The National Curriculum is a particular bugbear of the autonomous home educators. Again and again one sees them expressing the fear that it will be "imposed" upon them, thus ending their freedom to home educate. Mind you, more than a few of them seem to be a little vague about what the National Curriculum actually is. For many, the expression seems to be synonomous with conventional schoolwork; they use the term simply to signify structured academic work.
I am not sure where the rumour started that Graham Badman was seeking to impose the National Curriculum on home educators. It was certainly rife during the review. It never apparently occurred to anybody to adopt the straightforward course of asking him outright whether there was any truth in the notion that this was his ultimate aim. When I did ask him, he seemed genuinely amazed at the idea. As he pointed out, just getting schools to abide by the enormously complex and cumbersome provisions of the National Curriculum is a nightmare. The thought that anybody would try and do this with tens of thousands of eccentric and often awkward home educators seemed to bemuse him! That he was being honest about this is suggested by the final recommendations made in his report to the Secretary of State. Recommendation 2 limits itself to a bit of waffle to the effect that the DCSF should review the definition of a "suitable" education. This should not be "overly prescriptive", which seems at once to rule out the National Curriculum; possibly the most prescriptive body of instructions ever produced in human history!
While it is true that I am not a huge fan of the National Curriculum, at least not in its current, unwieldy form, it is worth asking why the thing was introduced in the first place. At one time, any school could teach precisely as it saw fit. This meant of course that some schools taught pupils a lot of skills and knowledge which stood them in good stead once they left. Others taught very poorly and the pupils left school fit only to be street sweepers or millgirls. This was not fair. The idea of a National Curriculum was to create a level playing field, so that all children would acquire a good grasp of literacy and mathematics, science and history and that they would all leave school with an equal grasp of these things. This was a noble aspiration, but like so many grand schemes it became bogged down in the pettifogging details of precisely what should be taught and when. This does not mean that it is not a good aim, just that it needs to be radically revised.
Although for a home educator to teach every aspect of the National Curriculum would be impossibly demanding, I can't see any reason that some of its targets should not be used as a very rough framework for what children should be able to achieve and know at various stages of their development.
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Imposing the National Curriculum may not be their currently stated aim, but experience of project creep in this country and experiences in other countries (starting out with registering and monitoring and moving ultimately to a defined curriculum) suggest that it's quite likely to happen. Do you remember when 'SATS' were introduced? We were told that the child would not even know that they were being tested, individual results were irrelevant, they were just to test the school, etc. I don't know how anyone could see how that has evolved and then say it's unlikely that the NC will be imposed on home educators.
ReplyDeleteYou say that, "I am not sure where the rumour started that Graham Badman was seeking to impose the National Curriculum on home educators...The thought that anybody would try and do this with tens of thousands of eccentric and often awkward home educators seemed to bemuse him!"
Graham Badman's intentions are irrelevant, he is just a pawn used to start the ball rolling. Why would it be difficult to enforce a curriculum on home educators? If the current recommendations go through, the LA can just refuse registration and force the child into school if they didn't follow the curriculum. Easy.
Yes, I quite take your point about SATS! I too remember those assurances. To be fair to those whi introduced the whole thing, I think that their intentions were good. It was the teachers and schools who became so anxious about the testing that they began focusing more and more on the run-up to the SATS in teaching "to the test". It is this which has made the whole experience so stressful for the children. Once again, the schools intentions were not sinister, simply that their school should be above others in the test results. What other countries are you talking about where a curriculum has been imposed after initially introducing registering and monitoring? I must admit I don't know about this, but would be interested to find out. You say that Graham Badman is just a pawn. Presumabally then you think that there is some other reason behind the whole review of home education, other of course than the stated one of seeing that all children are safe and get a suitable education? It's probably me, but I can't think of any other motive than the obvious. Could you tell me what you think is really going on here?
ReplyDeleteSimon said,
ReplyDelete"I think that their intentions were good."
Yes, intentions may have been good but closer control has resulted in a perversion of education and learning, why do you think it will be any different for HE? In much the same way as children become stressed before SATS I'm sure children will be stressed by LA visits - the intention is the same after all, to measure and test.
Simon said,
"What other countries are you talking about where a curriculum has been imposed after initially introducing registering and monitoring?"
France. They already had compulsory registration and monitoring with twice yearly tests to measure the child's development. A new education bill was passed in March 09 that defines a required curriculum. They have also had to fight previously proposed changes to the law in recent years, http://www.hslda.org/hs/international/France/200701250.asp in much the same way as we have ('light touch changes', etc).
Badman is just the latest front man in a series of attempts to increase the level of control the government has over HE, as demonstrated by the number of reviews and consultations over the last 4 years. They can see that HE is growing rapidly and they want to gain control before numbers make this more difficult.
I suppose that the amount of stress that both the SATS and visits from the LEA produce in children is largely down to the adults around them. teachers certainly make the run-up to the SATS a nightmare. This is because it is they themselves who are really being judged and a lot is riding on the results. I think that the same thing happens with visits from the local authority. If the parents are angry and resentful about it, that will inevitably rub off on the child. Imagine if, on the other hand, the child's mother just said casually to a child, " Oh listen, there's some guy coming round next week who wants to talk to you and see how you are. It's just some nonsense from the council, everybody gets it". If nothing more were said, then I seriously doubt that it would prove a stressful experience for the child.
ReplyDeleteI freely confess that I know little about the French situation and so am unable to comment!
Simon said,
ReplyDelete"I think that the same thing happens with visits from the local authority. If the parents are angry and resentful about it, that will inevitably rub off on the child. Imagine if, on the other hand, the child's mother just said casually to a child, " Oh listen, there's some guy coming round next week who wants to talk to you and see how you are. It's just some nonsense from the council, everybody gets it". If nothing more were said, then I seriously doubt that it would prove a stressful experience for the child."
In theory this sound reasonable. But however blasé a parent pretends to be in front of their child the underlying stress a parent may feel is likely to be sensed by a child. I took exactly this approach for the inspections we had (to the extent of not objecting when the inspector asked to take my child into another room to speak with them alone) but also couldn't stop myself trying to get them to produce recognisable 'work' during the months before the visit with all the attendant stress and arguments that that caused.
Hmmm, I suppose that you might also say that the fact that you knew that somebody would be coming to see what you were doing might have focused your mind and made you plan a little more? We did not see anybody from the LEA until my daughter was eight. I have to say that I think that knowing that we would be subject to some oversight was not a bad thing in the long run. It made me think a little more about what I was hoping to achieve.
ReplyDeleteBut how would I plan what my child will autonomously choose to learn? You claim to understood AE and then say this? I knew what I wanted to achieve, self directed learners who enjoyed education for its own sake and could also appreciate that sometimes it's a means to an end. As a result of much reading and observation of my children and in particular, how they reacted to externally motivated education, I believed that this was best achieved through autonomous, non-coercive education. Sure, the visits focussed my mind, but on the wrong things and the wrong methods (for our family).
ReplyDeleteI can imagine that some children respond well to externally motivated education, I think I have this tendency and quite enjoy the challenge of competition. One of my children certainly had this tendency too to some degree and I was happy to provide this to the level they required, so I have no trouble accepting that some children truly love school and/or school at home. But certainly, for my other children, this style of education just led to conflict and stress. I honestly believe that we would not have been able to continue with home education if we had stayed in that area. The conflict between my children's needs and the LEAs expectations would have placed too much stress on our family. It would have been better to send my children to school and keep educational coercion out of the home - to have kept home safe for them - rather than bring school, coercion and stress into our family life.