The task of Sisyphus

Readers with a smattering of erudition will no doubt catch the above allusion, which is to an ancient king condemned by the gods for his hubris. He was doomed to spend eternity rolling a heavy boulder up a hill each day; only to see it roll down again at nightfall, leaving him to attempt the task anew each morning. I know the feeling!

I set out a few weeks ago to explore the rationale behind the Welsh Assembly’s efforts to enforce compulsory registration and monitoring of home educated children. I hoped to do this by looking at a new aspect of the case each day and in this way gradually building up an understanding of what was going on. I need not have bothered. Even establishing the simplest and least controversial of facts proved too much and so I  have abandoned the attempt. Perhaps this was the intention of some of those commenting here?

To give an example of what I mean, I took two things for granted recently; two things connected with home education which are absolutely and incontrovertibly true and about which there cannot be the slightest doubt. Even with these simple facts, I found myself bombarded with objections and argument. No wonder we never got past the initial stages of considering the proposed Welsh legislation!

Here are the two, very basic and obvious statements which caused such debate;



The five outcomes of the Every Child Matters agenda were incorporated into the 2004 Children Act and are now the law of England



There has for years been a concerted campaign by some home education organisations and academics against the concept of a ‘broad and balanced curriculum’



Now I was not inviting readers to decide whether a couple of propositions from Russell’s Principia Mathematica were veridical. I was presenting two pieces of information, both of which had a bearing on discussions about the new Welsh law, and using them as givens so that we could look more closely at what is going on in the minds of those both in Wales and England who are demanding further powers with regard to home education.

It was a hopeless endeavour and  I shall according leave the topic of the Welsh legislation alone for the foreseeable future and concentrate more upon my own idiosyncratic views and opinions of things relating to home education in England. There is also, incidentally, the fact that I am currently writing three non-fiction books and a novel simultaneously and this is taxing even my powers,  to the extent that I have less time to engage in debate with those commenting here. Since it is discourteous to ignore comments, it seems better to limit myself for a while to posts such as this, to which nobody could really take exception.

If closer monitoring of home education in New Zealand and the USA does no good, why would we need it in this country?

In recent days two linked objections have been raised to the proposition that new legislation is needed in this country to regulate home education. The first is that increasing or decreasing monitoring in two other countries does not seem to affect the outcomes for home education there; the second that there is no evidence that there is anything wrong with the current arrangements in this country and that consequently there is no need for any new law. I want today to examine the first of these ideas, that it is possible and worthwhile to compare home education in this country with that in New Zealand and America. I strongly suspect that those making this claim know as well as I do why it is impossible to compare home education in this country with either New Zealand or the United States, but working on the assumption that there will be readers who do not understand the difficulties, I shall try briefly to outline the problem.

Let us begin by looking at the most recent investigation into motives for home education in the United Kingdom. This was conducted in Wales, but there is no reason to suppose that the findings are not also applicable to England. The full report may be found here:



http://wales.gov.uk/topics/educationandskills/schoolshome/pupilsupport/homeeducation/?lang=en



What was discovered about the motives for home education? The report says:



Broadly, from the responses gathered at this stage, the motivations of the Home Educating community can be seen to fall into four categories on a spectrum and, in this description, in no order of percentage choice.





1. Response to behavioural /attendance issues

The extreme stance expressed by some authorities that the majority of HE parents choose HE to avoid prosecution when they and/or their children simply disengage with education is not endorsed by this initial scoping, but it is the primary experience of the EWS in relation to HE and, as such, is perceived to be a much more significant motivation than it is in actuality.



2. Lifestyle choices

At the other end of the spectrum, the political position of some home educators is that the family unit and not the state has primary responsibility for the education of the child and therefore that education is most suitably and efficiently delivered in the family context. Other ‘alternative’ lifestyle choices include those of the traveller communities, or various religious perspectives.



3. Curricular/structural issues

Between these two poles are children and families opting out of the mainstream, not to disengage from education, but after struggling with, and giving up on, the curriculum or structural difficulties of school life, be it the size, the length of day or the interaction with some teachers.



4. Special social, emotional, health or learning needs

Towards the choice of HE as a lifestyle are those opting out of the mainstream because of social, emotional or other learning challenges, delicate health issues, difficulties with transition, or, most particularly, the experience of bullying. This appears to be the largest group in the spectrum. Many of these, though originally choosing reactively away from school, do seem to find HE particularly suitable to meeting, or allowing for, those particular needs and come to embrace this alternative educational experience as a proactive and positive decision.



Lest anybody object that this research was carried out by those opposed to home education and accordingly biased against the practice, let us recall that Paula Rothermel found pretty much the same thing when she surveyed British home educators. The main motives that she found were things such as, ‘having a close family relationship and being together’.

Now I find all this pretty astounding.   I was sure that I could provide my daughter with a better education than she would receive at school and it therefore made sense from a purely educational perspective not to send her to school. Such people as me are mentioned in the list of motives, but one does not get the impression that they are a majority or even a significant proportion.  I have an idea, which is borne out by what little research has been conducted in this country, that very few parents in Britain home educate for purely educational motives of this sort. Research by both Paula Rothermel and Education Otherwise confirms this. When Education Otherwise sent out two and a half thousand questionairres, the main reasons that were given for home education were bullying and lifestyle. Education per se did not seem to be a big factor in the decision to home educate.

In America, the situation is very different. The largest piece of research carried out there into the motives for home education, that carried out by The National Centre for Education Statistics in America, showed that 50% of those asked about their motives gave as the answer, ‘Can give child a better education at home’. This indicates that the commonest motives for home education in America are very different from those in this country. There, parents tend to choose the practice because they believe that they can provide a better academic education. In the UK, it is at best a lifestyle choice relating to wanting to be close to the children and at worst, a reaction to problems at school. In other words, British parents are not in general choosing home education for educational reasons.

It must be fairly clear that if, as tends more commonly to be the case, American home educators are primarily concerned with good academic education, then their children are likely to be achieving highly; regardless of whether or not they are being checked by the authorities. To try and compare this situation with that in this country is pointless. Most parents here are either forced into a position where they feel they have no choice in the matter or wish to keep their children at home as part of a lifestyle choice. This means that we are not able to draw any useful conclusions by the American experience of monitoring and regulation. Unless somebody is able to come up with evidence that home educating parents in New Zealand are very similar in their motivations to those in this country, we may probably disregard what has happened there as well. All of which means that when considering new legislation, we would be well advised to restrict ourselves to thinking about what is happening in this country and not trying to rope in America and New Zealand.

What is happening in this country and what does the evidence suggest? I shall be looking at this in the next few days.

More about changing the law on home education

I feel a little sorry for the Welsh home educator who commented here yesterday, saying what a pleasure it was to find a place where home education could be discussed without the quarrelsome and ill -mannered antics of those on some of the home education lists and forums. No sooner had she said this, than some of the more aggressive types zoomed in and showed her that this blog was not a safe space after all! It would be interesting, incidentally, to know how many of those commenting here are, like her, Welsh and so likely to be affected by the laws being proposed by the Welsh Assembly. Anyway, back to the desirability or otherwise of changing the law.


When the Children Schools and Families Bill was about to be passed a couple of years ago, with its provision for the compulsory registration of home education, the assertion was made that such registration and monitoring would harm home educated children. The same suggestion is now being made about the proposed measures in Wales. Commenting here yesterday, somebody claimed that this sort of thing was bad because:



less confident home-educators, who are, nevertheless, doing a better job than schools, may be harmed, along with their children.



This is the sort of thing home educators often say whenever anybody wants to change the law.  I was myself mentioned in the blog Dare to Know, as somebody who would have 'blood on his hands'  if the parts of the CSF Bill relating to home education were to be passed! Statements like this are a bit true, but wholly misleading. For example, I might say that black people are lazy. Well, this is true as far as it goes; after all there are lazy black people. It is misleading though, because of course not all black people are lazy. So suggesting that home educated children will be harmed by this or that new regulation or law may be true, but misleading because not all children will be harmed. Some may be harmed, but others will benefit. So in a sense, both the local authorities and the more militant home educators are both right. The LAs say that registration and monitoring will benefit some home educated children and home educators say that some children will be harmed. This is what it is like in the real world; nothing is black and white and whatever you do, there will be bad consequences for somebody!

Let us draw a comparison with the introduction of compulsory seat belts some years ago. If at the time, I had campaigned against the proposed legislation by claiming that children would be killed and injured as a direct result of this law, I would have appeared to be a bit of a crank. Still, that is probably what has happened. Because drivers feel safer when they and their passengers are wearing seatbelts, they tend to drive faster. This is bad news for pedestrians in built up areas and is likely to end in more pedestrian casualties than when the cars were travelling more slowly. This of course has led to campaigns to reduce the speed limit in certain places. However, those actually in cars are far less likely to be killed and injured when they are wearing seatbelts, so on balance it was a good idea. This is because lots of children travel in cars and there are fewer on bicycles or foot; the net result is fewer children being injured in road accidents.

Introducing a law to regulate home education would be very similar to this situation. Some children would suffer harm, but others would benefit. In order to work out if it is a good plan or not, we have to consider a number of factors. For example, some home educated children are already suffering harm, although others are benefiting enormously from being home educated. A new law would change the balance, with perhaps more children benefiting and fewer suffering harm. Or perhaps it would be the other way round!

Simply stating that home educated children would suffer harm if new legislation were to be passed is utterly meaningless. Of course some will suffer harm, just as some are already suffering. What we must do, and it is not at all an easy proposition, is discover the relative proportions of the increase or decrease in those likely to suffer harm and those who will probably benefit. Then we must somehow calculate the proportions of those being benefited and harmed under the current arrangements. We also need to define just what we mean by 'harm' and 'benefit'.

None of this is straightforward and many of the suggested benefits and much of the supposed harm is pretty vague and intangible. In a sense, there is no fundamental difference between the views of home educating parents and those of most local authorities. Both sides know that some home educated children benefit from the education they receive. Both know also that some children are harmed by being withdrawn from school and educated at home. The debate hinges around the exact proportions involved and this is where the crux of the matter lies.

There is no such thing as a perfect human system or institution. Always, there are victims and winners. This is true of home education, just as it is with schools. I do not see this as grounds for doing nothing and declaring that no change should ever be undertaken. I can see ways that I think that schools could be improved and I can also see scope for new ways of organising home education. My suspicion is that those who oppose any change in the field of education are probably the sort of reactionaries who just do not like new ideas and new ways of doing things. I can understand this; the older I get, the less fond I am of change myself! However, there is a powerful reason for changing the law and this is that the present legal situation is not at all clear. This ambiguity leads to conflict, because sometimes local authorities overstep the mark because they genuinely believe that they have powers which they do not possess. If the precise duties of both parents and local authorities were to be set out in plain language, then I think it likely that there would be less antagonism and confrontation as a consequence, because everybody would know where they stood.

Opposing the Welsh proposals

Somebody commenting here was quite affronted when I said that raising concerns about the possible cost of registering and monitoring home educated children was the latest strategy by home educators anxious to head off the Welsh scheme. She thought that I was hinting that this was something which she herself had dreamed up. Nothing of the sort; I was merely suggesting that she was surfing the zeitgeist.


Few ordinary people seem to be actually opposed to the idea of home education. They may be a little dubious about its efficacy or see it as an odd enterprise that they would not care themselves to undertake, but that is all. It is when they realise that there is no compulsory involvement of the ’authorities’ that the eyebrows start to raise. They will say things like, ’Who do you have to ask for permission?’ or ’I suppose the council check up on you regularly?’ When they discover that you simply don’t need to send the kid to school and there is no need to notify anybody; that is when you can sense that they think that there is something amiss.

Most home educating parents know this and also are aware that the average citizen thinks that it is a grand idea to ensure that home educated children must be registered and inspected by the local authority. This presents a problem when you are campaigning against anything of the sort. The tactic is to find an objection which will resonate with the man or woman in the street. We saw this a lot during the organised opposition to Graham Badman’s proposals. Some of this is discussed on home educating lists and forums, while key players also exchange emails and telephone calls, devising ideas which may then be planted on the lists or put in comments to online newspaper articles on the subject. You need only use a word like 'conflate' on the home education lists and in no time at all it will go viral and everybody will be using it. The same thing happens with ideas. A brilliant example of this was the idea a while ago that children would be left on the school roll for a time after being deregistered. It was a sensible plan and so something ad to be dreamed up which would show ordinary parents the implications. This was duly done and named the 'Ibiza Loophole'. This particular piece of propaganda was successful.

During these times of austerity, two linked ideas have emerged from discussions as being best calculated to gain the approval of ordinary people for the fight against the Welsh proposals. One of these is the projected cost and the other,  all the things that are wrong with the educational system and should be fixed first, before we start fretting about home education. The notion is being put about that if we spend money on a scheme to register home educators, then that money will have to be taken from more needy folk to pay for it. Gosh, how terrible if this meant that some child genuinely in danger were to suffer because of this obsession with a tiny number of home educated children!  Surely there are better things to use that money for? Another strand which is emerging is to agree that education in general is in a frightful state, especially in Wales. Then, we can bring the conversation round to educational standards in schools; the exams fiasco, exclusions and various other problems. My, it does seem a pity that with all these serious difficulties involving literally hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, they are worrying about a tiny handful of a few hundred home educated children. Why, if they got their house in order, people might not even feel the need to remove their kids from school!

The truth is of course that nearly all home educators know that their children are safe and cared for and just want the authorities to piss off and leave them alone. Saying this to people who sent their own kids to school would be tactless and so other sentiments need to be expressed if we are not to alienate the man in the street. Keep an eye on the comments being made to newspaper articles and so on, as the Welsh proposals gather pace and you will see a coordinated campaign of comments along these lines. As articles appear, so somebody will draw attention to them on various lists and forums and this encourages home educating parents to comment. The result is that it looks from a glance at the comments as though there is mass opposition to any plan to change the law.

Campaigning against the Welsh proposals on home education; a slight problem

I can see a problem looming for those who are gearing up for a Badman style campaign against the Welsh Assembly’s new proposals to regulate home education. It is a very simple one and has perhaps already occurred to some people in Wales. It is this; most of those shooting their mouths off on the subject don’t actually live in Wales and will not be affected in the least by any measures implemented by the Welsh Assembly. I have an idea that this is likely to deal a death-blow to the organised opposition to the registration and inspection proposals which are currently being debated in the principality.

There are not all that many home educating families in Wales, at least compared with this country. Certainly not the tens of thousands that we have in England. Almost all the people who have so far been expressing opinions on the subject are living here in England. I can quite see their point. They fear, quite realistically, that if a regimen of monitoring and inspection is successfully instituted in Wales, then after a year or two, it will be the most natural thing in the world for the government in Westminster to point to it as a great idea that we should adopt here. They are right to fear this; I should say that it would be a racing certainty if the Welsh proposals go through.

Never the less, when meetings in Wales are packed with various English people, some of whom are not even home educators,  it is going to raise a few eyebrows. This will  look particularly odd when speakers from England at such conferences  outnumber the Welsh, as here:

http://www.ehew.co.uk/index.php/conference-oct-18th-2012

 It will also look a bit strange when the responses to the consultation there are found to be vastly more numerous than the total number of Welsh home educators! I am going to be interested to see who in the Welsh Assembly is the first to draw attention to this situation. I quite understand the motives of those in England who are mixing themselves up in this affair, but really it could be argued that  it is nobody else’s business, apart from those who actually live in Wales.

Home education in Wales

Here are the the changes that the   Welsh Assembly proposes to introduce around home education:

http://wales.gov.uk/docs/dcells/consultation/120902registeringmonitoringen.pdf

'Cruelty to children

One of the less attractive features of the campaign against Graham Badman’s proposals becoming law, was the psychological cruelty inflicted by a number of parents upon  their children, some of whom had special educational needs. During my own daughter’s childhood, I always conceived it to be a major part of my duty,  to protect her from distress and shield her from worry. To reassure her, in fact, that she was safe and that there was nothing to worry about.  This was not at all the line taken by some home educating parents in the run-up to the passage of the Children, Schools and Families Bill through parliament! For them, this was a golden opportunity to make their children anxious and in some cases hysterical with fear; simply so that they could claim that their children were being harmed by the very discussion of increased regulation of home education.

This is not a history lesson and if this sort of cruelty had ended with the abandonment of the CSF Bill in 2010, there would be little point in raking over the ashes. Unfortunately, it has not and there are still parents who are determined to exploit vulnerable children in order to make political capital of them. Consider this, which was less than three months ago:



http://www.home-education.biz/blog/education/dealing-with-highly-intrusive-parasitic-public-servants




Look at the advice given in the above post:



Always tell your children how much you love them and how, if ever they were taken from you, you would never, ever stop looking for them. Encourage them to respect their instincts and always to question the morality of authority. Make sure they learn their personal details as soon as they are old enough and tell them that wherever they are and whatever the circumstances they can always contact you.


I can imagine nothing more likely to terrify a young child out of her wits than to suggest the possibility that she might be snatched from the security of her family. It is the sort of thing which would cause most children to lay awake at night in terror, waiting to be taken. Why would you do that to your child? The answer is that you can then use your child’s response to brandish at local authorities or other people who wish to discuss a change in the law. ‘Look,’ you can tell them, ‘You have upset my child and she is now nervous and clingy, because she is frightened that social workers are about to snatch her away from her family.’

This was done by quite a few parents during the aftermath of the Badman Review. They used to boast about it on various lists. One mother announced that her son, who had developmental problems and was on the autistic spectrum, had had a ‘major meltdown’ when she told him that the authorities would be able to take  him away from her for interrogation alone! I had hoped that mistreatment of this sort had ended, but judging from some of the things I have been hearing lately, it has not. There are still parents frightening their children in this way and warning them that the government wants to enter their homes and perhaps take them from their families.

I am expecting to see more of this sort of thing when the enquiry starts in Wales about the possibility of registration of home educated children. Incidentally, despite Alison Sauer’s irritation at my mentioning the proposals contained in the bill which the Welsh Assembly hopes  to pass in the next year or so, I observe that others have picked up on the thing since I posted about it here. As I suspected, few people knew of it, but this has now been remedied. I am all in favour of change in the law, but I certainly believe that it should be discussed openly beforehand.

Beware; dangerous and inflammatory!

I must warn readers that they are about to read something which is inflammatory, perverse and conveys a sense of urgency and danger. Brace yourselves against some heavy piece of furniture and prepare to be alarmed. Ready?



Just on the offchance that nobody else has noticed, I thought that I would mention that next month a bill will be introduced in Wales which will require home educators to register with their local authority.



I must apologise to those who found this something of a damp squib, but commenting here yesterday Alison Sauer was most disturbed by the thirty six words above. So disturbed in fact that she had over seven hundred words of her own to say about this brief post! She had a number of objections. The first was that instead of stating that the bill would be introduced next month, I should rather have said that it would be announced next month when the Welsh Assembly meets after the summer break. Mrs Sauer also felt that I should have explained that just because a bill is introduced, that does not mean that it will be passed. I thought it quite unnecessary to mention this. Surely, since the Badman debacle, there can be few home educators who are unaware that introducing a bill and getting it passed are two very different things?

Before going any further, I might mention that apparently some people did not know about all this until I posted about it here. Within hours of my post, the subject had appeared on various list relating to home education. It seems that I was right and this one had slipped past many people's notice. This makes Alison Sauer's irritation all the more difficult to understand. I may not have phrased it as precisely as I could have done, but surely she would be pleased for home educators to find out things like this that they did not know about?

Other objections to this short post made by  Alison were that it was inflammatory and designed to convey a sense of ‘immediacy, danger and urgency’. I am sorry if any readers were inflamed by reading it and apologise to those who felt that they were in immediate and urgent danger as a result. Perhaps in retrospect, it was a little thoughtless and irresponsible of me not to have chosen my words better. I must ask those who really were inflamed by this post to calm their passions. I am worried now that last night might have witnessed scenes in Cardiff like those from an old horror film, with  a crowd of yokels carrying flaming torches and armed with pitchforks attempting to storm the Welsh First Minister's home as consequence of reading my inflammatory post. The last thing I intended was to stir up the Welsh population to mutiny and I would be most distressed to hear that I had been the cause of any unpleasantness.

Nor was this all that Alison Sauer objected to. She was concerned that I was using secondary, rather than primary sources in a blog post. Now of course as somebody who writes history books for a living, I am perfectly familiar with the concept of primary and secondary sources. I have never in all my life though heard of anybody criticising a blog post for relying too heavily upon secondary sources. The explanation is of course that Alison and her husband are both history buffs. They read a lot on this subject and so it would be natural that they might seek to apply the tools of scholarship to a casual, thirty six word, personal blog post. Alas, to the rest of us, this might seem barking mad. Still, that is what it is like when you are absorbed in a hobby of that sort. So keen on history is she, that Alison Sauer dresses up at weekends to enact battles with the Sealed Knot. Those interested in such things can easily unearth  some charming  photographs of her on google, dressed as both  a Victorian barmaid and a 17th Century camp follower. No harm in that of course, but it does, as we saw yesterday, give one a rather skewed perspective when reading things that are not history books. Primary and secondary sources in a blog post, indeed!

One final point is that I was very puzzled about just how angry Mrs Sauer seemed to be about this little post. She was careful to point out that, ‘This is all I know and I have no involvement other than as an observer.’ Since that went without saying, I could not help but ask myself why she would tell us that and just why this business mattered so much to her. I did a little digging around and found that one list was saying that one person was already involved in the proposed consultation over the proposal to register home educators in Wales. This person ended by asking , “Guess who that is?’ I wondered if this was a hint about Alison Sauer.  I was curious and asked Alison if she had any particular interest in the thing. She says she does not.

I hope that this has reassured any readers who were inflamed or put in apprehension of danger by my drawing attention to what is being proposed in Wales. I read the post over and over and still cannot see that it is anything from which I might gain, as Alison Sauer puts it, ‘a perverse joy.’ Without giving away to many details of my private life, I think that I am prepared to share with readers the information that there are things in my life which do furnish me with perverse joys. Blogging about the activities of the Welsh Assembly is not one of them.

Possible action ahead on the home education legislation front

I am not, as regular readers will know, in general a great fan of home education conspiracy theories. However, I am beginning to wonder whether something is afoot in parliament. Consider this question, asked on January 19th of Michael Gove by Laurence Robertson, Conservative MP for Tewksbury ;

'To ask the Secretary of State for Education what estimate he has made of the number of children who were home-schooled in each constituency in the latest year for which figures are available'

A few days later, on January 24th, Pat Glass, Labour North east Durham, asked Michael Gove;

'What recent estimate he had made of the number of children in the North east Durham constituency who are home schooled'

On February 3rd, another Conservative MP, Gareth Johnson of Dartford, asked Gove;

'What estimate he has made of the number of children who are home schooled in the Dartford constituency'

In each case, Gove simply told the MPs that the Department for Education does not collect information about the number of home-schooled children and has not made a recent estimate of the number of home-schooled children in Dartford, North east Durham or Tewksbury. This is all a bit odd, especially since there was a similar string of questions last year. Sometimes, governments will get backbenchers to submit questions in this way in order to pretend that there is widespread public anxiety to which the government intends to respond with a new law. What is curious here is that these are a mixed bag of Labour and Tory, all asking precisely the same questions, to which they almost certainly already know the answer.

We know that Gove is supposedly considering what changes, if any, need to be made to current arrangements for the regulation of home education. It is odd that he should be receiving all these questions about the subject, questions which are designed to show that the government has no idea how many home educated children there are. This is something which many people, both MPs and others, find alarming. Unless we assume that this is all sheer coincidence and that all these MPs have spontaneously come up with identically worded questions for the Secretary of State for Education, then I think it a fair guess that something is about to happen.

Meanwhile, with the Welsh referendum on the March 3rd, which could grant new power to the Welsh Assembly to direct education, there is another attempt to 'do' something about home education. If the referendum goes in favour of increased powers for the Welsh Assembly, I can see something happening pretty swiftly there. This might in effect mean trialling a new system of regulation which could then be adopted in England as well. Interesting times.