Teach and forget; a common strategy for parents

I want to look today at what motives parents might have for teaching their children systematically and then forgetting that they have done such a thing; in effect, airbrushing this from their family history. This is by no means uncommon among both home educating parents and also those who send their children to school. Some motives for this are restricted to home educators and so I shall deal with these first.

Quite a few home educating parents seem to feel almost ashamed to be seen to be pushing their children academically and those who do ensure that the children study literacy and mathematics in a structured and traditional way often conceal this from other parents. I want to think about this first and see if we can discover what could be responsible for this extraordinary state of affairs; educators who seem to be embarrassed about educating! There are several reasons why home educating parents might behave in this way. Before we go any further, I want to make it quite clear that I do not want to become bogged down in terminology here. I am talking about parents who teach their children and then keep quiet about it afterwards or try to erase it from their minds. I do not mind whether we call this coercive education and contrast it with autonomous, or whether we talk of imposed teaching and compare it with unschooling or informal education. The fact is, that parents do it.

Many, but not of course all, home educating groups are ambivalent about teaching and imposing discipline upon children. I have heard from parents who say that when they have said 'No' to their child at a group, they are stared at as though they are child abusers. One mother mentioned that her eight year-old son would be studying for GCSEs when he was older and the reaction was very hostile. How could she possibly know that he would do this? Wasn't she being presumptuous? Did she not want to give the boy a choice when he was older? I think that quite a few readers will know what I am talking about here. Under these circumstances, there is a tendency to adapt to the mores of the group and keep quiet about anything that might smack of 'school at home'. There is also, incidentally, a tendency to pretend that one does not permit visits from the local authority, this being another of those things that many parents are expected to give lip service to. People who accept visits are sometimes made to feel as though they are letting the side down. One sees this attitude a lot on Internet lists. The family who I mentioned yesterday, for example, claimed in the newspaper to be unknown to the council and said that if registration became compulsory they would leave the country. In fact, just as with many other autonomous educators, they enjoy a perfectly amicable relationship with their local HE advisor from the council. This is also common; quite a few parents have visits from their local authority and then keep quiet about it for fear of being thought Quislings!

Conforming to the expectations of a group in order not to be rejected is one reason for maintaining these pretences, but there are other motives at work. Saying, 'We're autonomous' is a bit of a catchphrase in some circles. It makes one sound 'with it'. It's a bit like saying 'We're organic'. It is a shorthand code for a lifestyle rather than merely an educational philosophy. There was of course also the enjoyment during the campaign against the Badman review and Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill of pretending to be part of a persecuted minority. For a while, some of these parents could make out that they would be forced to flee the country or go on the run like desperate criminals! This was the only chance some of these families would ever have to feel like members of a despised minority and it would have been foolish to pass it up. Of course one had to be an autonomous educator to be part of this. Structured educators who were registered with their local authority could not make out that they were threatened by the proposed new law and so many parents denied that they had visits and let everybody think that they too felt that the new law would stop them home educating. This particular game encouraged many home educating parents to pose as being autonomous.


Perhaps the strongest motive for teaching one's child and then forgetting that one has done so is this. People tend to sneer a little at pushy parents and those who appear over anxious for their child to succeed. Let's face it; it looks a bit sad to be so desperate for your child to do better than everybody else's! It is much cooler to pretend that your kid does not have to work hard and that you certainly don't have to put the hours in on their education. When GCSEs were are taking place, every single one of our friends would claim that their children were doing no revision and that it was confidently expected that they would do badly at their exams. This was despite the fact that many of these kids had had private tutors for years and the parents were insisting that they stay in and study practically every night. (To say nothing of completing their coursework for them!) When their children achieved a string of As and A*s, it made it look as though the kids were little geniuses who had managed this without trying. The same thing happens when people teach their children things like reading and mathematics. If they then forget about this, then it looks as though their child must be super bright for being able to learn the thing later without any formal instruction. I must admit that I was tempted to do this myself. Had I kept quiet about all the teaching which I did, then I could have made out that my daughter had 'just picked up' literacy, the four basic arithmetical operations and everything else up to and including calculus. This would have had the double pay-off both of making me appear a laid back and right-on parent and also presenting my child as a real brain-box!

I have to say that there is often no conscious deception involved in this process by the parents. Some of our friends seemed genuinely to have forgotten the years of tutoring, the extra-curricular activities and so on. They honestly seemed to believe that their children's GCSE results were entirely their kid's doing. I am sure that the same thing happens with home educators who spend time teaching their children. If I had my time over again, I might well be inclined to erase all the intensive work with flashcards from my memory and allow my daughter the credit for simply picking up reading of her own accord.

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Non-standard UK qualifications

Last week I was accused of being fixated on GCSEs and A levels and not acknowledging that there were other, equally useful qualifications to be had by the home educated child. This is a very fair point and so I thought it might be worth looking a little at the alternatives to the standard qualifications in this country and seeing if any of them might be preferable for those being educated at home.

The first point to consider is this. The higher education system and also most employers are geared to the GCSE and A level. This may be regrettable, but it is indisputably true. Further Education colleges ask for five GCSEs if a teenager wishes to study for A levels, universities require A levels to study for a degree, training courses for plumbers ask for four GCSEs, even a shopkeeper or garage owner may well insist on GCSEs in English and mathematics. This means that anybody hoping that alternative qualifications will do the trick for their children is immediately putting those children into the position of being guinea pigs for a risky venture. It is not only home educating parents who do this. Schools and colleges are also conducting experiments of this kind with the International Baccalaureate and the New Diploma. Here is an analogy. Hikers usually ascend mountains wearing stout boots and thick socks. Imagine that somebody insists on trying to climb up while barefoot or wearing only flip-flops. It might be possible, but for every person who succeeds, there will be many who cannot manage it. This is what it is like for those who want their children to take non-standard qualifications. A few may do well, but it is hard to see the motive for avoiding the conventional path in the first place, except through sheer perversity!

Let us look at the alternatives to GCSEs and A levels, not just from the perspective of home educators, but also schools and colleges. One famous alternative to A levels is the International Baccalaureate. Some schools have adopted this in recent years because the standards are set quite independently of any government and are far more rigorous than A levels. There are two problems with the IB. Yesterday I mentioned the London Borough of Enfield, a local authority with which I have had quite a few dealings. One of the schools there, Highlands, decided a few years ago to be pioneers and scrap A levels entirely in favour of the International Baccalaureate. Big mistake. Because unlike A levels, it is perfectly possible to fail the IB entirely. In 2008, the sixth formers leaving Highlands found this to their cost. Almost half of them, 46% in fact, failed the IB. This meant that they had nothing at all to show for their two years further education. I cannot tell you how furious the parents were! Highlands dropped the IB and went back to A levels. Other schools found the same thing. Another problem with the IB is that universities are, as I said above, geared to GCSEs and A levels. They will accept the IB, but most are not as happy with it as they are with A levels, despite what they say on their websites.

A similar experiment has been carried out with the new Diploma. One local FE college decided to encourage many of those who wished to study for A levels to do instead a diploma, claiming that it would be worth three or four A levels and that universities would accept it as well as A levels. This is quite untrue and those foolish enough to be used as guinea pigs for this scheme are now finding that they are going to have great difficulties with getting into the universities of their choice.

Some parents have got their children to sit the National Tests in Adult Literacy and Numeracy (ALAN). In theory, Level 2 is equivalent to GCSEs in English language and mathematics, grades A*-C. This may in theory be so, but you will have trouble persuading a college to accept these as being equal to GCSEs if you are trying to access an A level course. A serious difficulty with these qualifications is that they look the sort of thing which an illiterate person might have taken after going to remedial classes. This is not always the impression which one hopes to give to a prospective employer. Combined with a blank space in the box for secondary school, the whole tone of an application form for a job might be seriously jeopardised by such a qualification.

We recently saw a teenager from Wiltshire get into Exeter University on the strength of Open University credits alone, without any GCSEs or A levels. This has been done before, although it is not common. Once again, we come up against the problem of a system which is geared to GCSEs and A levels, together with certain recognised foreign qualifications. One has to ask one's self, what is the advantage here for the child? Gaining 190 points at the OU is very hard work, but if you are going to embark on such structured academic work, why choose a scheme so radically different from that with which universities are familiar? It is in any case unlikely that this is, or will become, a common way of entering university.

I can see, although do not think it wise, that some parents wish to allow their children to make free choices about the type and degree of education which they have. For those who are going to embark upon structured study though, it is the responsibility of the parents to research the options carefully and consider all the implications. What I find utterly baffling is that any family would deliberately set out to obtain qualifications which would make it harder for their children to get jobs or university places than would be the case if they stuck to the same things as everybody else, i.e. GCSEs and A levels. The only possibility that I can see is that these are people who like to do things the hard way, who enjoy a struggle. That is a perfectly good decision for an adult to make about her own life. After all, if I wish to make things difficult for myself, that is my affair. I could start walking everywhere backwards if I liked or with my eyes closed. However, the case is altered somewhat when the future life of a child is concerned. In such a case, to set out upon a course of action which will make it harder for the child to get on in life than is the case for a schooled child, seems to me foolish and irresponsible. I was disgusted with Highlands school when they gambled with the future of their sixth form pupils and I was horrified to see our local college trying to get loads of bright kids to sign up to the New Diploma. I feel exactly the same way about parents who ignore the evidence and pursue an unconventional route for their teenage children. Why would you take such a gamble?

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Todays GCSE results

The publication of GCSE results today seems to me to be a moment for reflecting upon what these examinations mean to home educating families. One often sees things written by parents who are educating their own children that minimise the importance of GCSEs and suggest that they are hardly worth having, so devalued have they become by so-called 'grade inflation'. This strikes me as a neat excuse for indolence; why should we bother with them, they aren't really worth anything anyway? The truth is that GCSEs are becoming ever more important. Indeed, without them young people face almost insurmountable problems in their future lives.

Let us begin by looking at an article from today's Daily Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7961011/University-candidates-selected-on-their-GCSE-results.html


This article suggests that many universities now use GCSEs to weed out those candidates whom they feel are not really worth bothering with. In other words, they first select those with a string of As and A*s and then chuck out the rest. This process is done regardless of the A levels, OU credits or International Baccalaureate scores. In short: no GCSEs, no consideration. With the squeeze on places at university, this is likely to be even more the case this year and for the foreseeable future. Any young person who wishes to take his pick of universities had better have a clutch of As and A*s at GCSE. Otherwise, he will be restricted to the less prestigious universities or indeed none at all the way things are this year. So for higher education GCSEs are, as I have been saying for years, absolutely vital.

Of course, not everybody wishes to go into higher education. Some young people wish to get jobs at sixteen or eighteen. Here again, the lack of GCSEs is likely to prove a grave disadvantage to them. In its Survey of Employers, published by the Learning and Skills Council in 2006, many employers revealed that they would not even consider giving an interview to a teenager without any GCSEs at all. In fact GCSEs were of huge importance to the potential employers in deciding who they would take. In employment too, as well as in higher education, the lack of GCSEs is a serious handicap for any young person. With rising unemployment, this too will tend to make the GCSEs which an applicant has of crucial importance.

There were two reasons why it seemed to me a wise move to ensure that my daughter had a string of A* GCSEs. Firstly, the information contained in the specifications for these examinations is very useful in itself. Rather than devise a curriculum of my own, the biology, chemistry and physics International GCSE specifications already had in outline the scientific knowledge which a reasonably well educated person should have at her disposal. From that point of view they were valuable for their own sake. They are also useful for making sure that a young person has as many choices as possible in life. My daughter hopes to apply to a Russell Group university. For this, at least six A* GCSEs are indispensable. If, on the other hand, she wished to start work at once, then eight A* GCSEs in academic subjects would impress any potential employer. It is a win-win situation, no matter what she chooses to do. All that we have done is ensure that she has as many options as possible for her future life.

Failing to take all those GCSEs would have curtailed her choices. To give one example. She hopes to apply, as I said, to universities in the Russell Group. The fact that she has been to two summer schools this year, one at Oxford and one at Cambridge universities, will be a great help in this; just what looks good on the personal statement. However, to get on those summer schools in the first place, it was necessary to have a string of A*s. Without them, no summer school.

In his judgement in the case of R v Secretary of State for education, ex Parte Talmud Torah Machzikei Hadass School Trust in 1985, Mr Justice Woolf defined a suitable education as one which:

Primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he is a
member, rather than the way of life in the country as a whole, as long as
it does not foreclose the child's options in later years to adopt some
other form of life if he wishes to do so.

It seems to me that by failing to arrange for their children to sit and take GCSEs, many home educating parents are indeed taking an action which will 'foreclose the child's options in later years to adopt some other form of life if he wishes to do so'. Children are not really able to foresee the consequences of not studying for GCSEs and it is not fair to thrust the responsibility for such a serious decision with so far-reaching implications upon them. Few children probably read the Daily Telegraph and will not be aware that in several years time when they might wish to apply to university, that their lack of GCSEs might disqualify them before they have even sent in their UCAS form. As parents though, we know and we have the responsibility to see that their future prospects for either higher education or employment are not wantonly blighted in this way. That is what home education is for parents; a serious of duties and responsibilities to do the best for our children. Those who would shirk these duties by hiding behind some mythical 'right to home educate' and who seek to pass the buck to their children for serious decisions affecting their future life, should think very carefully about the consequences for those children.

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On the passing of GCSEs without systematic study or help from parents

I sometimes think that my daughter must be the only teenager who worked hard to achieve her GCSEs, just as I must be the only parent who put in a lot of effort to help her do so. According to practically all our friends, their children did no revision or studying at all and it is a miracle that they managed to get strings of As and A*s. The parents also generally claim to have done nothing to help the children pass their examinations; they were themselves too busy to do anything to help and so their child's academic success is a mystery to them. These are all children who attended school. It is not to be wondered at that when I hear similar claims being made by the parents of children who were home educated, I raise my eyebrows a little. Yet more children who did not study systematically or revise and yet got good grades. This is very mysterious, because both my daughter and I had to work very hard to achieve the same end. Perhaps she is particularly slow witted and needed a lot of extra coaching!

Now I have no idea about other parents and children, but in the case of many of those known to me personally, these stories of nobody doing much to get the kid to pass a lot of GCSEs at high grades are not really true. Parents who claim to have done nothing seem to forget the tutors they engaged for years, the attending church in order to get the kid into a good school, the piano and ballet lessons, endless visits to museums, rows with the kids to make them do their homework, helping them with their coursework, forbidding them permission to go out during the run-up to the exams so that they revise and all the rest of the efforts which they made.

Why do parents tell these fairy stories to each other about all this lack of effort on both their part and that of their children? Partly I suppose because nobody wants to appear to be a desperate and pushy parent! Much more impressive to be laid back and cool and not to beaver away neurotically for years just to get your kids into a good university. Telling other parents that your kid didn't revise or study and yet still passed a clutch of examinations is a subtle way of boasting. They are saying, in effect, 'My daughter is so talented and bright that she didn't need to work. She simply absorbed the content of the GCSE courses easily and did not have to revise it just before the exam. What a brain-box!' Of course, it is also laying up a brilliant alibi for yourself if your child does muff up her GCSEs. You can simply say, 'Yes, I told you she didn't do any work!' It's a win-win situation really.

How likely is it that a child would really pass GCSEs without studying hard and putting in a lot of work? Not very likely at all I would say. One picks up all sorts of knowledge casually just from ordinary day to day reading of newspapers and magazines, watching television, surfing the net and so on. This means that anybody concerned with the environment, climate change or even science in general is likely to know that plants grow by taking water from the soil and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and combining them together in process known as photosynthesis. This is simply the sort of general knowledge that any educated person might be expected to possess. It is not hard to see how anybody, even a person who has never studied for GCSEs or anything else might acquire this sort of information more or les automatically without anybody telling them to do so. However when I meet a teenager who is able to set down the correct balanced formula for this process, that is to say;

6 CO2 + 12 H2O → C6H12O6 + 6 O2 + 6 H2O

then I am pretty sure that she has made a conscious effort to learn it by heart. What possible reason could anybody, even somebody passionately concerned about trees and the environment, have for wanting to know the chemical formula for glucose? This is most definitely not the sort of general knowledge which one picks up casually in the course of reading about plants. It is not the sort of thing which anybody apart from a chemist, biologist or teenager swotting from an examination would ever know! It is of course a vital piece of information if one wants to pass a GCSE in biology, which is pretty well the only reason anyone ever learns it.

The same can be said of the minerals which plants need to grow effectively. Knowing the importance of these minerals is general knowledge which most of us have. The gardeners among us could also talk about NPK fertilisers and be aware that these contain potassium, nitrogen and phosphorus. We might even know about their role in eutrophication. We are unlikely though to know the precise proportions for a balanced NPK fertiliser and the symptoms of deficiency in plants of one of these elements. Again, to get an A* at biology, you must know this.

I make no bones at all about the fact that I am myself a pushy and ambitious parent who made damned sure that his daughter studied and got a clutch of good GCSEs. Both of us worked extremely hard towards that end, which, as I say, sets me apart from most of parents whom I know or of whom I have heard. There may perhaps be teenagers who learn for fun about Snell's Law, the formula for photosynthesis and the precise reasons for the failure of the Schlieffen Plan in 1914, but I think that they are as rare as rocking-horse shit. About as rare in fact as parents who do not do all that they can to ensure that their children pass these important examinations at the age of fifteen or sixteen. For the rest of us, it is hard slog involving a good deal of work for both parent and child.

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A curious case of apparently autonomous education

I am often accused of ignoring evidence for successful autonomous education, although this is not really true. I examine everything in this area closely whenever I get the opportunity. So I was intrigued a couple of days ago when somebody posted the following here;

' My AS child took science GCSE's as a way of consolidating her knowledge, and was very disappointed when she realised that her knowledge already far exceeded that which was necessary for the GCSE course. She got A*s without doing a stroke of work. She is completely self-taught, and was teaching me by the age of 11.'

What are we to make of this? Firstly, it is apparently being touted as a case of autonomous education without any teacher being involved. ' She is completely self-taught' certainly suggests strongly that she taught herself without anybody actually teaching her. For most people, this would indicate that she has not been attending school. Also, this comment was posted following a discussion of autonomous education and home education. The implication is plain. This is certainly the impression which others gained as well. The next comment was;

' well done to your daughter for learning so much without a course, Simon really has no idea, does he?'

This person too seems to have got the impression that the child passed the GCSEs without actually studying a structured course, either at school or anywhere else. She already knew more than enough to pass the GCSEs and barely needed to glance at the syllabus. A clear triumph for the autonomous method.

I found this all very interesting for several reasons. Firstly because I give advice and assistance to some local parents who have withdrawn their children from secondary school. They all want their children to take GCSEs although this is very difficult because of the problems of coursework and practical investigations. If it is possible to take ordinary GCSEs without following a distance learning course or attending school, this would be pretty exciting. Most find GCSEs almost impossible to do out of school unless they have a few hundred pounds to spare on a distance learning course, which these people don't. Science is particularly tricky, because of the practical work. The second point is the use of the plural; ' science GCSE's ' , ' She got A*s '. Obviously, this person's child did not take the usual double award science but instead opted to take separate sciences; biology, physics and chemistry. Now I have to say that I have never heard of any home educated child managing to do this with the standard GCSEs, due to the problems about authenticating coursework and carrying out the practicals in the laboratory. I don't say it has never been done, simply that I have never heard of it, either in those home educators whom I know or on any of the lists. Naturally, I wanted to know more about the business.

Most home educated children who wish to have qualifications in sciences take the International GCSE or IGCSE. This gets round the problem of practical work in the laboratory. There is simply an extra paper which replaces the practical. This is how my daughter took her examinations in physics, biology and chemistry. My daughter of course did not attend school for a single day of her life, nor did she ever follow a distance learning course or anything of that sort; a genuine case of home education.

Now one of the people who commented about this may well have thought that, ' Simon really has no idea, does he?'. I understood this to be a reference to my supposed inability to appreciate the efficacy of autonomous education. Actually, I did have an idea; the idea being that there was more to this case of a child apparently being completely self-taught and breezing through separate sciences at GCSE than met the eye. So it proved, because when I asked about the circumstances, I was told, 'To answer your question on yesterday's post, my child did GCSE's at school.' This is pretty breathtaking. After claiming that the child was, ' completely self-taught, and was teaching me by the age of 11.' we are now told that she actually attended school and took her GCSEs there like everybody else.

It's a good job that I took the trouble to ask about this because otherwise people might have gone off with the impression that here was a child who simply taught herself science by the age of eleven and then passed science GCSEs without studying any course or syllabus. Let's hope that this scotches at least one little myth in the making. In fact this is just the sort of anecdote which many parents of ordinary schoolchildren tell all the time and nothing to do with home education. I have lost track of the number of parents who have told me, 'My daughter is so bright. She already knew everything that the teachers tried to tell her and she didn't do a stroke of work; just sailed through her GCSEs. And she got A* for them all'. My daughter did actually get all A* for her IGCSEs, but it took some pretty hard work by me teaching and her studying! I couldn't truthfully say of her that 'she didn't do a stroke of work'! See;

http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/efnews/4569389.LOUGHTON__Home_educated_girl_gets_eight_A_s/


Shortly after this discussion on the comments, somebody posted a link to a GCSE course in Coventry which they thought might be suitable for home educated children;

http://www.covcollege.ac.uk/courses/Pages/Types/Course.aspx?@ID=882


I followed this up, but it is really aimed at overseas students from whom fees may be extracted. The person to whom I spoke at the college was surprised at the idea of a teenager without any experience of previous GCSEs starting the course and did not think it very likely. Back to the drawing board I fancy on this one.

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