Changes in pupil registration regulations

Regular readers will recall that I have several times written here that although there may be no specific new laws planned around home education, many of the recommendations of the Badman report could be introduced in small stages, simply by modifying existing laws. We have seen this happen in recent weeks when one of the suggestions made by Graham Badman was slipped in as an amendment to the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006 - as amended by The Education (Pupil Registration) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2010. This was the requirement that after parents deregister a child from school, the school should retain the child's name on their roll for twenty days. Personally, I think it a good idea, but that is neither here nor there. The fact is that when it was included as part of Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill 2009, a number of home educating parents objected to it. It has now been brought in anyway. The same will probably be happening with other recommendations from Badman. Michael Gove and Nick Gibb will simply slip them into changes in regulations and most people will not even notice until it has been done. What sort of changes could be made without drawing up a major new law? Well, almost anything really; some of them very wide ranging. Let me give an example.

I was at a special school in Hackney yesterday, with a mother who is very unhappy about the class that her child has now been placed in. She told the head that she regarded the new class as little better than baby-sitting and that unless her daughter is moved, she will simply remove her from the school and keep her at home. One might have though that like other parents wishing to home educate, she had a perfect right to do so and simply needed to write a letter to de-register her child from the school. She does not have the right to do this at all. Children at special schools cannot be de-registered without the consent of the local authority. The legal basis for this is to be found in Regulation 8(2) of those same Education(Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006 which I mentioned above. And guess what? There is absolutely nothing to stop the government tacking another bit onto the The Education (Pupil Registration) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2010, which extends this principle to all schools. I have heard it suggested that the requirement of Regulation 8(2) is discriminatory against disabled children and actually breaches the law because of this. Bringing other schools into line with this requirement would simply remove the discrimination against disabled pupils. In other words, it would be possible to compel the parents of all schoolchildren to seek permission of the local authority before they were allowed to take their kids out of school. From there, it would only be another small step to ensure that permission could be made contingent upon the parents signing an agreement that they would work closely with the local authority and accept regular visits. No signing of the agreement; no permission to de-register.

In case readers think that this is some fantasy which I have dreamed up, I suggest that they familiarise themselves with the process by which existing legislation can be amended in this way. They might be in for a shock. Michael Gove certainly does not want a big confrontation with home educators of the sort that Ed Balls had, but nor is he apparently intending to leave the situation as it is. Any future changes are likely to be small tweaks in the law and existing regulations. Most will, like the twenty day rule, be slipped past home educating parents until it is too late to do anything about it.

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What's the hurry? My child can always take GCSEs and A levels later if she wants to

Whenever I write about teenagers studying for GCSEs, several people always remark that there is no reason why qualifications have to be taken at home at the same age that they are at school. Why shouldn't a twenty year old take GCSEs if that is what she wishes? What's the hurry?

There are two main reasons why it is a good idea to get fourteen and fifteen year olds to sit their GCSEs at the same age as schoolchildren. Parents who talk vaguely of their children sitting these important examinations 'later' usually have a mindset which is twenty or thirty years out of date. At one time it was quite possible to take evening classes at a local college, either free or for a nominal amount, and take any GCEs or GCSEs which one had failed at school. It used to be quite common. These days of course, hardly any FE colleges do such a thing. The only GCSE exams which they handle tend to be re-sits and these are generally limited to those who have already taken them at school. They are not for home educated children as a rule. Because by this age, they will probably not be amenable to being taught by their parents, most will need to do the GCSEs via a correspondence course. These typically cost around £300 for each subject.

A far more important reason for taking examinations at the age of fourteen or fifteen is this. Most teenagers at that age do not have the sort of distractions which we have in adulthood. They do not have to work for a living, few of them have partners and children, they do not have to worry about paying rent or any of the other things that adults concern themselves with. They are free to concentrate solely upon their studies. This lack of distractions makes it far more likely that they will achieve good grades. How many nineteen and twenty year olds want to sit down day after day learning about the causes of World War I or how to solve quadratic equations? At that age, there are usually far more interesting things to be doing, like going to the pub or having romantic entanglements! Better by far to study like this as a child than as an adult.

A levels, if taken even a year or two after everybody else, prove an even greater problem. Because of the coursework involved and the higher level of academic work, it is very hard to do A levels except at a college or sixth form. I have in the past mentioned that it is almost impossible to get on an A level course at college unless you already have five GCSEs at grades A*-C, but there is another consideration. If you start studying for A levels over the age of nineteen, you have to pay for them. This is quite pricy. There is also the fact that as a young person of twenty you will be compelled to spend every day with a bunch of sixteen year-olds, not something that many young men and women would relish.

These are some of the reasons why if examinations are going to be taken by a young person, they should be taken at the same time as everybody else of the same age. The idea of 'taking them later' is a bit of a chimera. I have known one or two twenty year-olds study at college for A levels and it has not worked out terribly well. It may happen, but I have never heard of it, that a nineteen or twenty year old takes five GCSEs. This would be very unusual though and probably expensive. The fact is that if a child reaches the age of sixteen without taking GCSEs, then that is probably it as far as GCSEs and A levels go. She will, if she enters formal education at all after this age, find herself limited to BTECs. New Diplomas and vocational courses. Nothing at all wrong with these of course, but is would surely be better for the sixteen year-old to have as wide a range of choices as possible in her future academic career, rather than being diverted into certain channels purely as a result of her parents ideology.

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Parenting styles of home educators

I posted yesterday about the use of operant conditioning with children, which apparently left many readers with the impression that I am a cold and authoritarian parent. Some of the comments were very revealing; 'nauseous', abhorrent', 'distasteful' and so on. I am not altogether surprised by this, because the parenting style of many home educating parents who comment here is very different from my own. Let's have a look at parenting styles and see what the difference is between how I operate and how many other home educating parents seem to do things.

One of the most popular ways of categorising parenting styles is that devised by Diana Baumrind, an American developmental psychologist. Her classifications are very widely used these days. She divides parents into four types, based upon how demanding towards their children they are and how responsive to their needs. The first type are authoritarian parents. They are highly demanding, with very structured homes and expect instant obedience from their children. They are demanding without being responsive. Judging by some of the comments yesterday, this is how readers evidently see me! Perhaps this is because most of them seem to belong to the permissive or indulgent type of parent. This seems to be a very common type of home educator; they feel that they must not demand much of their children, focusing instead upon being responsive to their needs.
The children are free to choose how they wish to behave and few demands are made upon them. These parents are very non-traditional in the approach to parenting. Their children really direct their own lives and decide what they wish to do. There are also uninvolved or neglectful parents, who just leave their kids to it. These are both unresponsive and undemanding. I don't think many of the parents who come on here are like that.

The type of parenting which many psychologists today think is best is what is known as authoritative parenting. These parents are both very responsive but also demanding. This is child-centred parenting which has high expectations in terms of the child's behaviour. There is unconditional love combined with clear standards for the child. This sort of parenting is also known as balanced parenting and it is the parenting which most childcare experts today recommend.

Now I can see clear links between the indulgent or permissive style of parenting, in which few demands are made upon the child, and those home educating parents who describe themselves as autonomous or child centred. They allow the children to dictate what they wish to do, what they will learn and various other matters. Some have no set rules for bedtime or getting up in the morning and their children are almost entirely self-directed. No limits are set on television watching or computer use and no formal academic work is demanded. They do not like telling their children what to do and have an aversion to the word 'No'. Somebody who attends a home education group contacted me recently and said that the other parents at the group stared at her in shocked surprise because she often tells her son, 'No'. The feeling she got was that some home educating parents regarded this in the same light as smacking a child! It has to be said at once that this kind of parenting is associated with serious problems in adolescence and adulthood. What kind of problems? Well, drink and drugs for one. A recent study in America on teenage drinking found that the children of indulgent parents, those who are very warm emotionally to their children but make few demands upon them, are three times as likely to binge drink as the children of authoritative parents. The children of authoritarian parents were also at risk of misusing alcohol, as were those of uninvolved parents.

The children of permissive parents are also more prone to getting into trouble generally as adolescents than those of authoritative parents and also more likely to experiment with illegal drugs. Not surprisingly, they do not do as well academically either! On the plus side, indulgent parents do tend to have children high in self esteem and with low levels of depression. By far the best adjusted and happiest children and teenagers are those of authoritative parents. They are socially more competent than other children and generally better able to function in society. This is not only their own perception of themselves, they have very high self esteem, but also shows up on objective tests. Academically, this group also performs best.

A parenting style which imposes strong demands upon the child to behave in accordance with the parents expectations seems to be psychologically the best and most healthy for children. When this is combined with a child centred approach, unconditional love and a degree of flexibility, the resultant way of raising a child is called balanced parenting and it is almost universally recommended. Permissive parenting on the other hand, where the child decides for herself what she will do and when she will do it and few demands are made upon her by parents, is associated with many problems in later life. I said yesterday that I deliberately set out to use operant conditioning to modify my children's behaviour. I can make no such claim about my authoritative style of parenting. This came about through observing some pretty frightful children of friends, all of whom had been raised in an indulgent fashion by their misguided parents. These kids were generally of the spoilt brat type and some were so awful that we stopped inviting their parents round. It was the experience of those children which caused me to think carefully about what seemed the best way of childrearing. These were not dysfunctional families; most of those were uninvolved or neglectful parents. Our friends tend to be teachers, social workers and so on. The indulgent parenting style definitely seemed to be most popular among them.

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