A short while ago I was trying very hard to track down the sources for the various estimates for the number of home educating families in this country. These estimates vary greatly, as I am sure readers are aware. I wished to be accurate because the book of mine on this subject which is due to be published later this year is an academic work. This means that I can't simply make the sort of sweeping claims and wild statements that I regularly make here; everything has to be referenced. If I say that twenty thousand children are being educated at home, I must give my source for this information, for example (Hopwood et al 2007) or (Fortune-Wood 2005). Then at the end, I give details of the source so that others might check up for themselves later.
I found a couple of interesting things while I was tracking down the figures. One of the things was that people simply invent numbers and then the next person to come along quotes those guesses and references the first person's guess as though it were a piece of proper research. The result is that there is absolutely no reliable estimate of the true numbers of home educated children; just people quoting each other's guesswork. This will come as no surprise to most people. I did find a few curious things though. I was taken to task yesterday for supposedly belittling Paula Rothermel's research and suggesting that she didn't know what she was up to. A couple of people told me plainly that Paula knows more about statistics than I do and that compared with her I was a bit of a dunderhead, or words to that effect. A harsh accusation indeed! Well, let's see. One of the figures that I was very dismissive about was of course the idea that there might be over half a million children not at school. Why was I so scathing about this? I shall explain and in the process show why other academics do not take Paula Rothermel's work at all seriously. This is also why Graham Badman ignored it during his review. Follow carefully and you will see why people don't get excited about Paula Rothermel's claims about home education.
The figure of over half a million children not at school comes from a piece which Rothermel wrote in 2000. It is an apparently academic article, properly referenced. She said:
Moreover, there may be as many as 50,000 children educated outside school (ACE 1999). Combine this with the data that in 1997/98 there were 9,144,000 children aged 5-16 in the population, but only 8,583,400 registered in schools (DfEE 1999c). Where were the other 560,600?
Looks very professional and academic at first sight. Let's look a little closer. Observe the reference for the number of children educated outside school; (ACE 1999). I looked up this reference at the end of the piece and it says:
ACE (1999) Home education: a critical evaluation. ACE Bulletin. Advisory Centre for Education, No. 89, June.
This is promising. Perhaps I will find a source for the figure of up to 50,000 children being taught out of school! I tracked down this source and the opening paragraph says:
Home education: a critical evaluation
Advisory Centre for Education ACE: June 1999 No. 89
Over 50,000 British families are estimated to be educating their children at home. What do we know about home-education? Can ideas be generated that have relevance to education of children generally? Paula Rothermel, of the University of Durham, aims to answer these questions among many others. Her three year study of home-education, involving 1000 families, will be published early in the year 2000. Here ACE describes some of the study's preliminary findings.
Straight away, we have a problem. In the original article, Rothermel says that, 'there may be as many as 50,000 children educated outside school ' In other words, 50,000 children or fewer. The reference leads us to a source which says that, 'Over 50,000 British families are estimated to be educating their children at home.' In other words more than 50,000 children. The two statements are contradictory. Her reference does not back up her statement in the original article. There's more though.
This article is about Paula Rothermel's own research. There is nothing here to substantiate the figure of 50,000; as far as one can tell it is no more than a wild guess. In other words, she has tried to back up one unsubstantiated statement by giving as a source another unsubstantiated statement. Trust me, this is not how one does things in the academic world! The best is yet to come. Although the referenced article refers to Rothermel in the third person as though it is an objective account of her work and it says that ACE describes her work, at the bottom we find, "©P. Rothermel 1998". She actually wrote the thing herself. She has referenced her own work and tried to conceal the fact by giving the name of a magazine and failing to mention that it is an article written by her. Sharp practice indeed!
And just in case anybody has had trouble following all this, let me remind you that we are no nearer to finding out why she thinks that there are more than or fewer than fifty thousand home educated children in this country. Where does she get the number fifty thousand from in the first place? Perhaps now readers will realise why I don't take the rest of her guesswork too seriously. She may be an academic with a grasp of statistics and demographics, but she provides little evidence for it in this sort of work. To be fair, she is not alone. Every single estimate I looked at for the number of home educated children did precisely the same thing, just repeated previous guesses. And the source for the claim of over half a million children out of school? In the article this is given as; (DfEE 1999c). Will this lead us to some statistics which we can examine? No, the reference is in fact to a telephone conversation which Paula Rothermel says she had with an unnamed official in the civil service on an unknown day eleven years ago. No way of checking that figure either! Need I say more?
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Really, Simon. Speculation and fabricated figures are good enough for Ed Balls to justify blowing hundreds of millions of pounds our money - or rather, money he wants to borrow from our children's future earnings. They ought to be good enough for you.
ReplyDeleteI have not the least objection to fabricated figures, Ciaran. These are what one expects in this sort of campaign. It was more irritation at being told that I should accept these particular fabricated figures simply because Paula Rothermel is an academic who is in favour of home education!
ReplyDeleteDont buy Simon book he is a traiter to home home educators and a supporter of crazy old Badman.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the endorsement, Mr Williams. Unfortunatley, this book will not go on sale until October, price £16.99, available from all good booksellers. It is in any case, aimed more at professionals and local authority officers, rather than parents and the general public.
ReplyDeleteWe be in more of a mess if LA officers buy it and follow your crazy advice for home education.I shall write at once to HCC to tell them not to buy it!
ReplyDeleteIs they a section on home visits? and how to spy on people?
i may write a book myself tilted how to get rid of LA's the easy way write more letters than there do LOL!
No-one said in the last thread that the numbers you refer to should be accepted...it was just another interesting part of a puzzle.
ReplyDeleteThe point I was making is that there is a discrepancy between numbers known to be attending private or state schools and numbers of children in the 5-16 age group.
We already knew that but no-one knows what the numbers were.
The 500,000 figure is just another figure based on governments own figures-but we already know that government figures are not exactly accurate either.
I was hoping that by looking at this figure, be it 100,000 or one million , it would be recognised that not all children who fall in the category of being educated according to Section 7 are being home educated in ways that we have been talking about and that other possibilities exist which have strangely not been talked about by government.
I never said Paula's figures were correct -I was using them to point out that there could be more children than I had previously considered.
I was referring to her numerous different court cases where she has encountered many types of families and therefore has knowledge that the categories in the last thread do exist. Never that these categories make up a certain number. Only that she has a wider experience of 'types'.
Another interesting figure is that one million children's parents do not ask for child benefit.
You said Tania,
ReplyDelete" You may not agree with Paula on things but I doubt you have looked at the census data for all children age 5 -16 and compared it to children registered in state or private schools.
One thing I am sure about- Paula has more experience than both you and I combined."
I'm far from convinced that Paula Rothermel has actually looked at much hard data herself.
there is no hard data.
ReplyDeleteCan you concede that she may have been privvy to many more different types of home educators and methods of education than you or I -through the court cases she has dealt with -in which she gets to spend in depth time and do an in depth report ?
Without knowing how many cases she has dealt with, it is impossible to say. Certainly, claiming that half a million children are out of school on the strength of a telephone conversation with an unnamed civil servant about whom we know nothing, is evidence of nothing. I shall have to remember this one! The next time I wish to make a sensational claim about autonomous education I shall reference it as (Webb 2008) and then in the references I shall list it as (Personal conversation with bloke in the pub, London: 4/3/08) You must surely see Tania that this sort of thing casts huge doubts upon Paula Rothermel's reliability. These are not isolated examples: her work is riddled with stuff like this.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally Tania, do we actually know of cases where Paula Rothermel gave evidence in court for home educators? If so, when and where? Is this regular or occasional? Does she do it for a living or is she just supplementing her income form painting? These are all questions we should ask before we give a lot of credence to what she has to say.
ReplyDelete"The reference leads us to a source which says that, 'Over 50,000 British families are estimated to be educating their children at home.' In other words more than 50,000 children. The two statements are contradictory. Her reference does not back up her statement in the original article. There's more though."
ReplyDeleteThe reference leads to an article/research paper and you appear to have quoted an abstract. Maybe if you looked at the full paper you would see why the change in wording was used? There may be a good reason. For instance, the evidence for 'up to' 50,000 may be stronger than evidence for 'over' 50,000.
"This article is about Paula Rothermel's own research. There is nothing here to substantiate the figure of 50,000; as far as one can tell it is no more than a wild guess. In other words, she has tried to back up one unsubstantiated statement by giving as a source another unsubstantiated statement. "
If you look at the paper itself, rather than an abstract, you will find the source of her 'guess' was from research by Meighan in 1997.
http://www.pjrothermel.com/Research/Researchpaper/Exeter.htm
"School is not compulsory in the United Kingdom. Families involving about 50,000 children throughout the United Kingdom are estimated to have elected not to use the school system (Meighan 1997). "
I did not see that claim being made- only that there seems to be a discrepancy. The discrepancy was raised probably to raise more questions -just as you and I are asking questions - is this figure accurate- probably not but dig yourself and try and find out how many children were on the last census compared to how many were registered in a school at the same time-maybe rounding up or down is the answer -all it proves is the government have no clue and neither does anyone else. Maybe contactpoint will work and the mystery will be solved (at what cost?)
ReplyDeletePaula was an expert witness for my daughter and myself.I speak from personal experience as to her integrity .I have the most thorough report I have ever seen- fantastic compared to the paltry 2 page efforts from the other side.
She spent considerable time getting to know us and much more time visiting than the LA would. The court was not even interested in what the LA had to say. There is very few people who have a academic background and a knowledge of HE and I would venture to say that it is possible she is the only one who gets behind the scenes at court as an expert witness.This is how I know she has a more detailed knowledge of different peoples lives than most
Not so Anonymous. I quoted the opening paragraph. The text of the piece contains no new information to substantiate the claim. If she wished to cite Meighan in 1997, I wonder she did not do so.
ReplyDeleteI've just checked Anonymous's link. She did indeed cite Meighan in 1997.
ReplyDeleteErica, you are missing the point. In the original piece which I quote, where Paula Rothermel makes the claim about half a million children being out of school, she gives this reference;
ReplyDelete"ACE (1999) Home education: a critical evaluation. ACE Bulletin. Advisory Centre for Education, No. 89, June."
This is a brief account of her research published in the ACE magazine. There is no mention at all of Meighan there; the article is not referenced. This article refers to her work, which if you track it down does contain a reference to Meighan. The point I was making was that from the article and the reference leading to the piece in the ACE magazine, there is no way of telling where this information may be found. I was further making the point that it was a little tricksy to cite the ACE magazine without mentioning that this was an article she herself had written.
I've read academic works that have involved similar 'chains' of references. The fact remains that Rothermel did not make a wild guess at 50,000 as you suggest. That you need to follow a reference within a referenced paper does not change this.
ReplyDeleteNo, there is no chain. The reference from the first paper led to a second which had no reference. It was a dead end.
ReplyDeleteSimon wrote,
ReplyDelete"No, there is no chain. The reference from the first paper led to a second which had no reference. It was a dead end."
Oh yes there is! (sorry, sounds a bit like a pantomime).
As you say in the article above, Rothermel references the paper, Home education: a critical evaluation, in connection with the 50,000 figure. Home Education: a critical evaluation then references Meighan as quoted below:
http://www.pjrothermel.com/Research/Researchpaper/Exeter.htm
Home-education: a critical evaluation
"Families involving about 50,000 children throughout the United Kingdom are estimated to have elected not to use the school system (Meighan 1997). "
Meighan, R. (1997) The Next Learning System: and why home-schoolers are trailblazers. Nottingham: Educational Heretics Press.
Simon wrote,
ReplyDelete"Erica, you are missing the point. In the original piece which I quote, where Paula Rothermel makes the claim about half a million children being out of school, she gives this reference;
"ACE (1999) Home education: a critical evaluation. ACE Bulletin. Advisory Centre for Education, No. 89, June.
This is a brief account of her research published in the ACE magazine. There is no mention at all of Meighan there; the article is not referenced"
Can you provide a link for the copy of, Home Education: a Critical Evaluation, that does not include the Meighan reference? Maybe there are two versions out there.
I hesitate to contradict you Anonymous, but you are quite wrong. Here is the reference as it appears:
ReplyDelete"Moreover, there may be as many as 50,000 children educated outside school (ACE 1999)."
Look at this reference at the end of the paper and you will be refrred to the ACE Bulletin for a certain month. If you then track that down, you find a brief account of the work with no references. The trail ends there. Had Rothermel referenced either the paper she delivered at Exeter or the original reference from Meighan, this would not have happened.
"
Here is the link to the complete article as it appeared;
ReplyDeletehttp://pjrothermel.com/Research/Newspaper/ace.htm
So Rothermel referenced an article about a research paper rather than the paper itself maybe because it was in print and the research paper wasn't. However, the full paper is mentioned in the first paragraph (the paper I found first, and provided the link for, having found it within minutes via Google).
ReplyDeleteIt seems obvious that your link is an article about a research paper and not the research paper itself and, if you want more details including references, you will need to look at the full paper - effectively it's an abstract. So, you read an abstract, want to know more, request the full paper and find the reference to Meighan. A chain of references, not ideal, but possibly it is best to reference a published article rather than an unpublished research paper. Not impossible to trace and certainly not a wild guess.