Who’s truanting?
Civitas, 30 March 2007
The Times Education Supplement’s [TES] front page headline, ‘One in four parents who home-educate children provides little or no teaching’ ties neatly in with the alarming news that our already very high secondary school truancy rate ‘is at least 18% higher than thought’ [BBC News]. The connection between home schooling and truancy lies in the revelation that ‘some schools are encouraging parents of persistent truants to register as home educators to get their attendance up’. The other connector is bullying: 1 in 3 pupils truant because they are being bullied – and it is thought that a significant number of children are removed from school and educated at home in order to evade bullying. But the ultimate connection is, as stated by the TES headline: that some home schooling might boil down to truancy.
From the information that we have about children educated at home, most of them receive a good – often better than that offered in formal schools – education. However, little checking-up on home educators means that this is by happy coincidence – and committed parents. As a home-educator local authority inspector is quoted in the TES as saying: ‘Schools are told in such fine detail what they need to teach and yet parents [in home schools] can get away with doing nothing at all’. Under a government whose education policies are positively characterised by governed by regulation – now across the sectors – requirements for home-schoolers are oddly sparse.
It is thought that as many as 150,000 children in the UK are educated at home. Why this figure can only be an estimate is because there is no official record: incredibly, families who home-educate do not have to register with, or even notify, their council. Also surprising in light of the extensively prescriptive curricula and pedagogy that formal schools must follow, home-educators are not required to follow the national curriculum or teach a set number of hours. Nor are home-schooling parents obliged to agree to inspection.
It is ironic that excessively stringent regulation in formal schooling is countered with home-school regulation so minimal that no education at all is a possibility. But perhaps it isn’t all that ironic: that the activities of children in school are almost obsessively monitored, but that those outside the system are left to their own devices, lends credence to the theory that national inspection and Whitehall directives are more about government accountability than they are about child welfare.
Cat Rutherford suggests that Civitas isn’t thinking outside the box, as well as arguing that ‘Who’s Truanting?’ “tars and feathers” home-educators. I reject both these accusations vehemently. All the research that we have on the outcomes of home-educators indicates that home-educated children do exceptionally well. As I have explained in a previous response, the aim of the post was to express scepticism about why it is that the Government is so interested in regulating and dictating its own provision whilst not interested in regulating provision that it is not accountable for. The attack is on the Government and its strait-jacketing regulation, not home-schoolers. However, now that home-educators are finding themselves suddenly under unwarranted attack by the DfES I can understand why they might, justifiably, be on the defensive.
“From the information that we have about children educated at home, most of them receive a good – often better than that offered in formal schools – education.” What more really needs to be said? This is not a result of “happy coincidence” but of committed parents. Full stop.
Why is it so incredible that families who home-educate do not have to register with their council? For many home-educating families, their local authorities are the reason for the failure of their children’s education at school. They do not wish to have this failure perpetuated in their own homes by means of inspection, interference and misguided attempts at “monitoring”.
The rigid national curriculum and set number of hours taught in schools ensures that teachers have enough time to hammer their subjects into 30 heads encompassing different abilities, attention spans, interests and inclinations. Home-educators, thankfully, do not operate in the “sausage factories” we call schools.
It is the parents’ legal responsibility to ensure that a child receives an education either at school or “otherwise”. Likewise, it is also the parents’ duty not to neglect their children and to ensure that they receive a balanced diet. Parents do not have to account for their children’s diet by means of inspection – so far, at any rate – they do not have social workers coming into their homes and demanding menu plans for the week to ensure that the children are getting their five-a-day or whatever the latest buzz-phrase may be. They are presumed to be carrying out their responsibilities unless there is evidence to suggest they are not, in which case there are legal processes in place to address the issue. The same is currently true for home education. In the interests of dignity and liberty, it should remain so.
Reliable research shows the “150,000” figure to be vastly exaggerated as an estimate of the country’s home-educated children.
Surely the TES would say such a thing, seeing as they mostly cater for teachers who have an axe to grind – it’s like the doctors union saying that more money should be put in the NHS.
You write “…home-school regulation so minimal that no education at all is a possibility.”
I agree, it is a possibility, but luckily, as you also write “most of them receive a good – often better than that offered in formal schools – education”.
And as you say, it is likely that “…national inspection and Whitehall directives are more about government accountability than they are about child welfare.”
This is undeniable when one considers the article that raised your comment. If the goal was child welfare there would be no hoo-ha about LEAs suggesting home education, only resources being poured into assisting parents to get started, provide materials and exam centre access etc.
“Every Child Matters” has a double meaning – the one parents are meant to hear – ie your child’s welfare matters to govenement – and the one government believes – ie your child is human capital we need to expolit to our economic advantage and we cannot have you bucking the system.
The “inspectors” quoted in the BBC article completely do not understand autonomous education, which is practiced by at least one in four home educators in Britain. Autonomous education is child led, with parents facilitating, not dictating and allowing the child to retain the urge to educate themselves, the drive which leads them to teach themselves to walk and talk, and by not supressing that urge allowing them to learn all they need to know to get on in the world they live in. To the LA advisors, this is so far away from the regulated, prescribed curriculums that make up their world, that they see it as no educational provision, because unless the child decides structure is the way they wish to learn, there is often no external way to assess the child’s education. My two children have been lucky enough to decide on their own education, and an inspector making judgements about my son at 13 would have been horrified at this child who had not yet decided writing was an important thing in his life, or maths. However my son was recently the youngest entrant ever at the Manchester School of Medicine’s PhD programme, following his degree. My 11 year old daughter is currently writing her first novel, but has not yet decided that maths is interesting enough to spend time on. She will, because it will be a necessary skill that she will realise she needs, and at that time, because she herself sees the need, she will cover it quickly and thoroughly, just as my son did when he was 14, taking a GCSE in Higher maths after 6 months study.
Children are amazing people, and trusted to do so, they can and do explore and find out for themselves everything they need to know to survive and prosper in the world, and the amazing thing is that when their desire for knowledge is fed as and when they are hungry for it, instead of being eaked out them in prescribed portions at a time of someone elses choosing, they are capable of learning incredible well 🙂
What Lee Moore doesn’t tell you is that the ‘study’ the Dfes commissioned is merely asking what the various education departments of local governments want, and, for colour, what one or two home educating people think. Naturally, if you ask your best buddies what they think, they’ll probably agree with you. So… LAs want monitoring of home educators? Shock, horror, do they? Well, of course, since they’ve ruined schools they wish to come in and ruin home education too. Witness the huge amount of fuss about HE around in the media recently. Come on, people, wake up. You wouldn’t ask a car mechanic who had trashed your first porsche to MOT your second one, would you? The government is dementedly trying to squeeze the citizens of this ex-democracy to death with its monitoring and regulations. And we allow them to do it.
Schools are monitored by ofsted because they are offering an educational service to families and there needs to be some regulation to ensure the service offered is satisfactory. Schools follow the national curriculum because they cannot possibly offer a tailored approach to a class of 30 with one teacher and one TA. The law at present gives parents responsibility for their childrens education if they choose to hand over that responsibility to the state schooling fine and if they choose to do it themselves it is also fine.
Home education can be delivered in many forms because it does not operate under the same pressures as the school system. Methods adopted by HE families usually have little similarity with school education, but they still illicit the same if not better results. (See Paula Rothermels research from Durham Uni.) If the state wants to inforce its own failing system on HE children then we have lost our free and democratic society.
The state already holds sufficient powers if it feels HE children are not recieving an education, I do not understand why they feel they need more.
I feel that tighter legislation will force many more of us underground, I for one would seriously consider moving to live in a remote area to avoid enforced testing and monitoring of my children and their education. This in turn could put the welfare of some children at risk. Although I have little faith in the authorities abilities to help children at risk. In the case of Constance Spry they had contact with her many times over the years, the children were not ‘hidden’ by being home educated. The state failed these children, and then at the other end of the spectrum you have inocent families having their children snatched from them by the state for years. Their lives destroyed by the say so of a so called expert in child abuse.
I am proud of the education I am giving my two children, it does not resemble school at all and I feel they are recieving a better education than the one offered at school. They only have to share the educational facilitator (me) between the two of them, unlike school where they have to compete with 30 other children for the teachers attention. I used to help out in the classroom when they attended school, I was appalled at the lack of actual teaching time that happened in a day, I was appalled at the childrens behaviour and I was appalled at the adults attitude towards the children. Definately not where I wanted my children to spend their days.
Now they spend their days with someone who loves and cares for them, who is happy to listen and answer all their questions. We go out a great deal with other home ed groups on educational visits and workshops and we are loving our lives.
First of all before you decided to tar and feather Home Education let me point out that as the law stands at the moment it is ‘the parents responsibility’ to make sure that their child/children receives an education. Parents who opt to home educate are merely accepting that responsibility. Home Education is legal, and I am at a loss to know why some people should be offended by the fact that some of us actually relish the idea of teaching our children, and being the first ones to see how much progress they are making. Why should this be something that is frowned upon? When did it become a crime to want to and to enjoy spending time with our own children?
Schools may indeed be told in find detail what they have to teach so how are they continuing to fail so many of their pupils on a daily basis? I am not without knowledge of the school system having spent 13 years as a school governor 6 of them as Chair of Governors. Schools have been given a really bad deal by something that was advertised as being a new deal for all. The deal that schools actually got stinks and it’s little wonder that teachers are leaving the system faster than they can be replaced or that no one wants to be a Head Teacher of a SENCOs these days. But the fact is that schools are not delivering and children are being education in a system that is no longer fit to purpose. So why is it so abhorrent that parents who have experienced this failure at first hand should be concerned enough to do something about it?
Regardless of the excessively stringent regulations and the almost obsessive monitoring in schools children are leaving school still unable to read and write. Some of us are fed up with our children being used as Guinea Pigs in a system where the goal posts are changing almost by the hour and where an education can include being told by teachers that bullying is ‘character building’. Your inside the box view of education will not deter those of us who are able to stand outside of the box and be free thinking enough to accept the responsibility to educate our children and view those inside of the box with some contempt.
Winston Churchill said….”Schools have not necessarily much to do with education….they are mainly institutions of control, where basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school.”
Pity he isn”t here to say it again!
The potential ambiguity in my post has understandably thrown Lee Moore: Civitas wants MORE strait-jacketing government regulation? No, we unequivocally don’t: as anyone who has read my pamphlet, Inspection, Inspection, Inspection will know, I feel very strongly that it is central regulation, particularly that enforced by OFSTED, which has been the downfall of New Labour’s education system. Now even nominally immune private schools are not exempt from the tentacles of Whitehall. That home-educators have – to date – escaped the clutches of government control is as incredible as it is a triumph. Once home schools fall into OFSTED’s remit, as now seems all too likely, the freedom which has allowed a great deal of excellence in home schools, will be sadly narrowed. My point about the distinction between the disparity in regulation, was to question the motives behind the government’s tight grip over formal schooling, in order to understand how it was that an autocratic DfES had allowed such freedoms amongst home-educators to survive.
Good grief ! Is this Civitas or the BBC ? A few thousand home schooled children manage to escape the clutches of the LEAs, the organisations in charge of wrecking the educational prospects of 90% of British children, and you want the government to start regulating the refugees !
Here’s a clue. The Department of Education agrees with you. It’s just commissioned a “study” which has concluded that home schooling needs regulating. What more conclusive proof do you need that regulating home schooling is a bad idea than that the Department of Education is in favour of it ?