Secrecy

Between September and December 2009, Ofsted circulated questionnaires in and visited fifteen local authority areas with a view to finding out the views of home educating parents on a wide range of topics. They spoke face-to-face with a hundred and twenty parents and a hundred and thirty children of home educators and received the views of many more via their answers to the questionnaires. It was a worthwhile project. Among other things, this research uncovered evidence of offrolling and also the fact that parents of children with special educational needs were being discouraged from deregistering their children from school by the threat of withdrawal of all support services. One mother was told that it was a case of 'school and services or home education and no services'.

You might have though that nobody in their senses could possibly have been opposed to a survey of this sort, but you would have been wrong. Across various Internet lists, those in the local authority areas concerned were being urged to boycott the whole process and refuse even to speak to any of those conducting the research. It was broadly hinted that those who participated would be no better than Quislings.

Even when somebody very sympathetic to home education such as Pula Rothermel tries to find out what home educators want and how they feel about home education, 80% do not wish to answer any questions. A social worker doing an MA contacted Mike Fortune-Wood recently and expressed a desire to contact members of Home Education UK in order to find out what their objections would be to the involvement of social workers in their lives as a way of safeguarding their children. Now speaking personally, I would not have seen the need for any social worker to come within a hundred miles of my family when I was educating my daughter. I would have welcomed an opportunity to explain my reasons for feeling this to be unnecessary. I would have been happy to have the chance to set the record straight on this question. Mike Fortune-Wood's reply to this person deserves to be quoted in full;

'The problem with your question is that it is overly provocative.

The very idea that children need to be 'seen' by a SW to be safe is of
itself offensive. it is in any event beyond any legal requirement and an
infringement of article 8 of the ECHR.

I'm not sure that I feel comfortable with someone asking my members under
what conditions they would be happy to have their human rights infringed.

There is neither a duty or power for either a child protection department or
an LEA, or a merged child services department to undertake any such checks.
Neither can I imagine that routine checking of HE families could possibly be
of any use.'

Now I will say nothing of the horribly paternalistic attitude shown here. Why not simply publish this person's email address and leave it up to others to either contact or not contact this individual as they see fit? Perhaps Mike Fortune-Wood is not confident that 'his' members would make the right decision about this!

This is indeed an' overly provocative' question. That is the whole point. The questions posed for theses of this sort are often very controversial; one recent one was 'Are social services a necessary branch of local government or would the situation be improved by a return to individual philanthropy of the sort common in Victorian Britain?' The whole point is that the question might be devised not in order to prove a point but often to argue against it. Without knowing the precise wording of the title of this piece of work, it is impossible to know what the thrust of this person's argument was likely to be. Even if we assume that she was going to argue that home educated children needed to be seen by social workers, surely here is a perfect opportunity for parents to put their case and counteract such an idea? Why would anybody not wish to engage in a debate on this? There is certainly a strand of local authority thinking which believes that social services should be keeping an eye on home educated children. Many parents do not agree with this proposition; why not explain why parents are against this?

The reluctance of home educating parents to take part in research or answer questions about their lifestyle hardly helps their cause. The person who contacted Mike Fortune-Wood has probably gone off thinking that home educators are as secretive and closed as the Plymouth Brethren or Amish. Is this impression really helpful? Most parents of children at school are open, even boastful and proud, about their children's achievements and their own style of parenting. I simply cannot see why giving somebody the brush-off in this way could possible be a good idea.