A minor mystery

Since the recent unpleasantness with Alison Sauer, I have been puzzling something over in my mind and it is this. As soon as I came across reference to the Welsh Assembly Government’s plans for the compulsory registration and monitoring of home education, I felt that I should alert others to what was in the wind. I read about the plans on the night of August 4th and then posted about them the following morning. At that time, there had been no mention of this on any of the lists such as HE-UK or EO. Even Fiona Nicholson seemed to have missed it. As soon as I mentioned it here, on the morning of August 5th, others picked it up and started spreading the word to various lists and forums. I found this deliciously ironic, that I, who am viewed by some as the arch-enemy of home education, should be the one to tip people the wink about this development!

Once I had mentioned it, the news spread like wildfire and is of course now being talked about everywhere. I dare say that this would have happened soon anough, even without my intervention; I am not taking credit for that! Here is the mystery though. Soon after I had posted about this, Alison Sauer came on here and commented scathingly about several minor errors in what I had said. She seemed very tetchy with me and, I thought, annoyed to see the Welsh proposals being talked about. Judging from her comments, she knew all about the thing, certainly she knew far more about it than I did. Yet she had not said a word about this on any of the lists to which she belongs and if it had not been for my mentioning it, I gained the impression that Alison Sauer would have sat on the news herself. Why should this be? Why did it take me to alert home educators to what was going on, when Alison Sauer already knew all about it? I am puzzled by this and would be interested to hear of any theories.

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.

The real reasons for the opposition to the Welsh proposals for the registration and monitoring of home education

The Welsh Assembly hope to introduce a scheme to register and monitor home educators and their children, to ensure that an education is actually being delivered. Most ordinary people see nothing wrong with this, but a small number of militant home educators are fighting the proposals ferociously. Many of these are the same people who fought against the attempt to change the law in England in 2009 and 2010. There are not many of them, perhaps a couple of hundred at most, but they are very vociferous.

One of the things that I would like to know about these people is whether or not they really believe what they say. Let me explain. Although there are some home educating parents who are grateful for the help of their local authority, I am guessing that the vast majority just want to be left alone. This is the case with the whole spectrum of home educators; ranging from radical unschoolers at one end to the fanatically structured at the other. It is obvious why this should be the case. If you practice autonomous education, then the very act of examining and asking probing questions about the education could have the effect of altering its style or direction. If on the other hand, like me, you are an extremely structured educator, then you are just as likely to be unwelcoming to inspection. This is because those investigating the education that you are providing will not understand what you are up to and the hour or so spent in a visit will just disrupt the smooth running of the day’s work. This is why I did not register with either of the local authorities where we lived while I was educating my child; there would have been no point.

So far, so good. Up to this point I am in complete accord with all the other parents who do not wish to be registered or monitored. Where I perhaps differ is that I have not the least doubt that a regimen of national monitoring of this sort would have an effect, a generally beneficial effect, upon home education. To understand why I think this, it is necessary to look at the supposed beliefs of those home educators who are opposed to the proposals currently under consideration in Wales.

Militant home educators are a tricksy bunch. They will say anything at all in support of their cause if they think that it will play well with those who know nothing about home education. For example, during the Badman business, the focus was upon ‘rights’. There was much talk of the ‘rights’ of parents and, to a lesser extent, those of the children themselves. You will not hear much about this during the present campaign, because it has rightly been gauged that popular opinion is in favour of monitoring and talk of ‘rights’ will not sway most parents whose children are at school. Instead, the emphasis is on the cost of registration and monitoring and the pointlessness of it.

The thing that I am unable to figure out is whether or not the home educators opposed to the idea of monitoring really believe that it would have no effect or only a bad effect upon home education? I somehow doubt that do. At the moment, one withdraws a child from school or fails to send her and there is an end to the matter. Parents can avoid meeting with or speaking to local authority officers and fob them off for years at a time with copied ‘philosophies’ or threats of legal action. Some of the children of such parents are probably being educated; others are probably not. Does anybody really doubt that if they knew that they would be expected to give some account of the education that their children were receiving, then many of those parents would put their shoulders to the wheel and provide some structured teaching and get their children to read, write, study history and do sums? I would say that this is a racing certainty. Of course, most autonomous educators do believe this; but unlike me, they think that it would be a bad thing if this were to happen.

Diverting the debate to various states in America or other countries, such as New Zealand is very neatly done, but does not alter the fact that compulsory registration and monitoring would have a great effect on home education either in England or in Wales. One of those effects would be that more parents would be undertaking structured work with their children; that is to say actually teaching them. I think that this would be a good thing and so, I suspect, would almost all non-home educators. The militant home educators who are opposing any such move tend to be autonomous educators who think that for parents to feel obliged to teach their children regularly would be a bad thing. Because this sounds pretty mad to most people whose children attend school, they find it necessary to dissemble and claim instead that they are worried about the waste of money that such a scheme would entail. This is not an honest way to carry on. I think that it would be interesting to hear what those who do not approve of the idea of registration and monitoring think the actual results would be. Do they, like me, think that the natural consequence would be more parents teaching their children in a  structured way? If so, is this at the heart of their opposition?

Why the Welsh proposals make logical and legal sense

I shall probably regret doing this, but I think that the time has come to consider the proposed legislation in Wales which would require parents to register home educated children and allow their education to be monitored. I fully appreciate the opposition of some to the idea, but even so, the people fighting against the idea of registration and monitoring are almost certainly wrong and labouring under a fundamental misapprehension. The misapprehension is the very same one which gripped many of those who also campaigned against Graham Badman and his ideas.

The law makes certain assumptions about ordinary people. It assumes, for instance, that the default setting of normal citizens is not to be stealing, murdering or torturing their children to death. This means that unless evidence emerges, the police will not come knocking on your door to check that you have not harmed your child or are storing stolen goods on the premises. We have a general duty to avoid doing these things and so it is taken for granted that unless there is reason to think otherwise, we are not doing them. Society could hardly function if the police and authorities were constantly fretting that we were breaking the law in some way; it has to be assumed that we are not. This general assumption has been mistakenly thought by many home educators to include the fact that we are causing our children to receive a suitable education. In other words, if the police are not checking our homes regularly for stolen goods, why should the local authority check our children regularly to ensure that we are educating them? It is an ingenious idea, but unfortunately it is quite wrong-headed and confused.

We all have a general duty to avoid breaking the law. This largely consists of refraining from doing things. We must restrain ourselves if we feel like stealing, we must avoid starving or mistreating our children. In the case of children, the law takes it as given that parents voluntarily undertake to ensure the wellbeing of their children. Unless evidence of cruelty or neglect comes to light, we believe that parents look after their children and protect them from harm.

We have been talking so far of various assumptions made about citizens by the law; that they will not rob, rape or murder, that they will look after their children and so on. There are however additional and positive duties which are from time to time laid upon us. These are things which the law does not just expect us to refrain from doing as a matter of course, such as stealing or mistreating our children, but activities in which we must participate. These are things that we are compelled to do; not merely refrain from doing. One of these is jury service. If I am summoned for jury service, society is calling upon me to do something, to fulfil a duty. Because this is something thrust upon us, some of us will try to evade this duty. We will pretend to be deaf or have various commitments which prevent us undertaking this active duty. This happens with all duties which are pushed on us without our volunteering for them; some will try to get out of them. Another case is if a constable calls for our assistance while making an arrest. We have a legal duty to go to his aid. Some will not want to and try to evade this duty. From time to time, prosecutions result from this reluctance to undertake such duties.

Now the law might assume that in general people will avoid evildoing and obey the law by not going out of their way to commit crimes, but this is not at all the case with duties which are pressed upon them. In these cases it makes perfect sense to assume that some people called upon to perform a duty will try to get out of it. They have not freely chosen to undertake the duty; why should they do so? I am sure we all know the efforts that some people go to avoid jury service! In this case, enquiries may be routinely made into the reasons people claim to have for not accomplishing whatever the duty requires of them. We know that some people will wriggle out of undertaking a duty and since this is a very small section of the population, it is quite in order to look into the case closely, to make sure that not too many of us are evading our duty.

The situation which I have described above with respect to duties which some people will try and evade is precisely what is happening with the duty to cause our children to receive an education. The law may very well, and indeed does, take it for granted that we are not starving or torturing our children; it does not and should not assume that everybody is cheerfully undertaking the extra legal duty laid down by statute to provide the child with an education. Just as with any other duty imposed upon us, there will be those who seek to shirk it. This is simply human nature and it would be odd if this were not to happen. Because of this, it makes perfect sense to check that the duty is in fact being performed; that is to say that the parents are providing their children with a suitable education.

The ideas currently under discussion in Wales, amount to no more than this; that society will check that parents are fulfilling a duty which has been forced upon them. It is entirely possible that most of them are already doing so. Inevitably, there will be some who are not and the aim is to identify these and get them to realise that they must either provide an education for their children themselves or delegate the task to others.

What about New Zealand?

The more articulate home educators in this country are very good at citing various faraway places as showing why the situation in this country with regard to home education should never change. We saw this here recently, when somebody brought up New Zealand as a knockdown argument against the  routine monitoring of home education. I suspect that those using the case of New Zealand in this way actually know very well why it is not comparable with this country, but for the benefit of those who genuinely do not, let’s have a look at why the cases of this country and New Zealand are wholly dissimilar when it comes to home education.


In England, any parent wishing to educate a child at home must do one of two things. The first option is, as in my own case, to do nothing at all; that is to say just not sending the child to school at the age of five. The second is if the child is attending school,  writing to the Head and saying that you are taking your child out of the school. That’s it. No seeking permission, no registration; nothing at all. It is this state of affairs that many militant home educators are determined to maintain at all costs. Where does New Zealand fit into all this? Some people in this country are concerned that children being educated at home might not be receiving a good education. New Zealand, until a few years ago, used to monitor home education pretty closely and found that 95% of children being educated in this way were getting an acceptable education. This appeared to remain the case even when routine monitoring was stopped. Therefore, so the argument goes, it would be a waste of time and money to start routine monitoring of home educated children in England.

Assuming that it is true that 95% of home educated children in New Zealand are getting good education, does that tell us anything useful about the current situation in England? Not in the slightest. This is because parents in New Zealand are not allowed to educate their children at home until they have fulfilled certain conditions. The law there is very clear. The 1989 Education Act says that permission to educate a child at home will only be granted if it can be shown that the child, ‘will be taught as regularly and as well’ as if he were at school. Note that; home educated children in New Zealand must be taught and not only that,  taught as much as children at school and to at least as high a standard. Of course, some children in this country are getting this at home; many are not. There are an awful lot of parents here who do not approve of regular teaching, certainly not as frequently as it is given in schools. These would be breaking the law in New Zealand.

In order to home educate in New Zealand, one must ask for permission from the Ministry of Education. No nonsense here about just dealing with a local authority! Permission is not always granted. There are two reasons for this. One is that if a child about whom there is anxiety is taken from school, the school will contact the Ministry of Education and explain why they think why home education is a bad idea. Secondly, to gain permission anyway, called being granted an exemption, parents must fill out a very detailed outline of the type of teaching which they mean to undertake. Teaching, remember, not just allowing the child to learn autonomously. Here is a very abbreviated version of the sort of thing parents would need to be setting out in detail before they could even be considered for permission to teach their child at home:

1. Special Education Needs
If enrolled in a registered school, would your child be likely to need special education, forexample in a special class or clinic or by a special service? If yes, how do you plan to meet your child’s special educational needs?

2. Knowledge and understanding
Describe your knowledge and understanding of the broad curriculum areas you intend to cover as you educate your child.

3. Curriculum
Describe your curriculum or programme. Detail what you intend to cover with your child in different areas of your stated curriculum. The National Curriculum Framework may serve as a guide but use of this is not compulsory. It lists seven essential learning areas and eight grouipings of essential skills. These are listed below for your information should you wish to use the National Curriculum Framework as a guide.

4. The National Curriculum
Essential Learning Areas
Language and Languages
Mathematics
Science
Technology
Social Sciences
The Arts
Health and Well-Being

Essential Skills
Communication Skills
Numeracy Skills
Information Skills
Problem-solving Skills
Self-management and competitive Skills
Social and co-operative Skills
Physical Skills
Work and study Skills
Whatever source of curriculum you select, you should be specific about the skills you want your child to learn and you should be clear about matching the learning needs of your child to your programme.

5. Topic Plan
To help the Ministry understand how your curriculum vision translates into practical terms, we ask you to includ one topic of your choosing.

We are looking for the following elements in your statement:
The Topic Title –
The Aim – what you are going to teach your child.
Resources – what materials you would use to teach the topic.
Method – what steps would you take to communicate/teach the material? Please be as
clear as possible.
Evaluation – how you will test/measure the effectiveness of your teaching.

6. Resources and Reference Material
(There is no need to list the titles of books.) Please provide a comprehensive list of all resources and reference material available to you. Also list the type of material you may intend to include in the future. Do not list the titles of every publication.

7. Environment
State how you will use the environment and your community to extend and enrich your child’s education. Please include in this a description of any educational visits you hope to make.

8. Social Contact
Describe how you intend to provide for your child’s need for social contact with other children.

9. Assessment and Evaluation
Explain how you are going to assess and evaluate the progress your child is making. Remember, you will need to have some record of this over the years, eg, if your child wants to enter an apprenticeship, this will be needed.

10. Regularity
The legislation requires a commitment to regularity. In explaining your routines, show how you will meet the requirement that your child will be taught at least as regularly as in a registered school. Some parents provide a timetable to meet this request, some describe their integrated approach. You may like to include one of the following:
• Timetable or
• Integrated curriculum description or
• Description of typical routines used.

11. Other Information
Please make any other comments you consider relevant.





There are several consequences of all this. First, the sort of parent in this country who has a row with the head at her child’s school or is anxious about bullying and then dashes off a letter deregistering the kid, is unknown in New Zealand. Applying for an exemption is a serious process which can drag on for ages. It is very common for the Ministry of Education to consider an application  and then write back asking for further and fuller details. This alone discourages parents from just taking their children from school in response to some temporary problem. It is one thing to take a child out of school and say that you will ‘de-school’  for six or nine months; quite another to realise that you will be expected to provide fulltime teaching from the word go! Although the majority of applications for an exemption are eventually granted, quite a few are not. These are the cases where the school is worried about the child or the parents seem to be incapable of providing an education.  It must be borne in mind too that applications for exemption must be renewed twice a year and can be withdrawn at any time.

I think that readers are now beginning to see why 95% of home educated children in New Zealand might be getting a good education. It is because those who are not prepared to teach their children as much and as well as a school are not allowed to home educate in the first place. Those who do not feel up to the job of teaching to a high standard usually don't  bother to apply for an exemption. Trying to draw any comparison between this state of affairs and the case of England, where anybody can take their child from school at the drop of a hat and then announce that the kid will be doing nothing for six months, is absolutely meaningless. I am not at all surprised that the great majority of home educated children in New Zealand are receiving a good education. This would also be the case in this country if we put into place the same system here.

Of course, if those who talk enthusiastically about New Zealand and the high educational standards achieved by home educating parents there are in favour of a rigorous system like the one there being instituted in this country; I would be the first to give my support. Imagine parents in this country being expected to teach their children fulltime to as high a standard as schools! It sounds great to me and I will certainly join in any campaign for this. Until then, it is probably best that English home educators give the subject of New Zealand a wide berth, as it raises more questions for them than it answers.

Do parents in this country have a right to educate their children at home?

The debate about the Welsh proposals to regulate home education have inevitably brought forth the usual talk of a parental ’right’ to home educate. This is so at odds with the actual state of affairs in England and Wales that I feel it is time once more to shoot down this absurd notion.

We have various rights in this country; for example the right to a fair trial. We are the passive recipients of this right no matter who or what we are. We can be clever or stupid, deaf or blind, confined to a wheelchair or mentally ill, foreign or British; we all have a right, guaranteed by law, to receive a fair trial. The same situation applies to children and education. They have a right, guaranteed under law, to a full-time education. This is irrespective of whether they are clever or stupid, disabled, foreign or anything else; it is a right they all enjoy between the ages of five and sixteen.

Rights are enjoyed by all, but this is not the case with duties. These often entail some activity on the part of those upon whom they are imposed. Take sitting as a juror. This is not a right but a duty. If a potential juror were to be unable to undertake the duty, then he would not be called upon to perform it. Suppose somebody called for jury service were to be deaf, blind, unable to speak and also suffering from a psychosis. Few of us would want such a person to sit in judgement upon us. A person of this sort would not be allowed to undertake the duty of jury service. This is because sitting on a jury is a duty and not a right. Because it entails an activity, it is quite reasonable to enquire whether or not the person concerned is capable of fulfilling the duty. Of course, being deaf, blind, unable to speak and being also mentally ill would not affect somebody’s right to a fair trial. This is the difference between a right and a duty.

Wherever there is a right, there are corresponding duties. In other words, if we have a right to a fair trial, then others have a duty to make sure that we get it. If I have a right to walk down the street, then that right must be protected and others have a duty not to impede me as I stroll down the high road. Rights and duties again, you see; two very different things.

Now if children in this country have a right to an efficient, full-time education, then others must have a duty to see that they get it. The people who have this duty are usually the parents. They have a duty, which means that they must take active steps to ensure that the child’s rights are granted to it. Some undertake this duty by registering the child at school, others prefer to provide the education themselves. They are fulfilling a duty by doing this, not exercising a right.

Since, just as in the case of the disabled juror at whom we looked above, undertaking the duty of providing the child with an education is an active thing, something which parents do, not something to which they are entitled, it is perfectly reasonable that society check that they are in fact capable of carrying out this duty. We would not wish to impose a duty upon somebody who was not up to the job, would we? So it is that society, in the form of local authorities, might wish to reassure themselves that parents are able to perform what is a very arduous duty. Providing a full-time education for a child should not be lightly undertaken and our common sense tells us that just as in the case of the juror who could not be expected to fulfil his duty during a trial, so too will there be parents who are not really up to the job of providing an education for their child. That there should be a presumption that all parents are able to fulfil their duty in this way, would be ridiculous. Many would clearly not be able to do so.

All that is being proposed in Wales is that society enquire a little into the extent to which individual parents are able personally to provide their children with an education, rather than fulfilling their duty towards their child by handing the job over to trained professionals. This has nothing at all to do with the ’rights’ of the parents; they have none in this case. It is concerned solely and simply with protecting the right of the child to a suitable education. In other words, the aim will be to ensure that those charged with the duty of causing the child to receive an education, that is to say the parents, are in fact discharging this duty.

Any debate about the Welsh proposals which makes any mention whatsoever of the ’rights’ of parents has already taken a wrong turn. The only debate about the matter should be whether or not it is being claimed that all parents are actually capable of undertaking this duty, that of educating their children themselves at home. If we agree that some are not, and most of us would concede this, then the question arises as to the extent to which society is entitled to make enquiries and take action to safeguard the rights of children.

Are local authorities acting unlawfully when they monitor home education on a regular basis?

One of the most irritating features of home education in this country is the tendency of parents to latch on to random and fairly obscure words and phrases, incorporating them in every letter they write to their council or submission made to a select committee. ‘Conflate’ is one such word, ‘purposive’ is another; as in ‘learning by purposive conversation‘. Combined with the use of odd Latin expressions, I think that the hope is that this will lend their writing a veneer of erudition. Sadly, it has the opposite effect!

Without doubt, the most popular and overused expression in recent years has been ‘ultra vires’. These Latin words simply means beyond one’s powers and are generally used in connection with statutory bodies such as local authorities or government departments. For home educators, this phrase is most often used about the routine monitoring of home education. This is on the increase in some areas; the county of Lincolnshire and city of Nottingham, for example. The claim is made that these local authorities are accordingly acting in an unlawful manner and exceeding their powers. Let us see if this might be true.

The basis for many of the claims made about local authorities overstepping the mark with home education are founded upon a couple of lines in the 2007 guidelines on home education. They say:



2.7 Local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine  
      basis.



There are three points to consider here. First, local authorities go beyond their statutory duties all the time and mostly people are glad about this. The statutory duties are the absolute bare minimum that an authority must undertake. If they do not do these things, then they are in breach of the law and Council Tax payers or the government can call them to account. Doing more than this bare minimum though is what most of us expect from our council. If my council has a statutory duty to run at least one library and then instead opens three or four, I am not going to complain about this. If they have a duty to empty my bin at least once a fortnight, I shall not be taking them to a judicial review if they want to collect my rubbish more frequently than this. They are not acting unlawfully by doing more than their statutory duty.

In other words, the fact that they may have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring home education on a regular basis does not mean that they cannot or should not do this. It is just one of those extra things that they might choose to do which goes beyond the absolute minimum that they are obliged to do by law.

The second point to consider is that it is in any case debatable whether or not such a duty exists in law. The law is unclear on this point and many local authorities take a different view of it than that held by home educating parents. Before instituting a policy of this sort, local authorities always take extensive legal advice, knowing as they do that home educators are a touchy bunch. I rang up  Lincolnshire and Nottingham and they both confirmed that they have taken the advice of barristers on this question before sending out the letters to which some home educating parents object. What it essentially boils down to is this. The legal department at these  local authorities believe one thing and have been confirmed in their belief by consultation with experts in the law relating to education. A handful of parents believe that they have a better understanding of the law, chiefly because of what they have read on various internet lists to which they belong. It will be interesting to see which side are right!

The third point is even simpler. Let us assume that local authorities do not have a right to monitor the quality of home education on a regular basis. In other words, let us concede everything that the most militant home educators assert so forcefully. Let us even grant that such actions on the part of local authorities would be unlawful. None of this makes the least difference. The aim of yearly checks has nothing to do with the quality of home education; they are intended simply and solely to establish that an education is actually still taking place. They have no reference at all to the quality of the thing; they just want evidence that the child is in fact being educated. The passage of time can have the effect of altering what would be a suitable education for a child and the fact that the local authority was satisfied that a child of five was receiving a suitable education tells them nothing at all about that same child at twelve or fourteen.

Local authorities are not acting unlawfully in checking each year that children who are not at school are receiving an education. It may not be strictly part of their duties to do this, but as I remarked above, we are usually pleased when our council does more than they have to! I am not at all sure that those home educating parents who have learnt all the law they know from just reading blogs and home educating forums really do know more than the Borough Solicitors in various places. The way to settle the matter would of course be to seek a judicial review and I understand that two people are currently attempting this in Lincolnshire. It will be interesting to see what happens.

How can we simply refuse monitoring?

A couple of days ago, somebody asked here for advice on frustrating the best efforts of her local authority to ensure that all the children within their area were receiving a suitable education. The question asked was, 'How can we simply refuse monitoring?' This is a common enough desire on the part of some home educating parents and although I have dealt with this question before, it will do no harm to run over the basics again for newcomers to home education.

The first rule is to make it quite clear to your local authority right from the start that they are dealing with a troublesome crank, rather than an ordinary parent. Sometimes just refusing to allow a local authority officer to visit your home will be enough to give this impression, but if this doesn't work then telling them 'We're autonomous!' will usually do the trick. It is as well that they know from the very beginning what sort of person they are dealing with. This is important, because you want the local authority to realise early on that you are the kind of person who will be complaining to her MP or getting the local paper involved if they hassle you too much by asking questions or trying to insist on visiting your home. Here's an old dodge which some have found useful. Why not simply quote chapter and verse of the relevant legislation when replying to an informal enquiry about your child's education? This will leave nobody in any doubt at all that you are a bloody minded, barrack-room lawyer type.

How can one get away with providing no evidence whatsoever to the local authority? This is not really as hard as it sounds. Begin by downloading an educational philosophy from ;

http://www.home-education.org.uk/ed-philos.htm


These have proved a great hit in the past. Just add your kid's name to the document and you're in business! You will end up with something along these lines;

Our approach to John's education is in the main opportunity-based,
child-led and very flexible. It is impossible to provide a timetable or to
specify in advance which activities we shall be undertaking.
We work to keep a good balance between child-led, informal learning
and a more directed approach. In general, it is our aim to facilitate
learning through John's interests rather than artificially contrived
situations to reach pre-determined outcomes. We are always vigilant for any gaps which should arise in our provision and ready, willing and able
to make the necessary adjustments to fill them.

Notice the cunning way in which you can avoid actually saying what your child is doing or learning. He could be an infant prodigy who also excels at athletics; he could equally well be blind, non-verbal, learning disabled and in a wheelchair. This is a vital gambit in your attempts to keep the local authority at bay. By keeping it completely vague in this way, you ensure that your local authority won't be able to work out what level your child should actually be working at. This is of course why it was essential to oppose vigorously the recommendation in Graham Badman's report which suggested that parents should provide a statement of educational intent for the coming year. Heavens, if once the local authority had that in their hands, they might be able to work out next year that your child hadn't learned a damned thing over the last twelve months!

Sometimes local authorities will ask for more 'evidence'. No need to panic. Why not take a photograph of your child looking at a tree or doing some baking? You can then claim that these are evidence of studying the environment in a scientific way and doing maths by measuring and calculating in a practical, life-based setting. Impossible to prove you wrong about that! The 'diary' is another popular ruse that many parents have found to pay dividends. Just get an old exercise book and write down dates. Under each date, put down some educational activities. This can be going to the library, visiting a museum, conducting experiments in the kitchen; almost anything at all really. Don't worry about being too accurate or truthful, it's not as though anybody is going to check up on all this.

Occasionally, you may get a stubborn local authority officer who is not prepared to take your word for it that your child is being educated. This can be a real pain. In such a case, try this. You should already by this stage have sent a succession of strange, oddly worded and angry letters full of long words to your local authority. (Always remember to copy these to the comments sections of Internet lists and blogs. Other home educators will get a real buzz from seeing how cleverly you have managed to portray yourself to non-home educators as somebody suffering from a massive social skills deficit combined with borderline personality disorder!) Presumably by now you will also have dazzled them with your knowledge of Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act, the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006, Education and Inspections Act 2006, Children Act 2004 and Sections 436a and 437 of the education Act 1996. You should also have demonstrated a mastery of the relevant case law. Now go in for the kill by reminding the local authority of the 2007 Guidelines for local authorities on elective home education. You can find them here;

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/publications/elective/


These contain some wonderful stuff about local authorities not being able to insist on visits and so on. This ought to get them off your case; after all, this is official government advice to them.

Any reasonably inventive parent should have no difficulty at all in refusing to be monitored by their local authority by following the simple points which I have outlined above. If you really find yourself stuck, then why not join the EO and HE-UK Internet lists? There you will find groups of like minded individuals. People just like you, who are all obsessively anxious to avoid having their children's education scrutinised by those best placed to judge its efficacy; i.e. the education department of the local authority. It has only been possible to sketch out the main points of strategy in this piece, but on the EO and HE-UK lists you will find plenty of people ready to help you with more specific advice.

Checking up on home educators

Responsibility in this country for seeing that a child is educated rests firmly with the parents. About that, there is no argument on either side of the home education debate; parents have a duty to cause their children to be educated. The next question to ask is how do parents come to have this duty, where does it come from? The answer to this question will shed light upon the vexed question of monitoring visits.

For myself, the answer is quite simple and straightforward. I believe this duty comes from God and is part of his instructions to humanity, along with the prohibition on adultery, admonition to love my neighbour and various other commandments. However, it's often a little tricky to claim that one is doing something just because the Lord says so. After all, the Lord apparently told Peter Sutcliffe to hack up prostitutes with a screwdriver, so we need to be a bit cautious about using divine commands alone as a justification for our actions! Fortunately, in this case we don't need to. We also have the Education Act 1996 to fall back on. This too says that parents have a duty to cause their children to receive an education.

Most irreligious people are, even if they are unaware of the fact, legal positivists. Let's face it, if duties and rights don't come from God, then they must come from men and women. In the case of our society, these duties and rights are codified and then formed into laws. In other words, the duty to see that our children are educated has been bestowed upon us by law. We have many other duties and responsibilities like this, duties that parliament has given us. Paying a certain proportion of our income to the government is one such duty. Keeping your gun locked up securely in a steel cabinet if you have a firearms certificate is another. Now just because these duties have been laid upon us by parliament, does not necessarily mean that everybody will abide by them all the time. Take tax, for instance. You might think that it would be enough for the law to say that we have to pay part of our earnings and that would be the end of it. Why can't the government just trust us to do it? Why do they have to check up on us? The answer is fairly obvious. Even though we have been given a duty by law, some people will try and evade it. That is why we have tax inspectors and why the Inland Revenue have a huge range of powers to enter our homes and look at our documents.

If I wish to keep a shotgun in my house, then I must by law obtain a firearms certificate. This is my duty. I must also keep it locked up safely when I'm not actually using it. The police make regular visits to the homes of those holding firearms certificates in order to check that their arrangements are in keeping with the law. If you refuse to let them in the house, that's fine; you just lose your firearms certificate. Why can't they just take shooters' word for it? They have a duty, surely the police should just assume that people are observing this duty? It's outrageous, they won't take anybody's word for it, but insist on checking their homes regularly!

It is, when you think about it, quite sensible. Parliament thrusts these duties upon us whether we want them or not. Clearly, some of us will try to wriggle out of our duties if the state isn't watching. And so the next logical step is that if parliament lays a duty or responsibilty upon us, they will also want to check that we are actually undertaking this duty and not shirking it because we think we can get away with it. Makes sense really. So when we have a duty to pay tax, the government appoint people to check that we are doing so. Otherwise some people might be tempted not to pay the full amount. Similarly, the law lays a duty on those holding firearms certificates to keep their weapons securely locked up. To make sure that some fool isn't leaving a loaded twelve bore leaning against the wall in the living room, the government gets the police to pop round from time to time to make sure that this particular duty is being adhered to. And of course in precisely the same way, when we are given a duty by parliament to see that our children are being educated, the government assumes that some people will avoid this duty. They want to get somebody to visit every so often to see whether citizens are also undertaking this duty.

The duties which we have are, if not from God, then simply the free creation of human minds. The implications of this idea are profound and I have sketched some of them above. The conclusion is inescapable, if the duty has been devised by men and women and imposed upon us, then it is perfectly reasonable for those same men and women to check that we are fulfilling this duty. Causing our children to receive a suitable education is just one of many duties which we have under law. As with many other of those duties, the government likes to check up from time to time that we are actually doing it and following the law.

How do I know that home education is sometimes used as a scam?

For a number of years I have worked part-time for a small charity based in East London. Among other things, I act as an advocate for the parents of children with special educational needs. This entails visiting their homes, most of which are on large housing estates. In recent years, I have noticed that many of these estates seem to have at least one or two youths hanging around who look as though they are only fourteen or so. Some are truanting, others have been excluded, but there are also those who have been de-registered because their parents are allegedly home educating them.

Whenever I visit a family to discuss their child's needs, I always ask if they know of any children living nearby who are home educated. This is sheer nosiness of course. Even worse, is the fact that if I can get an address I think nothing of knocking on the door and explaining that I have been visiting Mrs. X who lives on the fifth floor and that I am interested in home education. Almost invariably, I am invited in. Such invitations are less a tribute to my personal charm, which is in any case all but non-existent these days, and more to do with the fact that they think they might be able to get something out of me.

Once these parents realise that I am not employed by the local authority, they seldom bother to dissemble. The truth is that hardly any of them have ever had any intention of educating their children, either autonomously or otherwise. Why then have their children been de-registered? The reasons vary. Some have simply been unable to persuade their teenaged offspring to get out of bed in the morning and go to school. I have mentioned elsewhere that my own nephew fell into this category. Others have children who truant so regularly that they have been at risk of prosecution. Still others are parents of children who simply don't like school and can't see the point of going. Sometimes they can nag their parents into letting them stay at home on the pretext of home education.

There are sadder cases. One fourteen year old girl lived with her mother, who was mentally ill and agoraphobic. She hated it when her daughter went off to school for the day and left her alone. The daughter did not particularly enjoy school and so after a little research on the internet, she typed up a letter for her mother to sign, stating that she would home educate her daughter. The pair of them now spend the day watching television. If anybody asks, the daughter has told her mother to say, "We're autonomous." I doubt she even knows what the word means. In twenty first Century Britain this child has been abandoned by the system and now fulfils the role of nurse-companion to her sick mother. This is utterly disgraceful. Here, incidentally is a similar case from Norfolk which they gave to the Badman review;

"Faye's mother has mental and physical health problems; her elderly husband cannot fulfil the role of carer, so this has fallen to Faye. Faye's previous school did not inform our service at the time of her de-registration, so a considerable period of time elapsed before we became involved, during which time Faye had not received any education. There were various concerns about the appropriateness of home education due to Faye's home circumstances, along with her social isolation. Faye's mother refused an offer of support from Young Carers. Faye is obese and school phobic. She has regular hospital appointments relating to her obesity and associated problems and has been offered gastric band surgery when she is older. Faye's mother will not agree to any additional support, eg CAF, and has often been reluctant to meet with our service, cancelling various appointments at short notice. However, with support and encouragement over a period of three years, Faye's home education provision has improved."

I am not suggesting that autonomously educating parents are like this in general, nor that an autonomous education cannot be good for a child. The people I talk of above are at one extreme end of the home education spectrum. I rather think that the parents on this Blog lie at the other end; they are very committed to giving their children the best possible education, by whatever approach they choose. Somewhere between these two types lie the bulk of home educating parents, some of them doing well and others perhaps not quite as well. There might be parents who took their children from school intending to educate them and found they were not capable of doing so. Others who start well and then begin to flag, maybe need a little help and encouragement.

What I do know is that the current system is so slack that it enables many parents to take their children out of school without making any provision whatsoever for their education. I believe this to be a bad thing and it is for this reason that I am in favour of some of the recommendations in the Badman Report. I am aware that these might well inconvenience some genuine home educators, but I feel that this is a price worth paying.