Letting the cat out of the bag

My mention of Parent A, as somebody here wishes to call her, has recently irritated a number of people. Defence of her privacy and right not to be quoted has been used as a stalking horse for many in the home education world who are really operating to quite another agenda, rather than their ostensible one of defending the rights of a poor woman with a disabled husband and son. I drew attention a while ago to this particular individual boasting on home education lists and other places that she would not be entering her child for any GCSEs because she and her husband were not really up to the job of teaching him, among other reasons. At precisely the same time, she was claiming in a newspaper that he would be taking eight GCSEs when he was twelve! This type of thing, home educating parents telling their local authorities and the general public one thing, while actually working to a completely different set of rules in real life, is very common with home educators. It was this which was the real cause of the annoyance which those commenting here expressed.

To some extent, it is possible to sympathise with the reasons that many home educating parents behave in this way. Ordinary parents expect their children to be taking GCSEs and there is a widespread feeling that teenagers who don't are losers and dropouts. There is also the impression that any child who receives no formal teaching will be uneducated. I don't want to go into the ins and outs of this or discuss autonomous education; the fact is that this is how most parents view the matter. A lot of home educating parents, for various reasons, are unable or unwilling to teach their children or enter them for GCSEs. They are aware that to other parents, those who send their kids to school, there is something a little shocking about this. They also know that local authorities are concerned about children who are not being taught, regarding them in many cases as children who are not really being educated. Theoretically, the local authority can force a child back into school by means of a School Attendance Order and so it is a matter of anxiety if anybody in the local authority should get the feeling that a home educated child is not being taught and prepared for examinations.

The result is a split personality. Most of the apparent anger on here over the last few days, that relating to my quoting Parent A at any rate, has been synthetic. Those commenting know very well that there are enormous discrepancies between what home educating parents tell newspapers, local authority officers and parents of children at school and what they say to each other in private on lists, forums and at HE groups. As a matter of fact, local authority officers know this perfectly well; that is why they are so worried about many home educated children and are constantly agitating for a change in the law. They know very well that parents tell them all sorts of ridiculous stories about what their children are doing educationally, which in all too many cases amounts to damn all. Here is Myra Robinson, a Home Education Advisor from Newcastle;

' pupils are unable to produce work samples on demand or demonstrate an understanding of the basics, despite parents' claims about their level of education. One girl said she worked in the library, but didn't seem to know where the library was,'

This is fairly standard for those unfortunate people who are charged with visiting home educated families. I have a stock of quotes from such people, all despairing at the fairy tales that parents tell about their children's achievements.

There is an element of Alice in Wonderland about this business, because nobody is really being fooled. The parents know that their children are doing nothing much in the educational line and so do the local authority officers. Both sides are pretending that everything is fine. The parents motivation is to get the local authority off their back and the local authority, who do not wish for all the fuss and bother of issuing an SAO, are going along with the game and pretending to believe what the parents are telling them. And then along comes some idiot like the present writer, who describes the situation in plain language and provides chapter and verse to illustrate the point. No wonder that some parents are getting a bit tetchy about this! My own motivation is very simple. I am aware of the way that things work and regard it as disgraceful. I think that the whole system needs a good shake-up.