I have been interested to note over the last few days that while people have had a good deal to remark about the pilot study being set up by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, not one person has touched upon the real reason for the vehement opposition to this new research. It's the wrong time, it's the wrong people arranging it, we have been vilified and insulted; all more or less decent excuses for avoiding the thing like the plague, but all skirting around the real objection.
Whatever their original motivations, there is no doubt at all that after a few months many home educators in this country continue to keep their children at home for reasons wholly unconnected from education. This was a major finding of both the Education Otherwise survey of its members in 2003 and also Paula Rothermel's work in 1997/1998. Now of course I have in the past had some harsh things to say about Paula Rothemel's research on literacy and so on, but there's no reason to doubt the raw data from the thousand or so questionnaires which she received. Parents cited the benefits of home education in both surveys as closer family relationships, the opportunity to do more things together, a relaxed lifestyle and things like that.
In a sense then, any attempt to study home education in this country will be pointless and irrelevant unless this is taken into account. After all, if you are comparing independent schools with maintained schools in the state sector, you don't generally ask about how the family relationships of the pupils are going, nor as to whether they feel more relaxed in this or that setting. You ask instead about how much PE they're doing, which examinations they have passed, who's learning the piano and stuff like that. And so we arrive, in a pleasant and roundabout way, at the heart of the problem. Because however good their family relationships and despite the fact that home educated children are supposedly kinder, more altruistic, more compassionate and concerned than children attending school, the fact is that they don't in general take Grade 6 Clarinet or pass GCSE's early, as many schooled children do.
In short, many parents are simply nervous about what such a study would reveal. I have no doubt at all that much of the opposition to serious research on home education is motivated by this fear. After all, it is one thing reading about some home educated kid who goes to Cambridge at fifteen or Oxford at twelve or gets an A level at nine, but most of us don't have children like that. I certainly don't! The awful possibility strikes some parents that if an outsider started to look at her child and test his abilities, then perhaps he would shake his head sadly and say, "Sorry Mrs. Smith, but your Johnny is at least three years behind other children of his age, particularly in reading". In other words, a study might show that academically, many home educated children are not doing as well as those at school. I think this anxiety is very prevalent among autonomous educators and I strongly suspect that this is at the root of many of the objections to participating in any sort of research.
Let's face it, none of us want a complete stranger sitting in judgement over us and our lifestyle! Many home educated children do learn to read and write later than those at school. It is quite possible that, for whatever reason, home educated children don't tend to take eleven or twelve GCSE's when they are fifteen. I am regarded by many as a fanatical "school at home" type and I can assure readers right now that it never for a moment crossed my mind to enter my daughter for eleven GCSE's! So the first result of any sort of study might be to reveal that home educated children are not doing as well academically as those at school, at least as far as the yardsticks used in schools are concerned.
Of course, there may well be another yardstick entirely by which home education should be measured; one which does not depend upon GCSE results and access to higher education. if so, then it is high time for home educators to share these benchmarks with those who are about to start investigating home education. Because otherwise, the end product of such a study is likely to be a set of graphs and statistics which demonstrate infallibly that home education is often absolutely useless compared with school and that many home educated children would benefit from returning to school as promptly as possible.
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So, your theory is that because home educators choose to HE for soft, touchy-feely reasons (and we all know you cannot abide touchy-feely lifestyles), their educational results will be poor. You think that if they were home educating because they think they can provide a better education (the main reason given in some other studies) we would see a different result and HE would prove to be at least as good as school (as demonstrated in all other studies). The main problem with this theory is that you are using Rothermel's study to support it and, despite their touch-feely reasons for choosing to HE, those same families were achieving better results than schools. How do you account for that?
ReplyDeleteVery conrontative tone here! Paula Rothermel's study was divided into two parts. Firstly she sent out five thousand questionnaires asking general qiestions about how people felt about home education, their motives and so on. Then she selected a tiny number for closer examination, using the PIPS baseline and the NLP liteacy tests. Only thirty five children were tested using the PIPS and all but five of the literacy tests were conducted by the parents themselves in uncontrolled conditions. This means that they were hopelessly compromised from the beginning. Even those who thought that they could give their children a better education, gave reasons relating more to lifestyle when asked what home education meant to them.
ReplyDeleteYou must be sure to distinguish between what British research has found regarding motives and what has emerged from the USA; there are differences. This is not, as you put it, "my theory", but what many home educators have said in response to surveys; that their reasons for liking home education are concerned with factors other than education.
"Whatever their original motivations, there is no doubt at all that after a few months many home educators in this country continue to keep their children at home for reasons wholly unconnected from education."
ReplyDeleteHow would you define 'education' Simon?
Can I clarify whether this question is specifically aimed at autonomous educators?
ReplyDeleteIs the point of the study to prove that AE can be a valid educational philosophy which 'produces' outcomes that are favourable ?
Would 'favourable' be defined by the individual being studied or by the government?
The aim of the study, as I understand it, is to look at the different methods used by home educators and then track how effective they are over the years.
ReplyDeleteSimon wrote,
ReplyDelete"Even those who thought that they could give their children a better education, gave reasons relating more to lifestyle when asked what home education meant to them."
and he also wrote,
"You must be sure to distinguish between what British research has found regarding motives and what has emerged from the USA; there are differences."
But the different motives do not appear to change the results despite your suggestions in this article that it would.
"This is not, as you put it, "my theory", but what many home educators have said in response to surveys; that their reasons for liking home education are concerned with factors other than education."
I didn't say that this was your theory (though it seems to be based on one study - Webb and Meighan both found different the main reason to be an interest in alternative education and school based problems, for instance). Your theory in this article is that because they have different reasons for HE, the results will not be as good. You are linking reasons with results despite a complete lack of evidence (and even some evidence to show the opposite) to support this view.
I'm sure suzyg, that we would have different views on a definition of education. However, Paula Rothermel herself said of her findings;
ReplyDelete"For half the sample home-education was a lifestyle choice. Families valued the freedom and flexibility that home-education brought them"
This suggests to me that it was indeed lifestyle rather than education per se, however, defined, that attracted many home educators. I am not saying that this is a bad thing, merely that one would use different measures than when looking purely at educational attainment.
Intrinsic motivation is a central tenant of autonomous education. Monitoring and evaluation are not neutral tools and tend to objectify and change education making it a discrete part of life instead of continuing to allow it to be an inevitable element (paraphrasing Jan FW, http://www.home-education.org.uk/ac/article-ae.htm).
ReplyDeleteAn interesting article about the effect of measuring and studying things:
http://nortonbooks.typepad.com/everydaysociology/2008/07/an-effect-of-me.html
"What’s the bottom line here? Well, when we measure anything, whether in professional research or everyday-life, realize that we’re probably changing some aspect of it. If we want to change something, probably the first thing to do is to start measuring it."
Autonomous educators don't want to change the motivation of their child's education from intrinsic to external - wanting to please their parents, the LA or researchers, or to gain higher marks in tests. They want their children to continue to learn because they enjoy it and it's inevitable.
Then you'd expect and hope that results for the school type education would at least be as good as results for schools.
ReplyDeleteHowever when it comes to AE I doubt you could pull a decent enough sample size for the population who chooses to have contact with their LAs even if 80% volunteered.
and sample size is the least of the issues.
I am saying Anonymous, that I would be pleasantly surprised if the educational outcomes for home educated children were as good as those at school. What evidence to I have for this assertion? Many children at school routinely take eleven or twelve GCSEs and a lot of them pass them all. Does anybody here know of any home educated child who has passed twelve GCSE's? My daughter certainly hasn't! In other words, what is not uncommon common for schooled children is unbelievably rare for those educated at home. I don't regard this as a useful benchmark myself, but it is the one used by the DCSF and local authorities. This is why I thought that it would be a good thing for home educators to come up with a different set of yardsticks to measure home education against.
ReplyDeleteYou have put the matter in a nutshell, Tania!
ReplyDelete"I'm sure suzyg, that we would have different views on a definition of education. However, Paula Rothermel herself said of her findings;
ReplyDelete"For half the sample home-education was a lifestyle choice. Families valued the freedom and flexibility that home-education brought them"
This suggests to me that it was indeed lifestyle rather than education per se, however, defined, that attracted many home educators. I am not saying that this is a bad thing, merely that one would use different measures than when looking purely at educational attainment."
But that's the nub of the issue. What is education and what isn't? My son has learned things from 'Ed, Edd and Eddie' that you wouldn't believe were in there unless you'd seen it, and from lying in a hammock playing with a lego brick, but I doubt whether many people would see watching 'Ed, Edd and Eddie' or lying in a hammock as 'educational'.
I would say that education was the child acquiring knowledge and skills that would help them grow into healthy, happy, independent adults who had a good understanding about how the world works. What that knowledge and skills are, and how the child acquires them, are points about which there is much disagreement.
Even if you are comparing a school-type home education with a school education, the measure by which you determine their efficacy is open to debate. University lecturers and employers are forever complaining about school leavers not knowing how to spell or to use their initiative, in spite of a string of A*s. Education is about more than qualifications, and if you make qualifications the only measure, which is in effect what the state system has done, you are by definition, invalidating other knowledge and skills.
Why thank you Simon- you know how hard it is for me to reduce to the size of nutshells!
ReplyDeleteI have yet to see the point of 10 GCSEs when you do not need more than 5 even for medical school.Its the A levels they look at. At any rate the measurement of this proposed study would likely be would be against the governments own targets-the magical 5 GCSE's by 16.
If this study would only be measuring external attainment by 16 (end of compulsory education) it says nothing about what these children's actual outcomes are unless the age range is increased to 25 years old so I also reckon that to say anything meaningful about AE you would have to study this as a separate variable, look at the end result and not put emphasis on measurements at particular points along the way. A retrospective study at 25 years old would be of more use and the DCSF is not planning on doing this.
As an aside, seeing as many of the registered children are SEN - was it 10% (?) would there not have to be an adjustment for this variable as this group is has a higher representation in HE than in school population?
I do not think the GRT community has a higher representation in HE than in school.
I do not think the year 10-11 issue has a higher representation in HE than those who remain in school in body but not in mind but all these variables would need to be taken into account and I seriously doubt they will do this correctly.
The more I think about it the less likely it seems that any meaningful results would be obtained. Even if all parents were required in law via the CSF bill to register and then it was required that 100% of ALL HE children participated.
"Because however good their family relationships and despite the fact that home educated children are supposedly kinder, more altruistic, more compassionate and concerned than children attending school, the fact is that they don't in general take Grade 6 Clarinet or pass GCSE's early, as many schooled children do."
ReplyDeleteDid you slip this "fact" in just to wind people up, Simon, or do you have proof?
You say Tania, "you know how hard it is for me to reduce to the size of nutshells". Indeed, I doubt that even among close friends your name is a by-word for brevity! Admirers still speak in hushed voices and awed tones of the three submissions which you made to the consultation, totalling an astounding ten thousand words. I agree with you about taking millions of GCSEs being pretty pointless. You point out quite correctly that if the object of the exercise for the DCSF was simply to look at home educated children at a certain age, say sixteen, then this would not tell us anything useful. I don't think that this is what is being proposed. They do describe it as being a longitudinal study, rather than a cross sectional one. This means that the aim is to follow through over a long period. How this would be done into adulthood, I don't know, unless they are wating until ID cards are introduced. Don't forget though that the school leaving age will soon be going up to eighteen. This will add a couple of years to the timescale which will be measured at intervals.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you suzyg about eduation being more than just a bunch of GCSEs. That however is how the business is often measured at the moment. As I said, it is really up to home educators to come up with another system of benchmarks is they wish to demonstrate the efficacy of what they are doing. And they do need to, otherwise home education might end up being branded a failure. This could have bad consequences.
ReplyDelete"How this would be done into adulthood, I don't know, unless they are wating until ID cards are introduced."
ReplyDeleteWhy are you assuming that the study will be carried out on all of a population whether they agree or not? Why should they automatically bypass normal ethical research considerations such as informed consent? This type of data collection doesn't fit with a longitudinal study either as these are usually observational in nature. I doubt ID card data collection will include that level of detail!
Ah Erica, not much gets past you! You are of course absolutely right. This is not a "fact", at least not in the generally acepted meaning of the word. Nor though was it an attempt to wind people up. I honestly doubt that very many home educated children are taking GCSEs early the way they regularly do in maintained schools. This demonstrates neatly the need for more research, so that people can speak with certainty about such matters.
ReplyDeleteTaking GCSEs early when a child is ready and to avoid taking them all at one sitting is an often quoted advantage of HE. Why do you assume that HE children do not take GCSEs early? And how early is early?
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've read the most usual case in schools involves taking GCSEs in November instead of the following June and only about 5% of GCSEs are were taken early (in 2008). When HEers take GCSEs early it's more usually a year or more earlier, not just 6 months.
Anonymous, you ask, "Why are you assuming that the study will be carried out on all of a population whether they agree or not?" I didn't say anything about this. I simply remarked that it was going to be a longitudanal study rather than a cross sectional one. That this is so can be seen from the information the DCSF are sending out to those who are expressing interest in this. They explicitly describe the study which it is hoped to conduct as being longitudinal. Don't tell me that I was the only person interested enough to send for further information on the pretext of wanting to put in a bid for this project?
ReplyDeleteTo clarify Simon- my main submission was 3000 words which is the allowable amount. The bulk of the rest was asked for ..it was the email exchanges that took place with one LA out of the original 25 that detailed how they worked out the percentages- by counting Jonny several times in each box if Jonny happened to have several possible risk factors - I refer to him as Jonny Fourtimes.Also contained therein was proof that disabled children were also counted (at least by this LA).
ReplyDeleteAnnette Brookes tried to bring it up as an issue during the hearing.
Sometimes I wonder whether all our public exposing of the dreadful original Review stats was what prompted the Supplemental evidence- no-one could look at the 'evidence' from the in depth questionnaire and say it was accurate.
Actually Anonymous many schools, including all three of the local schools here, enter children for GCSE maths at fourteen if they show any promise. Where do you get your data about home educated children taking GCSEs a year or more earlier? I must have missed this.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/15/schools-tables-exams
ReplyDeleteI have not found a school or college here where you can take GCSEs more than a year early.Also those where you can sit a year early only do one or two subjects
Can you recheck that Simon?
No, that's quite right Tania. Schools enter the kids a lot now when they are fourteen rather than fifteen. I should have given the actual year. As you say, it is usually limited to a few subjects; typically maths and double award science. My fault for not making myself clearer!
ReplyDeleteI should have said, the kids sit the exams in year 10 rather than year 11.
ReplyDelete"Anonymous, you ask, "Why are you assuming that the study will be carried out on all of a population whether they agree or not?" I didn't say anything about this."
ReplyDeleteWhy on earth would they need ID card data then? I realised that it is a longitudinal study. That's why I was surprised when you mentioned ID card data. Longitudinal studies are observational so ID card type data would not be relevant.
"Where do you get your data about home educated children taking GCSEs a year or more earlier? I must have missed this."
ReplyDeleteProbably the same place as you when you said, "the fact is that they don't in general take Grade 6 Clarinet or pass GCSE's early, as many schooled children do", word of mouth (or lack of word of mouth in your case).
I mentioned ID cards, not entirely in a serious way Anonymous, because Tania said, " A retrospective study at 25 years old would be of more use and the DCSF is not planning on doing this." Obviously at the moment, with people hopping about all over the country without so much as a by-your-leave, it would prove impossible to find the twenty five year olds, years after they left school. I thought, and I should have made it more clear that this was a whimsical idea, that ID cards would make it easier to find these twenty five year olds if such a study was ever attempted.
ReplyDeleteSimon says: I mentioned ID cards, not entirely in a serious way Anonymous, because Tania said ...
ReplyDeleteWere you hoping someone would point out that, like your beloved Schedule 1, ID cards will be soon be consigned to the dustbin?
Indeed they will Ciaran and nobody will be more pleased than me. I have always detested the idea of ID cards.
ReplyDeleteSimon my most heretical friend, I agree with you subject to the following caveats.
ReplyDelete1.) Any study will be useless if the people conducting it do not have a home education background of some sort.
2.) In comparing home education to a government school education, the "standard" to meet or beat is exactly what government schools are churning out. If the local authority has 50% at 5 or more GCSE then if 60% home ed cohort has 5 or more than home ed wins.
3.) You can not just measure and judge by GCSE results, which are dumbed down anyway. You need to also compare to IGCSE and I would also say that home ed pupils achieving suitable scores on the American SAT and/or ACT gaining admission to US University is equal to five or more GCSE.
I assume also, you would need to discount children who started out in school but then were withdrawn to be home educated, since to some extent the damage would already be done.
ReplyDeleteMy main problem with all this though, as I have said before, is that trying to measure the unmeasurable is fairly pointless.
"Obviously at the moment, with people hopping about all over the country without so much as a by-your-leave, it would prove impossible to find the twenty five year olds, years after they left school."
ReplyDeleteMany longitudinal studies have followed the careers of a sample of the population without too much difficulty. There are certainly issues about losing track of people and drop-out rates, but that is taken into account in the original sample size.
You're right suzyg. The only thing is, these studies are those where people are happy to take part! When they remember they even tell the researchers where they are moving to and so on. How very different from the way this current study is likely to be, with a marked reluctance of many to participate. That's why it might prove a little tricky to track them over the years.
ReplyDeleteThe reason people might be reluctant to take part is because they suspect the outcomes. If the EHE guidelines were the outcome of York Consulting's study, why not leave the EHE guidelines in place and be done with it? Why start another review and put someone in charge of it who could hardly be seen as impartial and clearly doesn't understand statistical analysis? What guarantee do home educators have that a) the body that gets this contract will be impartial and b) that the government will take any notice anyway?
ReplyDeletePossibly so, but this still has implications when carrying out a longitudinal study. Typically in such cases, those taking part wish to be as helpful as possible and make an effort to stay in touch with the team conducting the research. I can't really see this being the case here! You said, "Many longitudinal studies have followed the careers of a sample of the population without too much difficulty." I was just pointing out that the case might be slightly different here from the average study of this sort.
ReplyDelete"I was just pointing out that the case might be slightly different here from the average study of this sort."
ReplyDeleteWhy would it be different if the usually ethical considerations are followed and informed consent gained? Unless you are assuming that taking part would be made compulsory?
It will be different for the following reason. If one is undertaking a study of say, asthma, then the subjects are likely to remain asthmatic throughout the study, no matter how many years it lasts. There is also an incentive for the participants; they want scientists to find out more about the disease. In the case of home education, many parents and children simply lose interest in the thing after the kids are sixteen. They might agree to take part when the child is ten, but by the time he is twenty five or thirty, the chances are that he might have vanished. The chances of any home educated people being so keen to help the DCSF out with this study that they will make an effort to remain in touch for years is not very high. This would make it hard to conduct a longitudinal study; many of the subjects would drop from sight after a time and one would not be able to track long term outcomes.
ReplyDeleteAhh I see, when you said 'average study of this sort' you meant any follow up study. I thought you meant follow ups of education or social research studies (the sort of study we are talking about) which would usually suffer from the similar problems.
ReplyDelete