Saturday 10 October 2009

Home educators are angry/dismayed/up in arms/furious/worried............



We have been seeing headlines of this sort pretty regularly since January, when the DCSF announced an enquiry into elective home education. Of course, we cannot expect the writers of newspaper headlines, who all too often appear to be illiterate maniacs, to abide by the strict rules of Aristotelian Logic. Never the less, it would surely be helpful if they occasionally inserted check-words into their headlines such as "all", "some", "many", "few" or "none". The reason I say this is probably obvious. If a newspaper reporter goes to Tottenham and speaks to half a dozen disaffected Afro-Caribbean youths, he is hardly justified in writing an article with the headline "Black people angry about...". Unfortunately, this seems to be precisely what is being done with newspaper articles about home education in this country.

Nobody really knows how many children in this country are educated at home. We know that roughly twenty thousand such children are registered with local authorities as being electively home educated. We also know that some are not registered with their local authorities. Graham Badman, in his report, speculated that there could be another sixty thousand. Home education organisations often suggest that the figure is more like thirty thousand children unknown to the authorities. This would give us about fifty thousand home educated children in total and I propose to use this figure a rough estimate. Assuming that each child has two parents and that some parents have more than one child, might give us a very rough figure of eighty thousand parents in this country with children who are educated at home. It may be more, it may be less, but I shall work with this figure, at least until more data emerge.

Now, here is a question. What percentage of these eighty thousand home educating parents feel that the arrangements for monitoring home education need to change? Well, obviously it must be a tiny minority. The vast majority of home educating parents are furious about Badman's proposals, surely? They are overwhelmingly in favour of the situation remaining unchanged. Hardly any home educating parents want new and tougher monitoring of home education. This is, as it were, the standard view of the reaction of home educating parents to the Badman Report. Actually, it is a lot of nonsense. In fact fewer than 1% of home educating parents have objected to the idea of a new system of monitoring home education! The other 99% have remained resolutely silent, an interesting point to which I shall return later. First, the facts.

Despite all the shouting by an increasingly hysterical and vociferous faction of mainly autonomous home educators, the best indicator of the reaction of ordinary home educators to the proposal for a change in monitoring arrangements remains the responses of those who took part in the review which Graham Badman conducted. In answer to Question 5; "Do you think there should be any changes made to the current system for monitoring home educating families?", a mere seven hundred and eighty one parents said that they either wanted the situation to remain the same or called for the abolition of monitoring entirely. This represents just under 1% of our ballpark figure of eighty thousand home educating parents. Interesting, no? The rest wanted, among other things, better training for local authority officers. This desire has been reflected in Recommendation 9 of the Badman report.

Of course there are also various petitions, but as I have said before, since these contain the names of many people who are not home educators and are also open to abuse by multiple signing, it is impossible to know whether or not more than that same 1% of home educating parents have signed them. It is also true that a number of people have written to MPs and made submissions to the select committee, but I have a strong suspicion that this is that same 1% again.

The Badman review of elective home education ran from January until May. It was widely publicised in the newspapers and on the television and I suspect that few home educating parents were unaware of it. The fact that only 1% responded by rejecting the need for a change in monitoring is very suggestive. Silence means consent. The truth is that when most of us hear about some new legislation which is likely to have a direct impact upon our lifestyle, then we only complain if we disagree with it. If we hear of it, shrug and do nothing, we are pretty well accepting that we agree with the idea or at the very least that we can live with it. This seems to have been what happened with the Badman review. Over 99% of home educators simply saw no reason at all to get worked up about it. The thousand or so who did, are a very small minority of the home education community.

Of course we must be very careful when legislating, that we do not disregard the views of small minorities. On the other hand we cannot let the existence of tiny pressure groups prevent us passing laws for the greater good. The Lord's Day Observance Society has many more than a thousand members, but I doubt if most of us would want their views to be taken overmuch into account when the decisions are being made about licensing laws and the opening of cinemas on Sunday? It is true that the passage of a new Safeguarding Bill may well cause considerable inconvenience to a small number of home educating parents. This inconvenience must however be carefully weighed against the good that such new legislation might achieve.

60 comments:

  1. It's often said that 1 original letter to an MP is considered to represent the views of 100 others who didn't bother to write and I cannot see why the same wouldn't apply to consultation responses. If this is anywhere near accurate, the responses to the Badman review represent the views of about 140,000 home educating parents!

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  2. "This inconvenience must however be carefully weighed against the good that such new legislation might achieve."

    This assumes that there is evidence that this approach (the routine interviewing of children to check on their education, safety and welfare in an average risk population) will achieve more good than harm, will be cost effective and proportionate. This is not the case. In New Zealand, Chief Review Officer Graham Stoop wrote in February this year that reviews of home educators are not efficient or effective. He said, “From 1 July 2009 ERO will carry out reviews only when requested by the Secretary for Education, or in other particular circumstances.”

    There is also plenty of evidence to suggest that routine screening for child maltreatment is likely to cause more harm than good and this is when carried out by medical professionals who are likely to be far better qualified in this area than Local Authority officers (usually ex-teachers). Simon has previously compared these checks to those carried out by Health Visitors. However, they are not comparable on several levels. Health Visitors will have received far more appropriate training, both in quantity, quality, and in more appropriate subject areas, than teachers (the major source of HE inspectors). Health Visitor visits are also optional and they are not there to decide if you can be allowed a licence to continue your current lifestyle so the tensions within the family are likely to be completely different resulting in very different behaviour patterns.

    The only abuse situations that are likely to be spotted in the type of visit envisaged are the extreme cases that are likely to have been reported to the Local Authority by friends and neighbours already (as repeatedly demonstrated by virtually all publicly reported cases I've seen). As Julie said previously:

    "but I think that it would probably miss nearly all children who are at risk of harm; because if it is as difficult to detect abuse in a much larger school population who already have developed long term relationships with their teachers, how good will it be in detecting abuse when the only contact is fairly minimal and with a virtual stranger?

    My own preference is that what we need is much better relationships with the LAs in the first place so that more home educators have contact on a voluntary basis. This hopefully will improve educational provision and may also allow the slight chance of abuse coming to light anyway. Parallel with that is the need for the home ed community to be both more supportive and willing to act if they detect real abuse. The whole 'them and us' attitude is responsible for half the problems in the first place!"


    I agree with most of Julie's quote, though I don't think we have any reason to doubt that the home education community is willing to act if they detect real abuse. In the only related case I know of, annual visits failed to recognise a problem. However, local home educators recognised a problem, did something about it and gained the family the help they needed.

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  3. (Hit word limit so here's the rest of the post)

    Your posts are becoming a little repetitive, Simon. Why not post fewer new articles and spend the time saved responding adequately to previous discussions following almost identical posts? Maybe people should start copy and pasting previous replies to similar posts in the hope that you will respond to them (you may have recognised my first post)? Here's another one I prepared earlier:

    Simon said,
    "If we assume that the responses to the Badman Review were, as you say froma mixture of parents and children, this is still a tiny minority, co-ordinated I suspect from the EO and HE-UK lists. If we guess that two thirds of the responses were from parents, that gives us about 1200/1300. If we assume a figure of 50000 home educated children, then that would be about 80000 parents in total."

    BTW, a research sample size of 1053 is enough to produce results with a 95% confidence level and a confidence interval of 3, so a response to the level you describe is excellent. Admittedly the respondents were self selected but presumably they represent those with strong feelings either way.

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  4. Or indeed Sharon, I could simply include your responses in the body of my posts as I already know what they will be! As I said, the fact that a small pressure group, I gave the example of the Lord's Day Observance Society, can organise many letters of protest and lobbying of MPs does not mean that new licensing laws should be framed with their wishes in mind. I well remember the campaign against the opening of public houses on Sundays in Wales. There were many thousands of letters to newspapers, complaints to MPs and so on. In the end, it was decided that set against the millions of people who were evidently content with the move, the vociferous few thousands would be ignored. It is a similar situation here. New legislation is being propsed which would have a great impact upon at most, forty or fifty thousand families. This is a matter for concern, but even in absolute terms, the numbers are small. Even if it could be proved that every home educator in the land was dead set against the idea of new legislation, this would not be a completely convincing argument.

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  5. Simon said,
    "Or indeed Sharon, I could simply include your responses in the body of my posts as I already know what they will be!"

    I'd be more interested in seeing your replies to those reponses.

    "As I said, the fact that a small pressure group, I gave the example of the Lord's Day Observance Society, can organise many letters of protest and lobbying of MPs does not mean that new licensing laws should be framed with their wishes in mind."

    Not comparable at all, except possibly in support of the opposite view to yours. If the LDOS views became law those laws would introduce new controls and restrictions over the whole population. With home education the laws will supposedly affect only home educators. To be comparable, the law the LDOS want should only apply to their members or possibly Christians.

    However, Ian Dowty has suggested that some of the changes will inevitable apply to all families. So these changes, called for by a minority (some LA officers, a few home educators, so comparable to the LDOS in your example), could potentially impose restrictions on all home educating families, or even all families in the UK (who are, of course unaware of the possibility so cannot be claimed to be content with the idea), and this is more analogous to the example you give. How can you compare a home educator's preference to prevent increased government control to another group's preference to increase government control?

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  6. The reason that I do not always respond in detail to your posts Sharon is not that you present devastating arguments which I am unable to rebut. On the contrary, it is natural delicacy on my part which makes me try to avoid embarrassing you. However, let us begin with the first comment you made above, one which I did indeed recognise;

    "It's often said that 1 original letter to an MP is considered to represent the views of 100 others who didn't bother to write"

    The fact that something is often said is not really a good ground for believing it to be true. It is often said that black people are inferior to white people, but that does not make it true. Simply because it has "often been said" would not make me think that changing public policy or the introduction of new legislation should be undertaken on the basis that "It is often said that black people are inferior to white people."!

    Who says this? Is it statisticians? Men in the saloon bar of the local public house? Stupid people? Wise people? Without investigating that we can have no real idea at all whether the proposition that you put forward, that people often say that one letter to an MP represents the views of a hundred others, is founded in anything other than rumoour and myth. This is really an appeal to the Common Man, a faith in folk wisdom. I need a little more evidence before I will accept even your initial premise.

    Also, what sort of letters to MPs represent the views of another hundred people who have not sent letters? MPs get some very strange letters, you know. A few years ago an MP I know received a letter from a constituent which told him that the royal family were really shape-shifting lizards from another planet. She singled out the late Queen Mother as leader of these sinister reptiles. Are you really saying that this MP should have read this letter and then said to himself, "Ah ha, a hundred of my constituents are concerned that the Queen Moter is a shape-shifting lizard from the planet Zog. I had better address their concerns!"

    The truth is, you start from a shaky and probably false premise, that one letter to an MP actually represents the views of another hundred. This means that all your subsequent deductions are also liable to be faulty. (They may be valid if they follow logically from the initial premise, but a deduction can be valid without being true. See what I said about Aristotelian Logic above).

    This is why I do not reply to all your posts at length, Sharon. Simply to deal with that one short post effectively has taken a lot of time on a Sunday morning and tells us nothing new about home education, which is of course the subject which really interests me!

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  7. Simon, you say,
    "Silence means consent."

    Silence may be interpreted as consent but it could be other things too. It could be lethargy or procrastination, which results in people missing deadlines. It could be despondency and resignation based on the assumption that the government are determined to bring in these changes and nothing that is said by a member of the public will make any difference. It could be fear. Believe it or not, some home educators I know are very wary of putting their name to anything that might result in their becoming 'known' to their LA.

    If people don't speak up then no-one can know if they agree or disagree with the Badman recommendations. What we do know is that the vast majority of those who have spoken up, are against them.

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  8. Thank you Simon, for at least finding thee time to reply to one, small, point. I agree, it was a bit of a throw away comment. However, it seems likely that it at least has some basis in reality. Out of 100 people with a view, some will moan to friends about a problem, some will just stew about it and not mention it to others, a few may sign petitions, others will reply to consultations or write to their MP. It's highly unlikely that all will write to their MP so it is safe to assume that others hold the same view but do not write.

    Using the shape-shifting lizard example is a bit of a distraction, but to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if it's not a view help by 100+ people, just take a look round the internet. 'Lizard-People Run the World (including royalty) is one of the top 10 conspiracy theories according to Wired, http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/magazine/15-11/st_best. At no point did I say that writing to their MP means the views expressed are valid, just that it's likely that there are others who hold the same view but haven't got round to writing. How many views a letter represents is obviously debatable, but I don't believe that the general idea is.

    BTW, surely you didn't need to spend long on your response. After all your first sentence, "The fact that something is often said is not really a good ground for believing it to be true", says it all.

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  9. A Bayesian Physicist11 October 2009 at 06:52

    Allie summarised some important reasons for people not speaking out; personal anecdotal experience indicates that there are many of these but there is simply no useful quantitative evidence, one way or the other.

    Consequently, Simon has no substantive quantitative basis for his conclusion that "Over 99% of home educators simply saw no reason at all to get worked up about" the Badman review; it is wooly thinking dressed in artful casuistry. It's the same kind of flawed logic that initiated the Badman review and pervades the government view of home education; they make unsubstantiated assumptions about things for which they have no information, while being selective about evidence that is available.

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  10. Good point, Bayesian Physicist. About those 99%, we know nothing at all. We must use our inductive powers. I assumed that they saw no reason to get worked up about the Badman review, because they did nothing at all about it, not even writing any letters. It seems a reasonable guess that if they had seen any reason to get worked up about it, then they would have done something. I can't see a flaw in the logic there.

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  11. Of course I chose the shape-shifting lizard example, Sharon, to illustrate the point. On a more serious note, MPs receive many complaints and appeals for help. For instance, a groups of neighbours may be having a problem with one particularly difficult fellow. half a dozen people might then agree that one of them will write to the MP. This letter might then represent the views of six or seven people. In the case Of a larger matter, say the building of a new motorway, then a small action groups might be formed which lobbys MPs. They might previously have canvassed local opinion and ascertained that many of those to whom they spoke were in broad agreement that the motorways should not be built. In such a case again, a letter sent by a member of the action groups might be said to represent more than the views of one individual alone. there is however, no handy ready-reckoner which enables us to calculate how many people each letter to an MP should be thought to represent. It almost certainly varies from case to case. The first step if we wanted to look into the case of the opposisition to the Badman Report and its recommendations would be to establish how many letters had been received by MPs against the proposals. I am not sure how we could go about that.

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  12. What are your views on the differences in training (with regard to recognising signs of abuse) between home education inspectors and Health Visitors?

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  13. Simon said,
    "The first step if we wanted to look into the case of the opposisition to the Badman Report and its recommendations would be to establish how many letters had been received by MPs against the proposals. I am not sure how we could go about that."

    If you read my comment I was wondering how the theory that 1 letter represents 100 other people's views when written to an MP might relate to the responses to the Badman review. That's where the 140,000 home educating parents figure came from as 1400 HE parents responded. The exclamation mark at the end was supposed to suggest that this figure seems unlikely as it's too high. Thus the home educators responding to Badman (the vast majority of whom were against the current round of changes, over 95% if I'm remembering correctly) represent nearly 2% of home educating parents if your 80,000 total is accurate. So whilst 1 response might not represent 100 who didn't bother to respond, a rate of 1 response representing 50 seems more viable.

    BTW, a research sample size of 1053 is large enough to produce results with a 95% confidence level and a confidence interval of 3, so this response level is excellent. Admittedly the respondents were self selected but presumably they represent those with strong feelings in both directions.

    I don't believe that silence means consent when looking at responses to the Badman Review. Any pro-legislation home educators must have been blind and deaf not to know that many would respond that current laws were perfectly adequate. If they felt strongly that we should have more legislation, they would have put their point of view forward, as you did. When Badman consulted it was not known what silence would have been consent for, as he was exploring the current situation and asking if changes were necessary.

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  14. "Of course I chose the shape-shifting lizard example, Sharon, to illustrate the point."

    What point? That 1 letter is unlikely to represent 100 people with the same views? Or some other point (as I think it's quite likely that at least 100 people do believe in shape-shifting lizards)?

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  15. No, the point that while one letter might represent the views of a hundred people, it might equally well represent the views

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  16. of only one person; there is no way to tell.

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  17. "No, the point that while one letter might represent the views of a hundred people, it might equally well represent the views of only one person; there is no way to tell."

    But how does it illustrate your point that only one person might hold that view? How likely is it that one of the top 10 conspiracy theories is help by only 1 person? Search for Reptoids in Google and you get 66,500 hits. If anything the fact that only one letter was received despite so many believing in Reptoids suggests that 1:100 might be an underestimate.

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  18. I agree that a letter about a neighbour is unlikely to represent the views of 100 people, but this is irrelevant when we are discussing things that will affect thousands of people. I'm interested in you response to the related point I made about confidence levels and intervals bearing in mind that the response was something like 1400:

    "A research sample size of 1053 is large enough to produce results with a 95% confidence level and a confidence interval of 3, so this response level is excellent"

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  19. A Bayesian Physicist11 October 2009 at 11:00

    Simon wrote: "I assumed that they saw no reason to get worked up about the Badman review, because they did nothing at all about it, not even writing any letters. It seems a reasonable guess that if they had seen any reason to get worked up about it, then they would have done something. I can't see a flaw in the logic there."

    There isn't any logic in your argument; you're simply jumping from your assumption (based on nothing more than your personal view) to a "logical" conclusion! A fine example of "garbage in, garbage out".

    We know of several reasons for people being "silent"; we have no prior knowledge that allows us to select among these or determine their relative importance, so your attempt to infer your answer is merely speculation. You are perfectly entitled to speculate but let's not pretend that this has any substantive basis.

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  20. I wonder Simon, you appear to be very much in favour of registration and monitoring. Why then did you choose not to inform the LA when you began home educating your own child?

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  21. Anonymous, I saw no reason to inform the LA. I assumed that they had better things to be doing with their time. I was not hiding from them and when asked, was happy to give them my name and details. It simply did not occur to me to contact them. Later, it became a bit of a game with my daughter, trying to gues how long it would be before the local authority realised that she existed and didn't attend school!

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  22. My assumption is not really based at all upon my personal view, Bayesian Physicist. I think that if a new law is being proposed which will have a direct and immediate effect upon seventy nine thousand or so people and they do nothing about it, not even writing a few letters each, then it is a fair guess that they are not much concerned about the prospect of the new law.

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  23. "I think that if a new law is being proposed which will have a direct and immediate effect upon seventy nine thousand or so people"

    Is that what happened? I was under the impression that Badman's brief was to review home education to find out if new laws were necessary. This was certainly how the people I spoke to viewed it - as just another look at the situation by the government, similar to several previous consultations, which had all concluded that nothing should change. It was only after the review was published that many began to wake up to the implications to their lives.

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  24. Yes, the review was published four months ago amid a huge amount of publicity and yet the select committe only received a few hundred responses. Again, this argues that most home educators still did not seem much concerned.

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  25. I have no idea of the actual statistics of thosw who would vote for or against change if that were put to them in a vote, but that is not the situation we are facing anyway. We don't know how many home educators there are - and we don't know most of their opinions- only those of a few who post on the internet communities. The silent majority may be violently against change, but have left it upto others to fight their battles, or they may just not actually care or they may welcome more legislation - who knows? Since we can't easily find out and it isn't a situation where we will get a vote on what happens, the arguments are a bit futile.

    What does concern me though is the attitude of some home educators towards others who see any attempt to obtain something positive out of the review and compromise. The response of some to the DSCF announcement last week (about support for home educators) worries me; now I may have a healthy degree of scepticism as to how and when such promises may be delivered, but the contemptous dismissing of some ("real home educators won't want any of that") is completely overlooking the facts that some home educators do want exactly that, and to dismiss their views and regard them as betrayers is deeply hurtful and divisive. Likewise the news that the missing home ed parent is being replaced by someone from the Chard home ed centre releases more paranoia- despite the fact that the Badman response from that group is highly critical of everything Badman suggests. Why are they therefore suspect?...because they have done a deal with their LA (for those who want it- no suggestion of compulsory involvement) to get funding for exams etc. Or alternatively the fact that Badman's daughter works in some capacity for Somerset (although I am not even sure that she is in the same part of Somerset - and she certainly doesn't work with home educators?)

    Who exactly will represent home educators? In the eyes of some EO is condemned because of its past, HEAS because of its lack of democracy, one religious group is complaining because there is no one of their religion... we don't really need Badman to make life more difficult for home educators, we are doing that well enough on our own.

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  26. A Bayesian Physicist11 October 2009 at 12:26

    So you admit that this is nothing more than a guess on your part; "a fair guess" is merely your opinion and, as I've maintained, has no substantive basis.

    I can think of a number of cases where I have known people who have strong objections to a proposal that affects them, but they do not speak out for a variety of reasons (a cynical view that it's pointless, in many cases). In the case of the Badman proposals, I also know people who simply won't reveal their identities at all (I'm happy to do so in letters to my MP etc., but not more widely on public web sites).

    This is my personal anecdotal experience and small-number statistics (and I speculate that others may have similar experience) but it is at least as valid as your guess.

    Unchallenged unsubstantiated "reasonable assumptions" and "fair guesses" - by some supposedly very smart people - are the kind of reasoning that has brought the global economy close to catastrophic failure. This lack of rigour - you might call it "sloppy thinking" is all too common and is one if the reasons I'm a home educator.

    BTW, I think we're at cross-purposes about your "personal view"; I was suggesting that your personal view is what you say in your "guess". The fascinating alternative is less Aristotle and more like Hegel on a bad cocaine trip.

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  27. A Bayesian Physicist11 October 2009 at 13:10

    Simon wrote: ..."the select committe only received a few hundred responses. Again, this argues that most home educators still did not seem much concerned."

    Another unsubstantiated guess! If we follow your line of argument, most of the thousand or so who responded vociferously to previous requests must have changed their mind by the time of the select committee, leaving only a few hundred holding-out in their opposition.

    A great many proposals that have a significant impact on many people come before select committees and other government review processes; I doubt that the majority of affected people respond.

    Consider any of the highly-contentious legislation over the last thirty years. I don't think tens of millions of people responded on the poll tax (they may have changed their vote, but that's different); teachers have been hit with enough that one might have expected the great majority to be opposed, but I suspect that's not reflected in the number of responses.

    Have you responded on every issue that has a detrimental affect on you?

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  28. Simon said,
    "Yes, the review was published four months ago amid a huge amount of publicity and yet the select committe only received a few hundred responses. Again, this argues that most home educators still did not seem much concerned."

    Not really. I didn't consider the select committee as a group to be swayed by numbers. They are looking at the conduct of the review, how the figures were compiled and conclusions reached, not taking a vote to discover if the views are representative. Once I was sure that my concerns had been addressed fully in other submissions I didn't bother to write my own. I thought that they were more likely to be able to consider the issues fully if they *didn't* have to wade through 2000+ responses.

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  29. We are probably using different expressions to mean the same thing, Bayesian Physicist. What you call an unsubstantiated guess, I would call a logical deduction. We all of us work like this the whole time. Indeed, we have absolutely no choice at all in this matter because we simply do not know what other people are thinking. We can only observe their actions and then draw a conclusion about thier motives. If we did not do this, trying to work out the rules that motivate others to behave as they do, then the world would seem a frightening and incoherent place. I see a group of people behaving in a certain way and on the balance of possibilities, I decide what has caused them to behave like that. This is all one can do. Even if one asked them each individually, this would still not help. Some of them would lie, we would still be compelled to make what you would describe as unsubstantiated guesses as to their true motives and intentions.

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  30. Julie said,
    "I have no idea of the actual statistics of thosw who would vote for or against change if that were put to them in a vote, but that is not the situation we are facing anyway. We don't know how many home educators there are."

    No, but a study looking at opinions doesn't usually ask the whole population for their views, elections are the exception rather than rule. I'm sure you have an understanding of confidence levels and intervals. The Badman review gained 1400 responses from a population of 80,000 HE parents (as estimated by Simon). When asked, "Do you think the current system for safeguarding children who are educated at home is adequate?", 4.1% of home educating parents and children replied 'no', leaving 95.9% who thought the system was adequate or who were undecided. With this sample size and a confidence level set at 95% we can calculate a confidence interval of plus or minus 1.03. Therefore we can say that we are 95% sure that the true figure of those who didn't think change was needed or were undecided falls between 95% and 97% for the entire HE parent population.

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  31. A Bayesian Physicist11 October 2009 at 15:42

    Simon wrote: "What you call an unsubstantiated guess, I would call a logical deduction..."

    You're joking now! I think I know a little about logical deduction, having based a very successful career on it for three decades - in the face of varying amounts of quantitative and qualitative evidence.

    You are mistaken if you think your exercise has anything to do with logical deduction (or even induction). You are merely jumping to a conclusion by filling in the gaps with your prejudices. You say we have no choice, but there is a choice of saying "I don't know" or "there is no evidence one way or the other". I do it frequently; it's a part of intellectual integrity and honesty.

    Unfortunately, taking your approach to the people and world around you generates misunderstandings, mythology and sometimes worse; this might make your view of the world seem less frightening and more coherent to you, but it certainly has no basis in reality.

    Based on a the evidence available, as I said earlier, you can speculate but there are alternatives that are at least as valid but which you choose to exclude without any evidence. Your conclusion - embellished with your claim of "logical deduction" - is artful casuistry (and not very artful at that).

    Perhaps you'd like to answer the point about the majority of people who responded early-on in opposition to Badman not responding now to the select committee? That's a bit of a conundrum for you; either they have changed their minds, or there's an example of a large group (Sharon being a member) that oppose the proposal but who have not voiced their opinion to the select committee.

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  32. Simon said...
    "I saw no reason to inform the LA. I assumed that they had better things to be doing with their time"

    But now u no longer HE Simone u feel it is time the LAs cracked down on the rest??You perhaps feel they are not capable of undertaking their children's education as suceesfully as you feel u did with Simone's??

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  33. Simon,
    You are on record saying “I haven't really got any faith in the schools these days and it occurred to me if I wanted my daughter to be educated I'd probably be better off taking on the job myself." So why didn't you HE both your daughters??

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  34. I think it's already been pointed out to you Simon that some HEers don't respond because they are unknown and want to stay that way. An increasing number of HEers are seeing the relentless monontony of one consulation after another as the sham that they are and are simply disengaging from the process. Some of Badman's proposals have already made it into draft legislation before the Select Committee has even sat and before the public consult has finished. What is the point in wasting time on a process where the outcome has clearly been rigged from the outset. Badman's review was simply policy based evidence making, and even the fact that he couldn't manufacture any hasn't derailed the policy. Lots of HEers now are simply making plans to protect the freedom of their children as best they can. Some are contemplating emigration, many are planning simply to defy any new regulations. I expect there is some apathy, perhaps most HEers are structured and so think they will be unaffected, many are unknown and want to stay that way, some are not online and are ths completely disenfranchised because DCSF does nothing to reach or inform them about consultations but many are also disengaged from a process that it is clearly pointless to engage with. The democratic facade is slipping and we can all see what's underneath.
    Joely

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  35. ". On the contrary, it is natural delicacy on my part which makes me try to avoid embarrassing you. "

    Simon, we're all embarrassed *for* you. I understand that you need the authentication of hearing the sound of your own voice (virtually speaking) but the public displays of ignorance have gone too far now. If you were my Dad I hope I would be kind enough to take this blog down for you.
    Joely

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  36. We are two home educating parents who, along with every other He parent and child we've spoken to, are against the changes proposed by Badman. We didnt contact our MP because their record is to always go along with party leadership, so thats a lost cause before its even started. We didnt write to the select committee because we read their request as asking for information from groups, not from individual families. We did sign a petition and have used facebook and other social media/gatherings to spread the word and talk about these proposed changes. We did also take part in the still open consultation (filled the questionnaire in - although that seems pointless if the government cant be bothered to wait for the results before making decisions - just shows up how little interest they really have in our opinions, and how asking for them is therefore just a sham).

    Anyway, as I said - no other HE person we have spoken to, parent or child, has been in favour of these proposed changes. No-one. You are the first I've come across, but they won't affect you as you no longer HE your child.

    Rob

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  37. To the Anonymous who asked why I did not home educated both my daughters, I must decline to answer. I actually put up a post abot this, going into some detail. The following day I discoverd that somebody writing to the select committee to complain about my choice as a witness had been using information from this very post. I have now decided to say nothing more about my family on here. If you wish to contact me offline, I am happy to discuss this matter, but not on a public Blog.

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  38. Bayesian Physicist, My original contention was that it is impossible to say anything for certain about the 99% of home educating parents who did not respond the the Badman review of elective home education. I gather that you agree with me on that. The thesis I was opposing was that the great majority of home educating parents are against new monitoring. I imagine that you would agree too that the evidence for this idea is woefully lacking.

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  39. Billy Bunter, had the local authority in Haringey knocked on my door on the day that my daughter turned five, I should have been quite happy to invite them in and explain my decision to them. You can hardly blame me that Haringey are shockingly inefficient, as we have seen in recent news items, and that I did not feel inclined to do their job for them!

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  40. And yet Joely, you feel the need to return to my Blog time and again. There is obviously something here that you want.

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  41. You know Rob, I have grown used to seeing the fact that my daughter has turned sixteen as a justification for saying, ineffect, that my views on the subject of home education should be disregarded. This is a lot of nonsense. A number of people prominent in the worl of education are no longer actually home educating. I won't name the all, but two are Ali Edgely on the HE-UK list, who sent her children back to school two years ago and is still very active and vitriolic on the the topic of HE and also of course Fiona Nicholson, whose son is alos now sixteen. I have not heard this being used as grounds for suggesting that Fiona Nicholson's view on home education have suddenly become unimportant.

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  42. If an MP receives 10 letters from consituents informing him that a local river has been polluted, what does he think? Does he ignore the letters because the other 39,990 consituents didn't write to tell him that? Does he think, 'The river must be absolutely fine, because only 10 people wrote to me about the river being polluted. The others must all think the river is clear.'

    I wouldn't have thought so. I would have thought that the MP would go to look himself, or at least sent a researcher to check.

    No matter how many or few responses to government there were, the fact that several hundred home educators *were* concerned should have alerted someone to a problem.

    Mrs Anon

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  43. Sharon said "The Badman review gained 1400 responses from a population of 80,000 HE parents"

    I do vaguely understand stats (did quite a lot at uni although as that was a LONG time ago and I have had permanent baby brain for years -it is all a bit vague)...but I am still doubtful about making firm conclusions - sample of responders out of total population seems small and taking my own home ed group in particular - it is only the "No" campaign that is either politically active, are on National lists, or who have been encouraged to reply. Many of the people who would support more legislation have kept quiet, some of them don't even have email access on a anything like a regular basis or at all, they tend to be people who stick to a rigid curriulum and who have little time for AE advocates. In other words they are the "Simons" but (unlike our Simon) they haven't got an audience to express their views too. The results is that I suspect that the numbers are aased on an unfair self selection and so maybe invalid. In addition when I see the sort of conversations that deny that any true home educator would want the "so called benefits" of the DSCF " offer" or of the sort of schemes like "Bedford" or "Chard" - I know that these debates have completely misread the type of home educator out there - heck, if someone offered a Bedford scheme down here, 50% would sign up on the spot

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  44. Another thought.

    The Select Committee Inquiry was different to the public consultation in that the anti-Badman community was advised by those in the know that the Committee was more interested in group submissions than individual ones. So, many more groups responded this time, such as county groups or groups of HE'ers who get together for exam tuition etc.

    This might be why there were fewer overall submissions. It would not be sensible to assume from the number of summissions to the SC that opposition to the proposals is waning. My feeling is that, locally, it is just beginning to gather momentum.

    Mrs Anon

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  45. A Bayesian Physicist12 October 2009 at 00:45

    Simon wrote:"My original contention was that it is impossible to say anything for certain about the 99% of home educating parents who did not respond the the Badman review of elective home education."

    So have we moved you back to this position from your untenable one of "Silence means consent"..."Over 99% of home educators simply saw no reason at all to get worked up about it."?

    Of course, by definition, we have no evidence that provides a definitive answer on the views of those that did not respond. That's a problem but one can attempt some statistical inference based on the evidence that we have, rather than jumping to conclusions; that's what Sharon has already been doing here. Can we "logically deduce" that your long silence on Sharon's statistical argument implies your consent?

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  46. Well Bayesian Physicist, most of my piece was about the unjustified assumption from the evidence we have, that most home educating parents are opposed to a change in monitoring. I assume that you agree with me on that point? I then spent a paragraph speculating upon the reasons for the silence of 99% of home educating parnets. The fact that I used expressions like "I have a strong suspicion", "very suggestive" and so on, should have alerted you to the fact that I was not being dogmatic and was really speculating.

    As I say, from all that I am able to apprehend from your arguments, you agree with me that there is no evidence at all to support the contention that the majority of home educating parents are opposed to a change in the monitoring of home education by local authorities?

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  47. Sharon, once again, your statistical analysis looks very slick on the face of it, but falls down because your initial premises are once again flawed. I cannot fault what you say about confidence levels and so on, but this would only be of any interest if the fourteen hundred people you based your calculations upon had been randomly selected from the whole population of home educators. They were not, they chose themselves.

    Let us go back to my example of the hypothesis that the royal family are in fact shape-shifting lizards. If I announced a public enquiry into this hypthesis and then invited people to send me their views, I would not be at all surprised to get at least fourteen hundred people who believed this to be true. The vast majority of people, recognising the idea as proposterous, would simply ignore such an enquiry. Are you really saying that I could then take those self-selected forteen hundred responses, carry out statistical analysis on them and then announce that 95% of the British public believe that Queen Elizabeth is a reptile from another planet?
    This is the problem both with small smaples and self-selected ones.

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  48. Simon -

    I never said that your opinion was irrelevant because you were no longer home educating. I did say that these changes would have no effect on you, and as a result I do not understand why you would be chosen to give evidence to the committee, as a home educating parent, and as one of the only two invited.

    The whole purpose of your invitation is for you to explain how these changes may affect you as a home educator. But they wont, because you no longer are, so I think you should not have been offered or have taken this place in priority over a current home educating parent, and certainly not over a representative of HEYC (the HE youth organisation), who were snubbed despite all these changes apparently being 'for their own good'.

    Fiona Nicholson has not been invited in her capacity as an HE parent, but as a representative of an HE organisation. That is very different to your own position.

    Rob

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  49. I am by no means convinced rob, that I have actually been invited as a witness so that i can explain how these changes might affect me as a home educator. If that had been said, I should certainly have declined. Another problem is that if I were to announce that i had decided not to give evidence, there is absolutleu no reason to suppose that I would be replaced by another home educating parent or indeed home educated child. When David Wright pulled out, he was replaced by a representative from another organisation; the Chard Home Educators Centre. I feel it quite likely that if I were not to go, then another organisation would be chosen to replace me, rathe than a home educating parent.

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  50. What the select committee says about the session you have been invited to take part in this inquiry:

    "The purpose of this session is to examine the role of home educators, local authority representatives and national children's organisations on the recommendations of the DSCF-commissioned review of elective home education in England and assess the desireability and feasibility of those recommendations."

    But you are neither a home educating parent OR a representative of a relevant organisation. You are submitting your opinions to the Committee as an individual who was formerly a home educating parent. I don't think your views on HE are invalid because you are no longer doing it - however with only limited spaces for people to speak to this Committee, I do think priority should have been given to people and organisations who will actually be affected by the proposed legislative changes.

    It's not as if there weren't lots of people volunteering to give evidence, even requesting they be able to. HEYC requested that they be given the opportunity to speak for themselves, as an organisation made up of HE youth, and they were ignored. But they made space for you, an ex HE parent with views that appear to be in opposition to the great majority of HE parents - judging this by all the contributions I've seen in the media from other HE parents as well as my own experience.

    Why have they given you priority, and why did you accept it?

    Rob

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  51. Rob said "Why have they given you priority?" I expect because they wanted a representative of the "pro Badman lobby" and Simon was one of them - and probably because he wrote an articulate report to the Select Comm - I know one or two who may be on the "pro Badman side" but who are far more terrifying - and illiterate!

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  52. It may be that my submission to the slect committee was short enough that they actually read it. I sent in one A4 sheet, double spaced in 14 point typeface. Others were complaining that they could not say what they wanted in three thousand words, or whatever the limit was. I have read some of these submissions and they are long, rambling and incoherent. In my experience, people seldom read more than the first page of such things and are usually pleased to find a single sheet with half a dozen points, each made in one or two sentences. Perhaps I was chosen because they actually read what I wrote? That's only a guess.
    I have no idea Rob, how many people volunteered to give evidenc. I did and was selected. I cannot see why I should then be so quixotic as to decline the invitation on the grounds that others with views different to my own should be allowed to go in my place! Three and probably four of those giving evidence are going to be opposed to the recommendations of the Badman Report. Are you saying that all five should be of that view and that nobody should represent the views of those who cautiously approve of many of the recommendations. I acn't see how that would be more democratic.

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  53. A Bayesian Physicist12 October 2009 at 03:51

    Simon, I'm tempted to ask you how the weather is on Zog but I guess you've moved to Earth.

    You present your retreat as consistency and ask whether I agree with you! You appear to have a muddled view of evidence and inference, but perhaps we're moving you along in baby steps and that's good.

    So your long period of silence doesn't imply consent; you are correct in saying that the sample of home educators is self selecting, as Sharon pointed-out in the first place. While this is undoubtedly a problem - it has to be recognised - it's not as bad as your illogical jump to the answer you chose (although you seem to have shifted away from that now) and it cuts both ways.

    Sharon pointed-out the deficit of responses from home-educators in favour of more regulation; let me take this further beyond the scope of your original assertion. The local authorities might be considered to have a duty to respond, yet if I recall correctly (I don't have the spreadsheet to hand right now), the majority of LAs have not called for more powers and provided little or no evidence of abuse.

    It doesn't take a great intellectual leap to infer that the whole process is flawed, there is no evidence of a problem and one cannot infer one or the need for regulation. Of course, this does not stop people such as Badman, Balls and you from making irrational jumps to various conclusions without any evidence and with flawed reasoning.

    I spoke to my MP - a government whip - recently, and his view is that the current process is driven by fear of the fallout from another "Baby P" case; ministers don't want headlines asking why nothing was done. I don't find this in the least surprising but it confirms my view that the process is not a rational one.

    I've seen your definition of "logical deduction" and I've no doubt that your delusion is shared by those who seek to impose their will upon us.

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  54. So.... does that mean that you agree that the suggestion that the vast majority of home educating parents oppose the recommendations of the Badman Report is not supported by the evidence? The reason that Sharon's calculations are meaningless is that they are, as I said, a completely self-selected sample. If somebody managed to poll fourteen hundred random home educating parents and then put those data together, then that would give us something to work on.
    .

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  55. Julie said,
    "Many of the people who would support more legislation have kept quiet, some of them don't even have email access on a anything like a regular basis or at all, they tend to be people who stick to a rigid curriulum and who have little time for AE advocates."

    So you think these people are happy to reduce the freedoms of others, as well as themselves, feel that children at risk of harm, will be helped by these measures and that the benefits outweigh the harms (which is fine it they really believe this), but they can't be bothered to do anything about it? Isn't this a bit like someone suspecting abuse and doing nothing about it? It's not as if they would have to do anything openly and risk vilification from fellow home educators (as has been suggested), they could have responded to Badman without anyone knowing. If anything, I think I would be more likely to respond to a consultation if I felt this was the only way I could get my views across.

    I acknowledged previously the self selected nature of the Badman Review reponses, but at the same time I think it is safe to assume that they represent the views of those who feel most strongly about the issue. You have given no reason why we cannot assume that those who feel less strongly about the issues follow roughly the same proportions, with the majority thinking that current law would be fine if LAs used it to the full and as intended when written.

    I think the majority would like and accept support and help, this is clear from the Badman Review responses, but it's also apparent from the same results that they do not want annual registration and home visits. They were not asked if they would accept registration and visits in exchange for support.

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  56. Simon said,
    "Are you really saying that I could then take those self-selected forteen hundred responses, carry out statistical analysis on them and then announce that 95% of the British public believe that Queen Elizabeth is a reptile from another planet?"

    Of course not, and this demonstrates that you do not understand confidence levels and intervals at all. If the population is larger you would need a larger sample, and in the case of the whole population of the UK, a much larger sample.

    But you really cannot compare such a ridiculous question to the questions that have been asked of home educators. I mean, you are effectively suggesting that the answer to the questions about home visits and registration are so obvious, as obvious as the fact that the queen is not a lizard, that people have not bothered to answer. If this were the case, it wouldn't say much about the people paying for the questions to be asked and those asking the questions. We have no reason to believe that there isn't a spread of views amongst the population that didn't answer, and very little to support your theory that the majority feel strongly that more legislation is needed to save children. As I said to Julie, if they really feel strongly that this is the case, it would suggest that they are neglecting these children by their lack of response.

    "This is the problem both with small smaples and self-selected ones."

    The whole point of confidence levels and intervals is to determine if the sample is large enough to reach firm conclusions and in this case, they demonstrate that the sample is more than adequate. This only leaves the self-selected nature of the sample which I have covered to some extent above. However, I don't know of any social research that is not self selected to some degree. Are you suggesting that all the results are invalid? It's a bit like the other idea about research carried out in another country. You seem to be of the opinion that foreign HE research is irrelevant to the UK situation, yet in every area of research the location of research is born in mind when considering the results, but is rarely considered sufficient reason to ignore the results completely. In this case the self selected nature of the sample does need to be born in mind, but this does not justify ignoring the results completely. Otherwise, what would be the point in asking the questions and gathering the results in the first place?

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  57. If there was a limit of 3000 words one would assume that all words up to that limit that were submitted would be considered; that would only be polite if nothing else! I find it difficult to believe, on the strength of your posts here, that your letter was particularly well written; but then I've read Badman's Review and his recent letter to local authorities requesting evidence to back up his assertions, and let's just say that he would not have scored very highly had he handed it in as academic coursework. So, no, I don't believe that you (or he) were picked for talent.

    I find you very evasive to discuss this with, as you dont address anything I put to you, instead you resort to arguing with strawmen. Example the latest - I did not suggest that all five witnesses on that days panel should be against the proposals. I did say that priority should have been given to those persons who would be directly affected by the proposals, and you will not be. It seems as if you do not want to acknowledge or address this.


    Rob

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  58. I said I was probably picked for brevity Rob, rather than talent. I am involved in home education, I help families to de-register their children from school and have dealiings with others whose children are not at school. I did not choose the wirnesses and have no idea of the criteria used.

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  59. What I am suggesting Sharon, is that until we can see a sample of randomly selected home educators and check their views, we can only guess as to what most of them think. Let me give another example. In the wake of the Braybrook Street Massacre and the tendency for bank robbers to wave sawn-off shotguns about, the Wilson government decided to restrict the sale of shotguns in 1968. Up to then, anybody could walk into a gunsmith and buy one. This did not affect most people, so they said nothing. Among shotgun owners, the reaction was mixed. Most of the respectable people, those who used them for shooting grouse or clay pigeons, were quite happy about the new law. They were content to register their weapons and knew that it was probably a wise move. Similarly the farmers. A small group of people, a small subset of shotgun owners, went absolutely mad and treated this as an attack on one of the basic liberties of England. They wrote to their MPs, contacted newspapers and I dont know what all else. It was widely accepted among ordinary shotgun owners that these people wer a small minority. They themselves did not write to their MPs because they accepted that change was needed and had no reason to worry about needing a firearms certificate from the police. Anybody analysing the responses from the small group of shotgun owners who were complaining might have been tempted to do what you are doing and extrapolate from the numbers of shotgun owners opposed to the new law and assume that most shotgun owners felt that way. It was not true. This is perhaps the closest comparison in real life that I can think of to the present situation.

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  60. Simon said,
    "What I am suggesting Sharon, is that until we can see a sample of randomly selected home educators and check their views, we can only guess as to what most of them think.

    Not at all. Yes, the sample is self selected, but as I've said before, researchers would not just dismiss the results completely just because of this. They would bear it in mind and modify the amount of significance they place on the results, not dismiss them completely, otherwise why ask the questions and collate the results?

    The shotgun example is not comparable. As you say, the government had decided to restrict the sale of shotguns, they were not just taking a look at the situation to see if change was necessary. The belief amongst home educators was that the purpose of the Badman Review was to gather evidence about home education and discover if there is a need for change. That was the brief. Home educators are likely to have assumed that he would find no evidence of a need to change the law because several consultations in the past had reached just this conclusion and, as a result of this belief, not bothered to respond. If anything, there would have been more reason for someone who thought change necessary to respond. They would have seen that several times in the past it had been decided that current law is adequate and realised that the government needed to be told the opposite.

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