Through the looking-glass; a look at the mad world of the Fortune-Woods

I have had one or two things to say over the last few weeks about those in the British home educating scene who manufacture scare stories and spread alarming rumours. Of course, no mention of this subject would be complete without a look at the stuff that Mike Fortune-Wood and his former wife have turned out. I have been browsing on the Home Education UK website and thought that I might just  publish some of the things to be found there. It provides a fascinating glimpse into an alternative universe; a world such as few of us have seen.

Lots of home educating families feel nervous about being out in the daytime and lots of  children never go out 'just in case'. Imagine if you could be routinely be stopped in the  street by policemen checking up on whether you should be in work and suspecting that  you might be committing a crime just because you were going to a bookshop on a  weekday morning. 

Is it really true that a lot of home educating families feel nervous about being out in the daytime? Apart, obviously, from the crossover group of families who are both home educators and also vampires.  And who are these, ‘lots of children’ who never go out, ‘just in case’? Have any readers yet met a home educated child who never goes out, 'just in case'?  One hardly likes to ask, 'In case of what?'  Are we to understand that these unfortunate children never leave their homes at all? That doesn't sound like a healthy model of home education!  Presumably, if they never go out,  those children won’t be worried about the curfews which are about to be imposed on them, which will make it illegal for children  to be on the streets at all, apart from, ‘the twilight world between 3 and 9PM’ What, you haven’t heard about this? You really ought to check the Home Education UK website more often! The Fortune-Woods have the facts about the new law;


A new education act is being planned which would make it illegal for children of compulsory  school age to be in a public place during school hours without good reason. This legislation is  primarily aimed at excluded children who are perceived as being a public menace but will affect other children such as those being home educated. Home educators can expect  problems similar to those experienced with anti truancy legislation which has been a nuisance for HE families almost since the day it was introduced. It largely depends of course upon the wording of the bill and how local police, who still have  difficulty understanding the nature of home education and how it works, interpret it. At worst  it could effectively make HE children prisoners in their homes from 9 till 3. Given that children in some areas are already under curfew after around 9pm that means that children  are only allowed out in the twilight world between 3 and 9 pm. 

And then there are those idiots who have contact with their local authority…

Many parents, having made the decision to home educate, are aware that other home educators  have  had their  decision  in  some  way  “second  guessed”.  This  leads  many  home  educators to actively  avoid  any  contact with  education  authorities, fearful that LAs will  assess the parents’ decision to deregister their child against the national policy of ensuring that all children are in school. Experience suggests that parents known to authorities do come under undue pressure to return  children to  school  and this pressure  sometimes  extends to maliciously contacting social services to put further pressure on the parents to ‘cooperate’.  


And what about those parents whose children need to be taken to the Casualty Department at the local hospital? Don't they know what is likely to happen? The fools!

I have heard examples of parents discussing the wisdom of taking a child to an emergency ward when they know that a visit will be noted and passed on to the social services

Is this true? Do Casualty Departments generally pass on details of children seen there to social services? Or does this only happen with children educated at home? We need to know a little more about this, I think.

Remember the old Connexions service? You might, like me have found them to be pretty useless, but I bet you didn’t know this about them:

Not since Germany's Third Reich has the state systematically gathered information about  parents by using their children - it is truly reminiscent of "1984" …the introduction of the electronic Connexions card for young people, with its overtones of Hitler Youth reporting on their parents

It easy to laugh at lunacy such as this, but that would, I think, be a mistake. Home Education UK and its associated support group, the HE-UK Yahoo list, is one of the biggest  British home educating sites on the internet. For thousands of home educating parents, this is, heaven help them, their first contact with the wider world of home education.  Once there, many of them  get sucked into this delusional world-view and believe that these paranoiac ravings are what home education is all about.  No wonder there is so much friction between home educators and local authorities with poison like this being poured in the ears of parents.

Don't mention the 'P' word!

A few days ago I was ticked off here, possibly with some justification, for referring to certain  home educators as displaying the signs and symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. I think that the person making this comment felt that it might be offensive to those actually suffering from this disorder. It has also been pointed out recently that one cannot judge British home educators in general  from looking at the nutcases one encounters on the internet; also a fair point. However, the lists and forums of this sort do have thousands of members and some, BRAG and Home Ed Biz for instance, are public. Many local authorities actually direct parents towards Education Otherwise. For this reason, I think it reasonable to say that even if those on the lists are not typical of home educators, they certainly have an influence upon many parents. The atmosphere on these places is so mad, that even if they only affect 10% or 20% of home educators they are a little worrying.


North Yorkshire County Council is well known for reaching out to home educators, not in order to make them register, but simply to offer help and advice. They run sessions where home educating parents can come and talk to education professionals and they also do a lot of work helping home educated children move on to college and university. When a little while ago they contacted parents offering an open meeting to discuss careers and so on for the over 16s, one person at least could smell a rat. She emailed them saying, ‘In order for us to come along we would like an assurance from the County Council that we will not be forced to give personal details and that we will not be pursued after the event into accepting home visits or submitting annual reports’. Now this is, I am determined this time not to use the ‘P’ word, shall we say excessively cautious. ‘Forced’, ‘Pursued’; I mean really!

The person from the local authority responded quite affably, saying, ‘You can have our assurance that we will not force you in to giving any details, there will be a register to sign but you are welcome to sign this anonymously.’ Perfect, you might think; parents may now attend without any anxiety. You fool! What has been deliberately left out of this answer? Let the parent tell us, ‘they have deliberately ignored the part about not pursuing us after the event! This makes me very wary about going’. We will not ask what form this ‘pursuit’ might take. If the organisers are content with a false name, then presumably the fear is that the pursuit will be physical. Will local authority officers  actually chase this poor woman down the road after the meeting or might they engage private detectives to follow her home? Once again, I am restraining myself from making use of the ‘P’ word. Paranoia! Whoops, it just slipped out. Sorry.

The reaction of others on the list was revealing. Instead of telling the woman not to be a bloody fool, they encouraged her in her feelings of persecution. Here are a few of the responses;

something doesn't feel right. I'd suggest staying under the radar.
If you feel like something is amiss - it probably is.

do you have an email address which doesn't give away your real name? If not, now might be the time to create one and arrange for incoming messages to be forwarded to your usual email address. Think about whether you want them to have your mobile number too. You could think up an alias of some sort

. You can always create a spare Yahoo or Gmail account to put down as an email contact point in case they've got anything useful to send out.

I think your right o be on your gurd, given some of the horror stories that happen sometimes


True, some others suggested that it would be OK, but you see what an uphill struggle North Yorkshire County Council are having in helping some home educated children?

This particular list has thousands of members and this is by no means the maddest exchange on there lately. So the next time I inadvertently use the ‘P’ word on this blog, I hope that readers will forgive me; I have searched my thesaurus from cover to cover for a suitable synonym, but none seems quite so apt.