Wednesday 10 October 2012

A Home Education UK 'briefing paper' on the Welsh proposals

It will have been rightly guessed by some readers that I would not long be able to stay away from the subject of the proposed Welsh legislation which will introduce compulsory monitoring of home education in the principality. I have been shocked over the last few days to read some of the arguments being put forward against this idea. If it is necessary to engage in deceit and spread falsehoods in order to oppose the plans; what does this say about the strength of the arguments being put forward?


Those opposing the Welsh proposals have been producing a series of so-called ‘briefing papers’. Essentially, these are no more than the opinions of various home educators who do not approve of registration and monitoring and hope to persuade others to share their views. There are two types of such papers. One kind is directed at professionals working in the field of education and is intended to show that home educated children are not at increased risk of abuse and actually do better academically than children in school. The other sort hope to  work up support from other groups such as Christians, by playing to their prejudices. Today, I want to look at a typical example of the first type; that designed to deceive teachers, social workers and other professionals.

This example is taken from the Home Education UK website:



http://www.home-education.org.uk/articles/wc/wc-he-outcomes.pdf
 




I have no idea of the author; perhaps it was Mike Fortune-Wood himself. The paper begins by suggesting that Welsh schools are not in general brilliant, which is true. Then it looks at American research which it is claimed shows that home educated children do very well; better in fact than those at school. There is much wrong with this section, but since I do not think that the American scene can really be compared with this country, we shall let that pass. It is when the author writes of British evidence that he reveals his true motives. and these are not precisely open and honest.  I do not have time to go into the whole thing, but a few particularly awful instances should suffice. Here is a quotation from the thing:



Although little research is available in the UK there is no reason to believe that the

results for children here would be any different and research that has been

undertaken supports that view. A 2002 study of 419 EHE families in the UK found:

‘The results show that 64% of the home‐educated Reception aged children scored over 75% on their PIPS Baseline Assessments as opposed to 5.1% of children nationally.





Either the author has not read the actual research or is deliberately setting out to mislead. In fact the PIPS Assessments relate not to 419 families but 35. What do readers think? Has the author of this supposedly careful and pseudo-academic paper read the research which he is quoting? If not, it casts doubt upon the value of the other figures which he adduces in defence of his argument. If he has read the research, then he is trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes and hope that they will not spot the inflation of the figures relating to the PIPS Assessments. Neither case exactly encourages confidence!

The indications are that this was a deliberately misleading. I say this, because a few lines later, we find this claim:



A Wiltshire based home education support group has kept records of children in the group since 2002. They found that the 52 older children involved had achieved 199 formal qualifications in 50 subjects with 69% of those qualifications being GCSE or IGCSE, 13% were A levels and others in Tertiary or performance. 50% of those qualifications were taken under the age of 16 years. 33% of those students achieving performing arts qualifications were awarded distinctions and 96% of other grades

were at A* ‐C.



I think that readers here will agree that the intention is to suggest that a longitudinal study has been made of a cohort from one home education group? Note that ‘records’ have been kept of ‘children in the group’. Let us be plain about this. We are being asked to believe that the figures for examination results are all from one group of children; those who attended a home educating support group in Wiltshire.  This simply cannot be a mistake; it must be a calculated falsehood, because the author gives the source for his claim. Here it is;



http://www.nwilts-he.org.uk/he_exams_wiki/index.php/Exam_results





Presumably, he banked on nobody bothering to check the references. This is an open page, where anybody from the United Kingdom may send any exam result which they claim a home educated child has achieved. Nobody checks, the things are all done anonymously and then added to the total. Far from this showing that 52 members of a single home educating support group did brilliantly academically, it merely suggests that a load of random people emailed this site from anywhere in the world and their claims were placed there without any sort of checking. Of course this group of 52 children had good academic results; only those who had gained qualifications were intended to be included on it!

There is far more wrong with this paper than just these two examples. The whole thing is an absolute horror. I am curious, for instance,  about the 10 young people with 49 A levels between them. Eton only manage an average of four A levels per pupil; according to this a home educating group in Wales is averaging around five a head. More research needed here!

23 comments:

  1. Whilst I am reluctant to agree with you I do find that often the documents I have seen produced by the home education community to be full of misleading 'evidence', fallacies and inaccuracies. If they want others to take their evidence seriously they need to present information truthfully, and allow data gathering and research.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can see what you're saying, Simon, and, in the interest of balance, and since you've drifted back to Wales, what do you think of the way that Welsh official attitudes to HE were described by that 'scoping' document.

    Also, the suggestion of a 'reimagining' of HE as another provider of education seemed to me to be so much up your street that I was amazed when you resisted commenting on it.

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  3. Yes, wouldn't it be wonderful if there was no slyness involved in any writing about HE? If only people would stick to the facts and not try to spin them at all.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "I have no idea of the author; perhaps it was Mike Fortune-Wood himself."

    No, Mike didn't write them, he has put them there at the request of the author according to an email on his list. Part of the reason was to allow people to criticise them and point out any errors, so it would probably be better if any errors were pointed out on his list so that they actually reach the author and can be corrected.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "it would probably be better if any errors were pointed out on his list so that they actually reach the author and can be corrected."
    Probably but I believe that Simon is banner from the list so is unable to do so.

    ReplyDelete
  6. 'No, Mike didn't write them, he has put them there at the request of the author according to an email on his list. Part of the reason was to allow people to criticise them and point out any errors, so it would probably be better if any errors were pointed out on his list so that they actually reach the author and can be corrected.'

    I know nothing of this. I found them on the HE-UK site, here:


    http://www.home-education.org.uk/wales.htm

    It suggests here that people use them to respond to the Welsh consultation. Perhaps it would have been better to check them before encouraging people to use them? I assure readers that I am not alone in picking up on the problems with these briefing papers. Anybody using these things will find themelves being torn to shreds and ridiculed!

    ReplyDelete
  7. 'Also, the suggestion of a 'reimagining' of HE as another provider of education seemed to me to be so much up your street that I was amazed when you resisted commenting on it.'

    Yes, I shall have something to say about this in the future. I might mention that I explored this 're-imagining' in Chapter 9 of my book, Elective Home education in the UK, Trentham Books 2010. The enthusiasm among home educators for such a re-imagining was somewhat muted...


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. But it wasn't the home educators who were being asked to re-imagine it, Simon!

      Here's the part of the report that caused me to splutter into my coffee when I read it (and I am part Welsh and had been wondering about moving back to where some of my family are, so I wasn't just being nosy.)

      "The suggestion to come out of these interviews is to ask how an effective partnership between Local Authorities and the Home Educating community could be developed practically in order to address jointly some of the issues they have in common. It is suggested that HE be re-imagined as an integral part of alternative education provision, affording both greater transparency of their own practice and offering particular skills and experience to others both within and outside of mainstream provision, as well as to those in the process of withdrawing either temporarily or permanently."

      Whether home educators wanted to be drawn into a LA's provision like this didn't seem to be a factor, so I was left wondering if they were about to be nationalised... It seems a bit unfair, given how many of us either left or didn't get involved with the educational system precisely because we didn't like what it was offering.

      And here's the other bit I was hoping you'd comment on -

      "Developing an agreed and clarified best practice therefore is a matter of urgency. The clear evidence so far of this early exercise is that mutually supportive and respectful partnership with appropriate representatives of the HE community at a local level is effective, both so the distinctive skills and expertise within the community can contribute to the social, emotional and educational needs of all the children in the area and that otherwise, the threat and suspicion between the LA and HE will continue to contribute to a vicious cycle of increasing regulation and corresponding invisibility."

      I thought the use of the word 'threat' and the phrase 'increasing regulation and corresponding invisibility' were particularly interesting because it implied a causual relationship, with the regulation causing the invisibility.

      (Incidentally, let us hope they are not planning to allow home educated children to become invisible. Mine can find quite enough mischief while I can see them. I don't want to think about the uses they'd find for invisibility...)

      Delete
  8. 'Yes, wouldn't it be wonderful if there was no slyness involved in any writing about HE? If only people would stick to the facts and not try to spin them at all. '

    Ah, 'spin' is the word, is it? Thank you, Old Mum. I am, as usual, vastly obliged to you for your assistance. When somebody makes up a lot of nonsense which could not by any stretch of the imagination have been a consequence of honest misunderstanding, I am in the habit of using quite another word for the process, but I dare say that 'spin' will serve well enough. Mind, my private view is that this a damned charitable way of decribing the case, but perhaps we may agree to differ on that point?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I used the word 'slyness' as well as 'spin'. Did you not notice that?

      There's a lot of it going around.

      Delete
  9. 'Here's the part of the report that caused me to splutter into my coffee when I read it (and I am part Welsh and had been wondering about moving back to where some of my family are, so I wasn't just being nosy.)'

    Just by the by, Anne. before I posted about the Welsh business, early on teh mroning of August 5th, I hadn't seen any mention of it anywhere else! I don't say that nobody would have noticed what was going on, but there was certainly nothing on any of the forums or lists before that day. As soon as I mentioned it here, there was a rush of people talking about it!

    ReplyDelete
  10. I knew before that, but then I have Welsh HE friends. That's the internet for you though, isn't it? The world gets smaller and smaller.

    ReplyDelete
  11. simon. lets just get this right, you home educated your daughter, you are against home education and would welcome the proposals to impose more legislation on ehe families in wales?

    ReplyDelete
  12. 'simon. lets just get this right, you home educated your daughter, you are against home education and would welcome the proposals to impose more legislation on ehe families in wales?'

    I did home educate my daughter, but am not against home education. I have not said that I would welcome the Welsh proposals.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yet you were in favour of the introduction of almost identical proposals for England. Have you;

      a. had a change of heart generally about such proposals,or

      b. are you simply making the point you haven't actually *said* that you welcome them (and you do welcome them), or

      c. is there something in particular you dislike about the Welsh version compared to the English version?

      Delete
    2. I know, I know! It's b, right?

      Delete
  13. As the person who has compiled the data on the UK exam results website, I'd just like to correct a couple points.

    The results are anonymous but the people who supply them are not - all the parents who submit the data do so with names and email addresses. They also supply their postcode, an identifier for the young person and a date of birth. This data is kept (mainly for the purposes of making sure that we do not double count) but is not published - all data is aggregated, at the moment across the whole of the UK.

    That being the case, the data is not from anywhere in the world - it is specifically UK data.

    However, I agree with Simon that it is a self-selecting sample. The stated purpose of the website is to allay fears that home education necessarily leads to poor academic outcomes. No claims are made about it being representative of all home educators. The data is not checked - people could be lying about their children's results - I do not ask to see the certificates.

    ReplyDelete
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