Monday 31 January 2011

Actions and consequences

I wrote yesterday that parents who try and get their kids into college when the children don't have the required qualifications are likely to have a negative effect upon the reputation of home education in general. Judging from the comments, there was scepticism about this. Perhaps I should explain what I meant.

When a child who has been to school applies to an FE college, there are certain criteria to be satisfied before he will get onto the course of his choice. In the case of A levels, this usually means five GCSEs at A*-C and in the case of subjects like mathematics, a higher grade for that subject; typically at least a B at GCSE. Any home educated child applying with these qualifications will be treated precisely the same way as a child who has been to school; there is no prejudice against home educated children. This is not what usually happens though. In all too many cases, the child might have, instead of five GCSEs, a handful of feeble and inferior qualifications of the adult literacy and numeracy type. No matter what is claimed, these are not at all the equivalent of GCSEs in maths and English and everybody at a college will know that. The child might also have ten or twenty points of an Open University course. This too is very hard to translate into GCSE terms. If the OU course is in Ancient History, it tells the college little about the child's mathematical ability.

The result of this is that home educated children and their parents are difficult to deal with from the word go, at least in many cases. They argue, they have a sense of grievance, they suspect others of not recognising how bright their son is; in short, they are a nuisance. This makes colleges and sixth form centres a bit wary when they come into contact with home educating families. They are expecting difficulties and awkward behaviour from the start. They also tend to be a bit suspicious of children who have been at secondary school and then stopped going. This is often an indication of a troubled and troublesome youth. This is, by the way, why many home educators have problems in finding schools where their children can sit GCSEs as private candidates. Home educating parents tend to be very hard work. They are argumentative, they require special conditions for their child during examinations, they have grudges and chips on their shoulders. Many schools find it easier just to avoid dealing with them.

This sort of thing has a bad effect upon home educators generally. Many parents have trouble finding somewhere for their child to sit GCSEs and this is because of the reputation which home educating parents have as being a pain in the arse. This reputation has been created by the behaviour in the past of home educators with whom schools have dealt. The same thing goes for college admissions. For many staff at FE colleges, the news that a home educating parent is trying to get her kid into the college causes a sinking of the heart. Often, the parent wants the kid to start at fourteen, which is irregular and entails extra fuss and paperwork. If the child is sixteen, then the chances are that he will not have the same qualifications to join the course as everybody else. This too requires extra work and often arguments with the parent. These attitudes have been created by past experiences of home educators.

As I said at the beginning, if a home educated child applies to college at the same age as everybody else and with the same qualifications, then there will be no prejudice against him at all. Causing problems and creating fuss at colleges has the long term effect of queering the pitch for all home educating families. It gives people a very negative view of home education. If home educators wish to correct this view, then the best thing that they can do is to stop expecting special treatment and just make the applications to colleges in the same way and at the same time as everybody else. If this were to become the norm, then home education would soon be accepted as a perfectly ordinary choice in education. As long as applications from home educating families mean fuss, bother and unpleasantness, we can expect colleges to have a jaundiced view of home education and those who undertake it. The remedy lies in the hands of home educators. All they need to do is follow the same rules as everybody else.

19 comments:

  1. 'For many staff at FE colleges, the news that a home educating parent is trying to get her kid into the college causes a sinking of the heart.'

    Nice use of imagination, Simon. How many FE staff DID you actually speak to about their hearts? I'm just conjuring up the picture of you phoning A Level admissions depts and asking them to tell you about their feelings. Such twaddle.

    Oh, what's that? You know one socially? Oh, very well researched then.

    My child was welcomed with open arms into FE (with a good set of IGCSE's) because the staff knew how well formerly HE'd A Level students tend to do there.

    Their hearts didn't sink. They looked very happy indeed partly, perhaps, because they consider IGCSE's to be at least half a grade higher than GCSE's. They told me how well all their formerly HE'd students had done. HE had a good reputation there. Yes, perhaps it's because they make no exceptions regarding entry qualifications. However, it's simply untrue to say that 'many' (how many?) staff's hearts sink when HE students apply.

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  2. 'Many parents have trouble finding somewhere for their child to sit GCSEs and this is because of the reputation which home educating parents have as being a pain in the arse.'

    Again, the use of 'many' when you probably mean 'one person I met 10 years ago'.

    In our large town/small city there are a dozen places HE'd students sit their exams with no problems at all. They have to pay, obviously, but that's beside the point.

    Perhaps other areas have a dearth of options, but don't go fabricating the experiences of the 'many'.

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  3. 'Causing problems and creating fuss at colleges has the long term effect of queering the pitch for all home educating families. It gives people a very negative view of home education.'

    No, that's YOUR speciality at this blog.
    Thanks a lot.

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  4. 'Their hearts didn't sink. They looked very happy indeed partly, perhaps, because they consider IGCSE's to be at least half a grade higher than GCSE's.'

    This was precisely the same experience as my own daughter; FE colleges do indeed welcome students with IGCSEs. This is why I said that there was no prejudice against home educated children.

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  5. 'In our large town/small city there are a dozen places HE'd students sit their exams with no problems at all. They have to pay, obviously, but that's beside the point.

    Perhaps other areas have a dearth of options, but don't go fabricating the experiences of the 'many'.'

    You are obviously not aware of the trouble people have had to go to inoirder to find their children a place to sit GCSEs.A town where a dozen schools are happy for home educated children to sit GCSEs is rare indeed. Which town is this and could you let us know the name of some of these schools?

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  6. 'This is why I said that there was no prejudice against home educated children. '

    So, which is it? College staff are delighted and excitied to get HE'd students or they think of them as a pain in the arse and their hearts sink? It seems you can't quite make up your mind.

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  7. 'A town where a dozen schools are happy for home educated children to sit GCSEs is rare indeed. Which town is this and could you let us know the name of some of these schools?'

    No. I value my anonymity here. And I don't want you calling them up 'queering the pitch' for us. Rest assured however, that EVERYONE on our large county yahoo group knows where they will be welcomed. The names of those institutions are also often given out on the HE exams list whenever anyone in striking distance needs options.

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  8. 'So, which is it? College staff are delighted and excitied to get HE'd students or they think of them as a pain in the arse and their hearts sink? It seems you can't quite make up your mind.'

    I did not say that college staff would be delighted and excited to get home educated students; I said that there was no prejudice against them. Indeed, they hardly notice that a student is home educated if he applies with the same qualifications and in the same way as everybody else.

    What causes their hearts to sink is receiving a telephone call or visit from a home educating parent, rather than a filled in application form form a student. This normally signals a long and complicated transaction, often coloured by chippiness and anger on the part of the parent.This prospect would be enough to make my heart sink as well! I had no involvement in my daughter's going to college. If the first that the college had known of my daughter was a telephone call from me in which I started trying to by-pass their normal admissions procedure, then I suspect that this would have generated a negative feeling on their part towards home education.

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  9. 'The names of those institutions are also often given out on the HE exams list '

    If you are on this list, then I think that you are probably aware of the difficulties that some people have had finding a place for their children to sit examinations. I am happy to give a specific example of what I am talking about, which was at the David Game College in Kensington. A home educating mother made allegations of cheating and disturbance when her son sat an examination there. I was present and knew that this was untrue, but the resulting trouble almost caused the college to stop allowing any further private candidates to sit examinations there. In fact, the child found the examination harder than he expected and this was a gambit by the mother to try and give him an extra allowance. If you wish to email me privately, I am happy to give you full details of this and a few other cases where the behaviour of home educating parents has caused people to think twice about allowing home educated children to use their centre.

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  10. ''So, which is it? College staff are delighted and excitied to get HE'd students or they think of them as a pain in the arse and their hearts sink? It seems you can't quite make up your mind.'

    By the way, I din't say that colleges thought that home educated students were a pain in the arse. I said that this is how they regard home edcuating parents! In most cases, parents have minimal involvement when their kids go to college. With home educating families, the parents are the major feature of the whole thing. This at once marks them out from everybody else.

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  11. I think you make a thought-provoking point Simon.

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  12. Okay - as some one who does a lot of the entering of home educated children for exams, I would say
    a)it is a lot of extra work
    b)that is a function of the variety of exams rather than the nature of the students or their parents. (And the fact that everything keeps changing!!)
    c) the fact that the candidates are external and therefore not on site also adds to the burdens.
    For example, I am mid way in tackling entries for June. So far there are 30 odd candidates tacking about 15 subjects between them, mostly IGCSES but a couple of GCSEs. In a school they would have loads of candidates taking the same subject, so replicating entries is simpler. I have 1 candidate taking 2 MFLs, so that is more hassle to set up listening papers etc. None of the tasks require great skill - just care - and I am terribly aware that mistakes may mean disaster for a candidate.
    I expect lots of schools find that they get fed up with all the admin - not just the entries but communication with external candidates. It is true that some schools seem to have given up the whole private candidate thing, perhaps because doing it all for 1 or 2 candidates was easy, but not worth the effort when larger numbers applied.

    Special consideration? - we have had this for 3 candidates in the past 3 years, but the % involved is lower than the % of those school children who were in the same exam (where it was about 25%), so although again it may be an extra burden, I am not sure that it is a primary factor in whether a school persists or not.

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  13. I think part of the difficulty Julie, is that in a school, the whole thing is like a production line in a factory. Everybody knows their part and the thing tends to run smoothly. It is also, as you say, done in bulk. Fifty for this one, thirty five for that and so on. Obviously, if you are just dealing with one entry for Astronomy, that is a glitch. Also, many parents don't know the process very well. They are unsure whether or not they want the kid to sit foundation or higher; stuff like that. This too is a complication which is generally missing from schools. I can understand why some schools have stopped taking external candidates. This is less because they are against home education and more because the extra work is simply not worth the money involved.

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  14. 'A home educating mother made allegations of cheating and disturbance when her son sat an examination there. I was present and knew that this was untrue, but the resulting trouble almost caused the college to stop allowing any further private candidates to sit examinations there. In fact, the child found the examination harder than he expected and this was a gambit by the mother to try and give him an extra allowance. If you wish to email me privately, I am happy to give you full details of this'

    I know who you are talking about and have experienced her to be scrupulously honest over many years. I know exactly who I trust and believe over this incident.

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  15. 'I did not say that college staff would be delighted and excited to get home educated students; I said that there was no prejudice against them. Indeed, they hardly notice that a student is home educated if he applies with the same qualifications and in the same way as everybody else'

    Of course they do. Students have interviews and this was something that came up at the interview, at which parents were invited to be present. It came up at our child's first parents' evening too.

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  16. 'I know who you are talking about and have experienced her to be scrupulously honest over many years. I know exactly who I trust and believe over this incident.'

    I was present during the ICT examination. His mother was not.

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  17. Simon said
    "This was precisely the same experience as my own daughter; FE colleges do indeed welcome students with IGCSEs. This is why I said that there was no prejudice against home educated children."

    and yet in an earlier post you used a family whose child was sitting IGCSEs as an example of home educators complaining of not being allowed on a course without the right qualifications. This family's problem was not that they didn't want to do exams and expected a place on the course anyway, but simply, they had no predicted grades.

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  18. 'This family's problem was not that they didn't want to do exams and expected a place on the course anyway, but simply, they had no predicted grades.'

    This did not appear to me to be the nature of the problem. the mother was complaining that the college expected the standard five GCSEs and were not at all flexible. I understodd this to mean that her son had not taken five IGCSEs and that this was why she was not able to secure a place for him. If a home educated child has taken five IGCSEs, then I think that most colleges would be happy to offer a place conditional upon the results. This is the same thing which happens with those at school.

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