Three home educating myths

I have before examined in detail some of the odder myths associated with British home education, but  there are many new readers here lately and for their benefit  I shall today  outline three popular misconceptions about home education.

1. Paula Rothermel found that home educated children did better academically than those at school.

This old chestnut is still doing the rounds; it cropped up last month in a comment on the Times Educational Supplement forum. Briefly, the legend is that Paula Rothermel conducted extensive research and found that home educated children did fantastically well academically. This is awfully misleading for two reasons. First, because the samples used were so tiny as to be meaningless. For instance one of the claims was that 94% of six year-olds were in the top band when tested for reading ability. This was in comparison with the 16% of schooled children who fell into this band. Very impressive, until you read the fine print and learn that this research relates to just seventeen children. Even less impressive when you learn that Rothermel did not test their literacy herself, but posted the tests out and relied upon the parents to conduct them! For some reason, Rothermel's tiny, self-selected samples, which rely almost entirely upon parental assessment, are still being touted around by home educators.

2. Many famous people were home educated.

Claiming that people like Einstein or the Wright brothers were home educated is intended to show people that being home educated can create great scientists, inventors and writers. The trick here is in how you define ‘home educated’. On one of the home education lists Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian, was recently described as being home educated. In fact, like most German children before World War I, he started school at the age of seven. What people do is use the British school starting age of five and then assume that any child in Europe who does not begin school at that age must be home educated! Sometimes, people are plucked at random and the assertion made that they were home educated, even though they really attended school like everybody else. Einstein and the Wright brothers are in this category as are most of the other names one sees in the lists of famous people who were home educated. Even more curious is the inclusion in such lists, of people who could not have attended school. The Home Education UK site has Joan of Arc down as being home educated. No girls at all were at school in France during her lifetime.

3. You don’t need GCSEs to get into college or university.

This one has proved an absolute killer for many home educating parents; particularly those who favour autonomous education. They avoid entering their kids for examinations and then when they are fifteen or sixteen, expect them to get into college. It very rarely comes off, except for subjects like  art, textiles, design, photography, drama and so on, where you can sometimes get in on a portfolio or audition. It is almost unheard of for a college to allow a child without GCSEs to study academic A levels like physics. Even on the rare occasions when this does happen, getting to university can be gravely handicapped by the lack of GCSEs. Because there are often many applicants for university places, all with the same A levels, a kind of tie-break sometimes takes place. If you have two young people, both with three A levels at A in the same subject, then a good way of deciding is to look at their GCSEs. The one who has ten GCSEs at A or A* will generally be preferred over the one with no GCSEs at all.

I shall be covering other misconceptions and myths over the next few weeks, because no matter how often these ideas are exposed as nonsense, a new generation of home educating parents is always ready to come forward and be led into error by people who really ought to know better.

How well do home educated children do academically?

We looked yesterday at a ‘briefing paper’ about the proposed Welsh law on home education. This was designed to bamboozle education professionals into believing that there is good evidence that home education in this country is likely to lead to strong academic outcomes. One of the ways that this was done was to talk of a page on a website intended specifically for home educated children’s examination results and then pretend that these were the achievements of members of one home educating support group. We also saw evidence from the USA which apparently tended to suggest that home educated children did well academically and were more likely to go to college and university than schooled children. This is also implausible and for much the same reason.


The research quoted in the ‘briefing paper’ yesterday was that conducted by Larry Rudner and Brian Ray. Although extensive, it suffered from the same disadvantage as the statistics from the British website; that is to say, it was all self-selected. One sees at once the problem. Those volunteering to take part in such research are those for whom home education has been a success. Those who remain semi-literate after ten years of home education are unlikely in the extreme to offer to take part in any project looking at academic achievement. What is needed is a large group of young people, some of whom have been to school and others of whom have been home educated, so that we may compare their academic levels. Such a study has in fact been running in America for over ten years and the data from this provides a far more realistic and objective measure of the educational quality of home education than anything produced by Rudner or Ray.

Those wishing to attend college or university in the United States sit either the American College Testing assessment or the Scholastic Aptitude Test; the ACT or SAT. These measure such things as English, including reading ability, science and mathematics. Since the late 1990s, those taking these tests have been asked if they were educated at home. Of course, in a sense, this too is a self selected sample consisting only of those wishing to attend college, but that too reveals interesting information, as we shall see.

The first thing that one notices is that although home educated children taking these tests do tend to be slightly ahead of those who went to school, the differences are not dramatic. The ACT is scored from 1 to 36. The average schooled pupils score is 21, but home educated teenagers come in a little higher at almost 23. It gets really interesting when you break down the individual components of the scores. Home educated kids are quite a bit ahead on English, especially reading. This is not surprising really, since they spend much of their time in the company of adults; one would expect them to be more articulate and have a better vocabulary than those who spend their days in the company of other children. There is no difference at all in science and in mathematics, the home educated children lagged noticeably behind those who had been to school.

Another point to consider is that the proportion of home educated teenagers applying to go into further education seemed to be less than expected, given the numbers. In other words, it looks as though home educated children in America are less not more likely to go to university.

Of course, these figures must be treated with caution, but they are never the less intriguing. They do seem to suggest that the educational advantages of home education are not quite as pronounced as some would have us believe. The teenagers might have greater vocabularies, but they are worse at mathematics. There is no discernible advantage in science. The fact that a lower proportion of home educated children than expected is applying to go to university is also worth thinking about. This all gives a far more balanced picture of home education than one normally gains from looking at research financed by people like the HSLDA.

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes

The Department for Children, Schools and families announced recently;

Parents of home educated young people between the age of 14 and 16
who have the offer of a place at college 2010-2011 subject to funding can
ask their local authority to pay the college fees. In all cases where the LA
agrees to pay the fees, the LA is guaranteed to be able to recoup the
money by including the young person in the Alternative Provision census
in January 2011

At which, there was much rejoicing among home educating parents, many of whom thought that this would mean their children being given free places at colleges. One has to wonder if that is how it is going to work out in practice. Now leaving aside the question of just why so many home educating parents seem so keen to get their kids into college rather than school, what is actually happening about this?

Reading this directive carefully, we notice at once a curious thing. There is no suggestion whatsoever that the local authority will, let alone must pay the fees for these children. Parents may ask and the LA may agree. Knowing how uncooperative some local authorities can be, I hope that I am not being unduly cynical if I observe that asking is not getting. It is made very clear by the reference to, ' In all cases where the LA agrees to pay the fees', that the DCSF expects there to be other cases where the LA does not agree to pay the fees. How are parents to know? Are they to enrol their child at college and then ask the college to approach the local authority? What happens if their local authority says 'no'?

I have rung around a few friends who work at various colleges and I think I can see why many colleges will be very reluctant to become involved in this and actually offer places to home educated children. In short, I can see, if not what is going on, at least what some colleges think might be going on. It is this. They fear that certain local authorities are going to start getting them to take hard cases who cannot be managed at school. This could be done without any sort of prior consultation simply by the schools advising parents to deregister their kids from school and then to apply for a place at college because they are now home educators. This would mean that local authorities could, in effect, transfer difficult and unmanageable pupils from schools to colleges. If they set this up officially, they might be compelled to offer extra funding to colleges in order to help with these kids. This way, it could be done for very little.

Mind, I don't say that this is what the local authorities are up to or that this will be the result of the directive from the DCSF, simply that some people think that this could be the case. At the very least, it does not look as though access to colleges will be automatic for home educated children. I can foresee that many parents will still end up having to pay. Those hoping for such places could perhaps do worse than bear in mind the old German proverb; blessed are those who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed......

Everybody goes to school

There is one thing that practically every grown person in this country has in common. Young or old, rich or poor, black or white, male or female; everybody has attended school. Well, almost everybody. Everybody except the tiny handful of misfits and cranks who have been home educated. It is sometimes difficult for those intimately involved with some hobby, pastime or lifestyle, to appreciate just how strange it looks to outsiders. You have only to listen to a Scientologist or Moonie explaining his belief system and watch the expressions on the faces of the uninitiated as they listen. That's exactly the same look that you will see on people's faces when you talk to them about home education. I mean why wouldn't anybody send their kid to school? That is seriously weird!

Because so many of us spend a lot of our time talking, writing, reading and thinking about home education, we tend sometimes to forget how it looks to others. We take it for granted that everyone knows about the Badman Report or that people are aware that while education is compulsory, school is not. In fact, of course, the vast majority of people are still completely in the dark about all this. The Internet may have made information more freely available, but you still have to look for it.

The truth is, school is a given, probably the only given about which you can be certain when you meet a stranger. You may not know where she was born, who she votes for or how much she earns, but you definitely know that she went to school! In this respect, the adult who has never attended school is bound to be something of an oddity. It cannot help but mark one out in a thousand different ways, not all of them immediately apparent.

When my daughter started college last week, she came home a little bemused on the first day. Some of the children who had started were enchanted by a fantastically novel experience, something that they found really peculiar about college; they could visit the lavatory whenever they wished without first seeking permission! My daughter was utterly baffled by this. She also could not understand why a lot of the students persisted in calling the lecturers "Sir" and "Miss" , rather than using their Christian names. She has never called anybody "Sir" in the whole course of her life. These are two small examples of the shared cultural background that all adults in this country share, but from which home educated children are excluded. This lack of a common background cannot help but mark the home educated person out as being different from others, even a bit of an oddball. This might not necessarily be a good thing.

I still have a lot of doubts about home education, even as to whether it is the best way of raising children. Educationally, it is of course an amazingly efficient way of working. Unlimited one to one tuition, unrivalled opportunity for field trips and lectures in any subject you like, no distractions by a lot of idiots who don't want to learn. From that point of view, it is unbeatable. I am not at all sure though whether it is the best way for a child to grow and develop socially. I am also a little concerned at how home educated children may, as they get older, diverge more and more from the common social values which link all members of society together.

On a wider level, I cannot quite make up my mind whether home education is a marvellous, fast growing movement which represents in some sense the future of individualised learning, or if it is just another of those crackpot ideas like water births and macrobiotic diets over which the middle classes periodically go mad. Only time will tell.

Opting out of the system - should home educators expect access to GCSEs, college and OU places for their children?

There is an interesting thread on the HE-UK list at the moment. It was started by a mother who is angry that her 15 year old son is not entitled to a free place at an FE college, but will instead have to pay £3000 in tuition fees. On the face of it, this seems outrageous. But is it really?

One of the best things about home educating for me has been the complete freedom which it meant for us. If one does not want to take GCSEs, that's fine. If one does wish to do so, then there is none of that nonsense of choosing "options" at the age of fourteen; a process which all too often seems to compel children to study things in which they have no interest at all. If, as we did, you prefer to do International GCSEs, rather than GCSEs, then that is OK as well. It's great!

There is a downside to this glorious freedom; it is accompanied by complete responsibility for the child's education, including of course financial responsibility. In my case, this meant paying £120 for each examination taken. Had I wanted to send my daughter to college at fourteen or fifteen, then I suppose that I too would have been obliged to pay £3000 for the privilege. This is irritating, but quite fair. After all, if rather than teaching her myself at that age, I wanted to send her to an educational institution, then there are several free establishments in the town to choose from. They are called schools.

There is free educational provision for every child in this country up to the age of 18. A child can take GCSE's for nothing and then go on to do A levels at college if that is what is required. All completely free. If we choose not to take advantage of this provision, but instead wish to pay for an independent school or do the job ourselves, then we are at liberty to do so. What we cannot reasonably expect is for the state run educational system to bend over backwards to adapt itself to our wishes. Why should it? After all the whole structure is geared towards children attending school until 16 and then going on to college or sixth form. It would be rather as though we rejected the NHS in favour of treating our own illness, but then insisted on jumping the queue to see a specialist when something tricky cropped up. Those who had stayed in the system would get a bit tetchy about it! If we want to use the state's educational system, then that is fine; it is there for the taking as long as we follow the rules. If, on the other hand, we want to do the job ourselves, that is also fine. We can't really expect to nip in as and when though and expect preferential treatment for bits that we quite fancy the look of.

I shall be posting a piece in the next few days specifically about GCSEs and the possibility of the DCSF giving home educated children access to them. In the meantime, I will remark that I have the distinct feeling that FE colleges and also perhaps the OU are beginning to get a little tired of home educating parents and their children! It strikes me that more and more colleges are sticking to the rules and that there have been signs that the OU too seems to be making life a little more tricky for home educators. Whether this is due to pressure from the DCSF or local authorities, I don't know, but there seem more stories lately from parents who are finding these institutions less accommodating than has been the case in the past.