Will GCSEs be made freely available for home educated children?

Recommendation 10 of the Badman Report says that local authorities should help home educated pupils find examination centres and pay for them to take GCSEs. Hurray! This at least was my initial reaction on skimming through the recommendations. It looks good, especially for those of us who have bankrupted ourselves paying for the damned things. However......

Let us not skim through Recommendation 10, but read it slowly and see exactly what it actually says on the subject, "......Local authorities must provide support for home educating children and young people to find appropriate examination centres and provide entries free to all home educated candidates....." Wow, that sounds great doesn't it? Free entry for GCSEs. Oh, just a minute, there's more,"... who have demonstrated sufficiently their preparedness through routine monitoring, for all DCSF funded qualifications". Now as regular readers will know, I am not a ferocious critic of the Badman report, but even I can spot a gigantic hoop to jump through here. "Who have demonstrated sufficiently their preparedness". What can this mean?

It is pretty clear to me that what it means is that the local authority will be given the job of deciding which children can and cannot be entered for exams. I am guessing that it also means that the LA will be able to choose exactly which exams are taken. From here, it is only a very short step to imagining that they will after a while be expecting all children to be studying for GCSE's and following a particular syllabus. How will they demonstrate their preparedness, by having work checked by teachers at the local school? In short, I can see an awful lot of scope here for meddling and interference on a massive scale. Instead of being one item on a menu of services available to home educators, I can see this quickly becoming something which is actually expected of parents, that they will be required to prepare their children for public examinations.

When I raised this subject with Graham Badman, I had in mind parents telling the LA that Jimmy wanted to sit a GCSE in English and that the LA would simply arrange it and foot the bill. Perhaps I was a fool, but I don't think that anything even remotely like that is on the agenda. I do not think, looking closely at the matter now, that these examinations will be a freely available option for parents. I think that they are likely to come with so many strings and restrictions that they may well be more trouble than they are worth. I can also see the LA insisting upon English and Mathematics and arguing against astronomy or Greek. I hope I am wrong about this, but the harder I look, the more potential problems I can see in this recommendation.

Praying for a place - the great faith school scam

One of the more pleasant aspects of being a home educator is the amused condescension with which one can view those parents who are scrabbling around desperately for a decent school. The fools! Don't they know there's a better way of doing things? I have been thinking about this recently as a consequence of observing the new intake of parents with small children who have started attending our church this month.

Selective education is widely regarded as unfair and divisive. Still, whatever the disadvantages of the 11 Plus, at least it focuses upon the supposed abilities of pupils. The same cannot be said of the exciting and popular game of getting your child into a church school, or "faith school" as we now call them. This process, by contrast, centres on the ability of parents; specifically their ability to be as cunning, hypocritical and duplicitous as is humanly possible. The strange thing is that although almost all parents are aware of this, it is considered tactless and in rather poor taste to draw attention to it.

Modern life offers few more entertaining spectacles than that of militant atheists transforming themselves for a few years into seemingly devout churchgoers. At one time it was only necessary to put in an appearance once a month or so and have your child baptised, but these days the competition is so stiff that if you want a glowing reference from the priest, you have to put in the hours. Our local secondary school requires a ten year record of church involvement, which realistically means starting no later than the day after your child is born.

Several of our friends went through this process and we thoroughly enjoyed observing the various mental gymnastics this entailed. Of course the "Road to Damascus" style conversion is embarrassing and hardly ever convincing, so in general the thing is handled with a little subtlety. The first sign might be when the father of a young child announces casually that he himself attended Sunday School as a child and thoroughly enjoyed it. The next time you see him, you learn that his son is now going to the Sunday School at St. Jude's. No mention of school is made at this point and it is considered poor form to crack jokes about using religion to get into a good school. When the subject of St. Jude's secondary school does come up, the parents typically come out with a lot of humbug about liking the ethos of the school and how smart and well behaved the pupils appear to be. Only as an afterthought is academic achievement mentioned, "Of course, I believe their A level results are quite good as well."

The sheer effrontery is, in many cases, absolutely breathtaking. Individuals who have raved on for years about churches being full of paedophile priests and sanctimonious hypocrites, begin chatting about Father James and what a good sort he is, "Very liberal, hardly like a priest at all in some ways." By this time, the guy's wife is on the rota for flower arranging and Creche duty, while he is helping to organise the Summer Fete.

The churches themselves tend to be quite philosophical about all this. They know perfectly well why there are so many parents of young children offering to help out with Junior Church and so on. They also know that after their children reach twelve and are safely in secondary school, 99% of these same parents will drop church for good. Their attitude is that at least some of the teaching at Sunday School might rub off on the children and that it is better for them to come to church from the ages of five to twelve than never to set foot in the place at all.

We all do whatever we feel is necessary to help our children and It is hard to criticise a parent who feels that the only way to get a decent education for their daughter or son is to fight for a place at a church school. It just seems a shame that such antics should be required to get into the best schools. It surely cannot be edifying for a child to observe parents engaged in this sort of self-serving behaviour and it is at least worth considering how this might affect a child's view of religion in later life.

We have ourselves attended church regularly since moving here. Simone serves there most weeks, which means carrying candles and crosses, genuflecting at the right time, crossing herself all over the place and so on. When we moved here she was six. There was never any question of her applying for the church school and for some years we were viewed with suspicion in the church. I mean, why should a father and daughter attend church like that if there's nothing in it for them? You know where you are with couples wanting to marry there or get their kids into school. But just coming to worship the Lord? That's seriously weird! I got some really strange looks when I began running the Youth Club there. I almost felt like pretending that I was only doing it for a school place, just to allay suspicion.

Meeting with Graham Badman

I have grown a little weary of the constant posts by Peter Williams of Alton, invariably posting as Anonymous, who seems to be obsessed with what I said to Graham Badman. Here are the notes which Liz Greene took of the meeting. I hope that this will discourage Mr. Williams from pursuing this topic further. I doubt anybody will be surprised by any of this, it's what I say all the time to everybody, not just Graham Badman!

Independent Review of Home Education – Stakeholder meeting note
Attendees
HE parent and daughter (SW)
Organisation

Review Team
Graham Badman; Elizabeth Green
Date
28.4.09
Summary

·1 HE should be inspected. LAs should have a supervising role to ensure progress is being made.
·2 Does not believe that autonomous approach is a robust option for many children. Need for more research.
·3 Parent should have to produce a plan of what the education will be, how it will be delivered and what the outcomes will be.
·4 Don’t feel need to join, and value of, HE organisations – many of them push autonomous approaches.
·5 HE organisations are not representative of home educators. Doesn’t feel the need for representation.
·6 Would welcome support re work experiences and exam fees (£1000 for IGSEs).
·7 Own experience of LA visit – fine, if a bit distracting and irritating.
·8 Would have concerns re competence of some LA officers to judge what’s suitable.





Key points


Fully supports monitoring and registration.
Welcome more support esp. exam fees.
Quotes



Additional info



Follow up

Action for stakeholder(s)
Write with more evidence if wish.
Action for Review Team

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

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

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

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

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

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

Autonomous/informal/natural/child led/child centred/laisse faire education/unschooling; do I know the difference?

I frequently stand accused of being unable to distinguish between the various types of unstructured home education. "The idiot," some irate autonomous educator will cry, "Doesn't he know that what he is talking about is really informal education?" Or laisse faire parenting or unschooling or whatever. The fact is that I do myself know the difference between these divers pedagogic techniques, but am wholly unconvinced that many of the parents who claim, "We are autonomous" are similarly able to make such fine distinctions.

I am quite sure that many of those posting here and on the HE-UK and EO message boards are well informed and consistent in the approach to autonomous education. I also have no doubt that if the thing is conducted properly, the results can be impressive. Not, I suspect, as impressive as those achieved by more conventional means, but that might be a personal prejudice. My concern is with the tens of thousands of parents who deregister their children and have absolutely no idea how to go about educating them, whether autonomously or otherwise.

For articulate, educated and influential home educators such as the activists of Education Otherwise to propagate ideas which can in the wrong hands cause terrible damage to a child's educational attainment is, to me, a specially horrible example of irresponsible intellectual pride. Many parents who have trouble with their child's school for a variety of reasons, stumble across sites for home educators on the internet and jump at once to the conclusion that any fool can educate their child. There's nothing to it; why, the child will practically teach himself! This is of course absolute nonsense as any real autonomous educator will probably tell you.
I have also been accused many times of wanting to limit people's choices in home education and hoping that local authorities will ban autonomous education and insist upon a structured approach. Nothing could be further from the truth. I certainly believe that a very structured approach is likely to yield better results, but that's just me. My real objection is founded on human nature. Let me explain.

If we take a large group of people, say a thousand or so, and give them a really simple instruction, perhaps to raise their right hands, here is what will happen. About half of them will raise their right hands. Another couple of hundred will raise their left hands. About the same number will raise both hands and a hundred won't raise either hand. And a few will probably raise one leg or stand on their heads. There will also be a rising murmur of voices muttering things like, "What does he mean, hands?" and "Did he say left or right?"

I am assuming precisely the same situation for home education. That is to say that most of those parents using a structured system will not really understand what they are up to and screw up a lot. And of course the same goes for those supposedly following autonomous methods. Most of them won't have any clear idea of what they are up to. However, I think that a structured education poorly delivered and incompletely understood is likely to yield far better results than an autonomous education which is not being done properly.

In other words, I spent years planning and executing my child's execution in a very coherent and well organised way. Some autonomously educating parents similarly spend years planning and delivering their child's education and I dare say that when we look at the end product there may not be much to choose between the two systems. But when parents don't really know what they are up to, have no real understanding of education or are not prepared to devote their whole life to the business for ten years or so, then I am sure that a clearly structured system of education will be easier for them to implement, rather than some misunderstood and half baked version of autonomous education. In short, somebody teaching their child arithmetic methodically, however badly, will probably get some result. A parent who because of some vague idea of "being autonomous", does nothing, will not.

Schooling or education; a personal rant

I simply had to talk about this. A friend of my daughter who has just finished his AS level in English Literature studied the Tom Stoppard play "Arcadia". He wants my daughter to go to London and see it with him next week. But get this, his parents are really irritated with him and say that he is wasting his time because he has already sat the examination on this play. What on Earth is the point in his going to see it now?

For me, nothing could encapsulate more neatly the difference between modern schooling and education. The only possible reason for studying literature has nothing whatever to do with culture or education. The sole, direct and immediate purpose of looking at a play or novel is so that you can spend an hour and a quarter writing about it in June. Of course there would be no point actually seeing the play in September. Why would you, you won't get any extra marks for it?

This is not an isolated example, but typical of what I hear from other teenagers who are at school and college. Suggest to a fifteen year old who is doing "Pride and Prejudice" for GCSE, that she might enjoy other books by the same author, say "Emma" and she will look at you as though you have taken leave of your senses. Often, the teachers tell them not to bother with anything outside the syllabus. For instance the English teacher at a local school whose pupils were "doing" Great Expectations, told them not to read the whole book. It would take too long and they only needed to be familiar with certain chapters. Children will say, "I don't need to know that". or "Miss said not to read that". The ultimate in utilitarian education; I don't "need" to know that.

For me, and I suspect many other home educators, this is the opposite of education. It is not just in English Literature that this appalling state of affairs is the norm. Every subject is studied, not because it might shed light on the human condition or help us to think like civilised beings, but because it is on the syllabus. As Mr. Gradgrind said in "Hard Times", "Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else , and root out everything else."

Was John Holt the world's most annoying author?

The above question is not meant rhetorically. Like many home educating parents, I bought a copy of "Teach your own" years ago. I didn't think much of it and stuck it in a bookcase for the next decade or so. Recently, I fished it out and had a look through it. I had quite forgotten just how truly, monumentally awful it is!

For those unfamiliar with John Holt's books, his most popular ones consist of long, rambling, personal monologues, in which he reflects on his life as a teacher. He writes in a chatty, informal style, as though he were a favourite uncle giving you some friendly advice and his books are larded with a nuggets of homespun wisdom, usually presented in a toe curlingly twee way. He sprinkles homely anecdotes around and "Teach your own" also features many stories from parents who home educate according to his wise and good principles. I have chosen a couple of pages more or less at random; pages 143 and 144 in the chapter on Learning without Teaching. Let us look at the fathers whom he quotes approvingly and see if what they are saying is worth hearing.

The first man says, "It is not possible for an inquisitive child to delve deeply into dinosaurs without wondering about, and learning, how big they were (measurements), how many roamed a certain area (arithmetic), where they lived (geography), what happened to them (history) etc." This is, despite anything John Holt might believe to the contrary, a pretty fair load of nonsense. It is perfectly possibly to spend months being interested in dinosaurs, learn their Latin names and everything about them without once learning anything at all about geography or arithmetic.

I have known plenty of kids who become obsessed by dinosaurs. I have never met one who learned how many roamed in a certain area, let alone learned any arithmetic as a consequence. The reasons are obvious. Firstly, nobody has the remotest idea how many dinosaurs did roam in a certain area. Secondly, I have been looking in all the books in the local library about this aspect of dinosaurs. Not one has anything to say on the subject. Neither is any child likely to learn geography from studying dinosaurs. For one thing there were no continents at that time, just one large landmass called Pangaea. Fat lot of use that geography would be, unless you were planning to take a holiday in the Carboniferous Era. I couldn't find anything about this in any of the books in the kids' library either.

I don't believe for a moment that any child has ever learned any arithmetic as a result of reading about dinosaurs, or any geography either! On the next page, Holt quotes with apparent approval a father who has a four year old son, "He repeats and repeats things until he has them. We put him to bed at 9pm and often at 11pm we can hear him talking to himself as he goes over things he wants to get straight." Apparently the child counts to a hundred and twenty nine constantly and keeps obsessively muttering to himself about what he has learned that day. Now call me Mr. Old Fashioned, but if my four year old child were laying in the dark for two hours counting to a hundred and twenty nine and repeating everything he had learned that day, I would be seriously concerned. Sounds like an anxious kid who needs to relax.

The book is full of this sort of thing; pointless anecdotes which are supposed to present unschooling as a wonderful way of life. Perhaps the most irritating aspect of the book is the creepy and patronising way that Holt talks about children. Here he is on page 144 talking about visiting, " An eight year old friend and her mother". I can tell you now that grown up men don't really have eight year old girls as their friends. Presumably this is actually the daughter of a friend of his. To pretend that it is the child who is his friend is at best patronising and at worst, slightly sinister. I am on excellent terms with the young daughters of friends, but if I started referring to an eight year old girl as "My friend" it would raise a few eyebrows! He is always talking about "My young friends". Yuk.

Practically every page of this book has something to annoy one. How it ever came to be seen as a seminal work on home education is an absolute mystery.