Obsessions

I have been very anxious lately about the home education scene in Lancashire.  I am sure that the local authority there are not supervising and inspecting home educators in a way that I would approve of and so I have been studying their policies carefully. There is a lot that I don’t like about them and  I have now written a detailed letter to a parliamentary select committee, outlining my concerns and urging them to look into how Lancashire are organising their EHE department.

Well, actually of course; I have been doing nothing of the sort! After all, that would just be weird, wouldn’t it? I live hundreds of miles from Lancashire, I don’t home educate there; why on earth would I be fretting about how things are arranged in that county? It’s none of my business. I am pretty sure that if some readers of this blog discovered that I had been poking my nose into Lancashire’s EHE arrangements and trying to get them to run their affairs in a way that suited me, then it would be thought that I had way too much time on my hands and was turning into a frightful busybody. I am sure that we can agree on that. As for pestering a select committee about what I thought was wrong in Lancashire; that would just be absurd! I want readers to bear this in mind as I explain what has really been happening.

It has been suggested by those commenting on here, that I have an obsession with Alison Sauer; even, God save us, that I have some kind of crush on the woman! It is nothing of the sort, but rather that wherever I turn on the home education front; there is Alison Sauer, needlessly stirring up trouble. The latest example of my stumbling over her in an unexpected and unlooked for place, concerns the county in which I live, which is Essex.

I still have dealings with home educating parents in Essex, none of whom belong to any internet groups; largely because they have decided that such groups are full of troublesome maniacs. This is a view which I tend to share. I was looking for some support for one parent, when I chanced across this:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmeduc/559/559we16.htm


Have you ever seen the like? Here is a private citizen who lives hundreds of miles from my own county, writing to parliament to complain about what she sees as the shortcomings of my local authority when it comes to home education. Remember how we thought that this would be pretty mad if I were to be doing it about Lancashire? Recollect that we agreed that it would make me look like a terrible busybody with nothing better to do with his time? This is just precisely how I see the case here. The great irony is that home educating parents in Essex enjoy really good relations at the moment with the EHE department in Colchester. The LA officers there are friendly, helpful and offer all sorts of support if asked. I have never heard anybody complain about them. Alison says, with what justification I really do not know, ‘ Little wonder that many home educators choose not engage with the LA.’ I would be curious to know what grounds she has for thinking this.

I am sorry to mention Alison Sauer again on here, but even when I restrict my interest in home education to the county in which I actually live, two hundred miles from Alison Sauer; she pops up, causing mischief and spreading misleading information. Of course, I might be misjudging her. Perhaps she has some sort of genuine interest in home education in Essex and has heard of complaints about the staff who handle it in the county. If so, perhaps somebody could share this with us. Otherwise, I will be forced to think that this is no more than a random act of meddling and busybodying for its own sake!

The government's response to the select committee recommendations regarding support for home educators

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More about making money from home education

A couple of days ago I posted about a local authority which is trying to get home educating parents to pay for courses at a further education college and suggested that it was an attempt to make money from home education. Commenting there, somebody has objected to the choice of the witnesses who gave evidence to the select committee on the same grounds; that they stand to make money from home education and should therefore have declared an interest in the proceedings from the start.

Now I must choose my words very carefully here and even so I shall probably be accused of being as stupid or mad as Peter Williams! After all, when I made the completely truthful and wholly unexceptionable remark that the majority of the eight witnesses were not technically home educators, it caused considerable annoyance. Since five of the eight do not have children aged between five and sixteen, that is to say of ‘compulsory school age, I cannot see how anybody can fail to agree that this forms a majority, but we shall let that pass for now. What of the suggestion that has been made to the effect that some also have a financial interest in home education, in particular  being paid by local authorities for various services? Did they form a majority of the witnesses? Did five of the eight witnesses have such interests? This is a curious point and one which did not occur to me before the anonymous comments on my last post. Let us consider the matter.

Since the object of this session of the select committee was to examine the support offered by local authorities to home educators, its form and extent, then it is probably true that anybody being paid to provide such support should have stated the fact clearly at the beginning. Such people are partial and we are entitled to weigh their evidence more carefully than those who do not stand to make anything from the recommendations of the committee.

Two of the witnesses, Ann Brown and Hannah Flowers, certainly have no financial interest in home education. What of the others? Julie Barker makes no secret of her work with and for a local authority. She is open about this. So too is Alison Sauer, who with her husband runs a consultancy which charges local authorities for providing services. Fiona Nicholson also runs a consultancy and is pretty active in attending meetings and running a website. I have no idea if she ever receives payment for any of this, but I am pretty sure that she hopes to; she wants to make home education her career. Zena Hodges is a trustee and ‘support adviser’ for the Home Education Centre in South West England. I have a suspicion that she is paid for her services, at any rate the constitution of the Home Education Centre specifically allows for this. It says that the committee members may make payments to themselves, provided that the payment is for skills and experience needed by the group. This is so neatly worded that I would be very surprised indeed if Zena is not receiving money in this way, although I am of course open to correction on this point. Jane Lowe has written a book on home education and is a trustee and also apparently a teacher with the Home Education Advisory Service.

It is fairly plain that at least half and probably the majority of the  witnesses called to give evidence to the select committee have or hope in the future to have some financial benefit from their association with a local authority in connection with home education. This was not obvious to the members of the committee and means that they probably did not realise that most of the people apparently speaking objectively about the relationship between home educators and local authorities stood to gain financially in some way if local authorities were advised to provide further services in this field. This does not of course mean that those who gave evidence were on the make! I don’t believe this for a moment. It does mean though that the proceedings were misleading and not transparent.

Another unfortunate circumstance was that the Chair of the select committee, Graham Stuart, has a close relationship with one of the witnesses, Alison Sauer. I do not, I hasten to add, mean a close personal relationship; this thought is almost unbearable! No, I mean that they have for several years been on first name terms and have collaborated in the past on a project which aimed to alter the relationship of home educating parents with local authorities. This was not made clear at the beginning of the session either.

The end result of all this is that anybody watching the evidence being given to the committee on September 5th would not know that the Chair of the select committee and most of the witnesses had various interests in either maintaining or overturning the status quo. This is not a good state of affairs; it does not make for openness.

The Education select committee hearing on September 5th 2012

The witnesses who gave evidence about home education to the select committee were a remarkably homogenous bunch; all female, all white, all aged between forty and sixty five, all well spoken and probably all well educated as well. Most intriguing of all, every single one of them spoke in that same quiet, patient way that teachers and social workers do. This was eerie! In a sense, the whole session was a little like the three card trick. Many people are concerned that not all parents are capable of providing a proper education to their children and so eight women are presented who nobody in their senses would doubt for a moment are able to give their kids a decent education. It would have been interesting to put eight of the less sane and articulate home educators in front of the MPs and see what they made of them.

Despite the fact that Graham Stuart is now the Chair of the committee, I picked up on the fact that there seemed to be an appetite for some sort of registration among other members. This is because two facts emerged clearly. The first was that nobody knows how many children in this country are not at school because their parents are supposedly educating them at home. The second was that nobody has the least idea how many of those children are actually receiving an education. There were valiant attempts to obscure these facts, notably when Fiona Nicholson made the astonishingly untruthful claim that we know precisely how many children are being educated at home, because we have the figures from the local authorities. Incidentally, I watched with bated breath when Fiona was asked whether she was in favour of a simple scheme which would mean the registration of all home educated children. Great amusement was caused three years ago, when she gave evidence to the select committee at that time. Despite being asked by the then Chair several times, she appeared uncertain as to whether she was in favour of registration and he finally put her down as a ’Don’t know’! This time, she was ready and answered crisply and firmly as soon as the question was asked.

I have an idea that several members of the select committee smelt a rat when presented with such a clearly intelligent and well-informed group of women. They were clearly not typical of the sort of parent with whom many local authorities come into contact and about the children of whom there is such concern. Although there was no talk of monitoring this time, the idea of registration was definitely in the air. I would not be surprised if that actually happened in the end. It would of course not be the end of the matter, particularly if events in Wales follow their current course. Whether compulsory registration of home educated children would be a good or bad thing is a debatable point, but I have an idea that it is the direction that many people’s minds may be moving. It might seem like some to be a reasonable compromise between the wishes of the local authorities and the strong feelings of many home educators; a bare minimum to which few reasonable parents could object.

A man of influence

For several years, the idea floated around some sections of the British home educating community that I was a man of great and malign influence; that I had the ear of Graham Badman, was able to muscle my way into giving evidence to select committees and I don’t know what else. Such rumours were sedulously spread by the likes of Maire Stafford and Mike Fortune-Wood. Somebody commented here to this effect only a few days ago. Alas, it is not true, but today I want to look at a man who really does have such influence, somebody able to send civil servants at the Department for Education scuttling off to do his bidding. He is a modest man, too modest and retiring perhaps, and I feel that his role in manipulating things behind the scenes has not been sufficiently celebrated. Step forward our very own Mike Fortune-Wood. What? You laugh? You doubt my word? Mike Fortune-Wood, the scourge of the educational establishment, playing kiss-in-the-ring with the Department for Education? Let us see.

When the ‘new guidelines’ for home education were being drawn up in 2010 and 2011, nobody would admit to being involved. One story was that they were a solo production of Alison Sauer’s; no more than a money making dodge by her. Mike Fortune-Wood in particular, denied flatly that he had anything at all to do with them. He said this several times on the HE-UK list. In fact of course, as he has recently admitted, he was  up to his ears in the business. He and a group of other well known home educators, both here and abroad, were busily engaged in trying to frame a document which would have had a profound effect on every home educating parent in the country. Mike Fortune-Wood’s reticence was understandable. He wished to run with the fox and hunt with the hounds. If the enterprise was favourably received, he would bashfully step forward and receive the plaudits. In the event, it was roundly condemned by most home educators and so he was able to disown it and pretend he had had no part in it. This is known as ‘plausible deniability’; a way of oiling out of responsibility for one’s actions.

The legend arose that only rough drafts were made and that the document would have been put out to consultation with all home educating parents before it was finalised. This was untrue. Have a look again at what it has been alleged was merely a rough draft:



https://www.box.com/shared/6lk1826muy




Clearly, it is nothing of the sort. Alison Sauer, Mike Fortune-Wood and so on put a good deal of work into this and the fact that it was regarded not as a rough draft but a finished product may readily be seen by looking at the notes in red on pages 69, 70 and 87.  These notes indicate the only sections on which work still needed to be done.

The comments are addressed to Graham Stuart, Chair of the Education Committee, and they are staggering in their implications. On page 69, we read:



This section needs completing by someone in the DfE with more knowledge than I have of the process



So the members of the group producing these guidelines felt confident enough to direct that civil servants should work on this draft and follow their instructions? On page 87, we see that Alison Sauer, Tania Berlow, Kelly Green and Mike Fortune-Wood have run out of energy and hope to pass the final stages on to others; again to civil servants from the Department for Education. We read:



I’m sure you can find someone to do this one Graham!



Someone? A friend of Graham Stuart’s? A member of his family? No, a civil servant of course, you fool!

It is not to be wondered at that Mike Fortune-Wood was not overly keen to have all this come to light. For years he represented himself as the mortal foe of local authorities and government departments dealing with education and now we find him on perfectly amiable terms with them and expecting civil servants to do his research for him! I have been fortunate enough to be forwarded an archive of the work undertaken on the so-called ‘new guidelines’, which show in detail the involvement of all concerned. I may, in the public interest, put this up here in the future. In the meantime, a big round of applause for Mike Fortune-Wood; a true man of influence in the places that really matter, such as the Department for Education.

The Education Committee considers support for home educators

As most readers will be aware, the Education  Committee, a select committee,  has launched an enquiry into the support available for home education in this country. It seems to me inevitable that this enquiry will lead eventually to more involvement by local authorities into the lives of many home educators. One of the problems that some home educators face is that they would like their children to take GCSEs and other examinations, but lack both the expertise and money to arrange them. It is manifestly unjust that a home educated child whose parents have perhaps been paying taxes for years should have to pay again to access GCSEs. It is also to the benefit of society in general that more of the fifty thousand or so children currently being educated at home should gain GCSEs. This would help them to progress into further and higher education and also make them more attractive to potential employers. I have an idea that this is one area of support where the select committee might make a definite recommendation.


This is all well and good, but the implications for both those who do want their children to take exams and also those who do not, are profound. Let us look first at those parents who do wish their children to sit GCSEs. Children at school typically sit eight or ten GCSEs; obviously, if you are going to provide finance and other assistance for home educated children to sit them and the local authorities will be receiving the Age Weighted Pupil Units for each child, then some parents will want their children to sit the same number as pupils in schools. My own daughter took eight IGCSEs and if the local authority had been offering financial help, then I would have expected them to pay for  those GCSEs that I wanted my child to sit. Now all this will mean spending public money. You can’t just chuck it around willy nilly and so we hit the first difficulty. How will local authorities know whether or not they are simply wasting the money by entering some child for ten GCSEs? They would be unlikely to take my word for it that my daughter knew enough about physics to get an A*; they would want to make sure that they weren’t wasting time and money arranging for her to sit physics. For all they know, she might be barely literate, the whole thing might really be a pointless enterprise for all concerned. Perhaps she should just sit one or two, in perhaps English and maths, rather than physics, chemistry, history and geography as well? Even then, if they did enter her for maths, should she be entered for foundation or higher? How can they find out what level she is at in the various subjects?

Already, before the scheme is even off the ground, testing of the academic achievements of home educated children by local authority officers has appeared. Indeed, it is an inevitable development if once you concede that the local authority will be assessing the amount of money to be spent on arranging for these children to take examinations. Still, it might be argued, this is all voluntary. Only those parents who wish their children to take GCSEs will be involved. Just because I want my daughter to sit GCSEs, that does not mean that an autonomously educating parent in the next street would have to do the same. Nobody would have to submit to this testing and all these questions. This is ingenuous. If once local authorities begin regularly testing the abilities of home educated children, it will create an entirely new situation. This testing is bound to spread to parents whom the local authority will talk into it and encourage to become involved for the sake of their children, who would do so much better if they were to have a few GCSEs.

Now as it happens, I do not think that this would be a bad thing at all. Speaking personally, I would like local authorities to ask more questions of parents and to see how their children were doing; whether they really were being provided with a suitable education and so on. I would be glad if local authority officers were to start pressing parents to think about GCSEs and doing their best to see that the children studied for and took them. Not everybody feels this way though.

The point I am making is this. What sounds like a perfectly innocuous and well-meaning idea, making it easier for those who want to enter their children for examinations, has serious implications for the future of all home educating parents. It has the potential to create conflict a few years down the line, if taking GCSEs became the aim of local authorities for home educated children in their area, rather than simply an optional service which they provided. I think that people need to think about this a little before championing one side or the other in this question. They need particularly to think carefully before expressing too vehemently these views before select committees or to local authorities.

The select committee recommendations

Graham Stuart commented on here yesterday, claiming that the select committee, of which he was a member, had opposed compulsory registration. What a shameless rascal he is! He said;

" The select committee disagreed with both you and the government by saying that any registration system should be voluntary. I believe that if a voluntary system backed by proper support for HE parents and children was put in place no government would decide to make it compulsory."

Perhaps it is time to nail a few myths about the recommendations made by the select committee, of which this is one. I really am a little surprised that an MP who was actually on the committee should try to peddle this line! Let's see what the select committee actually recommended about such things as compulsory registration, monitoring and so forth. We shall begin with registration. The committee said;

"In our view it is unacceptable that local authorities do not know accurately how many children of school age in their area are in school, are being home educated or are otherwise not in school"

So far, so good. They went on to suggest that initially registration should be voluntary. Of course, we already have such a voluntary system; anybody can register with their local authority if they wish. Many parents choose not to do so. Regarding this, the select committee said;

"The success of a system of voluntary registration..... should be reviewed after two years. If it is found not to have met expectations- in terms of assisting local authorities in identifying and working with the families of children who are being home educated and those of children otherwise than in school- we believe that a system of compulsory registration should be introduced."

All perfectly clear? You have two years to volunteer to be registered and then, unless all home educators have signed up, it becomes compulsory. How Graham Stuart can have the cheek to tout this as a voluntary system of registration is utterly beyond me. What about compulsory annual inspections by the local authority? Surely, the select committee decided against them? Well, no. They said of home educating families;

"We believe that local authorities need a guaranteed means of engaging with these families."

I like this! Not that the local authorities want to engage, they need to. And the means has to be "guaranteed". The committee went on to recommend;

"Accordingly we recommend that home educating families be required to meet with their local authority officer within three months of the child's home education commencing and thereafter on an annual basis."

Hands up anybody who can tell the difference between this and Graham Badman's recommendation? What the select committee actually did was to take Graham Badman's recommendations, tweak them a little and then embed them in a load of waffle and pretend that they were courageously sticking up for home educating parents. But surely they were sympathetic to the concerns of autonomous educators? Well, let's see what they said;

"The specification of "suitable" education must enable local authority officers to tackle situations where the child has no prospect of gaining basic literacy and numeracy skills efficiently or where there is no breadth to their education."

Or, even better, how about this;

"We recommend that at the point of registration families should need only set out their reasons for choosing to home educate and to outline in broad terms how the education would initially be provided."

After three months, the family should;

"Be required to submit a statement on an annual basis, which includes a brief record of the child's achievement and progress"

I do hope that all the autonomous educators who believe that Graham Stuart is on their side are reading this. Local authority officers "tackling" situations where there isn't a broad enough education. I wonder how they will do that? Or what about those not gaining literacy skills "efficiently"? I am guessing here that the select committee thinks that reading and writing should be taught, rather than just being acquired autonomously. I'm not sure what else they could have meant by "gaining literacy skills efficiently". I am really puzzled as to why anybody should think that the select committee was any more favourably disposed to autonomous home education than Graham Badman. Stripped of the verbiage, their recommendations are almost identical.

The select committee, again.

Some people who skimmed through the video of the session yesterday have told me that they thought at first that I didn't say anything at all! It is true that I spoke infrequently and then only in a sentence or two, but this was still too much for some people. One person commenting after watching, said that I was deliberately allowed to have the final word. More observant viewers will perhaps have noticed that Zena Hodgson and I both signalled our desire to speak and it was a toss-up which of us spoke last. Despite having said about a tenth as much as any other of the witnesses, what I did say was enough to enrage an old friend of mine, Firebird from Godalming. Her account of what was said may be found on the Home Education Forums site. Firebird ends her account with the words, "Simon sticks the knife in". This was in reference to my final words to the select committee. I find this such a peculiar thing to say that I thought I would set out what I actually said at the end and see if anybody disagrees with it;

"Parents might have responsibility for their children's education, but all the rights are with the child. The child has a right to a suitable education. If it's not getting that right, then I think that society has a stake in establishing whether the rights of the child are being respected in regard to the right to receive an education; in which case, parents will have to give way to society's legitimate interest in the case."

"Simon sticks the knife in"......... I am sure that not everybody will agree with me in what I said. That is inevitable. But to suggest that ending such a discussion with a mention of the rights of the child, as opposed to the rights of parents which were talked about earlier in the session, is somehow "sticking the knife in".....

Such an attitude tells me a good deal about the person who would make such a strange statement. It tells me nothing at all about whether or not I was right to bring the discussion to a close by reminding those present that it is the children who have the rights here, rather than the parents.

The select committee - another conspiracy?

Many autonomously educating parents seem to be furious that I have been called to give evidence at the House of Commons select committee hearing on October 14th. Inevitably, they feel that this is yet another conspiracy by the educational establishment to suppress their entire way of life! A Stitch-up is the demotic expression most popular among these people to describe what they see as happening. The more rational of us are inclined to apply Occam's Razor to the situation and assume that the simplest explanation is probably the most likely. Here is what I think has happened.

The staff sifting through the submissions to the DCSF select committee are not themselves employed by the DCSF. The select committee is completely independent and is as likely to criticise the government as applaud it. The clerical staff sorting out the submissions have probably been told that many home educators are angry about the Badman Report and that the composition of the witnesses called should perhaps reflect that. So among the five people called in the first session on the morning of October 14th, we see Fiona Nicholson from Education Otherwise, Jane Lowe from the Home Education Advisory Service and Zena Hodgson from the Home Education Centre in Somerset. All these organisations have responded unfavourably to Graham Badman's recommendations. To balance this, the staff probably thought that they should give a space to somebody who is not opposed to the recommendations.

Another reason that my submission might have caught the eye and been chosen for further attention is that it was very short. I sent a single sheet of A4 paper, with half a dozen points, each of no more than one or two sentences. I used a crisp,14 point typeface and double spacing. Others have apparently written thousands of words. In my experience, nobody in these circumstances usually reads past the first page and so my submission was bound to stand out. As a matter of interest, did any of the people who have been complaining about not being called to give evidence stop to think of this? In other words, was I the only one who sent in a single A4 sheet double spaced and making only five brief points? if so, then that is the most likely explanation as to why mine caught the eye and I was chosen to give evidence. As scripture says, when dealing with people such as civil servants one should be as cunning as a serpent and as gentle as a dove! (Well, the Bible does not actually specify civil servants in that passage, but you take my point. You have to box clever with them)

Perhaps if the people who are now moaning about me had given the same amount of thought as I did, as to the correct way of approaching matters such as a House of Commons select committee or a DCSF enquiry, then they might have got a little further and actually had their own views taken into account. That I did so and have had my opinions considered by both Graham Badman and the select committee is evidence not of some sinister conspiracy, but rather of the fact that most civil servants and government employees would rather deal with a short, easily digestible summary, as opposed to closely packed pages of print totalling several thousand words. I do not make the rules, nor do I control human nature. I just work according to what I know of both and hope for the best.

Incidentally, quite a few people coming on to this Blog lately seem to be disgusted or shocked at what they find here. The following day they come back again and are offended all over again! They remind me of a prudish old woman who deliberately goes for a walk in a red-light district, purely for the pleasurable thrill of being horrified at what she sees. May I suggest that those who genuinely find my views distasteful, simply stay away? I am not exactly dragging people in here from off the streets. Or should I attach a warning on the first page; "Sensitive home educators may find material here which will criticise autonomous education"? I would be glad of constructive suggestions for how to deal with this vexing problem.

The House of Commons select committee

As many home educators are now aware, I have been called to give evidence next week at the enquiry into the review of elective home education. Fairly predictably, a campaign is now well under way to discredit me by telling as many lies as possible. Since the people involved in this have no hesitation about using old posts of mine from a private mailing list, I see no reason at all not to name them and detail their actions. Step forward, Maire Stafford, who sent an email to the select committee yesterday stating that;

"He is now on both of the message boards he mentions under a false name despite being removed by the list owners, as he freely admits on his blog".

This is of course a lie. Some members of the list forward messages to me, this is quite a different thing from joining under a false name. I dare say that some will remember Maire Stafford's agony a few weeks ago when she thought I was going to quote from one of her emails. In a truly breathtaking display of display of hypocrisy and double standards, she has copied a huge chunk of this Blog in her email to the select committee. Astounding!

Next up is somebody called Debs on the home education forums. She says of me;

"The inclusion of Simon Webb is also of grave concern. He is in fact an EX home educator, not a current one, who now spends his time writing vitriolic, insulting and personal articles about home education (especially autonomous home education, which he appears to know very little about) on his blog and in various publications. He has assumed various guises to infiltrate home education email lists"

Two things strike one about this email to the select committee. The first is the repetition of the lie that I have infiltrated home education lists under false names. As I dare say everybody knows, I actually joined under my own name and personal email address and never made any secret of my views. The second thing is really quite funny. Home educators, particularly autonomous ones, often claim that the idea that education starts at five and ends promptly at sixteen is quite ludicrous and wholly artificial. I agree completely. Now however, many of them have apparently decided that in the case of home education, it should end in the June of the year that a child turns sixteen. This means of course that I am no longer educating my daughter and should not therefore be allowed to give evidence on home education. How ingenious is that? Another A* for hypocrisy, I think! A cunning idea, but unfortunately the select committee have a fairly detailed biography and know my daughter's age. But a good try, never the less. Just to be scrupulously fair, I have contacted the select committee and reminded them about this. They assure me that they will now amend their records and list me as a formerly home educating parent.

Wendy Crickard is keen to denounce me to a member of the select committee, Lynda Waltho MP. She wishes to use old posts of mine from a private list. Janet Ford duly obliged by providing her with these. Unfortunately for these two, Lynda Waltho will not actually be sitting on the committee that day, but ten out of ten for trying. Julie Garret wants to know if there is a good way to discredit witnesses in advance of the hearing. There are many more, but these examples give one the flavour of the affair.

What none of these individuals seem to realise for a moment is that they are busily engaged in subverting the democratic process. The whole point of a select committee is to examine the actions and intentions of the Executive. It is our Legislature at work, a most vital constitutional check against the Executive. This is not one branch of the government rubber stamping another government department's decisions. The contempt displayed by these people for the constitutional processes of democracy is astonishing. I hope that this is the last post that I shall have occasion to make on this subject and that I will now be able to get back to discussing the wider aspects of home education.