Sunday 14 November 2010

Rumour and misinformation

I was accused a couple of days ago of spreading rumours about who might or might not be involved in the drawing up of the new guidelines for home education. The difficulty is that because of the way that this is being done, almost everything to do with this business is rumour and speculation. Now the truth is, many people want to know what is going on about these guidelines. They wish to know who is involved, what their terms of reference are, whose idea the whole thing is, who elected these people to do this job on behalf of other parents and many other things besides. Apart from Tania Berlow, none of those involved are prepared to identify themselves. This means, inevitably, that we must fall back upon guesswork and cloak and dagger to find out what is going on. This is far from satisfactory.

I have been sent various pieces of information and also misinformation about all this. The most recent bit of misinformation was a copy of Alison Sauer's Business accounts and credit rating, together with the claim that Mrs Anon, who regularly posts here, is Alison Sauer's secret identity! This is of course completely untrue, but it does make me ask myself why people would be going to such lengths in order to muddy the waters!

How could this current situation have been avoided? Very easily really. If the people who had agreed to undertake this work had set up a blog specifically devoted to the new guidelines and announced that they welcomed everybody's views on the subject, that would have stopped all rumours before they had even begun. It costs nothing to set up a blog like this one and they could have named themselves and explained precisely what they were doing and why. Such a blog could then have been advertised on the main HE Internet lists and then the whole thing would have been open and above board. This would have stopped all the rumour and speculation from starting. Instead, Tania Berlow has become the public spokesperson of the group and the only source of information about what is actually being done. This is far from satisfactory, because Tania is a woman who never uses one word where twenty will do and despite all he posts on the Badman Review Action Group and elsewhere, we still do not really know what is happening.

As long as the group who are directly involved in putting together the new guidelines are refusing to speak publicly or post on any of the lists, the gossip, rumour and innuendo will continue and indeed increase. I dare say that readers are itching to know what Alison Sauer's accounts said, but the answer is really very little. There is something a little puzzling and that is this. We are told that she has trained fifty local authorities in matters relating to elective home education. According to her accounts though, nothing much has been going on with this company for the last five years or so. It also has a very low credit rating. This is curious. Apart from North Yorkshire and Lancashire, can anybody name a local authority which Sauer Consulting was involved with? I suppose the implication of whoever sent me this document is that Alison is not as successful as we are being told and that in fact she has not really done as much in the way of training as has been claimed. Since the original email was headed 'Financial motive', I guess that we are intended to think that she is desperate to drum up some business. Of course, this informant is not very reliable and has some reason of her own to try and confuse matters by pretending that Mrs Anon and Alison Sauer are one and the same person! This suggests that we should treat anything being hinted at but this person with a good deal of caution.

Just to complicate matters a little further, there is a suggestion that a vacuum will soon be left by the demise of Education Otherwise and that a large Internet group is hoping to fill this gap with a national organisation of their own. It is being hinted that this would be for financial reasons, rather than for the good of home educators. Clearly, the next year or two will prove interesting for those involved in home education and it seems likely that changes are very definitely on the way in one form or another.

10 comments:

  1. The whole thing is become madder by the minute- we have an unknown group of people working with Graham Stuart, we have someone who is clearly trying to suggest that Alison S is presumably financially motivated (and that someone has gone to a lot of trouble to get accounts etc)- yet the same someone has really no idea of what is going on if they think that Mrs Anon (who I know in real life) is Alison. Meanwhile Tania is the new hate figure of many, and I even see that Lord Lucas put his head above the parapet but seems to have retired injured when he got in the way of the abusive comments.

    Oh dear.....

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  2. 'Lord Lucas put his head above the parapet but seems to have retired injured when he got in the way of the abusive comments.'

    Lord Lucas reminded me of the neighbourhood bobby who tried to calm down a domestic dispute and ended up being smacked in the face by both sides! He certainly took off after a couple of robust exchanges. Clearly a man with no staying power!

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  3. I have finally come round to agreeing with you about the 'guidelines' cloak and dagger stuff.

    Origninally, I understood why people working on it didn't want their identities revealed and I was happy to wait until the proposals were available for scrutiny and comment. But now, I've come round to thinking it would be best to do it more in the open and have a blog people could comment on.

    It could even be done in such a way that people would have to use real names, as this usually (not always) deters people from making abusive comments.

    Mrs Anon (I am aware of the irony of that last remark, but I have very good reasons for remaining Mrs Anon here and have tried very hard not to be abusive.)

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  4. 'Mrs Anon (I am aware of the irony of that last remark, but I have very good reasons for remaining Mrs Anon here and have tried very hard not to be abusive.)'

    I cannot find it in my heart to blame you in the least for wishing to remain Mrs Anon! Exactly why anybody should wish to pretend that you are really Alison sauer is something of a mystery to me. I don't recollect your being abusive at all; I must have missed that.

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  5. Simon, you are spot on with everything you say today.

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  6. I see nothing much has changed in the world of home ed internet lists! Who's on the hit list these days? ;)

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  7. 'I see nothing much has changed in the world of home ed internet lists! Who's on the hit list these days? ;)'

    Ah, Gisela. Good to hear from you again! I have been knocked from the spot of most hated person in the world of home education by Tania Berlow in Somerset. It was a cruel blow, but I fancy that when my book comes out later this month, I shall regain this coveted position.

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  8. 'Simon, you are spot on with everything you say today.'

    Why thank you, Anonymous!

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  9. Characteristically you appear to deploy your ignorance as veil of aspersions that constitutes a scurrilous attempt to marginalise good people that encroach upon your imaginary kingdom as the ultimate expert in Home Education. It is a delusion. You appear to lose all sense of decency to perpetuate the delusion.

    Scale, frequency and speed of payments determine commercial credit ratings. The basic trading commodity of consulting firms is a delivery of intellectual property with little or no external supplier costs. So credit ratings based upon low value and low volume of purchases, are rightfully low.

    Whilst company law allows certain costs to be detailed, small companies have protective exemption from turnover and profitability disclosures. This is not about hiding poor results.

    Please make an effort to think of the adverse and unjustified impact upon people other than yourself before making ignorant statements.

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  10. "Apart from North Yorkshire and Lancashire, can anybody name a local authority which Sauer Consulting was involved with? "

    Alison lives in Lancashire, I don't believe she has trained those in Lancashire LA.

    Why she might be sorting things out at national level when she has not sorted out the LA in her own back yard is beyond me.

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