What's wrong with visits

Several people lately have posted messages explaining why they feel that visits by their local authority to inspect the provision being made for home education are both unnecessary and undesirable. I have gone before into the question of why I feel that such visits are necessary. I don't propose to go into this again. However, the matter of whether or not visits like this are actually harmful is another thing entirely.

There seem to be three important reasons why some parents dislike visits and feel them to be damaging. These are that they simply do not wish for their methods to be judged by others, that such visits make children anxious and upset and finally, perhaps most important of all, the very act of receiving a visit tends to change the nature of the education being given to the child. None of these objections seems to me to have any force.

Taking the most trivial first, that of disliking the idea of being judged, this is something which happens to all of us, all the time. there is no course of human action which will not bring disapproval by somebody. One need only consider how some folk reacted to the actions of Jesus, to see that trying to avoid negative judgements from others is a pretty barren endeavour! Home educating parents make the point that in this case the negative judgements of others may have a practical and unpleasant consequence; that their lifestyle might be judged wanting and they will be prevented from pursuing it. This is not likely. Hardly any School Attendance Orders are issued and those that are, are not issued to home educating families on purely educational grounds. All this came out quite clearly during the Badman enquiry and the subsequent select committee hearing. In other words, some local authority officers will certainly disapprove of some methods of home education but there is unlikely to be any practical result. Nobody will stop the home education on those grounds alone.

The second objection likewise holds little water. If children become anxious and nervous about a visit by the local authority, then it is almost invariable because we are transmitting our own unease to them. In other words, parents get worked up and neurotic and the kids pick up on this and also get upset. Sometimes, parents specifically tell their children that the visit might result in their being forced back to school. The remedy here is for parents not to wind their children up in this way. In normal homes, all sorts of people visit. The man to read the meter, friends, relatives, strangers. If the local authority officer is treated as just another random visitor, then there is unlikely to be a problem. most children like showing off what they are doing and this provides them with the perfect opportunity for a bit of licensed showing off. If a child is really so nervous as to be thrown into a panic by the presence of a stranger in the house, then this is a matter of concern; a problem which the child has which needs to be dealt with for her own sake. I seriously doubt if the best approach is to pander to these irrational fears.

As for the idea that the education itself could be harmed or the direction which it takes altered by annual visits, there might, I suppose, be something in this. Although we must bear in mind that such visits typically last for an hour once a year! I guess that for a week or so before such a visit, there might be a frantic effort to gather evidence and make things look professional. I can't really see why though, because as I said earlier, even if the local authority officer does not like the provision, nothing will happen. Attempts to fawn round her and pretend to be providing the sort of education found in school are simply people pleasing and not at all necessary.

I think also that we should bear in mind that any changes to the education which take place as a result of these visits could prove to be an improvement. Perhaps some parents have been slacking a bit and the realisation that somebody is coming will cause them to get on with things. This seems to me to be at least as likely as the education actually being harmed by visits.