Maintaining the illusion of widespread opposition to the registration of home educated children

I wrote a couple of days ago of the way in which a small group of militants try to give the impression that they are speaking on behalf of the majority of home educating parents and promote the idea that most of these parents are fiercely opposed to the registration of home educated children or any monitoring of them. Only yesterday, a fine example of this racket turned up in a provincial newspaper. Here is a piece from the  Bradford Telegraph & Argus; which only appeared online yesterday;

http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/14637037.New_report_warns_that_Bradford_Council_has__limited_powers__to_monitor_333_home_schooled_children/

Within hours, two of the people whom I had mentioned in my recent post here had commented on this article. They may be seen in the comments as 770177wendy and llondel. They are of course Wendy Charles-Warner and Dave Hough and they are the owners of the Facebook group Home Education and Your Local Authority: Help Dealing with Officaldom. A number of points spring immediately to mind. The first is that one of these people lives in North Wales and the other in California. Why on earth are they commenting about home education in Yorkshire? We also observe that neither of these people  are even home educating their children in the United Kingdom; this being so, it is hard to see in what way they might be representing the interests of home educating parents in this country. There is also the fact that both have a variety of identities under which they comment. Why should Dave Hough be so averse to using his own name? Wendy Charles-Warner also posts under various identities. This is done so that the same names do not appear to be cropping up again and again. A final point is the sheer dishonesty of the things which are said in the comments there! Here is Dave Hough yesterday;


parents who have the option of remaining unknown to their local authority invariably choose to remain so and not make contact.

In the first place; how could he possibly know this? Secondly, let us remind ourselves of the advice which he dished out on the 'Officialdom' group, a little while ago, to a home educating parent who was moving house;

 post a letter with a second-class stamp on your last day there informing them that as of that date you're no longer in their area but that you will still be home educating. Don't give them your new address or area, and make sure the new occupants of the house and any neighbours also know not to tell them where you've gone if they know.

One of the reasons that home educating parents do not have contact with their  local authorties is because they are denounced and ostracised for doing so on many of the online support groups for home educators. They are called traitors and Quislings; those who do allow visits from the local authority  often do so secretly, for fear of the reaction from people like Dave Hough! The chief reason that people remain, or pretend to remain, unknown to their local authorities is because many of them rely upon support from Facebook groups containing other parents whose children are not at school. It is the reaction of some of the more vociferous of these parents which they fear, rather than the local authority itself.

Turning now to the comment posted by Wendy Charles-Warner, we see  she claims that;

 Freedom of information requests to Bradford Local Authority confirm that there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that a single home educated child in the region has been 'radicalised'.

Seriously? How would you find that out from a Freedom of Information Request?

The two people mentioned here today are of course not the only people patrolling the internet to find articles about home education on which to comment; although they are certainly among the most industrious. The fact is that about two dozen people, at least half of whom either live abroad or are not home educating their children in this country, are responsible for over 90% of the comments one sees about the dangers of registration and monitoring. They are part of a very small sub-set in the home educating community who are desperately anxious that local authorities and the general public should see them as being the  dominant trend in British home education.

A Militant Home Educator

Mrs Wendy Charles-Warner must surely be one of the best known home educators in the country. An indefatigable, an unkind person might say shameless, self-publicist; she has appeared in many newspapers in support of her chosen hobby horse. In addition to being a representative of the national home education charity, Education Otherwise, Mrs Charles-Warner has remorselessly chronicled in print the lives of the daughter and grandson whom she taught herself. Here is a recent example of her appearance in a national newspaper, in this case The Guardian, on behalf of Education Otherwise;

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/23/state-must-raise-its-game-to-protect-home-educated-children-judge-insists

In addition to these activities, Mrs Charles-Warner runs, under an assumed name, a Facebook group which purports to help home educating parents in their disputes with local authorities. It is popularly  known as Help Dealing with Officialdom and may be found here;

https://www.facebook.com/groups/239232119524989/

So much for the public face of this woman’s activities on behalf of the cause of home education. There is another side to her interest in this subject though and it is one about which she is strangely reticent. It is time now to shed light upon this lesser known aspect of Mrs Charles-Warner’s  involvement with home education in this country.

A brief look at the advice given on the Facebook group mentioned above, soon shows that its members are urged to live in a state of virtual warfare with their local authorities; refusing visits and doing their utmost not to cooperate with any requests for information about the education which they are providing for their children. This is because, as Mrs Charles-Warner has repeatedly said, ‘There is no legal basis to monitor home education’. On her Facebook group yesterday, a mother posted, saying that she was happy to have a visit from her local authority to check up on the educational provision she was making for her child. Mrs Charles-Warner thought this a bad idea, saying ‘I would not meet with her because she is seeking work samples and evidence, to which she is not entitled.’

I hope we all have this clear now. Wendy Charles-Warner, who acts on behalf of Education Otherwise and is a militant home educator, advises parents not to meet with local authority officers or provide evidence of a child’s work. One mother who adopted this strategy, received a pretty sharp letter from her local authority last week. They threatened her with legal action. The letter she received may be seen below.

Look now at the lower right hand of that letter  and you will see who helped to compose it. It was of course, none other than that same Wendy Charles-Warner who was yesterday urging a parent who was happy to receive a visit and provide samples of work to resist such an intrusion. And yet here she is now, helping and advising a local authority to take action against somebody who follows just this approach! Note that the letter, drafted with Mrs Charles-Warner's help, demands visits and samples of work; the very things which she told another mother that local authorities have no business even to ask for.

I will leave readers to judge for themselves what is going on here. It is however worth bearing in mind that Mrs Charles-Warner and the woman with whom she runs the Facebook group are founders and joint directors of a company which has a commercial interest in education; Heatherside Education Consultants Ltd. Almost unbelievably, after advising the local authority to send this letter, Mrs Charles-Warner then set out to offer her advice to the recipient on how to deal with the local authority! Cynical readers might think all this a perfect illustration of that old saying which mentions those who run with the fox, while at the same time hunting with the hounds.