Thursday 14 February 2013

Identifying children missing from education; Part 2





This will be a brief post, for I am very busy today. I am constantly enchanted at the way that asking simple questions of home educators provokes such bizarre responses by some of those who comment here. Apparently, asking open ended questions like this  is symptomatic of great fear and narrow mindedness in those asking them!

I am glad that I had an opportunity yesterday of seeing what readers thought when confronted with a genuine case of a child missing from education. Not one felt that anything should be done about the child and many seemed to think that he was actually better off  as a long term truant than he would have been if he had remained at school. One person even thought that getting up at one in the afternoon, spending the next few hours playing computer games, before hanging out with a bunch of kids who were drifting into petty crime, actually constituted an acceptable education! I can see that most readers feel that such children should be left alone, because the alternative might involve them personally in some slight inconvenience, if, that is,  local authorities began trying to sort out genuinely home educated children from long term truants and those missing from education.

I was asked yesterday by more than one person what I would do about such children; those who drop out of school in this way. The general feeling seemed to be that the local authority was somehow responsible for children like this who truant. This is unlikely. Most children do not truant or drop out of school. There are a few who do, even in the best schools. We need to ask ourselves why most pupils remain at school and a few do not. Often, there are common factors in the home lives of truants; it is more likely that these are responsible for the problem than that it is the fault of the school. As I am sure readers know, academic success or failure has far more to do with home background than which school is attended; five times as much, according to some research. From this perspective, truanting is more often than not a sign of something wrong at home than  a problem at school.

What can be done about such children? Making the process of becoming a home educator a little more complex would be helpful. Many of the sort of parents like Jack’s mother, whom we met yesterday, would think twice if they knew that they would be interviewed before being able to deregister their children from school. I have seen a few parents who would be discouraged from sending off that letter if they knew that they would be visited regularly and have to explain to somebody just what they were doing about their son or daughter’s education. True, this would be irritating for genuine home educators, but it would only be a minor inconvenience for most.

Some children simply do not wish to learn about photosynthesis or 19th century poetry. Often, this too says something about their home background, but what can we actually do about it? A local college has a scheme now where ‘disaffected’ boys of fourteen and fifteen can learn about vehicle maintenance for a few days a week. A deal is struck with the boys whereby if they attend school on the other days, they get to muck about with engines for two days a week. This approach is worth expanding.

Already, this post has eaten into my time and so I must call a halt for now.

37 comments:

  1. Simon, I will be happy to explain to somebody 'just what they were doing about their son or daughter's education' when that same somebody asks the schools the same question and holds them equally responsible if the education provided is not satisfactory. If the education I provide is unsatisfactory I could be issued with a SAO. What happens to failing schools? They're inspected again a few years later, then rebranded at vast expense. Meanwhile, the kids there are still not getting the education they need and are well aware that they've been written off.

    Interestingly, today I was talking to a couple of boys in our local park who admitted to being regular truants. They go (well, technically anyway) to a school who was at the bottom of the GCSE league table last year and has had unsatisfactory OFSTEDs as long as I can remember.

    They clearly weren't stupid, but I wish you could have been there while they were talking about how useless they felt at school, and how they'd spent so long being seen as problems that they didn't feel they had much to lose.


    They were on their way to college for a programme much like the one you describe as 'muck about with engines'. When I asked them about the two days a week they spend there it was like seeing two different lads. They felt that what they were doing was relevant to them and that the work they put in was showing real results and they were good at it. This wasn't a feeling they'd ever had at school, and talking to them I could quite see why they'd 'switched off' by 11. They were both practical, physical types and if that had been recognised earlier then they probably wouldn't have truanted.


    They were also adamant that HE wouldn't have worked for them because they were so fed up with anything that came out of a book. And their parents had had it 'suggested' to them...

    That left me wondering why you were so adamant that this is a HE problem. As so often, HE tries to pick up the pieces, but wouldn't it be better not to break people in the first place?

    Anne



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    1. And PS, I meant to say that they also very kindly untangled the swings that some little darlings had wound and wound round the frame so that my son could go on them. They offered to help because they were considerably taller than me and could reach where I couldn't and because they saw my son was upset that the playground had been damaged again.

      So not a danger to society but two square pegs looking for square holes. They certainly taught me a lot today.

      Anne

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  2. 'They were on their way to college for a programme much like the one you describe as 'muck about with engines'. When I asked them about the two days a week they spend there it was like seeing two different lads.'

    When I used the expression 'muck about with engines', I was not being derogatory. I think that programmes like that are a great idea. We need more such schemes.

    'That left me wondering why you were so adamant that this is a HE problem.'

    I don't think that it is an HE problem, although it can be sometimes. I think that it is a problem when a persistant truant can have his truancy legitimised by his parents sending a letter to the school, claiming that their child will be home educated. I also think that if, as I gathered from the comments yesterday, some home educating parents think that there is nothing wrong with getting up at lunchtime and then playing computer games all afternoon, then some home education needs to be examined a little more closely.

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    1. Ah, there's where you and I will have to agree to differ, Simon. I agree that it's a problem when a persistent truant can be shuffled off the books by ANYONE, but before you can solve the problem you have to have somewhere to put the persistent truants.

      And that's going to have to be either very interesting and relevant, which seems a bit unfair on the kids who aren't truanting but are plodding along despite being bored and miserable, or have very high steel fencing round it to keep them in. And even if you can keep them in, you can't make them work. That's the underlying truth to education. You can't force anyone to learn anything.

      I'd like to reform the whole system. For instance, we could do something like this... taken from a previous education act.

      "There were to be three categories of state-run secondary schools. Each was designed with a specific purpose in mind, aiming to impart a range of skills appropriate to the needs and future careers of their pupils.

      Grammar schools were intended to teach a highly academic curriculum, teaching students to deal with abstract concepts. There was a strong focus on intellectual subjects, such as literature, classics and complex mathematics. In addition to wholly state-funded grammar schools, a number of schools currently receiving state grants could become direct grant grammar schools, with some pupils funded by the state and the rest paying fees.

      Secondary technical schools were designed to train children adept in mechanical and scientific subjects. The focus of the schools was on providing scientists, engineers and technicians.

      Secondary modern schools (secondary intermediate schools in Northern Ireland[4]) would train pupils in practical skills, aimed at equipping them for less skilled jobs and home management.

      It was intended for all three branches of the system to have a parity of esteem. The appropriate type of school for each student would be determined by their performance in an examination taken in the final year of primary school."

      Please note the phrase 'parity of esteem.' That's where it went wrong imho. We forgot to value the practical types, and the country is paying for it now.


      (End of rant. Bet you wished you hadn't asked!)
      Anne

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  3. It's only your perception that a) Jack plays computer games and *nothing* else and that b) He is therefore learning nothing. You believe everything you think without question. To me that is the trademark of a sloppy thinker.

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  4. 'It's only your perception that a) Jack plays computer games and *nothing* else and that b) He is therefore learning nothing. You believe everything you think without question.'

    Well no, I worked with the family for some time. Many fourteen year-old boys would happily spend the whole afternoon playing computer games if given the opportunity. I am surprised that you find this unlikely. I didn't say that the child learned nothing; he was an absolute whizz at evading the police in Grand Theft Auto. Unfortunately, this is not what we call a transferrable skill.

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  5. Did you 'get paid to interfere with the family' for the entire 14 years of the boy's life, or just a dozen or so intrusions or a few months followed by a no doubt class based judgement about the whole situation.

    Glad to see my taxes go to such a noble cause.

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  6. 'class based judgement '

    Ah, a classic case of projection, I fancy! Just what class do you suppose me to belong to?

    'Glad to see my taxes go to such a noble cause'

    You may rest easy, your taxes were used for this; I was not being paid for this work.

    'interfere with the family'

    The family wanted help and I provided it. Any time they got fed up with me, they could have ordered me out of the house!

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  7. OK, suppose measures were put in place, as you wish, to prevent Jack's mum from escaping truancy proceedings and she is then criminalised for the behaviour of her son.

    Is she a criminal because she is not able to force her tall strong and self willed young man to take himself to school and stay there?

    Suppose she is fined.
    How does this help Jack?

    Suppose she is imprisoned for a repeat offence?
    How does this help Jack?

    Is it really your answer that this parent should be subjected to criminal proceedings?

    How does it help Jack to enforce the continuance of the status quo in which he is truanting? Not many decades ago, when I was at school, this boy would have left school to join the armed services or the labour force.

    The school system has clearly not won his heart or mind and this continued truancy is continued failure. Why do you wish to perpetuate failure upon a young person?

    It is a moral obligation upon the elders in our society to protect and promote the interests of the next generation but your suggestion in this blog is to inflict harm upon a young person and is abusive. It is shameful to promote harm on this boy and his mother and should be stopped.

    Nothing you have written about Jack makes me think that you wish to help him though you are unhappy that he escaped your efforts to make him go to school. You have not said how you would help him and it appears to me that you wish to inflict harm upon his family because they cannot comply.

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  8. I would prefer that none of us had to be stratified into classes Simon, so I cannot agree with the projection, although you do make a good point about my assuming your views, so my apologies in the first instance.

    As for the second and third, I am glad you are of high enough quality to not go looking for payment for what you obviously deem to be good works, however I do believe your entire argument in this and your previous post now stands in question by your own admittance; if the family had asked for your help, why in blazes are you repackaging your experiences with them as an 'unseen child and difficult mother' and then arguing for more LEA interference in HE families who do not require or want it?

    If this family did truly ask for your help then they are most certainly not an example of why HE families need to deal with more paperwork from their LEAs.

    Really Simon, this is too much.

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  9. Hmmm so strategic thinking, resource management, timing, dexterity and hand/eye coordination are not transferable skills? Epic fail Simon. A quick Google would have disabused you of your prejudice but then you do not write these blog posts in the pursuit of knowledge do you? You write them to disseminate the knowledge you think you possess.

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  10. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2012/12/13/video-gaming-skills-may-translate-to-robotic-surgery/

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    1. LOL! Many an AE'ers dreams have been dashed on those rocks.

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  11. http://www.creativeteachingsite.com/videogames.htm

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  12. http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/09/10/5-reasons-video-games-are-actually-good-for-you

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  13. "Making the process of becoming a home educator a little more complex would be helpful. "

    It would be more useful to make the process of becoming a social worker or civil servant more complex. Then perhaps we might get some useful work out of such people.

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  14. "I am constantly enchanted at the way that asking simple questions of home educators provokes such bizarre responses by some of those who comment here. Apparently, asking open ended questions like this is symptomatic of great fear and narrow mindedness in those asking them!"

    Simon is being disingenuous here - he's not the type to ask a question unless he has an answer ready. He isn't posing open ended questions; he has his own entrenched ideological views and he's simply churning-out argumentative bait in a crude attempt to justify those views.

    Anyone who sees through this transparent scheme is deemed to be "bizarre" or "uneasy" in Simon-speak.

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  15. Well put! This man was highlighted to me as someone to read as regards 'a view from both sides', but all I see is simplistic propaganda and pointless antagonising of a single group.

    Why he's decided to aim this pathetic tirade at HE I have honestly no idea, possibly because he will have more readers in two sections of the padded public sector.

    Nothing he puts forward is in all fairness even related to HE, it's just obvious he would want more work generated for the social services...I wonder, does he work directly for them, or have a partner or close family member who may benefit financially from such a thing happening?

    As you can see he admitted to me earlier in the comments that this family situation he's been using started with him being asked to help in the first place, therefore making it a completely inappropriate example of his invented need for HEers to submit to more interference.

    Thank you for your comments, I hope the now silent Simon learns a bit more about not turning serious issues into sales pitches.

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  16. 'invented need for HEers to submit to more interference.'

    We differ in that I do not believe that this is a case of home education at all. If the child had been educated at home, then there would have been no problem.

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  17. 'not turning serious issues into sales pitches.'

    Sales pitches for what? Do you imagine that I will be selling more books on local history if I can demonstrate that I disapprove of children missing out on an edcuation?

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  18. 'Please note the phrase 'parity of esteem.' That's where it went wrong imho. We forgot to value the practical types, and the country is paying for it now.


    (End of rant. Bet you wished you hadn't asked!)
    Anne'

    I agree absolutely about this. In fact I feel so strongly about the subject, that I wrote a book about the whole business. It is called The Best days of Our Lives; School Life in Post-War Britain; published this month by The History Press and available in all good bookshops. This is precisely why there are high levels of truancy now. In the book, I talk at great length about the tripartite system that was proposed and the tragedy of the fact that technical schools never really got off the ground.


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  19. 'Nothing he puts forward is in all fairness even related to HE, it's just obvious he would want more work generated for the social services'

    Yes, of course it goes without saying that nobody can be genuinely concerned about the welfare of vulnerable children! Anybody who expresses any interest in helping children who are at risk of academic failure or future difficulties must clearly have a financial motive.

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  20. 'Nothing you have written about Jack makes me think that you wish to help him though you are unhappy that he escaped your efforts to make him go to school. You have not said how you would help him and it appears to me that you wish to inflict harm upon his family because they cannot comply.'

    How people can write such nonsense is something of a mystery to me! I made no efforts to make the child go to school. I am fanatically enthusiastic for home education; I wanted the child to be educated at home. If by 'inflict harm', you mean attempt to set up a programme which would both benefit the child himself and get the local authority off his back, then I suppose that I must plead guilty. He was not being home educated and I thought that he should be. All my efforts were directed to this end.

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  21. Isn't 'education' in the eye of the beholder, though? Who are you, who is anyone, to say exactly what kind of education this boy needed? What gives some people - like you - the right to frame the definitions of words like 'education'? He was learning transferable skills. This has been shown from links posted above, which you have conveniently ignored. You and your ilk are nothing but meddlers, whose sanctimonious but well-meaning interfering often does more harm than good. You are the smug, self-righteous, 'we know best what's good for you' brigade - which really thinks it does, but often actually doesn't. Do you even question your 'right'ness on such issues?

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  22. 'Isn't 'education' in the eye of the beholder, though? Who are you, who is anyone, to say exactly what kind of education this boy needed? '

    To summarise, your view is that for a fourteen year-old boy to get up after lunch each day and do nothing but play computer games until the evening, before hanging round the streets, constitutes an adequate education. Have I undestood you correctly about this? As I said in the title of today's post; no wonder local authorities are alarmed about home education! It precisely views of this kind which are causing the current conflict between parents and local authorities.

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  23. And you still ignore the links about transferable skills and computer games.

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  24. 'And you still ignore the links about transferable skills and computer games.'

    I am ignoring them because they are irrelevant. Almost every child in the country uses computers and plays games on them which require hand-eye coordination and other skills. Many schools have such applications which young children use. This is just one, relatively unimportant, aspect of education; an aspect which can in any case be adequately achieved without the use of computers or Xboxes. You will find that the acquisition of hand-eye coordination did not arrive with the invention of games consoles!

    To suggest that the development of these skills, most of which are possessed anyway by children from a very young age, is a sufficient education for a teenager seems to be your position. Is that correct?.

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  25. No. My position is that it is not for you or anyone else to define what his education should be.

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  26. 'No. My position is that it is not for you or anyone else to define what his education should be. '



    But it is your view, if I understand you correctly, that this is not a case of a child missing from education and that neither the local authority nor anybody else should do anything about this child; he and his family should just be left alone. Is this what you are advocating?

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  27. Official interventions are fraught with unintended consequences, both for the child himself and for other children and families. You've said yourself it is extremely difficult. I would say it is an impossible task to intervene without risking more damage than you cure.

    The system must be mended from the inside, if a solution is to be found at all. What is wrong with the education system to make it such an alien environment for children like Jack.

    Please post positive solutions instead of advocating more intervientions from the heavy hand of the state. Ever a blunt object.

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  28. 'Please post positive solutions instead of advocating more intervientions from the heavy hand of the state'

    I have advocated nothing of the sort. I have described a home educator offering help to a parent who wished for her child to be home educated. I am not at all sure where the heavy hand of the state comes into the picture! I have also asked people for their suggestions about what might be done when this process fails.

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  29. Your reasons for posting about Jack were to argue that the state should be given more power to intervene in cases where children might be missing education, were they not? If you are now saying you think this is not the case, I will be much reassured!

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  30. "Sales pitches for what? Do you imagine that I will be selling more books on local history if I can demonstrate that I disapprove of children missing out on an *edcuation?"

    "The Best days of Our Lives; School Life in Post-War Britain; published this month by The History Press and available in all good bookshops. "

    *U comes before the C in education Simon, I'd have thought that would be the one word you'd spell correctly....hey, this petty correcting is fun! I see why you're a fan.

    The fact that you can make the two statements I have highlighted within minutes of each other shows how much your opinion needs to be questioned.

    By the way, it looks like your wife might indeed work for social services, obviously if this information is wrong then it's only you profiting from this heinous opinion, and not you both.

    Also, isn't that Ed Balls I see your daughter with on....yes...Google!

    So you're writing about it, your wife is in the trenches, and your daughter hopes to build a career off the man who would quash the freedoms of honest (and from I've learnt speaking to you much more capable) humans.

    I'm sorry you are incapable of seeing this entrenched and horrendous bias you (AND YOUR WHOLE FAMILY) have, I need to go and learn patience and calm...at home, with my family, where education starts, not in the child factory.

    http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html

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  31. ‘I'm sorry you are incapable of seeing this entrenched and horrendous bias you (AND YOUR WHOLE FAMILY) have,’


    Home educators!!! Do you find it difficult to follow a logical train of thought? Do you struggle to express yourself lucidly and coherently? Do you have the attention span of a grasshopper, combined with an inability to discuss any topic rationally?

    Don’t despair! If you are finding ordinary debates too hard for you, why not try googling the family of the person with whom you are debating? Then see if you can divert the conversation away from the matter in hand and towards the history of the family. Remember though TO SHOUT IN CAPITALS LIKE THIS!

    True, this might make you appear to be an ill-mannered, inarticulate and malevolent troll, but with luck you will be able to close down the discussion of topics which make you feel uncomfortable.

    Top Tip; Always put your name to material of this sort, rather than posting anonymously. You would not want other people to think that you are no more than a common or garden writer of poison pen letters!

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  32. "If you are finding ordinary debates too hard for you, why not try googling the family of the person with whom you are debating?"

    Since this has been one of your main activities over the years, we have a case of the pot calling the kettle black!

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  33. "Top Tip; Always put your name to material of this sort, rather than posting anonymously. You would not want other people to think that you are no more than a common or garden writer of poison pen letters!"

    So because you put your name to such posts, it's OK when you do it? Is that you thinking? (or not thinking)

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