Meanwhile, down in Somerset...

It is no particular secret that British home educators are prone to squabbling among themselves; this happens at both a national and local level. On the national level, there is a constant struggle to be the top dog organisation for home educators. Education Otherwise has held the crown for so many years that others sometimes despair of supplanting it. Every so often, discontented members split off and found their own projects; the Home Education Advisory Service for example or Home Education UK. HE-UK, under the personal control of Mike Fortune-Wood...

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Children’s rights

We looked yesterday at New World Order ideology. Today, I wish to consider one aspect of this theory and how it has permeated, one might almost say contaminated, British home education and those connected with it in any capacity.In the early 1970s, I was very heavily involved in the Children’s Rights movement in this country. For some of us who went to school during the fifties and were teenagers in the sixties, the helplessness of children was an absolute scandal. They could be beaten without any legal redress by parents and teachers and any adult...

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My association with Tania Berlow.

You know it’s a bad sign when somebody starts putting up your old emails on the Internet... The person who has done this, goes on to say:‘Are you refusing to take my name out of this equation because you're now labouring under the misapprehension that I repeated something you said to me 9 months ago’Step forward, Tania Berlow of Somerset. Now it has never been a secret that I have had dealings in the past with Tania Berlow. However, Jacquie Cox has drawn attention to this recently and now Tania herself has started to publish my old emails. I know...

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The New World Order and home educators.

The New World Order is a conspiracy theory which holds that a world government is emerging which is for the time being operating in secret. For some, this means a group such as the Illuminati, for others the United Nations is the villain of the piece. The New World order has been a popular idea with some home educators in the USA for years. They are fighting hard to prevent America ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child becausethey fear that this removes parental rights and makes the state the child’s first parent. It...

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Moderating this blog

After two years when people have been able to say anything they wish, the time has finally come to introduce some limits on what appears here. Let me explain. When people set out on a course of action which they know will affect many others, changing the law for instance, then these people put themselves in the public domain. It is fair to question their motives and examine their fitness to be involved in changing the law. This was the case with Graham Badman, Ed Balls and some of the witnesses who gave evidence at the select committee in October...

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Summary Care Records

One can usually hazard a pretty accurate guess as to the line which home educating activists will be taking on many contemporary issues; from ID cards to vaccinations. It made it, I suppose, inevitable that controversy should arise in the home educating community about the introduction of Summary Care Records, knows as SCRs for short. These are a short account of the most important bits in your medical record that a doctor treating you would need to know. Allergies to penicillin, blood group, history of diabetes, that sort of thing. As things stand,...

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Georgie Eden

Well, well, everything now seems to be coming together about the operations of Alison Sauer and her friends. I think that I have a pretty good picture of how it has all been working, although Jacquie Cox has certainly produced a few surprising rabbits from the hat! Mind you, she may not be a completely reliable and objective witness herself. For example, she claims that only she and Alison Sauer were involved in the EHE guidelines; Alison writing them and she, Jacquie, doing the proof reading. This would mean that Rainbow-Leaf Lovejoy is not telling...

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My dealings with Christopher Warren

I said the day before yesterday that I had had no email conversations with Christopher Warren, apart from the comments which I posted on BRAG and a request which I sent him to remove my name from his site. After checking through all my old emails (!), I now find that I actually sent him the following in March:Simon Webb's Smear CampaignFrom: simon webb Add to ContactsTo: homeeducators206@gmail.com--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dear Mr Warren,I read with interest your piece about me. I answer your...

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Deleting posts

Comments made on blogs run by blogger are prone to being deleted at random or moved without warning to a section marked spam. This is a problem which affects not just this blog, but any run via blogger. My daughter keeps her own blog on wordpress and assures me that blogger is notorious for these problems. Home educators, living as they do in a world where nothing happens by coincidence and everything is part of some overarching plot against them, simply do not seem to get this! I have only ever deleted one person's comments from this blog and...

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A final word about Christopher Warren and home educators

If there is a stick anywhere about, one can as a general rule expect many home educators to catch hold of the wrong end of it. After the post which I published recently about Christopher Warren, some people commenting here seem to think that I am suggesting that there is something sinister about his connection with Alison Sauer and Kelly Green; some kind of conspiracy perhaps. I was hinting at nothing of the sort. Let me state the case as clearly as I am able and see whether or not people grasp the nature of the problem.Some home educators feel...

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Caring and creative children

Many of our friends have children who have not done brilliantly at school from an academic viewpoint. I have noticed that this is, at least according to their parents, because they are sensitive and talented in various areas and so unable to knuckle down to study like all the other kids. None of these children are home educated and yet I have noticed the same attitude appearing frequently on the home education lists and forums; my kid may not have a bunch of GCSEs, but boy is he creative/compassionate/caring/sensitive/talented/concerned. It is...

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Christopher Warren and the British home education scene

Back in March, a man called Christopher Warren posted on the Badman Review Action Group. I raised a few questions about the suitability of such a person being on that list and people got so angry that there was talk of chucking me off. I left, having drawn attention to the dangers of becoming mixed up with such a character. Here are a few links about Christopher Warren:http://www.nccg.info/fastfacts.htmlhttp://www.nccg.info/jannicke.htmlhttp://www.nccg.info/memberindex.htmlOf course, this might all be lies, although there is a great deal about...

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Waiting for a home educating abuse ring to emerge in this country

I mentioned yesterday that home educators in this country often tend to have a particular mindset, whereby they will enthusiastically embrace evidence of the good effects of home education and ignore anything at all negative. This can be very dangerous, because it is frequently combined with a dislike and mistrust of ‘professionals’; be they teachers, social workers, doctors or anybody else whose job entails their caring about the welfare of children. Anybody who is, or claims to be a home educator is almost by definition in the right and social...

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More about dead children, particularly black ones.

We looked yesterday at the emotive argument often used by home educators, that of the bullied child who had been educated at home and then forced back to school with tragic consequences. We found, as I had suspected, that nobody knows of a single case of a home educated child being forced back to school, let alone of one who subsequently suffered any harm as a result.Of course, home educators are not the only ones who wheel out suffering children to bolster their arguments. During the select committee hearings in 2009, I was astounded to hear the...

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Blood on our hands!

During the recent debate about the idea of a twenty day ‘cooling off’ period before a deregistered child’s name was removed from the school roll, one of the stock mythic characters of home education was brought into action once more. This is the bullied child who is forced back to school and then suffers harm either from his persecutors at school or because, unable to bear the agony of school any longer, he kills himself. Now I am not at the best of times over-keen on claims of this sort, that some action or other will end up costing the lives...

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Parents can’t hope to achieve as much as a school

One of the regular objections made by teachers and other professions in the field of education to the idea of home education is that one or two untrained people cannot replicate all that modern schools provide. This is quite true of course; they can’t. How could I ever have found the time for the endless risk assessments and drawing up of policy documents? There were no CRB checks, no Ofsted inspections. We had no cleaners in the evening to straighten the place up and prepare it for the next day, nor did we hold regular staff meetings or arrange...

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Alison Sauer and Education Otherwise; a correction

Last week, Shena Deuchars of Education Otherwise was very keen to distance the organisation from Alison Sauer, after somebody commented here that she used to work for EO. Shena said, very definitely in response to this idea:‘"But Alison Sauer did once hold a position within the EO organisation, until recently wasn't it?"No, she did not. I have phoned her this afternoon to ask. I am assured that she has never been an LC, a trustee or a volunteer in any capacity.'Now of course, I know perfectly well that Alison Sauer has in the past represented Education...

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Protecting our children and close friends

I have long thought that the online home educating community has many similarities to those groups who believe that there are alien spaceships at Area 51 or that a secret cabal rules the world. For these people, there are no coincidences. If a document disappears briefly from the Department for Education website; it can only be because a sinister cover-up is in progress. They often like to see themselves as fighting against dark forces which would otherwise destroy them and their families; nobly resisting statist efforts to force their conformity....

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The Ofsted report on home education

Just to remind readers, Ofsted did conduct a survey about home education at the end of 2009 and beginning of last year. the report may be found here:http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Publications-and-research/Browse-all-by/Documents-by-type/Thematic-reports/Local-authorities-and-home-educationSome of the topics which have been discussed on this blog are mentioned in this report, such as special needs and off-rolli...

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Counteracting sexism when home educating a daughter

One of the great things about educating a girl at home is that one has the opportunity to work vigorously against society’s attempts to prevent her from achieving her full potential, both physically and mentally. There are those who believe that we live in a post-feminist world, where the major battles against sexism and male chauvinism have been won and that only extremists would continue to moan on about sexism. People expressing this view are generally either men or Daily Mail readers.The indoctrination of females and crippling of their abilities...

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Home educating in India

http://www.hindustantimes.com/School-is-an-artificial-social-environment/Article1-711142.a...

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A new blog about the EHE guidelines

Somebody has started a blog about the new EHE guidelines for local authorities. It may be found here:http://morethanoneside.blogspot.com/p/about-this-blog-there-are-two-sides-to.htmlOne problem glares out at one immediately; it is not possible to post comments. The author claims that he has disabled the comments facility because he does not ‘wish to spend my time moderating a volatile debate’ This is ridiculous. Lord knows that there are enough volatile debates on this blog, but I don’t have to spend my time moderating them! Why would I even bother...

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Who actually produced the new guidelines on elective home education?

One of the most curious and disturbing things about the new EHE guidelines is that not one person has so far come forward and admitted to having written any part of them. This is odd. Even Alison Sauer will not confirm that she wrote a single word of this document. Since this might have an enormous effect on how local authorities deal with home educating parents in the future and in view of the controversial nature of the sections on special needs, perhaps it might be worth trying to work out who was involved in the thing.We know that one member...

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Home educators set out, very much against their own best interests, to alienate the Open University.

I have for several years entertained the suspicion that home educators are the most quarrelsome and disagreeable special interest group in this country. I am increasingly inclined to believe that some of them must be quite literally stark, raving mad.The Open University has been a very good thing for home educated children in this country. It has enabled them to gain access to places at universities such as Oxford and Exeter, which might otherwise have been denied them. The OU is one of the most progressive and enlightened universities and given...

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Radio play about home education

Tomorrow on Radio 4 at 2.15, the BBC are broadcasting a dramatised account of the home edcuation of the Polgar sisters. Their father Laszlo is rather a cult figure among some home educators, having faced enormous difficulties in educating his daughters. If any parents in 21st century Britain think that there are problems in home educating their kids, they should have tried it behind the Iron Curtain in the 1970s. This programme contains an interview with the Polgar girls' mother and father.http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011v...

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On the fringe

Imran Shah, a home educating parent from the south of England, is by all accounts a competent enough social worker. If I wished to know anything about child protection procedures for example, he is certainly a man whose opinion I would value. Unfortunate then that on Saturday he chose instead to deliver a lecture about neurology and endocrinology; subjects in which he is ’interested’. Mike Fortune-Wood would similarly be worth hearing if he talked about setting up a large support network for home educators. He is probably not a man though whose...

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School-aged children attending college

I recently bumped into a father who I have not seen for over a year or so. He and his family live some way from here in a village. His son was always bullied at primary school for being, shall we say, not as masculine as the average boy. The problem intensified when the kid started secondary school and so he deregistered him and began to home educate. It didn’t really work out, because however dreadful school was, at least the boy was mixing with other children. He missed this when he started spending all his time with his parents. They carried...

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A final, but exceedingly serious, problem with the new EHE guidelines produced by Sauer Consultancy Ltd

I have over the last few days pointed out one or two difficulties which are likely to arise with the new guidelines which have been produced by Alison Sauer. Still, perhaps they won’t be adopted in the end? Even so, a considerable amount of damage has already been done. Influential MPs such as Graham Stuart, Chair of the CSF select committee, and Lord Lucas have learned a lot about home education from their dealings with Alison Sauer. They evidently believe that she has given them an objective view of home education in Britain and they have now...

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Social ineptness and awkwardness considered as a possible cause, rather than consequence of home education.

Those who followed the comments on the recent article in The Independent about some Hollywood starlet’s decision not to send her children to school, will have noticed an old and familiar accusation being made; that home educated children grow up to be weird loners, unable to interact normally with others.Now before we go any further, I have to say that I have no evidence at all that this is so; I simply have not met enough adults who were educated at home to form an opinion. I have met one strange person who did not go to school, but the overwhelming...

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The new EHE guidelines and special needs

Although we are told that the version of Alison Sauer’s new guidelines for local authorities now circulating is not the final one, I have been assured that the section on SEN is unchanged in the final draft which Graham Stuart now has. This was confirmed when somebody helpfully sent me some notes and handouts from a training session run by Sauer Consultancy Ltd for a local authority in the north of England.My jaw dropped when I read what Alison wished to remind local authorities about in the new guidelines and I am not sure that the implications...

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A problem with the EHE guidelines

Alison Sauer tell us that the version of the EHE guidelines to which I have posted a link here is not the final version which was sent to the Chair of the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee. Nevertheless, it must still give us an insight into Alison’s thought processes and one particular point leaps out when we read it. As far as one is able to understand, these guidelines are intended to advise local authorities on the law regarding home education. They are supposed to stop LAs from making up the law as they go along. It is reasonable...

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The new EHE guidelines

The guidelines which Alison Sauer produced may be found here:http://www.box.net/shared/6lk1826...

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The new EHE guidelines for local authorities

When Alison Sauer began writing extensive new guidance for local authorities, telling them how they should deal with home educating parents, it was not hard to foresee that it would all end in tears. For one thing, she had no clear mandate to undertake this work on behalf of other home educators and for another, there was an obvious conflict of interest in that she runs a company which trains local authorities in how to deal with home educating parents. In other words, the whole thing looked to many like a job creation scheme for the Sauer Consultancy;...

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