Is it me or is it them?

It's one of those facts of life to which I am yet to become adjusted. What am I talking about? It's the near constant sense that I and a reasonable number of other HEors inhabit a universe that runs alongside but never crosses over into the universe inhabited by the large majority of people. For me, this in turn generates a near constant feeling of befuddlement, of the "is it me or is it them?" variety. Are most people completely sane to think that school is the place you go to prepare your children for civilised society? In my universe, whenever I hear yet another inside story from school, it confirms my thinking that many schools are places you send your children to train for gang warfare, but then perhaps it really is me who has lost the plot.

Anyhoo...the latest story comes from a sink school in a neighbouring authority. A young teacher there who is usually a competent disciplinarian, reports that when four months pregnant, she was pushed over backwards and knocked unconscious. Some other delightful young individual who attended the place presumably in order to be socialised also had the courtesy to inform her that he hoped her baby died in the womb.

Ho hum. The school persuaded the teacher not to press charges, for which she is now rightly furious, and perhaps this is actually the way that schools get away with it. They just pretend such disgraceful things simply don't happen.

Or is it really the case that schooling parents know all the gory details, but just think this is a normal way of life to which you must become habituated? Hm??? Come on, which is it?

Home Education's Time may have Come

It seems that a little extra-curricula education has been going on in the Prof. Smithers' dept, because so says he in the Independent today.

The UK Youth Parliament

...is seeking ideas from 11 - 18 year olds.

"The UK Youth Parliament (UKYP) is currently updating its Manifesto and they want to hear from any young person aged 11-18 who has an idea, issue, passion or cause they want to share. All ideas will be discussed by Members of Youth Parliament (MYPs) at this year's UKYP Annual Sitting in July. The best ideas will then be included in UKYP's new Manifesto.

Go here to suggest an idea for the Manifesto.

To use the forum, you will need to register first, which you can do here:

To read the existing Manifesto, please go here.

Help from 11 - 16 year old HEK's is required on this thread in the forum.

Wii Fit

...is worth every penny. Daryl agrees.

Problems with Negotiations with Local Authorities

From Brighton and Hove HEors:

"We are forced to conclude that the reference group is nothing but a smokescreen, intended to give the impression that this policy is based on consultation with home educators."

Sadly Brighton's HEors are not the only ones to have experienced the smokescreen effect of apparent negotiations with LAs and it does indeed seem as if a number of LAs require more than a gentle hand to help them understand that they are acting illegally. Perhaps it's time that EO and AHEd step into the breach in the way that Schoolhouse does in Scotland.

HEK's Radio Station

...from the Otherwise Club, Kilburn is calling for more HEK contributions.

Home Schooling Quiz

Find out whether you annoy other home educators. Our score: 29, ie: we do, but only a bit.

Informal Learning = 80%

Based on a study of self-reporting workers, (which resonates with me in that I constantly find that information that I find myself imparting to the children is stuff which I learnt out of school):

"Most of what we learn, we learn from other people -- parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, playmates, cousins, Little Leaguers, Scouts, school chums, roommates, teammates, classmates, study groups, coaches, bosses, mentors, colleagues, gossips, co-workers, neighbors, and, eventually, our children. Sometimes we even learn from teachers.

At work we learn more in the break room than in the classroom. We discover how to do our jobs through informal learning -- observing others, asking the person in the next cubicle, calling the help desk, trial-and-error, and simply working with people in the know. Formal learning - classes and workshops and online events - is the source of only 10% to 20% of what we learn at work."

This from Jay Cross, who looks to be a natural ally of home educators and all personalised learners.

Jay Cross:

"...served as CEO of eLearning Forum for its first five years, was the first to use the term eLearning on the web, and has keynoted such conferences as Online Educa (Berlin), I-KNOW (Austria), Research Innovations in Learning (U.S.), Emerging eLearning (Abu Dhabi), Training (U.S.),Quality in eLearning (Bogotá), and Learning Technology (London).

He is the author of Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways that Inspire Innovation and Performance, coauthor of Implementing eLearning, contributor to The Blended Learning Handbook, and author of many magazine articles. Every day, thousands of people read his two blogs, Internet Time and Informal Learning Blog.

Jay is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School. He and his wife Uta live with two miniature longhaired dachshunds in the hills of Berkeley, California."

Site of the Month

...has been the Beeb's Newsround site, with current events, quizzes and animations, such as this one.

Child Protection?

ARCH points to the terrible hidden consequences of "child protection" by the state.

These Look Fun....

...free university lectures on iTunes, neuroscience from UCL, English Literature from Oxford, various from Imperial College. The BBC has the gen.

Letter of the Month

From Peterborough Today:

"Home Education Can Be a Success

I write regarding your article "17-fold increase in home schooling" (ET, June 4).

I would query the use of the words schooling and tutoring to describe home education. Schooling implies that all children attend the same institution or are formally taught the same thing, and neither is the case with home education.

Tutoring is misleading as it has connotations that a specific teacher or tutor is brought in to teach the young people, which in my experience is rarely the case with families who home educate.

I have been home educated for just over four years now.

Since I left school, I have worked towards GCSE and A-level qualifications and currently have a conditional place to read archaeology and geography at university. Being home educated has allowed me to take exams as and when I was ready, and to carry out volunteer work at Flag Fen Bronze Age Centre.

It's important to let people know that it is possible to gain qualifications, go to university, and be successful after being home educated.

PIPPA GARDNER (aged 17)"

DCSF Ideas Tree

Home Educators appear to have hogged the leaves - a vociferous, politicised bunch it seems.

Home Educated Joshua to Stand as an MYP

...and the Independent is seeking comments on the reasons for the problems children face in the UK. See Freedom for Children to Grow for details.

Words That Don't Go Together - Truth-Seeking, Schools and Ofsted

There's more on the vast and hugely evident disconnect between Ofsted reports and reality from ex-Ofsted inspector, John Bald. He explains how schools are getting away with not offering pupils extra support in specific areas in which they badly need it. This lack of help in schools is a common complaint amongst those who deregister to home educate.

Why am I bothered about the disconnect given that we have opted out of the system? Well, it's still irksome to know that parents allow themselves to be fooled into thinking a totally unacceptable situation is fine for their children and it's irksome to think that schools are getting away with it, since it's hard to imagine that the situation can improve if the problems are denied.

By way of yet another example of the disconnect, a friend of mine went to look at our local secondary school which is apparently thriving if one were to believe the Ofsted reports, yet amongst many other less than impressive occurrences that took place during her visit, she was taken into an DT class to find complete mayhem, some sort of protection racket being perpetuated and no teacher to be seen. It emerged that this said teacher was hiding in a back room having completely given up on maintaining any form of discipline, let alone actually teaching anything.

But most irksome of all, I think that this hypocrisy sets up a terrible model of lack of respect for truth-seeking. Given that truth-seeking is one of the fundamental principles that I wish to impart in our home educating life, it looks as if we might have problems adapting to school, where dissembling for self-protection appears to be the norm.

I am proud that Dd recently told Badger that she couldn't possibly say the Rainbows' pledge (containing a reference to God), because at the moment she is a fairly convinced atheist and that it is better to tell what one believes to be the truth if one possibly can. Although Badger did look a trifle discombobulated, Dd remained completely unflustered. Apparently none of the other schooled children had ever approached Badger on the matter before, though I bet a number of them have never taken the idea of God terribly seriously. Ho hum. I would not be happy about that record.

Naming and Shaming - Trafford LA

Home educators everywhere are once again infuriated by the fact that those who have a remit to understand education law, ie: certain members of Trafford Local Authority, appear either unable to read, or are unable to understand what they read, or perhaps worse still, wilfully choose to behave unlawfully.

We hear via HE lists that a new LA advisor for Home Education has been appointed in Trafford and that she is making unlawful demands to visit all home educating families, whether or not there is any reason to think that an education is not being provided. To compound the sins, Trafford's website appears to endorse these ultra vires demands. Finally, to top it all off, one of the home educators who raised the issue with the LA then received an email from someone in the LA, clearly sent to her in error, which revealed a degree of unprofessionalism and discourtesy that would cause one to lose all confidence in the authority.

The MP, Chief Executive, Head of the Education Committee, anyone else we can think of, can expect to hear about this. Do these people endorse illegal behaviour by their staff? Do they realise that it is their duty to ensure that the LA provides clear and LEGAL information for HE parents:

"that are clear and accurate and which set out the legal position, and roles and responsibilities..."

We expect to hear that the advisor has been dismissed since she has behaved unlawfully, that the website has been re-written and that those within the LA who behave in an unprofessional fashion have been reprimanded and have mended their ways.

1,616 % Increase in HE

It's likely that we will see many more examples of this sort of story in the next few months and years as the children's database, aka ContactPoint, comes on board as a result of which every home educator in the land will supposedly become known to the authorties. However, the expansion of most HE groups would suggest that the increase in the numbers of home educators does exist for real, even if it isn't as staggering as this article maintains.

Swindon Home Educators

...in the Japanese Times.

Every Single Parent Matters?

From the AHED Press Release on the matter of the proposed changes in the benefits system:

"The UK Government has made it clear they see no value in parenting and would rather see mums and dads out flippping burgers on the minimum wage, topped up with tax credits, child care subsidies and housing benefits, than caring for their own children. This will of course cost the public purse far more than providing the safety net of Income Support for families, especially where children have special needs."

From a purely fiscal point of view, that seems sound. Of course, it's impossible to factor in the hidden costs of children raised without parents, but they will be there without a doubt.

Silly Suggestions in the Times

Janey Lee Grace reports that she isn't quoted accurately in this piece in the Times, but she still comes across well, unlike Mr Smithers who fails to think through the consequences by suggesting that the government should legislate to ensure that HEors teach the National Curriculum and are inspected, presumably by Ofsted.

Ok, Mr Smithers, so tell us this? When the National Curriculum does not suit a child, whether that child is in school or at home, who will be held responsible for failing to educate that child appropriately?

By-Pass A Levels and Still Go To University

....to study science.

Keeping a Slightly More Open Mind!

It's rare nowadays that my assumptions about how the world works get really shaken up. You know, you take multiverses in your stride, so what else is surprising? Well, yesterday's incident has shaken me from my complacency in this regard. Something peculiar happened.

We were walking down a dried-up river gorge when my son decided to scale straight up the side of a 50 foot cliff...(yep, yep, yep, SS can come and get me now). He looked over the top and then fairly quickly came back down to report in slightly shocked and incredulous tones "I think I've just seen something like a cheetah."

I have in the past given absolutely no credence to reports of big cats in the countryside, so I didn't take him terribly seriously at the time, but I had to eat my words in the next couple of minutes.

We all walked on a little further on to a point where the cliff flattened out into a bank up which we could all climb. All four of us looked over and could see, by now in the far distance, an animal which appeared to be the size and shape of a cheetah, but which looked to be a sort of greyish brown, running at a roiling speed across the top of the field, along the tree-line of very wild woodland.

It was certainly not a deer or a boar...just the wrong shape. I really don't think it could even have been a big greyhound...again just not the right shape. The shape and the running style looked feline.

People we then bumped into to said matter-of- factly..."Oh yes, there are big cats up there". My guess is that we will never find out but it has made me realise that I should keep a more open mind about some surprising things!

Lessons from Birmingham?

This terrible news has resulted in some predictable soul-searching on home education mailing lists along the lines of "should home educators accept monthly visits from LAs in order that the authorities may assure themselves that these families are not starving their children to death?".

Whilst it would seem from what we know of this story that such intervention would have been the only way that these children could have been protected from harm, policy-makers would be wise not to insist on monthly checks on all HEors, and not simply for reasons of cost. Intrusion by the authorities can be hugely damaging for children and families. Children who are gradually gaining confidence after leaving abusive situations in school, or who are perhaps struggling with learning differences, yet are finding their own way in their own time, can have all the breath knocked out of them. Such children have been known to lose valuable and hard-won skills after a visit from the LA officer, eg: a child who had just started to overcome severe dyslexia stopped reading for six months after a visit from a hostile and prejudiced LA official.

Then, of course, there's the simple matter of privacy. During a home visit, an LA official stands in judgement over everything that is most private and intimate about family life. This is no way to behave in a free society.

So what should be the lesson from this terrible incident? If there is one, it should be that LA and school employees should be aware of and remain particularly vigilant for the signs of vulnerability. Any concerns should be followed up to the satisfaction of the authorities. On the other hand, when there is no cause for concern, HE families should be left alone.

Another reason for this proportionate response: if home educators were to accept monthly self-and-well checks, the principle of parental responsibility for children will be severely undermined. The state really would have become the final arbiter on the issue of how safely are children are raised. If a child injures himself, it will be the state who is accountable, for it has established that all parents cannot be trusted.

Ofsted Not Fit for Purpose?

Oh honestly, will yet more Ofsted inspections really make the difference to failing schools? From an outsider's perspective, the utter uselessness and irrelevance of Ofsted reports seems starkly obvious. For example, our local secondary school receives good to glowing reports, and yet whenever I speak to anyone about what goes on in that place, frankly if you had any sense you would run as hard as you possibly could in the opposite direction.

The latest news on this front: a neighbouring mum recently went to look round the place with a view to sending her 11 year old there next year. As soon as she walked in through the school gates, she was confronted by a huge fight between a large number of 15 year old boys and girls. She described it as a serious fight, proper punches being thrown - horrifyingly violent. She sought out the nearest teacher and asked her about what was happening. The teacher seemed unperturbed, and simply said "Well, boys will be boys".

Once inside the headmaster's office, this by now rather concerned parent looked up from the conversation about the good Ofsted report to see a boy being helped past the window, holding an ice-pack to his head with blood streaming out from under it down the side of his face.

Only a couple of minutes later, her conversation with the headmaster was drowned out by a huge ruckus emanating from the corridor. An adult appeared to be screaming at the top of his lungs at a child.

"That doesn't sound like a good way to deal with the situation" said very concerned parent.

"Well, the teacher will have taken the child out of the classroom in order to speak to him" replied the headmaster.

"But we can still hear it through a closed door, so I suppose the class will also be able to hear it" braved very, very concerned parent, whilst not daring to say "and anyhow, I don't want anyone speaking to anyone anywhere like that. This is not how I want to raise my child."

That family is going to fork out for a small private school, which will probably be a sensible outcome for that particular child, but you pity all the others who have to put up with this horror.

From an outsider's perspective, you wonder at how schools get away with it. We've heard it said that when heads realise that Ofsted are coming, they phone for taxis to come and take the most troublesome pupils away, but even if this is true, the disconnect between the reality and the reports still seems to this outsider to be gobsmackingly huge! If Ofsted are either oblivious to, or refuse to acknowledge the reality of the situation, there is little hope that their inspections will make the slightest bit of difference to troubled schools.

UPDATE: John Bald, an ex-school inspector, sheds some light on this subject.

More from the Idler

This one from the Telegraph:

"This is the spirit we need to bring to education: the less school, the better. We need to explore other options - home schooling, learning groups, home tutors.

That doesn't necessarily mean a lot of hard work or expense. This is where idleness comes in. It is precisely a love of learning and curiosity that schools tend to kill.

So it is the responsibility of the idle parent to implant a love of education. The way to do it is to lead by example and curl up with a good book."

Sensible Stuff....

...in the Times:

"In the QI edition of The Idler, Lloyd and Mitchinson present a five-point manifesto for educational reform.

One: play not work

Schools should be resource centres, not prisons. Teachers should be returned to their original roles as facilitators, not bureaucrats or drillmasters. The more “work” resembles play – telling stories, making things – the more interested kids will become.

Two: follow the chain of curiosity

Ask a kid what he wants to learn, and he’s unlikely to say: “a broad-based curriculum that offers the core skills”. Real learning is obsessive. It happens through watching, listening and practising something that really interests you. Encourage children to follow their own curiosity right to the end of the chain, and they will acquire the skills they need to get there.

Three: you decide

The QI School isn’t compulsory and there are no exams: only projects or goals you set yourself with the teacher acting as a mentor. This could be making a film or building a chair. From age seven onwards, our core subjects might be: philosophy, storytelling, music, technology, nature and games.

Four: no theory without practice

If you’re lost in wonder looking at, say, a lettuce, you will want to have a go at growing it, too.

Five: you never leave

There is no reason why school has to stop dead at 17 or 18. The QI school would be the ultimate “lifelong learning” venue – a mini-university where skills and knowledge would be pooled and young and old could indulge their curiosity."

Huh?

From a Barbara Ellen column entitled Let Teachers Teach and Leave Parents to Raise Children:

"Make 'home parenting' like 'home schooling', something weird and uncool your children beg you not to get involved in."

Oh honestly, what does she know! This commentator is much more informed:

"...your comment about home education being 'something weird and uncool your children beg you not to get involved in' is slightly misguided.

I've been home educating my sons since 2005 and the only thing they ever beg me to do is never send them back to school.

Like the majority of home educated children they spend a lot of time socialising with other children, many of whom go to school. As soon as my sons mention the fact that they don't go to school, they become the envy of the other children.

Not once has a child ever said that they were 'weird and uncool', in fact I hear a lot of the children telling their parents that they wish they could be home educated like my boys."

Neuroscience Providing Evidence in Favour of Autonomous Education

OK, the actual reported evidence for this in this Guardian article is scant to say the least, and the chances that the overall message will impact on schooling in any meaningful way is practically zilch in the current climate, so the good news probably really boils down to the fact that the head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, Mick Waters is described as "an enthusiast for active learning" - in which case, he at least should see the sense of what a large majority of home educators get up to.

The OECD study summary.

Good Argument for Increased Conditionality for Home Educating Parents

From Action for Home Education's recent Press Release:

"Former home educator, Karen Best, who was a lone parent reliant entirely on income support until her daughter reached school leaving age, has also spoken out against the government's proposals which she believes will remove an essential lifeline from desperate parents. Describing her own circumstances, she said: "I removed my daughter, who has profound learning difficulties and special needs, from school when she was 10 years old after a prolonged period of bullying which had resulted in her self-harming and threatening suicide. I was a single parent on Income Support and struggling to cope financially as well as with an extremely unhappy child.

Since the school and local authority failed to deal with the problems, home education became the only option for us and we never looked back, although I lost entitlement to free school meals and clothing vouchers as soon as I removed my daughter from school and got no support or resources from the local authority. Now it seems, the Government wants to completely pull the financial rug out from under the most vulnerable parents and children. How on earth can they justify impoverishing children and penalising single parents in this way?""

Yep, if the government in effect forces lone home educating parents to send their children back to school, it is likely to find that this will cost them a lot more than keeping such a family on income support, since many HE children are withdrawn from school precisely because of unmet special needs. These needs will have to be met when the child returns to school with proper, much more widespread statementing and support. However, statementing and learning support are VERY expensive and LAs are usually reluctant to undertake this process.

If the SENs of these children are not met, the government can expect HEors to organise a campaign to demonstrate that it is nigh impossible for such parents to meet their legal obligation to educate their children according to their age, ability and aptitude.

Bullying Causing Surge in Home Education

There's yet more on the link between bullying in schools and home education, this time in the Scotsman.

Home Educating News

....from Bridport.

Setting a Better Example

Despite the relatively benign Elective Home Education Guidelines which came out in Nov 2007, the majority of LA websites continue to make claims for powers which are over and beyond the law, particularly with regard to home visits and the absolute need for the LA both to know about HE provision and to be satisfied that an education is being provided. Darlington LA however is setting a better example. Other LAs would do well to follow it, as it would vastly improve relationships with their home education communities.

Home Educating

...in N. Ireland.

Site of the Day

Switch Zoo, including Where do I Live.

UPDATE:
There are two rather satisfactory new BBC games - Questionaut and Viral Vinnie here.

More Bullied School Children Driven To Home Education

Sadly, this tale of a school's incompetence in dealing with bullying is not unique. Only yesterday at a home education meeting, we spoke to parents of a boy who has recently been withdrawn from school after they had been treated extremely shabbily, both by the school and the local authority.

This story should be here, but the site is currently undergoing maintainence. However, it deserves to be heard, if only because of the parents' willingness to look directly at the problems, which is unusual, most parents preferring to turn a blind eye to bullying. In confronting their son's difficulties, these people have helped to expose the dark but far from unusual side (see here) of what is going on in our schools and what's more, have set a great example in finding the best possible solution to the problems.

This particular tale of woe began when the family moved to an new area and tried to enrol their son in the nearest available schools. Since the schools have foundation status, ie: they function more independently of the Local Authority, they are under no compulsion to offer anyone a place and since they were full, the boy simply couldn't go to school. At this point, the parents received a phone call from the LA, during which they were repeatedly threatened with a £1000.00 fine if they didn't send their son to school immediately. Ho hum...where is the LA's bullying policy, one would like to ask!

Anyhoo, the parents did then find their son a place at a school some distance away. They were not happy either with the logistics of getting their son to the place, or with the school's reputation which is frankly appalling. However, their son, an attractive, sensitive, indeed popular child did attend, only to find the parent's worst fears confirmed. Despite being reportedly popular, (the head confirmed this much), the boy was appallingly bullied - in one spell, there were serious incidents on four successive days. The parents asked for help which the school did indeed provide: the boy was given an older mentor who accompanied him to the canteen for three days, but this help was then withdrawn with no subsequent improvement in the situation at all.

In desperation, the parents returned to the see the headmaster. The mother has worked in schools as a special needs teacher, is familiar with school structure and codes of behaviour. Both parents are extremely well-informed, articulate and reasonable, but they felt they were making no headway at all in speaking to the school. A letter that the father had written explaining the problems was rolled into a ball and thrown away by the headmaster whilst the parents were looking on. When the father did eventually become animated and cross, the school called the police under the pretext that feeling verbally threatened constitutes a sufficient reason for involving the police - to which the father quite reasonably responded, "Well, since my son feels both physically and verbally threatened almost all the time in this place, I hope he will be allowed to call the police whenever he feels it is necessary!"

A short while after this, the parents decided to give up on the whole hopeless charade and handed in their letter of deregistration. The home education community is all the richer for it!

The Home Educator's Perspective

From the Children's Commissioner's new website:

"The Children’s Commissioner for England , Sir Al Aynsley-Green, has launched a new interactive website to gather the views and opinions of children and young people. The views posted on the new site will shape the priorities for 11 MILLION, and help the organisation to influence government decisions about children and young people’s lives. "

It might be very useful to offer up the often creative and unusual perspectives views of HEks since they've bought the T-shirts, been there, done that and know that the alternatives can work. Anyone under 18 can have their say. The section entitled Learning and Play might be particularly relevant. Questions like "how would you improve schools" are for the taking. (Our household produced a number of answers to this which ranged from the "make them voluntary" and "turn them into resource centres where people of all ages can pursue their interests and learn what they need to learn," to the" shut 'em down now" variety).

HT: JB. Thanks!

More on Taking It at the Child's Pace

...this time from the Telegraph

"Like world peace, "early education" sounds like a no-brainer - how can anyone quibble with getting children off to a flying start? The problem is that academic hothousing is subject to the law of diminishing returns.

True, it can sometimes yield the sort of results that make teachers gawp and parents crow: but what about the longer term? Does all that early learning pay off later?

No. The latest research suggests that reaching learning milestones early is no guarantee of future academic stardom.

One study in Philadelphia found that, by the age of seven or eight, there was no discernible gap between the performance of children who spent their pre-school years in nurseries that were rigidly academic and those who came from laid-back, play-based ones. The only difference was that the hothoused kids tended to be more anxious and less creative."

and:

"The argument that more testing and toil is the best way to shape them for life in the 21st century is starting to fray at the edges. A report by King's College London suggests that the cognitive development of British children is slowed by spending too little time messing around outdoors.

"By stressing only the basics - reading and writing - and testing like crazy you reduce the level of cognitive stimulation," says Philip Adey, professor of education at King's College. "Children have the facts but they are not thinking very well."

There's lots more of interest in the article - the problems with putting a child on a pedestal, for example.

Now all we would need is for the author to apply his theories to older children, using home educated kids as his control group!

Early Reading is Not Necesssary

...and could be damaging. So says Dr Katz in an article from the Beeb that I must have missed at the time. We have seen the evidence for Dr Katz's case many times over in the home education community. Late readers = competent, motivated readers.

The problem for most parents: what choice do they actually have if they don't either home educate or send their child to a Steiner school, the second option being potentially problematic in that Steiner teachers insist that a child shouldn't read before the age of 7. Some children want to.

Yep, the only real options lie with home education.

Achievement Gaps

Brian Micklethwait raised the following point with regard to the research from the Fraser Institute.

"The usual assumption, which I have tended to some extent to accept (in the absence of knowing any evidence about it), is that home-schooling is fine when done by well-educated parents, but perhaps rather less fine when done by less well-educated parents. But now read this, from the Fraser Institute:

TORONTO, ON—Home schooling appears to improve the academic performance of children from families with low levels of education, according to a report on home schooling released today by independent research organization The Fraser Institute.

The evidence is particularly interesting for students who traditionally fall through the cracks in the public system,” said Claudia Hepburn, co-author of Home Schooling: From the Extreme to the Mainstream, 2nd edition and Director of Education Policy with The Fraser Institute.

“Poorly educated parents who choose to teach their children at home produce better academic results for their children than public schools do. One study we reviewed found that students taught at home by mothers who never finished high school scored a full 55 percentage points higher than public school students from families with comparable education levels.”

Brian assumed that we in the HE community would know this already, and yes, this phenomenon has been something of which we have been aware certainly since Paula Rothermel pointed it out in her research on HE families in the UK back in 1999. Paula's main explanation for this seems to be that the less well-educated parents are very aware of their short-comings and go to great lengths to compensate for this. I have indeed seen this dynamic at work, but, as Dr Rothermel was well aware, there could be plenty of other things going on too.

For example, she suggests that the happy home and the absence of pressure from schooling contributes to improved academic performance, which is almost certainly the case, but I would also hazard that one of the main reasons for this result stems from the fact that home educators, whatever their level of education, are largely a self-selecting group of mostly thoughtful, creative people. They have guts and nous and their children are likely to inherit those characteristics one way or another. The results of self-selecting for such individuals is likely to look good.

Then again, it is also the case that most HE parents are just so heavily involved, either in the direct teaching of the child, (the more transmissive model of learning) or in being available to help the child to learn whatever they want to learn (the facilitative model of education).

Actually, I only became acutely aware of the constantly high degree of sense of responsibility and need for involvement in the education of one's children recently when for the first time in six years that I spent a couple of days without either of my kids and I found that the pressure that I assumed was a normal part of life simply lifted. Yep, it was a nice holiday, but the thing is, isn't this level of responsibility really what parenting is meant to be about? Schooling parents can absolve themselves of this sense of duty to their children for at least part of every school day. Perhaps at least some of them forget to pick up the mantle again when the children come home and perhaps this could account for the differences in achievement between HEKs and schooled children.

Then again, it could come back to numbers: all that one-to-one stuff. Or it could come down to the fact that even if you use a transmissive model of education, HEors are far more likely to pursue the child's interests, which means you are likely to get far further far quicker.

Quite probably, it is all these reasons and/or others. Either way HE looks good!

Well Said, Pete

...in the South Wales Echo - a necessary response to this.

Eeek...A Peculiar Experience

...a night on my own...well, just me and the animals. First night like this for over six years, I think.

Now, where's that chocolate stash...

DIY Biosphere

from KQED Quest

School Refusal and Emotional Well Being

For any family struggling with school refusal, Mike Fortune Wood's book on the subject could well be a godsend. In Can't Go, Won't Go , he challenges decades of received professional opinion which asserts almost unequivocally and without substantial evidence in support of these assertions, that it is essential to return an unwilling child to school for they will otherwise never learn to cope with life. Mike provides evidence to the contrary in the form of 17 case studies of children who have been withdrawn from school and successfully home educated. He backs these up with sound reasoning and explanations as to why the professional line may be wrong, along with some arguments as to why home education could be the answer.

This is the first book on the subject which genuinely takes children's emotional needs seriously. This is perhaps not surprising. Most professionals in the field have a vested interest in keeping children in school whether or not they are really coping, and parents often feel they have to ignore their children's unhappiness in order that they may carry on with their own lives as they see fit. Yet forcing a child into a situation where they have been miserable by no means ensures that they will settle or benefit in any way from this enforced return. From the EO webpage on the same subject:

"A research project by Hersov and Berg, both advocates of the view which insists on school attendance, ironically confirms the likelihood of troubled children becoming troubled adults with this conventional response."

In marked contrast, the evidence emerging from the home education community is that HE has saved many children and their families from misery. It has given them their lives back and many of these children have gone on into successful careers or into high pressure further education with often fewer difficulties than their schooled peers.

Now all we have to do is to tell this to the DCSF who are hosting a review of child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and are calling for evidence to help inform the deliberations of the review team as to how to improve these services, though we had best be aware that the review is headed up by Jo Davidson, the Group Director of Children and Young People's Services in Gloucestershire CC, and notable for her lobbying of parliament following the Spry case.

Home Education in the Telegraph

Wow...it looks as if the Telegraph could be starting to get it.

For the Records

...more research on Home Education, from the Fraser Institute, from October 2007

Social Workers Report that Database Doesn't Help

...but will the government listen? It seems they would far rather pretend that Social Workers simply aren't telling them that the Intergrated Children's System (the ICS, the database which is meant to hold social work records), means a lot more red-tape in the form of data input and is not sensitive to client's needs and is therefore not useful for anything other than pretty dodgy data collection.

We might never have known about this were it not for the tireless work by the people at ARCH. They issued a FOI request for a copy of an evaluation of the ICS which the government had commissioned from academics at York University. This report had seemingly disappeared and not only from public scrutiny - there were opposition ministers asking to see it too. Read the full story here.

There’s more in Community Care and a bit in the Sunday Times, where e-caf also comes in for a battering.

Another Website in Need of Input from Home Educators

From Anxiety Care:

"PROFESSIONAL THERAPY FOR SCHOOL REFUSING

"Parents cannot afford to allow school refusal to be ignored or treated in a haphazard and ineffectual manner. The law requires a child to be educated, and most parents are not able to pick and choose where this takes place. If children do not go to school, parents may be taken to court, and there is even the (very slight) risk of the child being taken into care. Nobody wants this to happen, so professional help is usually readily available, and it is vital for parents to make the best use of it.

Most current treatments for school refusing are carried out around the home and the school by clinical child psychologists. They will involve helping the child to deal with anxiety symptoms in the situation where they developed, while getting the child back to school as quickly as possible. Inpatient treatment compares poorly with this kind of 'live' support, though a small minority of children do fare better away from home.

Some parents may be tempted to take their child out of the school system altogether, but research shows that temporary home tuition is not a useful road to recovery, and works against the child's early return to school. Permanent withdrawal, even if some children do better academically, and feel more content outside the school system, has some dangers. The child with low social skills may not learn how to relate to the peer group, which can become a major problem. The child may also never resolve the underlying problems that generated, or were part of, the school phobia."

They may thus become prime candidates for a similar anxiety disorder later in life when faced with going to college, or to work. They may also be so handicapped by lack of the social and 'peer' learning gained at school that character traits such as timidity, over-sensitivity, and the tendency to have unrealistic expectations of themselves and others, may become a permanent barrier between the young adult and the rest of the world."

Now what research would that be, we wonder? And even if research does prove that temporary tuition out of school is not the answer, (to what? presumably on many an occasion, to overcoming a perfectly rational fear of school), that doesn't mean that it's possible to conclude that long-term home education is not the answer, because for many children, it has been just that.

For the record, we have now seen plenty of school-phobic, home educated children become extremely adept at managing social situations. Many go on to college and get degrees with no problems whatsoever or they have gone straight into sometimes demanding careers. Had they remained in school, it might have been a different matter, since there is a high chance that some of them would either have actually managed to commit suicide, or would be self-harming or would have long-standing depression. It is a wonder how any professional would want that on their conscience.

So yes, how about this plan: deregister, deschool and socialise with a lovely bunch of HE children who can show these anti-social school kids a thing or two, for HEKs are not infrequently appalled at the way school children are supposed to relate to one other. This doesn't mean that they can't cope with the anti-social behaviour they encounter. The other day, I watched and learned, as a group of HE children helped three recently deregistered school children learn about how to socialise in the real world, away from a hell-hole of a prison. The recently deregged children were throwing sticks and stones (literally and metaphorically) at a mixed age group of HEks. The HEks discussed the best course of action and decided that the school socialised kids just wanted attention, so the HEKs would offer it in the best possible way. A fun game of hug-chase ensued, with the HEKs chasing the deschooling children with open arms. No name calling, no anger, no stick throwing. The HEks just showing these other children how to have good, simple, kind fun. I was proud and amazed as such a solution would never have occurred to me.

Ho hum. Someone's got to put Anxiety Care right!

The Dangers of Blurring the Private and Public Sector

From Simon Jenkins:

"Specialist publications covering the public sector, such as Computer Weekly, Building Design and Public Finance, report a litany of disasters as hapless ministers struggle with the public-private behemoths they have created but which fail to deliver. Jacqui Smith and Alan Johnson have neither the competence nor the courage to end the absurdity of the ID card and NHS computers, both victims of high-pressure consultancy with billions of pounds at stake."

Of course, Mr Jenkins could also have included any number of other useless government databases, most relevant here being ContactPoint, aka The Children's Information Sharing Index.

Am off to have another go at extracting ourselves from the NHS Spine. Apparently a letter is not enough.

Californian Homeschooling

...is not imperilled, according to this analysis.

More on Doing Without Schools

...from I Cringely, this time seeing the possibility as being driven by Moore's Law.

HT: Raquel

Better Off Without Them?

From the irascible Theodore Dalrymple, we heard that:

"When we were students, a professor of public health once told us that the death rate declined whenever or wherever doctors went on strike. This was an even stronger argument, he implied, than the purely ethical one against doctors resorting to such action, or inaction. No profession should lightly expose its uselessness to the public gaze. "

Could these principles, by any chance, also apply to state education and the teaching profession? Is it just possible that we would be better of without them?

Brian Micklethwait seems to be thinking along these lines:

"I am more than ever convinced that if the entire state education system were to drop dead tomorrow morning, that would be a great improvement for some people immediately, for many people in a few weeks, for most people in a few months, and for almost everyone in a few years. After a decade, the results would be miraculous."

Dr. Dalrymple's other point about trying to avoid exposing the inadequacy of the profession could also easily apply to schools, and would account for the habit of teachers of choosing to blame families rather than taking the rap themselves.

Best Description of Home Education...

...for quite a while from Greg Millman in The Washington Post. Ok, so he is writing about homeschooling but on this evidence there's little difference.

"I've never heard a home-schooling parent refer to a child as "learning disabled," for instance. There are many kinds of intelligence, but conventional schools usually only focus on one. Take late reading. A conventional school education depends on written textbooks and workbooks and homework, so a child who can't read is unable to learn. But home-schoolers have developed systems and approaches that work with the kind of talent and intelligence a child has. One of our sons didn't read until he was 8 years old. That was no disability, though. He learned from audio tapes and DVDs and from being read to and -- very importantly -- from going outside and looking around. He could spot a deer on a hillside or a bluebird in a tree long before the rest of us. When he finally decided to read, he jumped into "The Chronicles of Narnia" and finished the series within weeks. "I want to read the books before I see the movie," he told us. "

Yup, that's all right on the button, as is the rest of the piece.

We'll be looking out for Greg's book "Homeschooling: A Family's Journey" (Tarcher-Penguin), due out in Auguest

In the meantime, am off to search out the online chat about homeschooling on the Washington Post site today, 1:00pm Eastern Time.

California

I am not at all sure that I have understood the recent California homeschooling ruling. As I currently see it, homeschooling remains a perfectly legal option, you don't have to have teaching credentials, you just have to tell the state what you are actually doing, and not pretend to be using credentialed teachers when you aren't.

That aside, one really does have to take issue with the following from the judge, (and whip your child straight out of state school, if you do believe that there is a chance that it is the case):

“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare,” the judge wrote, quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue. "
Justice H. Walter Croskey

Whoa, hold on there pal! I don't want my child patriotic and loyal to anything, let alone the state and nation. I want them to think about whether what they are doing seems good and right. I am not even certain that they should automatically have to protect the public welfare. This really would be up to them, thank you very much.

More on School Stress

...from the Independent.

Home Education in Germany

Aspie Home Education has You Tube story of the Busekros family. It comes to us courtesy of the Christian Broadcasting Network, but this version tallies with other sources.

When last I heard, Melissa, who has now turned 16, has been allowed to return home, but not before the HE community in the UK has been alerted to the plight of other German homeschoolers. Plenty of UK HEors are ready to put up a fight on their behalf .

School-Induced Problems and a Solution

I suppose one should be grateful that it is actually finally coming to the attention of those who might be able to do something about it, but I still can't help but wonder why on earth it has taken so long for adults to make that link between the emotional well-being of children and their experiences of school. Perhaps the recognition both of the link and the possible problems school can cause has been prompted by the spate of teen suicides and/or by the UN's finding that the UK's children come bottom of the league when it comes to well-being, but my honest reaction is "how could it have taken so long!" Are the reportedly high levels of self-harm, anorexia, aggression and bullying amongst school children really the new problems that the Guardian seems to think they are.

Surely school-inflicted damage is an age-old problem. Within my own experience, there were at least eight severe anorexics out of my year group of approx 120 girls, way back when I was at school. This problem appeared to be largely school-induced as it consistently developed at times when academic pressure was most heavily applied. Of the anorexics I know of now from this group, all have been seriously and permanently damaged by this affliction. None of them can eat adequately even now. They all have digestive problems and other health issues such as osteoporosis. At least one of them is sterile, probably as a result of being permanently underweight.

But it wasn't just anorexia. There were plenty of other pupils who were either near-anorexic, bulimic, smiling depressive, completely flat, clearly clinically depressive or proto-pathological narcissists. Plenty of these individuals continue to struggle with the trauma and the emotional habits that resulted from their school experiences.

At the time, very few adults, be they teachers or parents, appeared to take these problems seriously in the least, or come to that, even bothered to recognise them for what they were in the first place. On the rare occasions when problems did come to light, (usually because a child was underachieving academically), teachers would almost unfailingly blame either the child or the family. The idea that a problem could have been generated by teachers or school life...nah, that just wasn't on. Staff would far rather cover their backs and not look for real causes or seek real solutions.

Of course, it is wise to avoid admitting that problems are likely to be caused by the one-size-fits-huge-numbers problem that afflicts the school system since it is nigh impossible to think of a way of solving it, other than by encouraging the child to leave, and schools don't want to do that in the private system, what with that big, fat cheque being on the line, and there is sod-all point changing schools in the state system, what with that poor child most likely getting out of the frying pan and plopping straight into the fire in one short step. Yep, it's pretty damn difficult to know what to do about it if you're invested the school system, so far easier to get blaming children and parents instead.

But really, is this absense of truth-seeking and problem-solving the best we can manage for our children? Is condemning them to hopeless misery and other pathological behaviours really likely to set them up for creative, exciting, responsible lives?

OK, there is some merit in learning to adapt to strenuous surroundings, but surely it is far better to help our children learn that they should only adapt to an environment or situation if they believe that the adaptation would be beneficial, that the cause is worthy. If you were to be conscripted into an army, life would doubtless be hard, but whether you chose to cope with this should surely depend upon whether you believe the cause worthy or not. You would ask yourself "is it a just war?" If so, you adapt. If not, you subvert. Either way, you live your values. Surely this is what we would want from our children?

It was the case that plenty of girls during my time school did appear to adapt to the regime on some level. But you know what? Most of them knew or at least sensed that they weren't doing it in a good cause and they often developed nasty little emotional and behavioural tics to cope with this dissonance. They became subtle bullies, mini-narcissists, religious nut-jobs, or hard around the edges when their better natures would never have allowed for this. Some of them have yet to get over this. They carry the mal-adaptations with them to this day and they often have no compunction about putting their children through a similar system, which whilst it may have improved over the years, still creates many of the same sorts of difficulties for at least some of the children. For many of the other old girl mal-adaptees, it takes a good many years to recover, to see the world for how it is. At that point, most of them vow never to risk repeating that experience for their children.

I have witnessed quite a number of these renunciations as they actually happened, these moments when people finally achieve clarity about how appallingly useless their teen experience had been. At old-girl functions, I see how gentle probing can unravel a huge web of bitterness and hatred for the oppressive institution. A few years ago, I opened the Sunday Telegraph magazine to read a six page denunciation of my school during the years I was there, and this from many of the girls who had appeared to tolerate it well. My recent school magazine carried a paragraph by the head girl in the year above me who had bullied those around her in the services of the school system she appeared to espouse. She has now finally had the wit and wisdom to see the school for what it was at the time. She denounced it roundly and good for her.

So the moral: It is not a good thing to force yourself or your child to adapt to a set of beliefs for which you cannot see a proper rational argument or explanation. It scrambles ones thinking, leaves one open to doing truly terrible things, prevents one from dreaming big about how to solve problems, causes one to repeat mistakes ad nauseam.

If your child senses that they can learn in ways that better suits their skills and interests and that these methods are not open to them in schools, don't try to browbeat them into thinking that they must forego their beliefs. If your child is unhappy in school, I would really be thinking very hard about this one, particularly in the light of knowing that there can be a MUCH BETTER WAY, a way of providing an education that it is suitable to the age, ability and aptitude of the child. Consider home education.

Border and Immigration Education Page Update

OK, so there has been an improvement on yesterday's education page from the Border and Immigration Agency, for which we should doubtless thank the home education community and the internet.

We now read:

"This page explains your children's right to education, and your responsibility to make sure they receive full-time education, usually at school. You must make sure they receive full-time education if they are of compulsory education age.

It is compulsory for children to have full-time education between the ages of five and 16. This is usually at school. A child must start education in the term after he/she turns five, and must continue it until June of the year he/she turns 16. If you have any dependants of compulsory school age, you must make sure they receive full-time education.

The organisation responsible for providing education in your area is the local council. It must make sure all children living in its area receive full-time education, regardless of the child's immigration status. The education must be appropriate to the child's age and abilities and any special education needs he/she has. "

However, I'd still rate that a D and not just for the reason that there is no explicit mention of home education. Local councils are neither the sole providers of education, nor are they ultimately responsible for ensuring that a full-time education is taking place. Under primary legislation, parents are responsible for ensuring that a child is in receipt of an education and local authorities only have a duty to act when it appears that a parent is not making suitable provision.

Yup, it's up to the parents, stupid.

Outrageous Ignorance or Willful Lying?

...from the Border and Immigration Agency. You decide. Either way, it should erode one's faith in government institutions even further, (if that were possible).

And Your Point?

...presumably that parents are a feckless lot who simply cannot be trusted to be left alone to get on with it.

OK, I give up. All parents everywhere in the UK must finally agree that the only sensible thing to do is to hand over our children at birth. After all, it's quite clear that the state's care homes and all those state approved foster carers never put a foot wrong.

Some of My Friends

There are at least 6 home educators in this cute You Tube Vid, one of whom I suspect would have thoroughly enjoyed his role, throwing the hero from the train.

More on Schools and Home Education in Germany

For the latest on truancy rates and primary school results, visit ARCH Blog here and here and then there's Scatty's place for more on what German home educators are being forced to resort to.

Schools and Truth-Seeking Don't Mix

A friend who did a teacher-training course last year told me that plenty of the teachers she spoke to found the recruitment TV ads for teachers shockingly misleading and I've often wondered what would happen if school prospectuses were made to conform to an Advertising Standards code. Yep, I wonder how they'd accurately pitch the following story in amongst all those pretty pictures of teachers swirling in job satisfaction.

On yesterday's BBC Breakfast News, it was reported that approximately 50% of teachers admit to having been bullied by their pupils. This percentage is not repeated in the article here, but whatever the figure, the BBC investigators still assert that incidents are under-reported by heads.

Mick Brookes, the NAHT's general secretary has an explanation:

"I think we're quite right in asserting the under-reporting of these sorts of incidents because it's not the sort of thing that schools, and even teachers, will want to be shouting from the rooftops." "

Too right. It also seems perfectly possible that the same explanation could account for the fact that so many schools claim not to have a significant pupil to pupil bullying problem when this is so clearly not the case.

Hm. Put all that in your prospectus if you can.

My Pet Hates

OK, I'm feeling a bit tetchy right now. It could be the flu, but I am pretty sure that even if I were in tip-top condition, I would be hoppingly irritated by quite a number of the statements made by local authorites in their responses to the consultation on guidance for home education. It's the potent combination of local authority ignorance, their inability to see how inequitable they would like to be and their inability to think through the consequences that really gets to me.

By way of an example, take this statement from Brighton and Hove:

" What happens if a child wants to go to school but the parent doesn’t want this? Who advocates for the child? Is the parent’s decision overriding? "

Ignorance: most home educated children are absolutely thrilled to be home educating. I personally don't know a single one who isn't. In addition, every home educating parent I know would send their child to school if the child wanted to go. They might do this reluctantly, given what they know about schools, but if the child chose this, they would go with it. I suspect therefore that the problem of a child being kept at home against their will is absolutely MINISCULE. If LA personel actually knew anything about most HE families, they would know this already.

Inability to spot the inequitable nature of their demands: If LA's really feel they must intervene in families to check where are child wants to be educated, will they ensure that children who say they don't want to go to school can be educated at home? No? Then don't demand this of the HE community, because it is clearly hugely inequitable.

Inability to think through the consequences: In setting out to ask all HEKs where they would prefer to be educated, and then presumably determining that a child must be sent to school if he says he would prefer it, LAs would be over-riding the principle of parental responsibility for education. Once that has gone, LAs would become responsible for a child's education, so for example, when a child is failed by school, that family would have a case.

Phew, actually I feel better for getting that off my chest, even if the flu will take a little longer.

Will They Ever Learn?

We guessed it was bad, but it's nonetheless still galling to read yet more of the Local Authority responses to the DCSF's Consultation on Elective Home Education Guidelines which are emerging as a result of Freedom of Information requests by a number of home educators to various councils.

The fact that the final version of the Guidelines clearly did not give the LAs the leverage they were asking for, could give us some hope that the message will finally sink in. But just in case it hasn't...

To the any LA despots out there: You might be able to control what school children do to the very nth degree, but this is only because parents have (even if completely unwittingly) given you that responsibility. Don't forget in all your customary wielding of power, that the principle of parental responsibility for the welfare and education of children hasn't gone away. You never ever have a prima facie responsibility to do anything in this area, so butt out and only intervene when you are pretty damn sure you really need to. Most of you don't have enough money to go throwing your weight around doing something so totally unnecessary and so frequently very damaging as to interfere with perfectly well-functioning families, so go find something meaningful to do instead.

You know, the secret to education is to learn something. Perhaps the likes of the Education Welfare officers in Doncaster, Bournemouth, Warwickshire and Cambridgeshire really have seen the light at last, but if this is not the case and we really are right back were we were in 2004, well, you would have to wonder whether they'd have been better off being home educated.

UPDATE: Pete has alerted me to the fact that it can be done!

German Home Educators Flee to UK

...a story from the Guardian which contains a perfectly legitimate reference to Hitler.

Connexions and Home Education

The home education community has recently been re-alerted to the fact that personal advisors (PAs) from the government's Connexions Careers Advice Service for teens aged 13 - 18 are cold-calling home educating families in what looks like an attempt to conscript HEKs into the system.

This is not innocuous. From the invaluable Database Masterclass:

"Every young person is allocated a ‘personal adviser’ (PA) who brokers access to services, and is responsible for carrying out an in-depth personal assessment of the young person. This assessment process is known as APIR (Assessment, Planning, Implementation and Review) and covers every area of the young person’s life, including information about parents, family and friends. "

Yep, that really means every area of a young person's life: health, income, family relationships, mental health, emotional health, you name it. And guess where all this highly personal information gets stored? Yep, you got it: yet another database, this time the Connexions Customer Information System (CCIS).

It has also emerged that some local authorities have nominated a Connexions worker to actively seek out those teens who are not obviously within the system, so HEKs are very likely to be in their sights.

PAs are meant to garner consent before starting out on this whole redundant yet dangerous process, but once a teen has given that consent, it looks pretty damn difficult to withdraw it, so plenty of HE parents will be making absolutely certain that their teens have imbibed the message that they shouldn't give out personal information to a complete stranger on the doorstep or over the telephone, so they also shouldn't do it simply because someone says they are from the government.

Our Space

Talking of finding Orion, here's another project which involves identifying the constellation.

"GLOBE at Night Event Taking Place Feb. 25 - March 8, 2008

Take part in this international event to observe the night time sky and learn more about light pollution around the world. GLOBE at Night is an easy observation and reporting activity that takes approximately 15-30 minutes to complete."

Total Lunar Eclipse

To save you having to get out of bed at 3.00 am on Thursday, there's an animation here. I am quite sure I am being extremely witless, but why does the moon show up in the middle of the umbra?

OK...Daryl provided an explanation in comments here.

Letter

From The Independent:

"The psychologist Frank Smith in The Book of Learning and Forgetting chronicles how the current schooling model has only been in existence for the last 120 years. It was based on a plan used to produce soldiers for the Prussian army.

Corralling children in groups of 30, segregating them according to age, and perceived ability, forcing them all to attend to the same material at the same time ... none of these approaches favour learning and all fly in the face of years of experience, which show us that the most effective way to learn is the classic one: that of being apprenticed to someone with whom you identify and whose skill you wish to learn. Although I am a qualified teacher, I would be the first to acknowledge that some of the very best home-educators have no teaching qualification, just a desire to help their children and an open mind. "

Confused over Kosovo

...but this has helped.

Avoiding the Surveillance State - Another Reason to Home Educate

They haven't got to the children so far, it seems! Despite the fact that my medical records and those of my husband (such as they are) appear to have been uploaded onto the NHS Spine, and this even though we had requested that they shouldn't be, the existence of non-schooled children appears to have thrown several systems into some confusion. Even in our own GP surgery's database, the children would appear not to exist, though they they were registered there perfectly satisfactorily for a number of years prior to the computerisation! I'm guessing that this is because they aren't on school databases and the mismatch throws the system into confusion.

Very sadly, I don't imagine this situation will continue for long.

However, for another related reason to home educate, read Gordon Brown's woefully inadequate response to Nick Clegg's questions about fingerprinting children in schools, via
Pippa.

Brotherly Love

INT: CAR - ESTABLISHING SHOT

Long journey. Children staring out of the window. DS stirs.

DS: (to younger sister): You know what we're doing is illegal.

DD: What?

DS: Yeah, home education is illegal.

DD: No, it isn't. It isn't is it Mum?

Mum: No. It's perfectly legal. The law says that a child must be educated in school or otherwise.

DS: Yes, that's what I mean. In school or else.

DD: (squeaking). MUMMMMM....

Website of the Morning

Trainee Paramedic.

Home Schooling on Samizdata

here.

Website of the Day

Finding Orion and navigating using the Pole Star is made easy here.

Brian Links to AHEd

...at Brian Micklethwait's Education Blog

The Continuum Concept Tour

Jean Leidloff, author of The Continuum Concept, will be speaking in a number of venues in the UK in the near future.

Although she undervalued the role of the parent as a provider of seemingly good theories, her book challenged many of the prevailing assumptions about how children should be raised and did much to encourage a trend towards attachment parenting.

Following On...

...from yesterday's article in the Guardian, The Observer quotes Roland Meighan (previously Professor of Education at Notts University):

'The one downside is that home-scholers have no laboratories or sports equipment. "But that is the fault of the system, not the home-educators," says Meighan.'

Actually, I'd say that would be the fault of the parents and is actually not a real problem. Most HEors can get themselves a chemistry set and make their way down to their local leisure centre.

Update: Please note Archright's comment below. They and I suspect that Roland Meighan didn't actually say this!

Popper's Open Society for Busy People

From the introduction to a highly desirable precis of Popper's Open Society and it's Enemies:

"Western thought has been described as a series of footnotes to Plato. This is a tribute to his achievement and to the way that his ideas have continued to exert influence to the present day. Many of our problems in politics and the social sciences are complicated by methods and doctrines that we have inherited from him.

Some of these are:

Essentialism – excessive concern with the “correct” definition of terms.
The idea that individualism and altruism are not compatible.
The idea that “who shall rule?” is the most important question in political philosophy.
The quest for a utopian society by means of violent and revolutionary reform.

Karl Popper subjected Plato’s social and political thought to searching scrutiny in the first volume of The Open Society and its Enemies. My aim here is to make this work more accessible by providing the bare bones of the arguments with some supporting text from the book."

Now that should tickle the fancy! Am off to read the precis with a view to considering the place of home education in Popper's scheme of things.

Fiona Brookes Speaks!

From 37 mins into Radio 4's Friday PM recording, Prof. James Conway reiterates some slightly peculiar ideas about home educators and computer usage, but HEor Fiona Brookes is peerless.

I want to put it on record that we owe this woman and her husband a huge debt. She and her family were the first home educators we met when we moved to this area. Her example was and is inspirational and her children are WONDERFUL.

And so much for not using computers. Her family have used them pretty consistently throughout!

State Schools Shunned for Home Education

Apart from wondering both how researchers know that HEks don't spend so much time on computers, and why they assume that spending time using them is so terrible, I'd say this piece from the Guardian has got it about right. The Guardian is getting its story from a Review of Primary Education, but the research on home education that in turn informed the review is questionable in some regards.

From the review:

"In the midst of the many differences in philosophy, outlook and practice of home schoolers, from those who follow the national curriculum pretty rigidly to those whose approach makes Summerhill seem like a model of mainstream pedagogical rectitude, home schooling appears to consistently offer children a more efficacious educational experience even as measured by the standards of normative performativity. One constant in the midst of much complexity is the better than average performance of home schooled children when compared to age cohorts in the general population. Rudner's (1999) study illustrated that those in grades 1-4 who are educated at home, on average, perform one grade level higher than their public and private school counterparts. Lest this be thought as an effect of early nurture likely to dissipate later in the child's educational development, it is striking that the performance gap expands as the student progresses so that by 8th grade such children are performing at four grades above the national average in the US."

Actually, I think they may have that last bit completely right. Over and over, we see HEks starting apparently slowly, (ie: gathering information in a much more ad hoc sort of a way, according to interest and real life experience) then going on to perform very strongly by the usual academic standards.

Ho hum. We can only hope that this message finally gets through to any priggishly pedagogic LA inspectors.

There are more takes on the story from The BBC, The Independent and The Telegraph.

Update: Ah, a possible explanation for the minimal computer use assertion has emerged, (thanks Fiona N). It seem quite possible HEks have been conflated with Steiner pupils, the latter group being heavily discouraged from computer use. Most HEks aren't kept in the dark ages.

Further update: Ok, Fiona N now tells me that the assertion that HEks use computers less than schooled kids comes from outdated research on largely religious US homeschoolers. It certainly doesn't match our experience here.

The Next Reason to Home Educate

...parents actually take their responsibilities towards their children seriously. They don't want their progeny ending up in the situation of the presumably schooled children who were featured recently in Channel 4's Dispatches: Why Children Kill.

Supernanny Doesn't Make Any Difference

...from the Independent. Shame they didn't look at families where the child is provided with good explanations. Would be interesting to see how the behaviour of these children compares.

ContactPoint - What to Do Next

From Freedom for Children to Grow - (lifted in its entirety, sorry FfCtG...I can't find a permalink):

"The petition asking the Government to abandon ContactPoint, the national children's database, closed on the 20th December 2007 with 1395 signatures. On 1st February Downing Street made the following response saying that ContactPoint will still be going ahead and that it will benefit children in need of services by making it "easier for them to deliver better coordinated support to children and families "and that "security is, and always has been, of paramount importance. "
We assume that this will continue to be the official position on ContactPoint.

The Government announced a delay in the introduction of the national children's database immediately following the news of the loss of Child Benefit data discs.

The Downing Street petition response mentions that the Information Commissioner is looking at ContactPoint and the Data Protection issues.

A good place to have your say on information sharing and databases is the Ministry of Justice's Consultation into the Use of Personal Information which is being led by the Information Commissioner. This consultation closes on 15th February. The campaign site will shortly have notes on some of the main points you might want to consider and these will be flagged up here on the news page. "

Go here for more on why ContactPoint is such a terrible idea.

Latest from Wiltshire

The North Wiltshire Home Education Robot Design Team have continued their run of form, this year winning the Technical Design Award at the First Lego League Robotics competition in Birmingham.

Way to go, boys and girls!

Libertarian Edublogger is Back

Brian Micklethwait's Education Blog was essential reading back in 2005. It's therefore great to see that he is back at it again.

Only problem: there doesn't seem to be an RSS feed.

We Don't Want to Have to Say We Told You So...

...but the government is clearly continuing to ignore repeated warnings (eg: here, here and here) about the problems with ContactPoint.

When it comes to getting government departments to listen, experience seems to suggest that only threats of damage to themselves actually carries any leverage - witness their desire not to appropriate responsibility for education which informed their approach to the writing of the recent Guidelines on Home Education.

The threat of endangering the population at large just doesn't cut it with that lot.

Inspiration for Debates

Whilst looking for ideas for subjects for some proposed home educators' debates, I came across ForandAgainst.com.

You might want to sign up now if you fancy explaining why breastfeeding in public is not disrespectful and exactly why it can be a very good idea that children should sleep with their parents.