Wednesday 4 May 2011

Home educated students going to Oxford and studying bio-medicine


When Shena Deuchars mentioned on here recently, as an example of a successful academic outcome for home education, the case of a young man studying bio-medicine; I was a little snappish, for which I apologise. The fact is though, I had been counting down the time until this person was cited. Before we go any further, let us look at a piece from the Times Educational Supplement a couple of years ago. Readers must avert their eyes as they scroll down, because the first section contains my own opinions and I would not wish to run the risk of anybody to suffering an apoplectic fit from being exposed to these. Look instead at what Jeremy Yallop says. He gives examples of how academic success can be achieved without formal education.





http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6019184





Who does he give as an instance of this success? Why none other than Chris Ford. Now fast-forward two years to the day before yesterday. Who is given as an example of an academic achiever who was home educated? Why, ' There is also the chap who has recently finished his PhD in bio-medicine' Yes, it's the same person.





I have two problems with the cases which people put forward like this when I am discussing the long term outcomes for home education. One is that the same tiny number of individuals are produced; year in, year out. Chris Ford is always mentioned, as is Alex Dowty, who is of course Ian Dowty's son. Sometimes, attempts are made to disguise them. Reference is made to 'people getting places at Oxford', or instead of actually using his name, Chris Ford is called ' a dermatologist' or some such. At least 90% of the time though, anecdotes about promising academic outcomes for home education, particularly autonomous home education, rely upon these same two people. This suggests strongly that such cases are very much the exception rather than the rule. Otherwise, why would Shena Deuchars still be talking of this person years later?





The other thing which annoys me about this business is the degree of deception involved; whether witting or not, I couldn't say. I am aware of parents who have expected to get college places for their home educated children at fourteen, just through reading about Chris Ford. After all, if he could be offered a place at college, having been autonomously educated and without any GCSEs, why shouldn't my little Jimmy? Only of course, he didn't get a place at college like that at all. He actually took his first GCSE, mathematics, at the age of twelve and that is how he came to be offered a place at college. Details like this are usually left out of the accounts of this case. One suspects strongly that those involved in the education of this young man might suffer from faulty memories as to just how laid back this eduction was! I have similarly heard of parents who say that it is possible to get into any university without GCSEs or A levels; just look at that young man who got a place at Oxford on the strength of his Open University studies! Again, the missing piece of the puzzle is that this young man spent years as a teenager working in a solicitors office and this looked brilliant on his personal statement. How was this possible for a teenager with no GCSEs? Well, it helps if your father is a partner in the firm...




I have been provided with other examples of successful outcomes for home education, similar to those above. In every case where I have been able to look more closely, there are things which have not been mentioned. One case which somebody gave me as being a fantastic outcome for home education, was of a boy who had only been home educated from the age of fifteen. In another well known case, the parents had engaged a series of specialist tutors; somebody else had a mother who was herself a lawyer and taught her child law. Again, these few examples circulate with various details missing or changed.




The fact that two years after I have been given the case of Chris Ford as a knock-down refutation of my views, he is still being trotted out for this purpose, really should set alarm bells ringing. Why are these same few individuals still being regularly produced? There are two possibilities. One is that such outcomes are common; in which case there should each year be a fresh crop of home educated children attending top universities and going on to become scientists and lawyers. The other is that cases like this are freakishly rare, which means that the same one or two people must be endlessly recycled in different guises, year after year. I shall leave my readers to decide which of these possibilities is the most likely....

15 comments:

  1. Funny you should bring this up this morning. Last night I went to my son's FE college parents' evening. The tutors who organise UCAS entry were all excited about the student who, last year, went to Oxford, from the college, without any GCSEs. This student had been home educated. They had, however, done 'lots' of ASs, apparently starting at age 15 with those.

    I thought that was interesting for several reasons. One is that Oxford, which, according to the UCAS tutor, 'never takes anyone without GCSEs' apparently WILL admit those with 'unusual educational backgrounds'. Tutor's exact words, not mine. An abundance of ASs is surely adequate alternative proof of being academically inclined and of course, they did extremely well in their A2s. This is probably a very good point to note, by the way, when we are thinking of using 5 passes at GCSE as a measure of academic success at age 16.

    The other point to note though is that I don't think anyone in our local group has heard of this student, or their story would probably be well known locally, or even nationally? Probably, the family did not WANT to be famous in the HE world and it never occurred to them to broadcast their child's success?

    My conclusion from this is that it MAY be far more common that is usually supposed for HE'd students to get to Oxford, whether via GCSEs or an alternative route, than I'd previously imagined.

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  2. Back to what I said yesterday - one of the reasons we keep hearing about the two you mention above is because in both cases, their parents are still active in the HE world- Chris F has a younger sister still being home educated, so his mother still posts on national lists, whilst Ian Dowty is all over the HE world because he is a lawyer that gets involved in HE legal cases and also is constantly asked for his legal opinion. The examples I mentioned (eg midwife, accountant, teacher) are still home educating younger siblings, but don't have parents who are on any internet list that I know about - I know about their successes because I have met the young people concerned on lots of occasions. I am sure that
    there are lots of others in similar situations, and I am pretty sure that when the accountant won some college award and got himself in a local paper, it didn't mention the fact that he was HE up to 16 anyway.

    Having said that, I do think that it is unfortunate that both your examples are used ( by many) to illustrate the "you don't need GCSEs etc to get into uni" stories, because they are not being used well to demonstrate this. CF did, I understand most of his GCSEs at college once he went at 14, and AD not only had the huge advantages of his prior work and background, but had also done OU. (Shena's daughter would be a better illustration of this, with her OU points as a route to uni.)
    However the desirability of GCSEs etc is another issue!

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  3. Let's tackle this from another perspective.

    What proportion of school-educated children go on to become 'scientists and lawyers'? Even assuming that you mean 'scientists *or* lawyers', I suspect the same proportion, in terms of the number of home-educated children reaching 16 each year, would be a very small number. And very small numbers are very susceptible to large fluctuations.

    In short, we can't conclude much about the outcomes of HE compared to school education without more data.

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  4. ' Even assuming that you mean 'scientists *or* lawyers',

    What a narrow and compartmentalised view of the world you do have, suzyg! These are not mutually exclusive categories; look at Margaret Thatcher.

    'In short, we can't conclude much about the outcomes of HE compared to school education without more data.'

    Very true.

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  5. The category 'scientists *and* lawyers' would be very small even for the school-educated community, so the likelihood of any HE children falling into it would be very low indeed. 'Scientists *or* lawyers' would be a much larger category, and more likely to encompass some HE children.

    " 'In short, we can't conclude much about the outcomes of HE compared to school education without more data.'

    Very true."


    There are probably fewer than two average secondary schools' worth of young people each year who turn 16 having been exclusively home educated, and it would not surprise me if I picked two secondary schools at random and found that *no* 16 year olds went on to become scientists or lawyers.

    We know that some HE children do very well by anybody's measure, and some are NEET. But then the same outcomes apply to school-educated children. Without data, no one can comment on overall outcomes of EHE, so why bother to speculate?

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  6. "One suspects strongly that those involved in the education of this young man might suffer from faulty memories as to just how laid back this eduction was!"

    So now autonomous education = laid back education? LOL Following your own interests and being in control of your own education can look laid back, or it can look very hectic and busy, I've seen both with my children. Both young people are in further (& well on the way to higher education) or higher education now so both approaches seem to work.

    "One is that such outcomes are common; in which case there should each year be a fresh crop of home educated children attending top universities and going on to become scientists and lawyers."

    How can such extreme cases be common? They are not common amongst state school children, let alone the tiny minority of HE children! How many school entrants to top universities are there as a proportion of all university entrants? What proportion of HE children are there to schooled children? How many would you expect to see per year? How many of those are in families that are still (or have ever been) connected with the home-ed community and/or relish publicity enough to seek it out?

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  7. "There are probably fewer than two average secondary schools' worth of young people each year who turn 16 having been exclusively home educated, and it would not surprise me if I picked two secondary schools at random and found that *no* 16 year olds went on to become scientists or lawyers."

    This was certainly the case for my school (with about 100 children in a year group), as we found out at a reunion a few years back.

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  8. Simon I don't usually agree with you but you are spot on today. I see these same two examples trotted out all the time in every list i'm on. Unfortunately they are often cited when responding to someone who posts asking for advice about whether or not they should make their child sit exams, or how their child can get onto a course which normally requires 5 GCSEs without having done any.

    These are great examples but the problem is that as you've already mentioned, the fine details are left out, so the impression given when people invariably quote them is entirely misleading and can give the receiver of such knowledge a false sense of security. Then they may find that their child is disappointed when they find it difficult to get onto a course of their choice. If people are going to use such examples they should include all the facts.

    I think the EO video series on home education includes such fallacious examples also if I'm not mistaken.

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  9. Let's assume that there are 77,000 EHE children and young people split evenly across the 11 years of compulsory school age. This assumption almost certainly leads to an over-estimate of the number of 16yo as 7000pa.

    According to government stats (http://www.education.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/VOL/v000992/index.shtml), in 2009 in England and Wales:
    - 86% continued in education
    - 5% moved into Government supported training
    - 2% moved into Employment
    - 5% became unemployed or not available for work
    - 2% of destinations are unknown

    Translating this to 7000 EHE leavers, we'd have
    - 6004 in education
    - 354 in Government-supported training
    - 140 in employment
    - 354 unemployed or not available for work

    I'd suggest that the majority of the 6000 continuing in education will go to some sort of institution at this point. Their destination at 18 is thus less likely to be known about in the EHE community.

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  10. BTW, Simon, if you meant me when saying about the cases being obscured, I'd like to say that I did not initially give Chris Ford's name not because I wanted to hide who I was talking about but because I was uncomfortable using his name in public without permission.

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  11. 'BTW, Simon, if you meant me when saying about the cases being obscured, I'd like to say that I did not initially give Chris Ford's name not because I wanted to hide who I was talking about but because I was uncomfortable using his name in public without permission.'

    I didn't mean you at all, Shena! I was just talking generally about how I see people present these two cases in slightly different forms. I shall look in detailed at the comment you made above; this looks interesting.

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  12. "These are great examples but the problem is that as you've already mentioned, the fine details are left out, so the impression given when people invariably quote them is entirely misleading and can give the receiver of such knowledge a false sense of security."

    I would hope that anyone with any sense would not assume that if one or two people can do something, everyone can. We all have different intelligence levels and we live in different areas of the country with FE college having different entry qualification requirements. A lack of GCSEs has not prevented my children from progressing to University, but we didn't assume this would be the case. We did our research by contacting colleges and discussing entry requirements.

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  13. I think it was unreasonable to complain about those "cases" being mentioned on the basis that they are always mentioned. They fitted the question and always will ... unless we change history. :)

    The more they are mentioned, the more they are likely to be mentioned because more people will know about them, IYSWIM. Also, Chris Ford (as other people have said) is an extreme case and is thus more likely to be talked about (along with Ruth Lawrence, Arran Fernandez and a few others).

    I also think that we need to look at the questions that are asked and the assumptions behind them.

    1. If the question is "Can autonomously home-educated young people get into university?", the answer is "yes" (Ford, Dowty, La Fleur, Bunker, et al.).

    2. If the question is "Can young people get into university without doing GCSEs and A-levels?", the answer is "yes" (Dowty, La Fleur, et al. - but a smaller group than in 1).

    3. If the question is "Can young people get into university without any qualifications?", the answer is probably "no".

    I think some of the problem is that people (including Simon) seem to think that autonomous EHE necessarily excludes the gaining of qualifications. This means that they assume that "yes" to the first two questions implies "yes" to the third. I don't think that Janet Ford, Ian Dowty or I *have* misrepresented what our children have done (my account is at http://www.home-education-exams.org.uk/index.php?title=Personal_experiences_of_home_educators).

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  14. "I think some of the problem is that people (including Simon) seem to think that autonomous EHE necessarily excludes the gaining of qualifications."

    Exactly, Shena, good summary. Simon's comment about 'faulty memories as to just how laid back this eduction was', says it all really. Autonomous education does not equal informal, laid back education. It is education under the control of the child and can include anything from the most formal 'school at home' styles of education to the most laid back of informal education styles. One of my children has gone from one extreme to the other and back again at different ages, all by their own choice. They have never taken a GCSE and have had 4 University place offers this year. They do have qualifications, just not the ones Simon seems to think are necessary.

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  15. I will go with Shena's summary too! In fact (as I have said before!) it is young people who are aiming at more humble careers who are the ones who run into more difficulty with the "qualifications or not" issue. In our current HE group we have 3 young people facing such difficulties - one needing maths and English GCSE passes for her hairdressing apprenticeship, and another needing 5 GCSEs for a dog grooming course! These are families who perhaps could have done with a bit more appropriate advice earlier, although I do think the world has gone mad (do I really need the person who cuts my hair to be able to analyse poetry?)

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