition (primary) and 15 hours (secondary) for individual children;
further education colleges;
hospital schools;
home tutorial services organised by a local authority;
education supervised or delivered by parents"
Disbelief suspended as above, the confusion here concerns the last point, ie: "education supervised or delivered by parents", since under Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act, the education of all children is meant to be supervised by parents which would presumably therefore mean that none of the regulations for independent schools would apply anywhere. On the other hand, home educators will fight tooth and nail to stop this phrase from being changed because it would rule out the use of tutors for more than the stipulated hours (in red).
The problem might be superficially solved (ie: putting aside the outstanding problem of quantification of education) to ask that both individual private tutors teaching on domestic premises and informal co-operatives without a fixed meeting place be excluded from the requirement to register.
Home educators might do well to respond to this further consultation to make these points.
The problem with the first consultation was that if the phrase "main provider of education" is to mean what it apparently says, then presumably a private pupil who accumulates more theories from his parents than from his school will be counted as home educated and will therefore be excluded from regulations that apply to private schools. Of course, quite how the state proposed to make such an assessment was utterly baffling and demonstrated very neatly the poor epistemology that underpins much of the legislation on education.
However, for the purposes of this next consultation, the DCSF have changed the phrase from "main provider" to "main organiser" of education, presumably hoping to shift the balance from the need to demonstrate from whence the majority of a child's theories have been acquired, to an apparently more quantifiable task of working out who plans and implements the majority of the education of the child. It doesn't work though, since you still have to answer the impossible question of from whence the child acquires the greater number of his theories since this is the only way to ascertain who (or what) is the real main organiser of his education.
However, it looks as if we will be required to suspend disbelief in this regard since the DCSF
"have concluded that the best approach is to adjust the definition of an independent school so as to specify that an independent school is the main organiser of a programme of education for children of compulsory school age, unless provision is excluded through regulations."
and
"We would propose that regulations exclude:
schools maintained by a local authority;
non-maintained special schools;
temporary provision e.g. summer schools;
any institutions providing less than 12.5 hours per week tuition (primary) and 15 hours (secondary) for individual children;
further education colleges;
hospital schools;
home tutorial services organised by a local authority;
education supervised or delivered by parents"
Disbelief suspended as above, the confusion here concerns the last point, ie: "education supervised or delivered by parents", since under Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act, the education of all children is meant to be supervised by parents which would presumably therefore mean that none of the regulations for independent schools would apply anywhere. On the other hand, home educators will fight tooth and nail to stop this phrase from being changed because it would rule out the use of tutors for more than the stipulated hours (in red).
The problem might be superficially solved (ie: putting aside the outstanding problem of quantification of education) to ask that both individual private tutors teaching on domestic premises and informal co-operatives without a fixed meeting place be excluded from the requirement to register.
Home educators might do well to respond to this further consultation to make these points.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Problems with Truancy Patrols
A truancy officer in Gloucestershire returned a home educated child to her house. Full facts unknown at this point, but the debate in the comments is worth following for an airing of the issues involved. Read from the bottom up.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
TES Scotland
From the Scottish Edition of the Times Educational Supplement, a piece that deserves to be copied in full, for the record:
"Parents deceived about home schooling
Rather than support parents, many local authorities prefer to employ a catalogue of dirty tricks to prevent them from exercising a valid educational choice. While no parent requires permission to home educate per se, consent is required to withdraw a child who is already in a state school, and this legislative anomaly effectively gives councils licence to bully parents.
Too many parents remain unaware of their rights and responsibilities in education, and most councils prefer to keep it that way. When parents discover there is a viable alternative to schooling, usually through independent research, they are, unsurprisingly, angry at having been deceived.
Despite clear guidance, most local authorities remain confused about their role in relation to home education. Their responses to the Government's consultation reveal a widespread oxymoronic belief that home-educated young people are "children missing from education".
Many also believe they may demand direct access to children to hear their views on their home education (while ignoring the views of individual schooled children), when it is parents who have this responsibility in law.
Local authorities are clearly failing to grasp, or are in denial about, the most important aspects of the 1980 Education (Scotland) Act, namely the duty of parents to provide compulsory education and the corresponding duty of councils to provide school places for parents who wish to use them.
They further misunderstand the Standards in Scotland's Schools Act 2000, which does not compromise parental choice, but rather places a legal duty on local authorities to provide school education "directed to the development of the personality, talents and mental and physical abilities of the child or young person to their fullest potential".
That last duty might prove pretty tricky for councils, given that they should be meeting the needs of each individual child, so they have probably decided to keep parents in the dark about that too."
"Parents deceived about home schooling
Rather than support parents, many local authorities prefer to employ a catalogue of dirty tricks to prevent them from exercising a valid educational choice. While no parent requires permission to home educate per se, consent is required to withdraw a child who is already in a state school, and this legislative anomaly effectively gives councils licence to bully parents.
Too many parents remain unaware of their rights and responsibilities in education, and most councils prefer to keep it that way. When parents discover there is a viable alternative to schooling, usually through independent research, they are, unsurprisingly, angry at having been deceived.
Despite clear guidance, most local authorities remain confused about their role in relation to home education. Their responses to the Government's consultation reveal a widespread oxymoronic belief that home-educated young people are "children missing from education".
Many also believe they may demand direct access to children to hear their views on their home education (while ignoring the views of individual schooled children), when it is parents who have this responsibility in law.
Local authorities are clearly failing to grasp, or are in denial about, the most important aspects of the 1980 Education (Scotland) Act, namely the duty of parents to provide compulsory education and the corresponding duty of councils to provide school places for parents who wish to use them.
They further misunderstand the Standards in Scotland's Schools Act 2000, which does not compromise parental choice, but rather places a legal duty on local authorities to provide school education "directed to the development of the personality, talents and mental and physical abilities of the child or young person to their fullest potential".
That last duty might prove pretty tricky for councils, given that they should be meeting the needs of each individual child, so they have probably decided to keep parents in the dark about that too."
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Education in the 21st Century - The Home Educators' View?
Returning, (see post below) to the matter of getting the killer message across, ie: that the state must avoid appropriating responsibility for education, perhaps the following would provide a satisfactory opportunity to do a little earwigging with Lord Adonis.
From Events Programme for St. Paul's Cathedral:
"Must try harder?
Education in the 21st Century
30th October 2007
6.30 - 8.00pm
St Paul's Cathedral
Admission free and unticketed.
Who is education for? What role should schools play in shaping a well-balanced childhood? In an increasingly competitive world, is education beihng compromised by an economic agenda? this debate considers how edcuation can help children flourish now an dits long term implication fro both adulthood and society.
Panel: Andrew Adonis, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools; Anna Hassan, Headteacher of Millfields Community School; Rebecca Nye, author and consultant on children's spirituality, Gervase Phinn, lecturer and children's writer. "
Any London HEors available?
From Events Programme for St. Paul's Cathedral:
"Must try harder?
Education in the 21st Century
30th October 2007
6.30 - 8.00pm
St Paul's Cathedral
Admission free and unticketed.
Who is education for? What role should schools play in shaping a well-balanced childhood? In an increasingly competitive world, is education beihng compromised by an economic agenda? this debate considers how edcuation can help children flourish now an dits long term implication fro both adulthood and society.
Panel: Andrew Adonis, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools; Anna Hassan, Headteacher of Millfields Community School; Rebecca Nye, author and consultant on children's spirituality, Gervase Phinn, lecturer and children's writer. "
Any London HEors available?
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Why Bother?
Probably as a result of the recent DCSF's Day of Debate, and yet more articles from Private Eye on the related subject of citizens' juries, am still - at this late stage left wondering about the wisdom or otherwise of engaging with these phoney processes.
From Private Eye:
"While the government talks of "participative decision making" giving ordinary members of the public the chance to have a say in politics, the sceptics talk of "participative ventriloquism" giving ordinary members of the public the chance to say whatever politicians want them to say. While (the pollsters) call themselves neutral "facilitators", the sceptics call them "facipulators" who manipulate jurors to reach a desired conclusion."
It is almost impossible not to agree with this conclusion on the evidence so far, so can there be any point in bothering to turn up to these events and putting the counter-arguments, as a few members of Education Otherwise did?
Of course, the problem with engaging with this kind of pseudo-consultation is that it is highly likely that the minority voice will not be heard at all - will be written out of all reports of the event, and yet the government will nonetheless be able to claim that they consulted widely. Under such circumstances, could there be any possible reason for being there? My arguments in favour of doing so remain the same. I think it worth doing if there are a combination of conditions:
1. that you have a killer argument. The point here is not that one might hope to persuade the other jurors but that you simply get yet another chance to explain your devastating point. That you will take every opportunity to unnerve the pollsters and their commissioners.
2. that you have some way (campaign groups, MSM, e-mail lists, blogs etc) of publicising the fact that your killer point was made and, if necessary, that it was ignored. That you can make the point that the government knew that you have a killer argument and that if they ignore it, this wasn't simply a naive mistake on their part.
3. that the readership could be mobilized, or indeed that an individual could be sponsored to take the governments to the courts to prove the killer point, should that be necessary.
Then, just then it would be worth going. All of these conditions did apply, both to the Day of Debate and to the Consultation on Guidelines for Elective Home Education.
From Private Eye:
"While the government talks of "participative decision making" giving ordinary members of the public the chance to have a say in politics, the sceptics talk of "participative ventriloquism" giving ordinary members of the public the chance to say whatever politicians want them to say. While (the pollsters) call themselves neutral "facilitators", the sceptics call them "facipulators" who manipulate jurors to reach a desired conclusion."
It is almost impossible not to agree with this conclusion on the evidence so far, so can there be any point in bothering to turn up to these events and putting the counter-arguments, as a few members of Education Otherwise did?
Of course, the problem with engaging with this kind of pseudo-consultation is that it is highly likely that the minority voice will not be heard at all - will be written out of all reports of the event, and yet the government will nonetheless be able to claim that they consulted widely. Under such circumstances, could there be any possible reason for being there? My arguments in favour of doing so remain the same. I think it worth doing if there are a combination of conditions:
1. that you have a killer argument. The point here is not that one might hope to persuade the other jurors but that you simply get yet another chance to explain your devastating point. That you will take every opportunity to unnerve the pollsters and their commissioners.
2. that you have some way (campaign groups, MSM, e-mail lists, blogs etc) of publicising the fact that your killer point was made and, if necessary, that it was ignored. That you can make the point that the government knew that you have a killer argument and that if they ignore it, this wasn't simply a naive mistake on their part.
3. that the readership could be mobilized, or indeed that an individual could be sponsored to take the governments to the courts to prove the killer point, should that be necessary.
Then, just then it would be worth going. All of these conditions did apply, both to the Day of Debate and to the Consultation on Guidelines for Elective Home Education.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Failing Schools
From the BBC:
"Nearly a quarter of England's state secondary schools let down their pupils, an education minister has said".
When you consider that Treasury statistics reveal that more than 1 in 6 children leave school each year unable to read, write and add up, an estimated 1 million children truant every year and at least 16 children commit suicide each year as a result of school bullying, it is hard not to agree.
The education minister here was Lord Adonis. Perhaps he should have a word with his department whose spokesmen have claimed that
"Standards (in schools) have never been higher and with record funding in our schools we believe the best place to educate a child is actually in school."
Wonder where they were educated!
"Nearly a quarter of England's state secondary schools let down their pupils, an education minister has said".
When you consider that Treasury statistics reveal that more than 1 in 6 children leave school each year unable to read, write and add up, an estimated 1 million children truant every year and at least 16 children commit suicide each year as a result of school bullying, it is hard not to agree.
The education minister here was Lord Adonis. Perhaps he should have a word with his department whose spokesmen have claimed that
"Standards (in schools) have never been higher and with record funding in our schools we believe the best place to educate a child is actually in school."
Wonder where they were educated!
Friday, October 05, 2007
Bullying at School Only Solved by Home Educating
Bev at Cruel at School has been doing great work recently: Channel 4, GMTV, and articles in her local press.
Bev decided to home educate her daughter after despairing at solving the problem of bullying in a school which is supposed to have a very progressive policy with regards to listening to children and to maximising their enjoyment.
I find the disconnect between the Ofsted reports and what local children tell me very peculiar. The children frequently report terrible, brutalising experiences in schools, and yet Ofsted gives these schools a lovely shiny report, after supposedly consulting with pupils. What is going on, I wonder? In one of Bev's articles on her front page, we learn that:
"Schools Minister Jim Knight questioned whether it was practicable to ask schools to keep detailed records on bullying. "Feedback from heads indicates that placing a duty on schools to measure and record every incident of bullying would be a huge bureaucratic burden," Knight said" "
Perhaps Ofsted feels the same way.
Bev decided to home educate her daughter after despairing at solving the problem of bullying in a school which is supposed to have a very progressive policy with regards to listening to children and to maximising their enjoyment.
I find the disconnect between the Ofsted reports and what local children tell me very peculiar. The children frequently report terrible, brutalising experiences in schools, and yet Ofsted gives these schools a lovely shiny report, after supposedly consulting with pupils. What is going on, I wonder? In one of Bev's articles on her front page, we learn that:
"Schools Minister Jim Knight questioned whether it was practicable to ask schools to keep detailed records on bullying. "Feedback from heads indicates that placing a duty on schools to measure and record every incident of bullying would be a huge bureaucratic burden," Knight said" "
Perhaps Ofsted feels the same way.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
The Problems with Calls for Tougher Home Education Guidelines
Take Cheshire County Council by way of an example. Cheshire CC has issued a press release which comes with the tagline:
"Cheshire Calls For Tougher Guidelines Concerning Home Education"
Stop. Go no further than that just now, for there's already a problem. The thing is, guidelines do have to respect the law and if you go any tougher than the current draft guidelines, the law will have to be changed to reflect this.
OK, that's the first howler, (more on which below). The second one is that members of Cheshire County Council clearly haven't asked themselves whether they really do want such changes in law, for if they had, they wouldn't be asking for tougher guidelines. Doh dum.
They blunder on:
"...chairman and Executive Support Member for Children's Services Shirley Harris said: "Some of the guidelines are ambiguous and some simply do not go far enough. For example all children educated at home should be registered as home educated wit (sic) the authority. "
It rather looks as if the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing in this authority, for with the establishment of the children's database, aka ContactPoint, there will be de facto registration of home educators anyhow. Sadly, we have already conceded this point.
Back to Cheshire's pronouncements:
"Elective home education is the only area of education and child care that is not subject to more rigorous statutory regulation concerned with quality assurance and accountability. "
The "only" area? Cripes, it's worse than I'd hoped. Yup, if this is indeed the case, Cheshire parents had better be making sure those five portions of fruit and veg are consumed or their council will be coming to get them.
Parenting by parents? Forget it in Cheshire. The state will dictate precisely what you do in every area of your lives, or else you will fail in their quality assurance tests. Can parents honestly therefore still be held responsible for child care and education? I don't think so. This simply doesn't work and we will have to change the law in this regard. The tagline should be "Cheshire CC Calls for Powers to Take Over Parenting".
Further, what is it with this idea of accountability? To whom are we meant to be accountable in every area of our lives? Surely it isn't actually ultimately the state for in other areas, the state collects data at least nominally to be answerable to tax payers, parents and children. In a right-minded world, home educating parents need only be answerable to their children and almost all of us can manage that without a stranger equipped with powers, ignorance of the situation, a clip board and probably a dose of prejudice and bias to boot, to tell us what our children are telling us every single day. The chances of that working out are really quite minimal if you factor the bias and prejudice and just how much most HE children don't want to bother with that stranger who could change their lives dramatically for the worse.
Yep, they should and are. Home educated parents can manage this, thanks.
Then again, if the state really is going to require HE kids to be consulted and taken seriously by council employers about their needs and aspirations, then surely it is only fair to do it for schooled kids? Yep, if the state does go down this route, then we will demand parity. CC's everywhere will need to introduce a council policy which requires that they take all children's needs and aspirations seriously, (not just HE children.) Councils will, for example, need to ask children who are about to go primary school, age 4, what their needs and aspirations are. Given that a significant number of this population will tell you that they would prefer to stay home and carry on learning and playing there, CCs will at least make huge savings on their education bill. In this situation, councils will also find out that there are almost no children who are HE'd against their will whilst thousands and thousands of schooled children are not happy bunnies and are not having their needs and aspirations met, are threatening suicide because of bullying or are bored rigid by impersonalised learning schemes.
"There is also a need for a standardised system of monitoring visits and reporting to parents which should be applied to all local authorities."
Why? Who does this benefit? Given that almost all HE families, even when they have relatively good relationships with LAs, will tell you that the LA visit is extremely disruptive, anxiety-provoking and provides nothing of value to them at all, what purpose exactly would these visits serve for these families? How would these children benefit?
Plus, where will all this money come from?
Plus, if the state does do this, they must concede that they have taken over responsibility for education, for in the instituation of regular compulsory monitoring, a family is implicitly required to meet standards that are set by the state which are not freely chosen by them. Ho hum. Yes, we would need new legislation to reflect this point. Whilst a parent may remain responsible for provision of education, the state is ultimately responsible for it's form and content and for the monitoring it. There will be plenty of opportunity in such a system to demonstrate that the state fails.
"Cheshire Calls For Tougher Guidelines Concerning Home Education"
Stop. Go no further than that just now, for there's already a problem. The thing is, guidelines do have to respect the law and if you go any tougher than the current draft guidelines, the law will have to be changed to reflect this.
OK, that's the first howler, (more on which below). The second one is that members of Cheshire County Council clearly haven't asked themselves whether they really do want such changes in law, for if they had, they wouldn't be asking for tougher guidelines. Doh dum.
They blunder on:
"...chairman and Executive Support Member for Children's Services Shirley Harris said: "Some of the guidelines are ambiguous and some simply do not go far enough. For example all children educated at home should be registered as home educated wit (sic) the authority. "
It rather looks as if the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing in this authority, for with the establishment of the children's database, aka ContactPoint, there will be de facto registration of home educators anyhow. Sadly, we have already conceded this point.
Back to Cheshire's pronouncements:
"Elective home education is the only area of education and child care that is not subject to more rigorous statutory regulation concerned with quality assurance and accountability. "
The "only" area? Cripes, it's worse than I'd hoped. Yup, if this is indeed the case, Cheshire parents had better be making sure those five portions of fruit and veg are consumed or their council will be coming to get them.
Parenting by parents? Forget it in Cheshire. The state will dictate precisely what you do in every area of your lives, or else you will fail in their quality assurance tests. Can parents honestly therefore still be held responsible for child care and education? I don't think so. This simply doesn't work and we will have to change the law in this regard. The tagline should be "Cheshire CC Calls for Powers to Take Over Parenting".
Further, what is it with this idea of accountability? To whom are we meant to be accountable in every area of our lives? Surely it isn't actually ultimately the state for in other areas, the state collects data at least nominally to be answerable to tax payers, parents and children. In a right-minded world, home educating parents need only be answerable to their children and almost all of us can manage that without a stranger equipped with powers, ignorance of the situation, a clip board and probably a dose of prejudice and bias to boot, to tell us what our children are telling us every single day. The chances of that working out are really quite minimal if you factor the bias and prejudice and just how much most HE children don't want to bother with that stranger who could change their lives dramatically for the worse.
"Children should also be involved and consulted if their parents want to elect home education (sic) so that their needs and aspirations are taken into account. "
Yep, they should and are. Home educated parents can manage this, thanks.
Then again, if the state really is going to require HE kids to be consulted and taken seriously by council employers about their needs and aspirations, then surely it is only fair to do it for schooled kids? Yep, if the state does go down this route, then we will demand parity. CC's everywhere will need to introduce a council policy which requires that they take all children's needs and aspirations seriously, (not just HE children.) Councils will, for example, need to ask children who are about to go primary school, age 4, what their needs and aspirations are. Given that a significant number of this population will tell you that they would prefer to stay home and carry on learning and playing there, CCs will at least make huge savings on their education bill. In this situation, councils will also find out that there are almost no children who are HE'd against their will whilst thousands and thousands of schooled children are not happy bunnies and are not having their needs and aspirations met, are threatening suicide because of bullying or are bored rigid by impersonalised learning schemes.
"There is also a need for a standardised system of monitoring visits and reporting to parents which should be applied to all local authorities."
Why? Who does this benefit? Given that almost all HE families, even when they have relatively good relationships with LAs, will tell you that the LA visit is extremely disruptive, anxiety-provoking and provides nothing of value to them at all, what purpose exactly would these visits serve for these families? How would these children benefit?
Plus, where will all this money come from?
Plus, if the state does do this, they must concede that they have taken over responsibility for education, for in the instituation of regular compulsory monitoring, a family is implicitly required to meet standards that are set by the state which are not freely chosen by them. Ho hum. Yes, we would need new legislation to reflect this point. Whilst a parent may remain responsible for provision of education, the state is ultimately responsible for it's form and content and for the monitoring it. There will be plenty of opportunity in such a system to demonstrate that the state fails.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Humane Parenting Petition
I can't pretend that there is any hope of any science to substantiate the idea that attachment parenting is vastly superior to other forms of parenting, but my own experience of trying both leaves me pretty convinced that AP works and works beautifully. I have therefore signed the petition here.
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