But you can’t do a GCSE in chemistry at home…

George Bernard Shaw remarked that all professions are conspiracies against the laity. Teaching is no exception to this rule. Teachers are, as a class, determined that other people, parents in particular, should believe that they are doing something fantastically subtle and clever;  undertaking an operation which no ordinary person could hope to understand, let alone emulate. It is, of course, not so, but that is the impression that they wish to make upon the rest of us. Unfortunately, like all really good propagandists, they sometimes come to believe  their own fantasies. I have lost count of the number of teachers who, after  conceding that most parents could look after their children up to the age of seven or eight, perhaps even teach them to read and write,  then go on to say triumphantly, ‘Yes, but what about secondary? You couldn’t do chemistry or physics at home, could you?’ This is widely regarded as a knock-down argument against home education after the age of eleven or twelve. The tragic thing is, I think that those using this as a debating point really think that it is true!

The irony is that, as anybody who has witnessed a science lesson in a maintained secondary school will know, there is very little practical work such as experiments, these days. Nobody would trust the average fourteen year-old in a state school to handle sulphuric acid safely or dissect a frog without chopping off some other pupil’s fingers. Science is mainly done by means of photo-copied handouts and the watching of clips from Youtube. In fact, it is incomparably better to teach things like chemistry, physics and biology at home, than it is to leave it to a school. You can experiment with flames and acids, cut up dead animals, make your own indicators, rather than relying upon strips of litmus paper; all sorts of really enjoyable activities. I defy anybody not to find that their child is interested in science, once they have discovered that rose petals and tea leaves can both be used to distinguish between acids and alkalis. This is just the kind of thing that all children love; boiling things up and sloshing about liquids that change colour!  

The specifications for the International GCSEs are all available on the websites of Cambridge and Edexcel. These tell you precisely what your child will need to know in order to pass the examination. There are also old exam papers there with marking schemes, so that you can tell exactly how the child is likely to do. I know that there is nothing to it, because of course we studied for all three science IGCSEs at home. The child concerned got A* for all of them, which, for home educated children, is about par for the course.

What is wrong with people??? Part 2

Another irritated complaint about the sort of things people say on home education lists. This one relates to the Education Otherwise support group. Somebody posted there yesterday, full of pleasure and enthusiasm for the speed with which her twelve year-old daughter was zooming through academic work in preparation for IGCSEs. In fact things were going so well, that the mother was thinking of letting the kid  sit the examinations early. Cue comments along the lines of, “Why are you doing this? Why not let your child decide for herself what she studies?” The suggestion was made that  “many” mysterious "agencies" had found that it was “damaging” for children younger than sixteen to take IGCSEs. These “agencies”  were not named and so it is hard to know what was meant by this. Even Fiona Nicholson, who really ought to know better, advised caution and talked of the possibility of being oppressed by examinations.

This is all so absolutely bizarre, that one hardly knows what to make of it! A child is rushing through work at a rapid rate, as many do when they are being taught one-to-one, and there is no indication that there is any pressure or stress involved. Actually, children out of school often enjoy learning things and take pleasure in working quickly through academic material. It is in school that this kind of thing is an onerous chore; you seldom find it with home educated kids. The mother was, in effect, being advised on a home education list run by a major organisation in this field, to slow her child down and discourage her from learning so fast!

I must point out that a number of people, including a woman who comments regularly on this blog, then popped up and said that their children too enjoyed studying and made very rapid progress. But how extraordinary that the first response to news of a home educated child studying and making good progress should have been that there was some sort of problem that needed to be dealt with and that all could not be well in that family for the mother to be considering IGCSEs a little earlier than they are taken in schools! 

The trouble with ALAN

It is not uncommon to read or hear statements by home educating parents to the effect of, ‘we have decided not to do GCSEs’. Since it is usually parents who possess both the money and knowledge to arrange the things, this may be better translated as, ’I have decided that my child will not be taking any GCSEs’.


I have discussed before here the disadvantages for home educated children of not having GCSEs. These range from difficulty in getting a place at college when they are sixteen to limiting the choice of university at eighteen or nineteen. Still, as I have been reminded, not everybody wishes to go into further or higher education. Some young people are eager to enter the world of work at once. Here too, problems can arise form the decision not to sit GCSEs. When over 99% of children in the country are taking GCSEs or IGCSEs, those without a single one to their name do tend to stand out somewhat and not in a favourable way. The news that a sixteen or seventeen year old has not attended school for some years and has no GCSEs suggests to many potential employers that he has either been excluded, has learning difficulties and/or has feckless parents. This is an unfortunate impression to be creating when looking for work! Not everybody is familiar with home education and even those who have heard of it can have difficulty working out whether or not a child who has been subjected to this experimental procedure has the necessary skills to make him a valuable member of the workforce. In short, how does the employer know that this young person can read and write, carry out arithmetical operations and so on? For many parents , the answer is for their  child to sit adult literacy and numeracy tests.

Here is some information about adult literacy and numeracy tests or ALAN for short:



http://www.edexcel.com/migrationdocuments/Adult%20Literacy%20and%20Adult%20Numeracy/ALAN%20brochure%20for%20web%2030-4-09_A4.pdf
                                                                              

These are pretty popular with home educating parents as a way of proving that their child is literate. They are supposedly the equivalent of a GCSE, although in reality they are nothing of the sort. They certainly demonstrate that a teenager can read, write and do simple sums, but that is about it. Still, surely this is better than nothing? It at least provides some evidence for an employer that an applicant is not utterly lacking in academic skills. Sadly, these things are not a brilliant advertisement for children. The very phrase, ’adult literacy’,  brings forth images and associations to the average mind which would better be left untouched.

For the ordinary person, the expression ’adult literacy’ is connected with ’illiteracy’. Adult literacy courses, adult literacy qualifications and so on are widely thought to be remedial activities undertaken by adults who did not learn to read and write while they were at school. This is not at all the impression that one hopes to make when applying for a job; that one was until recently illiterate! Most employers glance at educational qualifications and want only to see five ’good’ GCSEs. Anything less than this marks an applicant out at once and not in a good way. The thought that somebody has not attended school and as a result has taken adult literacy qualifications is not really a good start.

Parents might think a little carefully about how their child will present to the outside world in later years. It is all well and good that home educated children are, at least according to their parents, cleverer, more sensitive, spiritual, creative and compassionate than other children. None of this will be much use if they look to outsiders like hopeless dropouts that have been learning to read and write at remedial classes!

‘A’s are for losers…

I have had to abandon this blog for a while to meet a deadline, however, normal service is now resumed. I shall be looking in the next couple of days at the idea of compulsion, which seems to be so baffling to at least one reader; compulsion in her mind being associated only with punishment or physical force! Before that, I want to talk about the awful situation at British secondary schools, with reference to what are known as grade boundaries. These have a pernicious effect upon children unfortunate enough to attend school.

When my daughter was studying for both GCSEs and A levels, I had a saying that I used frequently with her. This was, ‘A's are for losers!’ I meant to convey by this that if she gained only an ‘A’ in an examination, rather than ‘A*’; then as far as I was concerned, she would have failed that particular examination. Nothing less than 100% was satisfactory, whether she was working at home with me or sitting an IGCSE. There are a number of possibilities for this attitude on my part. One would be that I am a man obsessed with GCSEs and their importance in life. Another might perhaps be that I am a male, Caucasian version of the notorious Chinese ‘Tiger Mothers’. A third and, to me at least, more likely explanation would be that I am not a bloody fool and that I know how the world actually works outside of school and examinations. Let me make this a little clearer.

In a deplorable lapse of judgement, I allowed my older daughter to be registered at school. Apart from a spell of flexi-schooling, she was at school all the way through until leaving at sixteen. When she was fifteen, a year or so before she was due to take her GCSEs, I noticed that her maths was atrocious. She was getting around half the questions wrong and yet her teacher was marking the work with things like, ‘Well done’. When I spoke to this woman she explained that from her point of view this was fine. It was not because my daughter was unable to do any better, it was that there would have been no point. In the GCSE, which mark you get depends on the percentage of marks you score. These are the grade boundaries. Incredibly, if you get over 50%, you get an ‘A’ in mathematics for GCSE. Over 70% and you will have an ‘A*’ Because my daughter was in line for at least an ‘A’ and possibly an ‘A*’, she was doing as well as could possibly be achieved. What purpose would have been served by trying to get her to get three quarters of her work right? It would have been overkill; way over the grade boundary for an ‘A*’. I resisted the temptation to slay this idiot on the spot; in retrospect, a matter of some regret.

Let’s forget for a moment about schools and GCSEs. I have only recently, after a long struggle, resolved the problems I have been having with the Student Finance people over the loan my daughter is getting for university. I sent in almost everything necessary. The only problem related to an income of £60.75, for which I provided no documentation and had overlooked when filling out the form. You might have thought that they would have given me a gold star for this, or at the very least congratulated me on getting over 95% of the calculations correct. Even a ‘Well done’ would have been nice. They did none of these things, because of course this is real life. Anything less than 100% accuracy means that you fail. It is the same with my tax returns. It is not enough for me to get 70% of the answers right. This will not earn me an ‘A*’ with the Inland Revenue. Not even 80% will do, nor 90% or even 95%. Every figure and all calculations must be 100% correct.

This principle, that of getting 100% all the time in maths is how we have to live our real lives. Whether we are looking at out bank statement, measuring the room for a fitted carpet or working out the change from a £20 note; nothing less than 100% will do. Saying ‘Well done!’ to a child for getting a third of her sums wrong is a false kindness. It does not matter a damn if that will be enough to get her an ‘A*’ at GCSE; getting a lot of sums wrong in real life will be a disaster for her. The same is true of practically every other aspect of life. If I write out a job application and only make errors in spelling a quarter of the words, this will not earn me an ‘A*’ from the potential employer. He will probably dismiss me as illiterate.

Real life is very unforgiving. Most of the time we need to get things right. The penalties for getting things wrong can be pretty severe and you are not awarded marks for effort either! Anybody who does not expect a child to get things 100% right in maths, English or any other subject is leaving the child ill-prepared for the real world. Real life is not about GCSEs or A levels. It is about getting figures 100% right, making sure that not one word is misspelled nor a single capital letter or full stop omitted. Teaching children this and being ferociously demanding about it is the only strategy that will fit them out for the adult world in which they will all too soon find themselves.