As expected, opposition among home educators is stiffening towards the proposed feasibility study for which the Department for Children, Schools and Families has invited expressions of interest. Let's see exactly what the DCSF are trying to do and why. In the Impact Assessment connected with the Children, Schools and Families Bill 2009, it was suggested that it would be a good thing if more home educated children were to gain five GCSEs at grades A*-C. Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether that would really be a good thing, let us see first why no effort has yet been made to establish a baseline. In other words, why don't the DCSF know to begin with how many home educated children are passing these examinations? Can't they find out without setting up some research project?
The problem with gathering the data on even such a simple thing as the number of GCSEs is as follows. To begin with of course, nobody has any real idea how many children are being home educated in this country. The York Consulting study carried out in 2006 concluded that it was impossible to find out, so the first job of the new study is to see if anything has changed, whether it will now be possible to count the number of home educated children accurately. I think most people would agree that there is nothing wrong in that. Now we come to the matter of GCSEs taken by home educated children.
Children currently leave compulsory education on the last Friday in June of the academic year in which they turn sixteen. After that day, no parent need have anything more to do with their local authority's education department, unless they choose to do so. Unfortunately, the GCSE results don't come through until a couple of months later, in August. Since almost all these are taken as private candidates, the results will not reach the local authority unless the parents go to the trouble of telling them. I certainly did not bother notifying Essex County Council about my daughter's IGCSE results; why would I? I dare say most parents feel the same and so local authorities simply don't find out about GCSEs passed by such children. Two things will be changing in this respect pretty soon.
The first thing to change is that the school leaving age is going up to eighteen. This will mean that local authorities will be in contact with home educating families for a year or two after the children are sixteen and should therefore get to hear about their GCSE results. The other thing likely to happen is that when the Children, Schools and Families Bill comes into force in April 2011, local authorities will probably start arranging for home educated children to sit GCSEs if they want to. This will probably mean a dramatic drop in the number of GCSEs which are sat as private candidates. These two events will mean that it will be a lot easier to find out how many children not at school are passing GCSEs. Of course many of them will still sit International GCSEs, and local authorities won't learn about these as a matter of course, but they will certainly be better informed than is now the case about educational attainment.
I would assume that these data will be collected without reference to parents, otherwise, the whole thing would become a nonsense. If the local authority are actively involved with all home educating families until the children are eighteen and if they mainly sit GCSEs via the maintained schools, then it will be easy enough to count how many home educated children are achieving that Holy grail of modern education; five GCSEs at grades A*-C, including English and Mathematics.
Personally, I would be curious to know about this. At the very least, I cannot see how it would cause any harm for people to know what the rough proportion is. For those in maintained schools it is about half the pupils. Will it be more or fewer for those taught at home? Instinctively, I feel that it will be many fewer, but I would be happy to be proved wrong.
The one thing which really puzzles me is why some parents are already getting worked up about this. Why would anybody object to having solid data about the educational attainment of home educated children? I quite see that many parents feel that those five GCSEs are irrelevant and that is fine; they are entitled to their opinions. I simply don't understand why they would be opposed to the information being made available for those who are interested. After all, home educating parents are happy enough to make disparaging remarks about the quality of education offered by state schools. And so indeed are those connected with the educational system not averse to hinting that home educated children receive an inferior education to those at school. Surely having the data about GCSEs, college, sixth form and university admissions would enable the discussion on the rival merits of these very different educational methods to move to a more measured and rational level?
One could argue that a GCSE exam should test one's knowledge of the subject area in question, but that no longer seems to be the case. Passing a GCSE exam is an indicator of one's knowledge of the course material.
ReplyDeleteHaving no GCSE passes is not an indicator of one's knowledge or skills. Having GCSE passes is not necessarily a good indicator of one's knowledge or skills.
Home-educating parents complain about the quality of state education for a variety of reasons; one is that if GCSE results are what the state education system is using as its criterion for a good education, it is clearly failing many children, by its own measure.
It's high time some research was done on what educational approaches have the best outcomes for the whole community in the long term, instead of fussing about percentages of GCSE passes. The education system is unbelievably self-referential.
All this is quite true. However, I have never in my life heard any parent of a child at a maintained school object to the annnual announcement that such and such percentage of children at state schools have passed English or Science at GCSE level. The statistics are anonymous, it is not as though we hear on the news, "Bad luck Jimmy Smith of 102 Lansdowne Road, Doncaster. You only passed three GCSEs, you loser!". Why should the parents of home educated children be opposed to this information being made available in an anonymous form? It does not seem to make any sense, unless that is they are worried about what such data might reveal in a general way about the efficacy of home education in this country.
ReplyDeleteBy the by suzyg, I am intrigued at your suggestion that modern GCSEs require testing on a syllabus or specification and that this was not the case in the past. You say,
ReplyDelete"One could argue that a GCSE exam should test one's knowledge of the subject area in question, but that no longer seems to be the case."
Are you saying that at one time in the past, passing an examination in biology, for example, would require a candidate to be familiar with the whole field of biology and to be tested on absolutely any aspect of the subject? I do not think this to be true. All examinations sat by school children have always been limited to certain parts of any discipline, not the entire field.
Or are you rather saying that modern GCSEs are limiting themselves to a narrower field than was formerly the case? Again, I see little evidence for this. Perhaps yopu are objecting to examinations in general and feel it wrong to expect children to take them?
>>>>>>>>>>In the Impact Assessment connected with the Children, Schools and Families Bill 2009, it was suggested that it would be a good thing if more home educated children were to gain five GCSEs at grades A*-C.<<<<<
ReplyDeleteOf course, the BIG problem with measuring educational attainment among HE'ers is that a simple collection of GCSE passes at age 16 will definitely not show the whole story. Some egs in my local HE community will demonstrate why:
1. Several kids whose parents waited, for good educational/developmental/psychological reasons, until 17 before they took their exams. One for eg is now on her way to Cambridge after A's taken at 6th form which she entered at age 17. But she's going a year 'late'. Her Educational Attainment at 16 was zero. A year later it was many GCSE's at A*, but such reasearch as will probably be commissioned by DCSF would just have put her in the box marked: No qualifications at 16. Many, many such stories in our area.
2. Parents who prefer to give a good all round education until age 16 and then pack them off to FE to do the traditional 5 GCSE's (where there are FE's still offering them.) Parents clearly agree that having 5 good GCSE's were a great idea, they just didn't believe it was their responsibility to teach them those courses at age 16. 17 was fine for them.
3. Kids who go the OU route and have a nice little collection of OU credits under their belt but no GCSE's. Are they uneducated? Research, which is not geared to collecting info other than GCSE's at 16, would miss these kids' achievements.
4. Kids who go straight into apprenticeships, whether formal or informal. They have clearly been educated to a standard required to get a job in their specialist interest field, but no GCSE's. their education may not have been as broad or balanced as the DCSF might like, but clearly, education has taken place.
5. Kids who go straight to uni with no formal qualifications. I USED to think these kids were limited to only 2 or 3 well-knowmn egs, but recently, when talking to an FE principle, found that it's more common than I thought. They frequently do informal tests of HE'd students, to back up their applications to uni, at that particular FE. For eg They recently tested a girl who was fluent in Italian (bilingual family) and she got straight into Oxford to study Italian with no qualifications whatsoever. Now, no local HE'er knows about this girl as far as I know, which surprises me. Perhaps the family weren't members of the local HE community. However, it was fascinating to hear about her from the FE college. As I said, she wasn't the first they'd tested in that way on being requested to by a uni. Fascinating. At 16, she would have presented as having not attained the required 5 GCSE's to prove her education was adequate.
It seems to me that such a longitudinal study would have not NOT stop at 16 and have to include measures of achievment broader than GCSE's alone.
Mrs Anon
"Of course, the BIG problem with measuring educational attainment among HE'ers is that a simple collection of GCSE passes at age 16 will definitely not show the whole story. "
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely true, but also true of children at school. Does not seem a good reason not to look at the GCSE results though. I agree with you about a study not ending at sixteen, but I don't think that was the intention. I have an idea that it is hoped to track a cohort of HE kids further than that. Anyway, as I said, when the school leaving age goes up to eighteen, this will happen automatically.
If the local authority are actively involved with all home educating families until the children are eighteen
ReplyDeleteBut they not actively involved with all home educating families and never will be because most home educated parents will tell the Local authorthy to go away and leave us alone!so DCSF/LA will not find it so easy to get this data.
You alway talk Simon as if every one is going to do what they told by they LA many of us dont! We have not heard from our LA for over 4 years.I think they give up with some home educators but never tell any one this why do you think they not been in touch for over 4 years?(i thought they had a duty to check to see if child is geting an education?) If they do every ask for this data we wont answer!
Some schools/teachers have always 'taught to the test' and others have been more interested in the children's wider understanding. Given the status of GCSEs as an indicator of school performance, and rewards and sanctions that come with that, I don't get the impression that the number of children with a broad knowledge has increased.
ReplyDeleteI don't object to exams, nor to children taking them - but I see them as one tool in the educational toolkit. They are not the same as the education itself.
I've come across plenty of parents of school children who object to GCSEs being used as the sole indicator of performance, anonymous results notwithstanding, but the system is, for systems reasons, geared round GCSEs, so it is a big hassle to bypass it.
Home-educating parents object because they don't generally see GCSEs as being an indicator of quality of education. Quite right too. GCSEs might be a convenient measure of 'performance' for the DCSF or for schools, but that doesn't mean we have a better educated population.
We're back to the old 'Intelligence is what intelligence tests measure' circular reasoning here.
"I quite see that many [HE] parents feel that those five GCSEs are irrelevant and that is fine;"
ReplyDelete"Why should the parents of home educated children be opposed to this information being made available in an anonymous form?"
Maybe you have answered your own question. If many HE parents feel that 5 GCSEs are irrelevant it's highly likely that they will not waste theirs and their child's time and money in an attempt to achieve them. So what would the results of the information tell people? It will tell government that HE is not as efficient at educating children as schools. It will tell home educators that GCSEs are not valued by home educators. But who has the power to take action based on their view results?
"Absolutely true, but also true of children at school [GCSEs not being the whole story]."
Again you are not comparing like with like. Schools aim for GCSEs, it's their holy grail. This is often not the case for HEers. GCSEs are much closer to being the whole story in schools compared to HE.
Discovering that a certain percentage of home educated children passed five GCSEs at grades A*-C would tell us no more than that a certain percentage of home educated children passed five GCSEs at grades A*-C. The interpretations put upon this information would be a separate thing entirely. Just as we can speculate upon the importance of poverty or ethnicity in educational attainment, so too would anybody be free to guess at why the percentage of home educated children with GCSEs was high, low or average.
ReplyDeleteNone of this seems to me to be good reason not to have the data.
Now you are being naive. How can the possibility that the government will use the data and their interpretations of it to change and control home education be irrelevant to the advisability of collecting the data?
ReplyDelete"Just as we can speculate upon the importance of poverty or ethnicity in educational attainment, so too would anybody be free to guess at why the percentage of home educated children with GCSEs was high, low or average."
ReplyDeleteHome educators might speculate, but if the results are low government will decide that it shows that HE fails children and they have the power to do something about it. If they don't they will fear being 'held to account'. Isn't that their thinking behind the current changes? Why would that change in future?
But we are living in an age where government interpretation of data tends to be rather simplistic. If I have understood correctly, the basis for raising the school leaving age to 18 is that people were better qualified, in general, in countries where a higher proportion of children stayed at school until they were 18. But it isn't being 'in school' that makes children better educated, it's what and how they learn while they are 'in school'. And it isn't qualifications per se that mean that someone is better educated.
ReplyDeleteYou can bet your bottom dollar that if research finds that, say, only 20% of home-educated 16 year-olds have any GCSEs at all, someone will draw the conclusion that home-educating children don't 'do as well' as their peers in school and hands will be thrown up in horror and action taken. And it won't be a longitudinal study that compares the long-term outcomes for students with different educational backgrounds or different educational qualifications.
Governments habitually distort and misuse data gathered from every imaginable source. I'm afraid that this is in the nature of the beast. This does not seem to me to be a good reason for saying that information should not be collected in the first place. It is certainly good reason to set a close watch upon the government and draw attention to their misuse of data. To suggest that the danger lies in finding things out in the first place seems to me absurd.
ReplyDeleteAre we saying here that nobody should ever count or measure anything in case the government uses the figures wrongly or misrepresents them? Should we object to the statistics being collected on domestic violence or university admissions, just on the offchance that in the future some government will try to use them for their own purposes? Or are we perhaps saying that it is fine to collect information about the number of GCSEs taken by pupils in maintained schools, OK to ask questions about the shocking state of modern schools and try and find ways to improve them, but that when it comes to home educated children, we should stop dead and not try to find anything out? This sounds dangerous to me.
No, what I am saying is that SOME research can be useful, but only if it is independently conducted by people with no vested interest in the results, very long term and combined with looking at factors other than the narrowest measure (of 5 GCSE's at C and above).
ReplyDeleteFor eg, what if results show that GCSE, or equivalent, results were identical to or, as you clearly suspect, slightly lower than, those of schools but other long term indicators were way better? For eg, lower drug-taking rates, lower suicide/mental illness rates, lower rates of divorce or incarceration, higher rates of community involvement, higher rates of volunteerism or generosity in charitable giving? Lower unemployment? Fewer ASBO's?
The exam results would measure something so narrow that they would only give a tiny fragment of the picture.
Which group would be the more beneficial to society? Which group would have been the better educated and prepared for life in modern Britain?
Yes, research. Go for it.
Only do it well and do it thoroughly.
Mrs Anon
Without knowing the rate of volunteering, levels of charitable giving, amount of mental illness and so on among different types of schools, this might be a problem. Such a survey would of course be interesting, but it would be rather different from a study of educational attainment.
ReplyDeleteI would still be interested, and so I suspect would many other people, in knowing how many home educated children went on to college and university, as well as the number who passed GCSEs and A levels.
Hand on heart Mrs. Anon, would you really not be interested in seeing those figures? I bet you would! What I suspect many parents are thinking is that it would be great to know about this, if only the information could be kept away from the DCSF and local authorities.
ReplyDeleteif only the information could be kept away from the DCSF and local authorities.
ReplyDeleteWho cares what the DCSF/local Authorties think i know we dont!
"It is certainly good reason to set a close watch upon the government and draw attention to their misuse of data. "
ReplyDeleteWhat, like we have with the Badman 'research' data? How much notice did have they taken?
"Are we saying here that nobody should ever count or measure anything in case the government uses the figures wrongly or misrepresents them?"
Not necessarily but we should decide on what is worth counting and measuring and why we want this information before we start.
"Or are we perhaps saying that it is fine to collect information about the number of GCSEs taken by pupils in maintained schools, OK to ask questions about the shocking state of modern schools and try and find ways to improve them, but that when it comes to home educated children, we should stop dead and not try to find anything out?"
It is appropriate to count GCSEs for schools because that is their target end point. The equivalent to counting GCSEs for HE children would be something like counting the number of Open University qualifications gained by 16 years olds in schools and using that figure to reach conclusions about the success or failure of schools. If you just looked at the sub-group of home educators whose primary aim is GCSEs, then you would be comparing like with like. But this is not the case so they will be comparing apples to oranges.
Going back to suzyg's point about GCSEs, I think the problem with them is that they concentrate much more on regurgitating information than on understanding and (in maths and science) problem solving. The same has happened at A-level. If anything, some GCSEs are trying to cover too much material, but in a superficial manner.
ReplyDeleteUniversity departments running courses in physical/mathematical sciences and engineering are seeing a severe decline in the capabilities of their freshers for analysing and tackling previously unseen problems. If they haven't been taught how to handle that particular case they are stuck - and often complain that it wasn't in the lectures.
In school, regurgitation has a much greater emphasis on presentation; it seems that a colourful, word-processed piece of drivel can attract a higher grade than a rigorous piece of hand-written work.
The result is that children are working harder (and often enlisting considerable support from parents) to produce less of real value (other than landfill); they and their parents are being conned by the school system. That's why simply looking at GCSEs is pointless.
I'm not opposed to exams at all; but if you want a real measure, look at the kind of thing that S-level used to test (and I don't mean AS-level). I'm not suggesting it needs to be that advanced, but the guiding principles would be a good start. I suspect that most people involved in the contemporary education system and its associated logocracy would run a mile.
It is probably true that home educating parents set less store by GCSEs than do the parents of those at school. This is no reason though not to ask questions. Rather more than half of children at school do not go on to university. Does this mean that we should not collect information about those who do, simply because they are in a minority? More to the point, should we not ask ourselves just why children do not go to university and try and see if they are being put off it for some reason? Most would agree that this is a good thing.
ReplyDeletePrecisely the same applies to GCSEs. It may be true that only a minority of home educated children take them, but that is no reason at all not to collect information about it. It is also worth asking just why some do not take GCSEs. Is it because of the difficulty in finding an examination centre which takes private candidates? Is the cost putting their parents off? Why anybody would be opposed to asking such questions is completely beyond me.
Anonymous said "University departments running courses in physical/mathematical sciences and engineering are seeing a severe decline in the capabilities of their freshers for analysing and tackling previously unseen problems. If they haven't been taught how to handle that particular case they are stuck - and often complain that it wasn't in the lectures."
ReplyDeleteA university lecturer once told me the formal feedback from students about his lectures included the complaint that "he told us things we didn't know about".
>>>>>>>>>>>Hand on heart Mrs. Anon, would you really not be interested in seeing those figures? I bet you would! What I suspect many parents are thinking is that it would be great to know about this, if only the information could be kept away from the DCSF and local authorities.<<<<<<<<<<<
ReplyDeleteDo you mean a like for like comparison, matched participants, long, long study over time accepting alternative qualifications etc? Kinda, but there are other things I'm more curious about Simon. Like why is your experience of HE and HE'ers seems to be so different to mine. LOL!
I'm not particularly curious about purely exam results among HE'ers because I'm in touch with dozens of my younger child's peers and they are all doing so well. WAY above the national average for schools in terms of results. Apart from the ones with ASD.
I do accept that the national picture might be different to the local one though. I guess I'd be vaguely curious to see if my experience of HE kids round here is replicated nationally.
Mrs Anon
>>>>>>>>>>It is probably true that home educating parents set less store by GCSEs than do the parents of those at school.<<<<<<<
ReplyDeleteNot in our area. The only people who state categorically that their kids won't be taking GCSE's are those with young, young children. LOL! When their kids hit 12/13 they all join the HEexams list and start asking the veterans for info.
Mrs Anon
suzyg wrote:
ReplyDelete'A university lecturer once told me the formal feedback from students about his lectures included the complaint that "he told us things we didn't know about".'
In the immortal words of Bart Simpson: "You're damned if you do and damned if you don't".
Simon wrote:
ReplyDelete"Why anybody would be opposed to asking such questions is completely beyond me."
Because it's like fiddling while Rome burns; harmless on the face of it, and who could possibly object to some good music and a warm fire?
"Why anybody would be opposed to asking such questions is completely beyond me."
ReplyDeleteA group of parents decide the GCSEs are not suitable for their children (for a variety of reasons) and find alternative routes. The government looks at their GCSE results and, because GCSE results are their measure of a good enough education, decide that the HE is failing to educate adequately and future home educators will be more tightly controlled so that GCSE results in this group improve.
Can you honestly say you see no problem with this scenario or that you think government take any notice of parents who complain that they don't like the measure being used?
"When their kids hit 12/13 they all join the HEexams list and start asking the veterans for info."
Not all of them - we didn't and it hasn't held us back. If that's where you are that's what you will see, but I know plenty of families with children in the late teens and early 20's and none of them have taken GCSEs at home (though about 2 out of about 14 have taken some at college). Most are attending college or are at university now (or heading that way).
I said, 'in our area'.
ReplyDeleteMrs Anon
Would it be possible to ask for alternative routes (ie exams taken later, OU credits etc) to be collated as well and represented in the data ?
ReplyDeleteIf you they are going to go to the effort of getting a picture of the state of play it might as well be complete one.
"I said, 'in our area'."
ReplyDeleteDo you know all of the home educators in your area? I or some of my friends might even live in the same area as you for all you or I know. Most (possibly all) of my children's friends no longer have contact with local HE groups.
Here is what is actually proposed;
ReplyDelete"DCSF intends to commission a study to investigate the.feasibility of embarking on a longitudinal project investigating the provision of teaching and learning for, and the attainment of, home-educated children.
The overarching aim of the feasibility study will be to:
A small-scale investigation at LA-level to assess numbers of home-educated children known to them;
Research with voluntary organisations to establish number and type of children known to them; and
Research with families who home educate."
I am sure that there will be ample opportunity for home educating parents to put their views across. I doubt that it will be restricted to GCSEs. The idea eventually is to identify a number of home educated children and follow their progress.
>>>>>>>>>>Do you know all of the home educators in your area? I or some of my friends might even live in the same area as you for all you or I know. Most (possibly all) of my children's friends no longer have contact with local HE groups.
ReplyDelete<<<<<<<<<<<<
Actually, for various reasons, I think I do know most of them. Your kids and their peers are now grown up, I think you said. Or I assume that's what you meant when you said they'd not taken GCSE's but it hadn't held them back, which obviously is not what I'd implied anyway.
However, I was referring to my younger child's age peers and those younger. I really wish I did know more former HE'ers, though I am friends with a few.
Mrs Anon
"Your kids and their peers are now grown up, I think you said. Or I assume that's what you meant when you said they'd not taken GCSE's but it hadn't held them back, which obviously is not what I'd implied anyway."
ReplyDeleteThey range in age from 5 to 21 with most in the 14-18 year old range.
"I doubt that it will be restricted to GCSEs. The idea eventually is to identify a number of home educated children and follow their progress."
ReplyDeleteThat would actually be very interesting if they got a good sized and varied sample.
Do we know more or less what the number will be or is it still TBD ?
Simon wrote:
ReplyDelete'Here is what is actually proposed;
"DCSF intends to commission a study to investigate the.feasibility of embarking on a longitudinal project investigating...'
It sounds like something from "Yes Minister" to me, but that's fine just so long as they find some voluntary-sector organisation to do it, instead of wasting our taxes on another idiotic bureaucratic binge like Badman's effort. But I'm sure they won't.
'...I am sure that there will be ample opportunity for home educating parents to put their views across.'
ROTFL!
"find some voluntary-sector organisation to do it"
ReplyDeleteOr better still the setting up of a Cochrane for social sciences.
Yes, something like Cochrane for social research would be great and would probably be very useful to many, but do you think the government would take any more notice of them than they did the Cambridge Review?
ReplyDelete"but do you think the government would take any more notice of them than they did the Cambridge Review? "
ReplyDeleteI was thinking more in terms of the usefulness for us, having access to sizable, dependable data that relates to our educational choices.
Governments are a different kettle of fish, but I certainly don't think it could hurt.
Do the Cochrane review carry out research? I thought they review and disseminate the research of others. I would love to seem more (genuine) research based policy making in government as opposed to media/opinion driven policy. We still have the issue of who decides what end points are desirable and who gets to impose their views on others though and I'm not sure research would help with that.
ReplyDeleteThat's my understanding too.
ReplyDeleteI think I got carried away with my "Cochrane 2.0 the social science version" in my head and had them actually doing doing my bidding by producing research on demand ( :
LOL, it's nice to dream, isn't it.
ReplyDelete