The advantages of home education

Two of the greatest advantages of home education are the depth in which subjects may be covered and also the spontaneity and choice which is possible with this type of education. For example, at school history is for most of the year restricted to the classroom. There might be the odd visit to a museum or castle, but these are rare exceptions. Mostly the children are limited to watching DVDs, looking at books and so on. How very different is the case for the child being taught at home! If World War II is being studied and the family live near London,...

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A sad, but not unfamiliar, story

I watched the Channel 4 programme Child Genius on Thursday. As I am sure readers know, it featured somebody who comments regularly here, Mr Williams of Alton. I found the section dealing with his son quite depressing. The reason for this is that the situation with young Peter, who is fourteen, is very familiar to me. There are countless thousands of young people in the same position, although most of them are at school rather than being home educated. Let me explain.All secondary school teachers have teenagers in their class who are not at all...

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Rent-seeking vulture queens

I adore this expression! It has a weird kind of beauty about it, rather like the term coined for the French when they would not join in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Remember 'Cheese-eating surrender monkeys'? So why would one home educator be so unpleasant about another as to call her a 'Rent-seeking vulture queen'?As readers no doubt recollect vividly, the last government tried to introduce registration and monitoring of home educated children. The then opposition, including the current Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, managed...

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The problem with home education forums

It is no secret that I was chucked off a number of Internet lists for home educators after having a couple of articles published last summer on the subject of home education; the idea being that many parents would not feel comfortable about discussing their problems freely if a supposedly unsympathetic character like me were hanging round. This displays a touching naivete on the part of those running the forums. In fact I would be very surprised to find a single home education list which does not have professionals and other people who are not...

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Wonderful quote from Graham Stuart

I simply had to post this. As readers are probably aware, Graham Stuart, Chair of the Commons Children, Schools and Families select committee, is currently the home educator's best friend. He understands them and wishes them well. He is our favourite MP. A few days ago, Tania Berlow asked me to post a long string of quotations by Graham Stuart. Here is one which we missed, which really should be appended to anything he is currently saying on the subject of home education:http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/153756/Get-your-child-to-school-and-win-flying-lessonsIt...

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Monitoring and inspection of home education

An awful lot of local authority officers inspecting or supporting home educating parents seem to be ex-teachers. This never used to bother me; nearly all our friends are either teachers or social workers, so one more visiting the house didn't make much difference! Many home educators though have very negative feelings towards schools and conventional education. For them, having a teacher come round to check up on what they are doing is intolerable. I wonder if parents would be more agreeable to the idea of other home educators carrying out such...

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Home educated girl offered place at Oxford

On one of the Internet lists to which I belong, it was said recently that a home educated girl had been offered a place at Oxford University without having any A levels or formal qualifications. According to the person who spoke of this, Oxford were, ' more interested in character, personality and extra curricular interests and activities,' This sounds quite odd, because they are in general almost entirely concerned with academic achievement.Does anybody know anything about this or is it another of those urban myths? I have been asking around and...

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Learning to write autonomously

We were treated the day before yesterday to a splendid example of the truly extraordinary mental contortions which are necessary if one wishes to be an 'autonomous' home educator. Just like the White Queen in Through the Looking Glass, the dedicated autonomous educator is required to believe six impossible things each day before breakfast!A couple of days ago somebody whose child still cannot write even though he is in his teens commented here. The fact that he can barely write his own name was attributed by some others who commented, to the fact...

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Injection of new blood

I was contacted a short while ago by somebody who is running an information day for home educators and professionals involved with home education. She wished to publicise this blog and wondered if I had any objection to this being done. The more the merrier is my general feeling about this and so we should soon be seeing a few new people here. I was going to ask some of the regulars here to try and be a little more civilised and polite, but I have noticed lately that everything seems to be pretty affable here and so that does not seem necessary....

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Graham Stuart MP and home education

Most people involved in home education will know by this time that Graham Stuart, who is Chair of the Children, Schools and Families select committee, is trying to draw up a new set of guidelines about home edcuation which the Department for Education could issue. There is of course some controversy about this, not least in that the whole process has apparently been embarked upon on the quiet and has only come to light gradually. However, Tania Berlow has collated all that Graham Stuart has said publicly on this matter and she desires me to publich...

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Special needs

One of the great things about educating your child at home is that you have almost complete responsibility for the end product. If the child turns out well, you can take a lot of the credit. After all, you provided the education. The downside is that there is no blaming a school if your kid turns out to be ill educated or badly behaved. Nobody else to blame for the slovenly speech or swearing, no peer pressure as a handy alibi if the child starts taking drugs and so on. What your child becomes is largely down to you. So for example, the fact that...

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The joys of freedom

Here is a quick quiz for home educators. Which well known advocate of home education was in favour of abolishing the age of consent so that adults and children could have sex without any legal restraint? No? Well it was the same one who argued that children should be able to vote at the age of three. And use heroin if they wished. Anybody guessed yet? Last clue, he did not think that there should be a minimum age for children to be able to drive a car on public roads. Well, I can see that nobody is going to get this one. Step forward John Holt,...

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The need for democratic legitimacy for representatives of home educators

Every single person in this country who claims to speak on behalf of home educating parents is doing so because they have appointed themselves to this role. This applies to me, Mike Fortune-Wood, Education Otherwise, Alison Sauer; every single one of us. Not one of us has any democratic legitimacy whatsoever. In fact, looked at from that point of view, the only person during the debate about home education last year who had any claim to being appointed in a democratic fashion was Ed Balls. This is a sobering but inescapable conclusion.What can...

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Who is attempting to limit the freedoms of home educators?

Yesterday I was accused by one person who commented here of seeking adulation! I really can't be going about this in the right way, because I have yet to notice that I have received any adulation at all here over the last year. Come on guys, you are welcome to be adulatory if you want; don't be shy!I was thinking a little more about the idea of people like me wanting to restrict the freedoms of home educators. I was perhaps a little harsh about this, saying that I had no interest at all in such freedoms. Let us look at the freedoms of home educators...

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Funding for home educated children

Over on the HE-UK list, there is some discussion about the idea that local authorities will have 10% of the funding available for school children, which they can use for children who are educated at home. It is being suggested that this is some new scheme, but that is ridiculous. Eight months ago, on February 17th, I posted about this subject. It is pretty widely known. I said;'In the letter to local authorities, the DCSF says, apropos of home educated children;"We would count each such pupil as 0.1 for DSG funding purposes, and review towards...

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Cherishing illusions

I still belong to one or two Internet lists for home educators, although my relations with those on the lists is not always what one might describe as cordial! I tend to limit myself these days to supplying information, but even that seems to provoke people. About a month ago, for example, there was a panic because some parents seemed to believe that the Metropolitan Police were treating both co-sleeping and home education as risk factors for abuse. I found out about this and passed on what I had learned. More recently, others were saying that...

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Changing the law on home education

One gains the distinct impression when reading Internet lists devoted to home education that many, perhaps most, home educators want nothing to change and for the legal situation regarding home education to remain just as it is now. In a way, I can sympathise with this view. I am myself a conservative and more or less opposed to anything new, almost as a matter of principle. It is heartening to see so many others in the world of home education who embrace this basic tenet of conservatism! Still. it seems a little odd to me that the present jumble...

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Update about weighing and measuring home educated children in Oldham

I have been in contact with Francesca Lees, who is the School Health Advisor for Oldham Primary Care Trust. She says;' I would only weigh/measure a child regularly if there were possible concerns about a child's weigh or growth, or if a child is subject to safeguarding procedures i.ea child protection or 'child in need' plan. 'She is very keen to discover who is making up these ridiculous stories and what the motive is for frightening parents in this way. Does anybody here have any ideas about this? Fiona Nicholson has also been in touch about...

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Attempting to limit the freedoms of home educators

Yesterday I posted a humorous piece about the fact that I am often being told that I have no place in the debate on home education because I am no longer a home educator; the reason for this being that my daughter is now seventeen and attending a Further Education College. Somebody commented with the surprising news that those who make this objection are not really saying this at all. They are rather complaining that I am 'attempting to limit the freedoms of current and future home educators', instead of trying to maintain these freedoms or offering...

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No longer a home educator

I am still on one or two home education lists and a short while ago an old friend of mine, firebird2110, expressed surprise at this. She gave it as her opinion that since I was no longer a home educator, she could not see why I was on any HE lists at all. This is a fair point. Before I explore it a little, I must mention one thing which puzzles me about the woman who raised this question. She describes herself as a 'wool crafter'. I have racked my brains trying to work out what this might be. I even went to the length of sending her an email asking...

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Home educated children and access to health services

I have, as I have said in the past, been involved in helping parents of children with special educational needs to de-register their children from special schools. This can be a little more complicated than de-registering from an ordinary maintained school, because of Regulation 8 (2) of the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006, which specifies that the permission of the local authority is required before a child at a special school can be removed from roll. In practice, this is seldom withheld, but a variety of tactics are...

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More about weighing and measuring

While some are still sharpening their coloured pencils in readiness for firing off strangely worded demands for information from local authorities, I have been speaking to the people involved with home education at Oldham. The suggestion has been made that home educated children in this area are being forced to have their children wieghed and their height measured every six months in order to ensure that they are not being starved to death. This move was supposedly in response to the death of Khyra Ishaq in Birmingham.Fortunately, I have a sister...

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Internet lists and home education

A couple of people have pointed out lately that just because one or two people on Internet lists relating to home education are fretting about some topic or other, does not mean to say that this is representative of home educating parents in general. This is of course absolutely true. The main lists might typically have a few hundred people on them and only forty or fifty who regularly take part in debates there. If we assume that there are eighty thousand parents of home educated children in this country, these forty or fifty individuals, many...

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Councils checking the health of home educated children

A current concern on some of the Internet lists ties in perfectly with my post earlier about the readiness of some home educators to believe any old rubbish as long as it shows a local authority in a bad light. The latest story is that some local authorities, Oldham in the North of England and Ceridigon in Wales have been mentioned, are insisting that home educated children are weighed and measured or forced to see school nurses regularly. I shall be posting more fully on this tomorrow, because these rumours are actually damaging the provision...

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