Providing proof that a suitable education is taking place

According to Ian Dowty, who is of course a lawyer specialising in home education, a recent court case in Oxfordshire ruled that the burden of proof in establishing that a home educated child is receiving a suitable education falls upon the parents. In other words, the onus is not upon the local authority to demonstrate that the child is not receiving an education, but the ball is in the parents' court to show that the child is. This is quite interesting, because many local authorities are dubious about the 'evidence' produced by parents to show that an education is taking place.

Quite a few parents whose children are not at school get irritated to be called upon to prove that they are educating their children. Why can't the local authority just take their word for it? Why do they need evidence at all? Well the reason is of course that everybody lies and an awful lot of home educating parents say anything at all that they think will get the local authority off their backs. Local authorities know this perfectly well and so they require something other than mere words. Parents often tell the local authority officer whose job is to monitor home education a pack of fairy stories and hope for the best. Here is Myra Robinson, a Home Education Advisor from Newcastle;

'Other pupils are unable to produce work samples on demand or demonstrate an understanding of the basics, despite parents' claims about their level of education.
"One girl said she worked in the library, but didn't seem to know where the library was," Ms Robinson said'

This is a fairly typical example of what many local authority officers encounter. Parents send them an educational philosophy, backed up with a diary of supposedly educational activities. Then when they get to meet the kid, it turns out that this is a lot of nonsense. This is one of the reasons, incidentally, that local authorities are so keen to visit. It is often only during such visits that the truth comes to light. Presumably many parents are reluctant to accept visits for the opposite reason; so that they can prevent the truth coming to light. Mind you, maybe Myra Robinson is not telling the truth. After all, she works for a local authority and it could be that she is unjustly maligning home educating parents for sinister reasons of her own. Let's see what a few home educators have to say.

Up in Herefordshire, a well known and vociferous home educating mother gave an interview to her local newspaper recently. During the course of the interview, she repeated what she had already told her local authority;

'Mrs Gxxxx added that Mxxxx is looking to do between six and eight GCSEs at the end of the year.'

Blimey and the kid is only twelve! Small wonder that the local authority have been led to believe that she is a dedicated and fantastically structured home educator. But hang on a moment! What does she say when she is relaxing with her friends of one of her favourite Internet lists?

'We are thinking that GCSE's are going to be a no-no. The stress would stop
his brain working'

See the problem? How can the local authority take seriously what she is telling them? No wonder that they want proof and not just empty words. At the other end of the country, Hampshire County Council served notice of their intention to issue a School Attendance Order upon parents in Alton. Subsequently, they were provided with evidence of this child's academic work. Can you believe it though? They expressed doubts that the work they had been given was actually done by the child. How can people be so suspicious and lacking in trust? What reason could they possibly have had for doubting that the work which they were given was in fact the unaided efforts of the child himself? Well, let's look at another recent example of this same boys work, namely an email which was sent to Penny Jones at the DCSF on November 20th last year. He signed his name and so we can be sure that he wrote the thing. He says;

'I’m not scared of a school attendance order do it go for it. I burn it on the fire like the other one! I’m not scared of you Ed Balls DCSF come on Ed takes us to court I’m soooooooooooo scared! '

All right, stop laughing at the back! It is sheer coincidence that his style of writing is so uncannily similar to that of his father. I am shocked and disgusted that anybody could be so cynical as to assume that the father produced both this email and the written work sent to Hampshire County Council.

I have recently had the impression that some local authorities are becoming a little tougher about the standard of evidence which they require to establish that a suitable education is taking place. Some have attributed this to their behaving as though the Children, Schools and Families Bill was actually passed intact. The case in Oxfordshire which Ian Dowty mentions might well provide another explanation. I have an idea that more local authorities will be adopting a hard line now and requiring a bit more convincing that a suitable education is really being provided to children. I for one find this a very encouraging development.

Ex home educators

It has more than once been suggested by people commenting here that it really is time that I got myself a life, or even a hobby, and stopped being so concerned with home education. After all, my daughter is at college now, why don't I just forget about home education and get on with other things? It has to be said that even my own daughter feels that way! I mentioned this to a friend of mine who is not a home educating parent, but has a professional interest in elective home education. She laughingly reminded me that quite a few of the well known names whom one sees writing letters to newspapers, sending in submissions to select committees and also posting every day on various Internet lists, are in precisely the same position; that is to say they are not actually home educators at all.

We spent a while compiling a list of those household names in the British HE scene who are either not home educators or have only taken it up in the last year or so. To my surprise, it came to well over half the names! I thought I would look at one or two of them and see how obsessive my own interest in the subject of home education seems in comparison. Knowing of course the almost pathological desire of these people to conceal their identity, I shall of course respect their privacy by using only initials.

Take AE for instance, who lives in the West Country. AE posts on the comments sections of the online editions of newspapers using the name tinpanali, although even her closest friends concede that a more apposite sobriquet might perhaps be 'annoyingloudmouthedali'. AE has not been a home educator for over two years now, since she bunged her kids back into school to start an ill starred business venture. She tells friends that the whole HE thing was getting a bit much anyway. She still hangs out on many of the Internet home education lists, despite the fact that one of the largest states clearly, 'Membership is open to families who are home educating or are interested in home educating their children in the UK.' You would think really that since she is neither home educating her children nor has any interest in doing so in the future, she would have dropped out of this particular list.

AE spends a good deal of her time fooling around with home education related issues. I have myself been accused of not being able to let go and give up the whole HE thing, but I have not a patch on AE. Last September, eighteen months after she had stopped being a home educator, AE was writing to Calderdale local authority up in Yorkshire, making a Freedom of Information request about home education there! Reassuring really, to know that in comparison with characters like that, my own interest in the subject seems quite low key.

Many of the most vociferous advocates of home eduction are those who have been quite content to send their children to school and then undergone a 'Road to Damascus' style conversion. From that moment on, they talk of schools as though they were the Devil's work and are as fanatical in the faith as new converts to some cult. Look at JG, who lives in the charming village of Eardisley at the other end of the country from AE. This pleasingly Rubenesque mother only stopped sending her son to the local C of E primary school in the summer of 2008. Within a matter of weeks, she had joined up to a raft of HE lists and was angrily denouncing those who did not share her own view of education. Within six months, she was known across the Internet as a dedicated home educator. One might have though she had been at it for years!

There is a slight puzzle about JG and her home educating methods. On the lists, she gives the impression of being almost an autonomous educator. In a recent post she talks of the educational value of crossword puzzles for her son as a way for him to acquire general knowledge, spelling, comprehension and so on. All very autonomous and designed to strike a chord in the hearts of other home educators there. However in a recent interview with a journalist, she claimed that her son was 'looking to do between six and eight GCSEs at the end of the year'. This suggests that she is a hothouser, delivering an extremely disciplined and highly structured education to M, her son. Even I would have hesitated to get my daughter to take the eight GCSEs which she sat at the age of twelve or thirteen. Which is it, JG, hothouser or autonomous?

I could go through a few more well known 'home educators', but I think these two give the flavour. Home education is an addictive process. Once one becomes involved with it, it is very hard to give up. I can quite understand why so many parents remain on the lists and indeed are still very active in the business, long after their children have ceased to be home educated. I can also understand the mad enthusiasm of people like JG who have only recently discovered the excitement of home education. I too was very gung ho about it ten or twelve years ago. It is to be hoped that the next time readers feel like asking me why I am still hanging round the HE scene, they will perhaps realise that I am not alone in this and that home education, like heroin and sudoku, can be a very hard habit to drop.