Letting the cat out of the bag

Every so often, somebody intimately connected with the world of British home education will make a casual remark which gives the game away as regarding how a lot of home educators really view education. This happened recently on the Badman Review Action Group. A discussion was taking place about the proper response of a local authority which learns that a child in its area is not attending school. The unanimous view among home educating parents seems to be that if the local authority are told that home education is taking place, then that should be the end of the matter. The parents' word should be accepted and unless they have good reason to suspect that something is amiss, the authority should just cross that name of the list of those missing from education. Parents are, after all, the ones responsible for seeing that their children are receiving an education.

I pointed out a couple of cases which I have mentioned here. One was that of a fourteen year-old girl whose mentally ill mother got lonely during the day. Since the daughter hated school, they got together and the child was de-registered. The pair of them spent all day from then on watching television. The girl surfed the net a lot too. Now to any normal person, and I am talking here not about educational professionals but ordinary parents and people in the street, it is plain that here is a young person missing from education. Watching the Jeremy Kyle Show in the morning and then looking at Facebook in the afternoon is not what most people would see as an education. One of the people who founded the BRAG list though, thought that this showed that an education was being provided for the child. She expressed the view that one can learn a lot by watching television and using the Internet.

Now the truth is, most teenagers do all this sort of thing in addition to learning at school. Staring at a succession of photographs of other people's friends leering drunkenly at the camera while sticking their tongues out is what many young people spend hours doing in the evening. It is not particularly educational. A lot of them are addicted to soap operas as well. There is no harm in this either, but it would be hard to claim that viewing Hollyoaks is an educational activity. For a child to do nothing at all but this for the whole day would be an absolute disaster from an educational viewpoint.

I have noticed before that some home educators claim that watching television or surfing the Internet is as good as an education in itself. It was interesting to see this view expressed on one of the major lists. I suppose the rationale behind this is that if one watched BBC2 documentaries all the time or the educational channels on cable television and then spent a lot of time doing research on the Internet, then one could learn a lot. This is true, but is not how the majority of children and teenagers use these media. This sort of thing gives one an insight into the sort of lifestyle that some teenagers who are supposedly being home educated actually live. It is hardly surprising that such parents are reluctant to allow their local authority into the home to observe this!

I also cited the case of an eleven year-old boy working in an illegal factory. Again, there seems to be nothing wrong with that either from some people's point of view. The child might be happy and learning a trade, what's the problem? In other words, all the legislation which has been enacted over the last century and a half to abolish child labour and ensure that children actually have childhoods, is, for these people, a mistake. What's wrong with kids working in factories or down mines and up chimneys? At least they're learning a trade! Who's to say that this is any less educational than sitting at a desk all day?

It is opinions like this which ring huge alarm bells in the minds of those charged with protecting children and ensuring that they receive an education. I have seen such views expressed before; this is not an isolated case. That parents in the twenty first century should honestly believe that it might be a good thing for an eleven year-old child to leave school and work in factory or for a fourteen year-old girl to slump in front of the television all day is little short of horrifying. One wonders what sort of education the children of those who espouse such views might be receiving. Certainly, it is not to be wondered at that local authorities are uneasy about this sort of thing.

Read More

The scourge of secrecy and anonymity in the world of home education

I have remarked several times before, that I have never seen any need personally to say anything on the Internet without signing my real name to it. Anonymous messages always smack to me of poison pen letters. Still, I am in a minority when it comes to this view; most people prefer to hide behind a pseudonym when posting, both here and elsewhere, about home education. This, combined with an almost obsessive desire for secrecy by some, is starting to cause serious divisions among home educators in this country.

As readers are probably aware, a small group of individuals are working with Graham Stuart MP and also possibly Nick Gibb, the Schools' Minister, to draft guidelines for local authorities about elective home education. This is a worthy enough enterprise, but they have chosen to do it in secret and conceal their identities. Why they should carry on like that is a complete mystery to me. According to one of those involved, albeit in the minor role of proofreading, the whole thing is run like a secret society, divided up into cells, the members of which do not know the identities of those engaged in other parts of the operation! This sounds very strange.

I have been receiving emails lately from those who are either opposed to this scheme, or, which is equally likely, part of it and trying to throw people off the trail of the identities of those who are actually involved. For example on November 12th a had an email from kayceeb@cheerful.com headed 'financial motive?' It said; ' You may be interested in the business accounts of Mrs Anon.' Enclosed as an attachment were Alison Sauer's accounts. Somebody had gone to the trouble of paying for these and then sending them to me with the untruthful statement that Alison Sauer was actually Mrs Anon who comments here regularly. I have to say that Kaycee, who is fairly well known elesewhere claims that this was not sent by her. What is fairly plain is that some people in the home educating world are intent upon causing mischief one way and another and the way that this is being done is through more anonymous messages.

On the BRAG list, somebody calling herself Georgie Eden popped up. She seemed to know an awful lot about the business with Graham Stuart but vanished as soon as people asked her who she really was. Another case of anonymity causing problems and suspicion. I honestly think that it would be a good idea if those in the world of home education thought seriously about being a bit more open and revealing their true names. People talk of 'outing' people, as though home education were some shameful perversion to which people are reluctant to admit. I have never felt that way myself!

Another problem is that posting anonymously encourages rudeness. Consider this gem of incisive invective, posted here a few days ago;

''Simon you are a muddle headed bufoon with breath like an pigs bottom '


I seriously doubt whether anybody would say such a thing over their real name. Mind you, to be fair if I were unable to compose a short sentence without two spelling mistakes and two grammatical errors, I would probably be too ashamed to sign it either!

Read More

Targeting local authority resources more effectively with regard to elective home education

A couple of people commenting here yesterday made the very sensible suggestion that the way that monitoring of home education in this country is currently carried out is wasteful and inefficient. They asked why visits and so on cannot be more precisely targeted at those who need or would benefit from them, instead of the present scattergun approach, which apart from everything else, risks generating false positives. It is perfectly true that as things stand, over 90% of home visits are a complete waste of everybody's time. Those who deliver a suitable and efficient education often receive just as many visits as those whose children are not receiving any sort of education at all. How can we tackle this problem?

I am assuming that those who commented were not advocating a 'Bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted' kind of system. In other words, I am guessing that they are not saying that visits should only take place once a child has been abused or his education neglected. I imagine that they are really suggesting that local authority resources are directed more effectively so that children can be caught before abuse or educational neglect occurs. I agree with this wholeheartedly. Every year when Essex County Council came to monitor the education which my daughter was receiving, all of us knew that it was a farce and waste of everybody's time. I knew that the education was suitable and that my daughter was safe and well, the local authority officer, who had to make a round trip of sixty miles to come here, knew it, even my daughter knew it. My daughter enjoyed it because it meant that instead of an hour studying mathematics or physics, she had an hour of showing off outrageously to a stranger.

There would be no difficulty about focusing upon those families more likely to be in need of support; I could draw up a list of the 10 or 20 per cent of parents easily enough. I would need to see the children's school records, reasons that they were de-registered, ACORN postcode analysis, anything from social services, Health Visitors records when the kids were small; stuff like that. Sure, I would miss a few cases where there were problems, but I could certainly improve on the way it is currently being done. So why don't local authorities do this? Why do they religiously visit families where they know full well that there are no problems as often as those where they have good reason to suppose that problems do exist?

The system which I outline above is known as profiling and it has a very bad name. Let me give an anecdote from the past. Not long after the 7/7 suicide bombings on the underground, I was stopped by the police as I entered Mile End tube station. I carry a backpack, which by the by is a bit sad for a man of my age; makes me look as though I am trying to be young and with it! The police wanted to search me under the provisions of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, in case I was a suicide bomber planning to blow myself up on a tube train. Just as with the monitoring visits from Essex County Council, everybody involved knew that this was a nonsense. The police knew that they were wasting their time and that I was not a terrorist and so did I. Nevertheless, we wasted twenty minutes or so, time which the police could have spent trying to catch a real terrorist. Why did they do this? The answer is simple. They knew, as did I, that suicide bombers are young men of black, Asian or Arab appearance. However, in order not to appear prejudiced, they were also stopping and searching an equal number of men and women, black and white, young and old. During the same operation, they stopped an old white woman with her shopping trolley!

Obviously, in a case like the above, the logical thing to do is focus the limited resources of the police upon those most likely to be planning to blow up a train. This would be young black and Asian men with backpacks. Rather than cause upset, the police decided to waste their time. this is the same reason that local authorities do not use profiling to aim their limited resources at the families who are more likely to have difficulties with home education. In Essex, for instance, those with difficulties are likely to be living in places like Basildon. There will be more boys than girls and those particularly at risk of receiving an unsuitable education will have been withdrawn from secondary school and probably living in social housing. Many of them will live only with their mothers A family living in a detached house on the outskirts of Chelmsford in a family with two parents, only one of whom works and where the decision to home educate was taken for ideological reasons rather than in response to trouble at school, is less likely to need help and support.

How long would it take for the howls of protest to start if it were discovered that Essex were monitoring more closely the 'at risk' groups? In other words if they were paying more attention to the single parent families in a Basildon tower block than to the nuclear family in the leafy suburb? I can just imagine what would be said on the HE-UK and EO lists. How dare they stigmatise single parents? Why should working class families be penalised? The result is that just as the police do when hunting terrorists, the local authorities play safe and treat everybody equally. They do this although they know that it means wasting a lot of their time. The reasons are political rather than pragmatic.

Read More

Different worldviews

One of the things which those who are not home educating parents sometimes fail to realise is that an awful lot of home educators are very odd people who think completely differently from everybody else. It is not as though home educators are simply a random cross-section of the population who simply failed to send their kids to school. Many home educators conform to a particular type. This does not mean that they are all left wing or all atheists or anything like that. There are many Christian home educators and also many who, if they lived in the USA would probably be anti-Federal Government survivalists. They are all of a type though to the extent that they reject the government's right to intervene in the lives of their families except in the direst need and with clear evidence of neglect and abuse. Those who feel this way can be socialists or fascists, Christians or atheists; this desire to avoid government interference is their common feature.

School and nursery and all that goes with it permeate the lives of most families to such an extent that they hardly notice it. It is like the water surrounding a fish; it is just a fact of life. Government busybodying goes with this way of life as a given. The government gets worked up about climate change, they force it into the curriculum and the result is odious little prigs coming home from school and shouting at their parents because they have left the light on and so are destroying the planet. This might seem like a trivial example, but it is one way that those with children at school find the government poking their nose in. Some parents feel strongly that abstinence from sexual activity is a good thing for teenage children. The government arrange that school nurses will hand out contraceptives and arrange abortions. They also set up the sex education classes in such a way as to avoid criticising early sexual activity. This is another way that the government interferes in family life. As I say, this is simply a background which most parents hardly notice. The government becomes a third parent to their children and they seemingly accept it without question.

Home educators, whether they are devout Christians or rabid atheists, do not approve of government interference in their lives and those of their children. They see it happening and wish it to stop. Now the difficulty is that although the government can be exceedingly annoying and have a habit of sticking their noses in where they have no business and are not wanted, they also have duties to fulfil. In this country, we cannot do what we will with our children. Whether they are at school or home, certain laws apply to them all. They must not be beaten or starved, for instance. Nor must they be murdered or married off at the age of nine. They must be educated between the ages of five and sixteen. The attitude of most home educators about this sort of thing is very straightforward and seems to them to be blindingly obvious. Only if evidence emerges that a child is being starved or her education neglected have the state any right to take an interest in the matter. Otherwise, it should be assumed that parents are the best judges of their children's interests and should be left alone to get on with the job. For many in ordinary society, used as they are to involvement with the school nurse, Health Visitor and so on, this is an odd notion. They cannot see why home educating parents would mind a local government apparatchik asking them about their kid's education or diet. After all, schools routinely confiscate unhealthy food from pupils' lunchboxes, they hand out condoms, monitor the education of the children; surely that is normal? Why are home educators so precious about these things?

I do not think that there can ever be a satisfactory resolution to some of the things which irritate home educating parents. Their worldview is so completely different from that of parents who send their kids to school, that they might as well be speaking different languages. I find myself torn between these two points of view. Most of my friends are teachers and social workers and their concerns are very real. They are not actuated by malice, but by genuine concern for the welfare of children. In general, the same can be said of local authority officers and those working for the Department for Education. They set up a marvellous system for the benefit of children, a system which provides them with all that they could possibly require and then a handful of cranks not only refuse all these benefits but go mad and threaten legal action if you so much as ask after their kid's welfare! They must be mad. I would be curious to know how this will ultimately work out. Will the government and local authorities back off and abandon any attempt to monitor children who are not at school? Or will the prevailing common view become codified in law and enforced on home educating parents against their wishes? It is an interesting point.

Read More

Home educated children and Child Benefit

Over on the EO list, a poor woman is currently shaking and unable to decide whether to scream or cry. A common enough experience indeed for those of us who have had dealings with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs! She has been asked to provide evidence that the child for whom she is claiming Child Benefit actually exists and is resident in this country. This is a common enough event for many in the non-home educating community, for reasons which I shall explain. Few of them are traumatised by being asked questions in this way, unless they are in fact fiddling benefits. If only I had not been thrown off the EO list, I would be able to offer a few words of gentle advice and calm encouragement to this sad and vulnerable individual; something perhaps along the lines of shouting in her ear, 'WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, YOU IDIOT??!!'

As anybody who has not just been revived after a fifty year long coma will be aware, the Coalition are trying to reduce the Child Benefit bill. There are two ways of doing this. One is to ensure that it is only given to people who are not earning so much that the odd £20 a week extra would make little difference to them. The other way is to cut back dramatically on the fiddles associated with this particular benefit. Working as I do with families in London's Inner City, many of whom are refugees and asylum seekers, I am more familiar than most with the scams which go on with Child Benefit. Those from West Africa seem to be among the worst offenders. They lend each other children, have clutches of birth certificates and other documents relating to children in Lagos, have different names according to whom they are dealing with and accuse anybody who asks too many questions of being racist towards them. And of course they forget how to speak English when pressed upon the whereabouts of the kids for whom they are claiming, pretending that they need Yoruba speaking interpreters. The way round some of this is to require not only a birth certificate or passport, but also objective evidence from other agencies that the child actually exists and is in this country. The easiest way is to ask for the name of the school which is being attended, since over 99% of children are at school.

The fear seems to be among some that the local authorities are ganging up with Her majesty's Revenue and Custom in order to track down children who are not at school and are also unknown to their local authority. The woman who posted on the EO list says that the clerical officer from HMRC to whom she spoke cited the Laming Report as the reason for these enquiries, but this sounds a bit odd. This enquiry took place over seven years ago. Even if the local authority were trying to trace children outside the school system, I hardly think that they would have been discussing the Laming Report with a minor clerk in this way.

The worst case scenario as far as I can see is that some parents might have their Child Benefit delayed for a few weeks. It is conceivable that they will also become known to their local authority. Let's keep a sense of perspective here; neither of these things is a disaster. Both have happened to me and I have so far managed not to shake, scream or cry about it! One of the irritating things during the recent talk of cutting Child Benefit to well-off families was that it was being referred to as a benefit 'paid to mothers'. It is not; it is paid to one of a child's parents. In the case of my youngest daughter, I have always been the parent to whom it is paid. Over the years, I have had endless trouble from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs about this. They seem to find something unnatural and downright fishy about the idea of a father claiming Child Benefit and I have had a good deal more than the two telephone calls which the woman on the EO list complains of!

When we moved to Essex, we never got round to notifying the local authority of the fact that we had a child who was being educated at home and it was not until a couple of years after we moved that a truancy patrol stopped us and we became known. This was not of course a catastrophe; certainly not something to start shaking and crying about. I do wish that people would maintain a level head about these matters. Being asked questions about one's Child Benefit is increasingly likely to happen now as attempts are made to reduce the amount spent on this benefit. Local authorities finding out about more and more home educated children is also likely to happen. Neither of these are anything to get worked up about. At worst they are irritations of the sort that everybody has to put up with these days and I honestly do not see why some home educating parents have to make so much of these minor inconveniences. It does rather give the impression of a community of hysterical people, ready to have a fit of the vapours at the least excuse and always willing to row with anybody who asks any questions about their families or lifestyle.

Read More

The new trustees at Education Otherwise

Following the Annual General Meeting of education Otherwise, a new set of trustees are in charge. I thought that it might be helpful to provide a little information about them, in order that people could be able to have some idea of the direction which the charity might take in the future.

Fiona Nicholson is still in. She was one of the group who more or less seized control of Education Otherwise three years ago. Fiona lives in Sheffield with her seventeen year-old autonomously educated son, who has never been to school or college. It will be remembered that she provided much innocent amusement during the select committee hearing last October, when she found herself quite unable to decide whether or not she was in favour of the compulsory registration of home educated children. Still, actions speak louder than words and it was observed that Fiona never felt any inclination to notify her own local authority of her intention to home educate her son, only taking this step when the child's father was threatening to do it for her. Annette Taberner, another of the old trustees who has not resigned, also lives in Sheffield and with Fiona is part of the Northern mafia who have exercised such influence on EO for years. For a while, it was thought that Fiona's best friend in Education Otherwise was Ann Newstead, but they do not seem to be as chummy as once they were. This is rumoured to be because Fiona did not share Ann's gung-ho approach to chucking EOs money around on expensive litigation and various other profligate activities which are not really in keeping with the charity's aims. Both Ann Newstead and her husband Alexander Roarke are no longer trustees. Fiona is a great fan of the Molesworth and William books, which must surely show that she is fundamentally sound.

Shena Deuchars is a copy editor who lives in Swindon. Her daughter managed to get a place at Exeter University to study law without having any GCSEs or A levels. The whole thing was achieved by Open University courses, which is encouraging for others. Shena is a very honest and decent person who cannot fail to have a wholesome effect upon EO.

Celia McDonagh remains as a trustee. This surprised some people, who thought that she would resign along with Jo Berry. She was very involved with the Jo Berry business, allegedly passing on emails to her about internal matters at Education Otherwise. This led to threats of libel action and her resignation was demanded. She was forced out at an Extraordinary General meeting in 2006, but returned a short time later.

Some people expected that the trustees who had presided over what looked like the decline and fall of Education Otherwise would stand down en masse, but this has not happened. In fact after the AGM on Saturday, seven of the existing trustees are still around. It remains to be seen whether the reforming zeal of people like Shena Deuchars and Heidi de Wet will be able to change the organisation and bring it back to life.

There has been some talk about the accounts not being approved at the AGM, but this does not really signify. After all, they have already gone to the Charity Commission. There were discrepancies between the amounts listed in the 2008 and 2009 accounts, but this sort of thing does happen sometimes. It will be recalled that EO sacked their last auditor because they were not satisfied with how the financial position was presented in the accounts. The Charity Commission will put the accounts up on their website in due course; they have had them since September.

Read More

Free speech about home education

When I wrote a couple of articles on home education last year for national newspapers, I was swiftly chucked off the HE-UK and EO Internet lists. The ostensible reasons for this were that I had used information from the lists to write the articles and that other parents would feel uneasy at my continued presence. I have said several times since that both arguments struck me as weak, which led some of those commenting on this blog to suggest that I must be autistic!

I am observing the same reluctance to tolerate dissent or heterodox opinions now operating on various other home education lists and blogs. I am not the only person whose views are being suppressed; Tania Berlow has also been barred from several places, the Home Ed Forums for example.

There is something deliciously ironic and satisfying about watching stout libertarians imposing censorship in this way. It is not called censorship of course. I have always been perfectly courteous on the Badman Review Action Group list, but that did not stop somebody making an extremely personal attack on me, speculating about my childhood, possible relationship with my parents and resultant hatred of women! When I attempted to respond to this, I was put on moderation. This was done on the grounds that my posts were not helpful, informative or interesting and from then on posts which I have made have been deleted. I have of course stopped posting there, which was the intention of those using moderation in this way. The grounds for censoring Tania Berlow from the Home Ed Forums was that she had been defaming people. Quite untrue of course, but it provided a neat excuse to get rid of her. Kelly Green in Canada, the great defender of civil rights and freedom of speech, simply deletes any posts of mine at once from her blog. This is because she disagrees with what I say and does not wish to have anything on Kelly Green and Gold which suggests less than 100% agreement with her own views.

Sometimes, the censorship is done in a very unpleasant way. On HE-UK, a small group of playground bullies have in the past driven off parents who have asked too many questions or failed to be firm enough in their resolve to refuse visits from their local authority. Several women have contacted me after such episodes, one or two of them very distressed at the treatment which they have received. On other lists, the strategy is a little subtler. Certain people are put on moderation without being told and their posts simply deleted. This means that when somebody posts a message which denounces them, it appears that they are unable to formulate a response! I am not the only person against whom this particular tactic has been successfully used.

Readers of this blog will know that there is no moderation at all. Anybody can say anything they please and their comments will appear at once. I had to use moderation briefly on two occasions, but that was more for disruption that one person was causing, not because I wished to stop his views appearing. I do not agree with Tania on a number of points, as can be seen from things which I have said here, but I consider it absolutely scandalous that her views are being censored by people who claim to be hard-line libertarians. If these people were to be honest, they would admit that they were taking such a step not because Tania is defaming anybody, but rather due to the fact that she is disagreeing with others. This is a terrible reason for introducing censorship. There have been rumblings of discontent on the BRAG list, which Tania has chosen as her vehicle to put across her motives and plans for the project with Graham Stuart and Alison Sauer. I have a suspicion that if she is not careful, she is going to find herself in difficulty there as well. It is rumoured that Action on Home Education have also thrown her off.

This sort of activity by supposedly liberal and right-on home educators is hard to justify. If these people actually approve of censorship and believe that those holding other opinions should be denied a voice, then they have a perfect right to believe that. What sticks in my craw is the way that people like Kelly Green in Canada and others in this country make such a song and dance about freedom and civil rights and then at the drop of a hat impose censorship upon anybody whose views do not coincide with their own.

Read More