How many home educating parents do I know?

A number of times in the past, the suggestion has been made that I am somehow out of touch with what ordinary home educators are thinking and doing. The idea being, I assume, that I am a pretty weird and atypical home educating parent and that my ideas on the matter are a bit strange. Yesterday, somebody commented that she thought that my experiences of home education seemed to be from another planet from that which she herself inhabited!

The truth is, I know many home educating parents and their children. Few of them belong to organisations like Education Otherwise or HEAS and most just get on with the job. Some of them get their children to take GCSEs, while others find that making their children study is too stressful and so they don't do it. Still others believe that their children should choose for themselves whether or not they study or sit examinations. I think that this means that I know quite a broad cross section of home educating types and that I am unlikely to be comparing other parents only with my own methods.

The area in which I live, Loughton in Essex, has quite a few parents who, for various reasons have taken their children out of school. Because my daughter is fairly well know locally, (try googling "Simone Webb" and Loughton together and you will see what I mean), I have got to know some of these parents because they have seen my daughter in the local paper and then stop me in the street to ask about things. Others I know from when I belonged to Education Otherwise and still more I know from my work in East London.

I think that the problem might be that I recognise that parents all have different motives for home educating and that these motives can affect how they go about the job. Sometimes, the conclusions which I draw are in conflict with the artfully constructed images of home education which are propagated by some home education support groups. For example, I know one father locally who took his daughter our of secondary school when she was thirteen because he felt that she was under too much pressure. He does absolutely no academic work with her and neither does her mother. As far as I can make out this is because the child cuts up rough if her parents try and make her work. They want a quiet life and so don't push matters, preferring to get on amiably with their daughter. At the other end of the spectrum is a family in Chigwell whose son is doing four A levels at home. They view me as a bit of a sell-out because my daughter is now at college studying A levels. They feel that I am letting down the home educating side and generally being a bit slack now!

I mention all this to show that I think it quite reasonable to suggest that some parents don't get their children to sit GCSEs because they want a quiet life and wish to avoid trouble. I see on the lists that many parents say that GCSEs are not that important anyway and that their children can always take them later if they wish. I really can't see why anybody finds it hard to believe that some parents are idle and that others do not get their children to study because they are opposed on ideological grounds to this sort of routine taking of exams; I know it is true and so I suspect does everybody else. Perhaps it is considered poor form to draw attention to this? Similarly, I know some single mothers who would like their children to take GCSEs, but honestly can't afford it. Again, I am a little surprised that anybody should doubt that this is so.

I have not counted the number of home educating families that I know, but there is certainly a wide range of different types. Judging from the membership numbers and the calculated numbers of home educated children in the country, I think that the parents who I know are perhaps more typical of British home education than those on the lists. There is no point in anybody accusing me of being out of touch, because the very same suggestion could be made of those who spend all their time chatting to a group of people in cyberspace who they are never likely to meet in person. The parents whom I have dealings with are flesh and blood individuals who I meet in the real world. They all have different motives and ideas and many of them do not conform to the views which are expressed so vociferously on the HE-UK list. Whether the parents I meet are the typical ones or those on the Internet lists is a very interesting and debatable point.