some negligible minority - a small fraction of home educators who are, themselves. a small fraction of the population
This is very interesting. The problem is that nobody really knows how many children in this country are not attending school. Most experts believe that universal literacy in this country was attained by making sure that almost every child was in school. The fear is that if a significant proportion were, as was the case during the nineteenth century, to be out of school, then things like illiteracy would begin to rise.
So readers are right in one sense; if the numbers of children who are not at school are indeed tiny, then this will hardly affect the country's literacy rate or academic achievement in general. However, some researchers who are widely respected in the world of home education are making increasingly extravagant claims about the scale of the phenomenon. Paula Rothermel, for instance, is currently saying that she believes that the number of children in this country aged between five and sixteen who are not at school now runs into the hundreds of thousands. She claims to have identified between 300,000 and 500,000 such children. Yes, you did read that correctly; that's half a million children who are not at school. If this were to be true, then of course local authorities might well have cause for concern.
Lot of children leave state school and can hardly read or do basic maths.
ReplyDeleteI doubt there are that many children who are long termed home educated most people still send there children to school Webb.
The number you cite for Rothermel equates to less than about 6% of the overall child population for the 5-16 age range. Even if they received no effective education at all, that represents less of a problem than the degraded education of the 94% in school - particularly when you consider that historical employment rates in the UK rarely exceed 95%.
ReplyDeleteFollowing on from my previous point:
DeleteDo you have a reference for the Rothermel number?
How many were thought to be genuinely home educated vs excluded?
I find it hard to believe that 1 in 16 children are home educated. A geometric mean of Rothermel's upper limit and the canonical 20,000 - 100,000 - seems like a reasonable working estimate.
DeleteIf we assume that half of those are completely uneducated, the problem drops to about 50,000 - about 0.5%.
'the canonical 20,000 - 100,000'
DeleteYou've lost me here. The 20,000 is the number of children known by local authorities to be home educated, but where does the upper figure of 100,000 come from and why is is canonical?
'Do you have a reference for the Rothermel number?'
DeleteIn 2000, 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? '
Last year, she elaborated on this, after consulting with a statistician from the Department for Education. She now believes that 420,000 children are not at school.
How many were thought to be genuinely home educated vs excluded?'
Not really relevant. Local authorities on the whole want all children to be in school. This is historically how high levels of literacy and numeracy are maintained. if almost half a million children were missing from school, it would be a worry for them.
'
' the degraded education of the 94% in school '
DeleteSorry, I'm not quite sure what you mean by this.
100,000 is the geometric mean of the canonical 20,000 and Rothermel's 500,000 upper limit.
Delete' the degraded education of the 94% in school '
DeleteSorry, I'm not quite sure what you mean by this.
Try your own words, Simon:
"there is a good deal wrong with the schools in this country and they need to be greatly improved"
One should add here that the assumption above - that 50%-100% of "home educated" children receive no education at all - is a gross overestimate used to indicate the upper bounds of the so-called problem.
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one who's thinking that it's a relatively simple sum for a Government to do? Total number of children getting child benefit - Number of children on roll at school = children unaccounted for. Surely that would give you an upper figure of potentially home educated children and you could then assess their hypothetical impact on national literacy figures?
ReplyDeleteAnne
That would be too easy, Anne!
DeleteI suspect that the collection of the data may be beyond the capabilities of the "concerned" classes; they're full of empty rhetoric and management speak, but counting is a little too tough for them.
Many of their fears are fueled by their own inadequacies.
'Am I the only one who's thinking that it's a relatively simple sum for a Government to do? Total number of children getting child benefit - Number of children on roll at school = children unaccounted for.'
DeleteThis is essentially what Paula Rothermel claims to have done. She says that the figure of 420,000 has been confirmed by the Department for Education. If true, then you can see that this would raise a few eyebrows and cause anxiety in local authorities. I do not personally think that this is really helpful for home educators.
Is there any way you can check that it has been confirmed, Simon? Because I think the last LA figures showed 20000 known and I'm having difficulties with the idea of 400,000 'invisible' children.
DeleteIf it's true then there is a problem, because I'm not convinced that they're all home educators. If it's not, then it needs to be corrected.
Having thought about it, I can see a couple of factors which might account for it, like people working abroad and EU migrants claiming child benefit for non-resident children, as they're legally entitled to do, but again, I wouldn't have thought that could account for that many. Is it also possible that the figures only include children in the state sector?
My gut instinct is that it's getting harder and harder to be unknown, but that's just based on how things work in my area, so it's quite possible I'm wrong...
Anne
'My gut instinct is that it's getting harder and harder to be unknown, but that's just based on how things work in my area, so it's quite possible I'm wrong...'
DeleteI don't think that you're wrong at all. Nor do I believe for a moment that there are over 400,000 children roaming around who are not at school. For one thing, we would probably notice if hundreds of thousands of kids were out and about during school hours! I'm not entirely sure what the motive would be for inflating the figures in this way, but I can's see that it is helpful.
I've seen people estimate elsewhere that about 50% of home educated kids are "known" to their LA, which sounds reasonable to me. If there's 20,000 children known to LAs, that would give a rough estimate of 40,000 home educated in total. I agree with Anne that the idea of 20,000 "known" and 400,000 "unknown" is obviously incorrect - it's clearly not true that only 1 in 20 home ed kids is known to their LA.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure it's getting any more difficult to remain unknown - I think it does depend on your area. Our eldest was briefly in school, and we've always been completely open with doctors, dentists, librarians, neighbours etc yet somehow we've remained under the radar.
'I'm not sure it's getting any more difficult to remain unknown - I think it does depend on your area. Our eldest was briefly in school, and we've always been completely open with doctors, dentists, librarians, neighbours etc yet somehow we've remained under the radar.'
DeleteOn the other hand, I've known people who have not sent their kids to nursery and receive a stream of letters from their local authority as the child approaches his fifth birthday. Also, local authorities contact each other and let them know if they hear of a home educating parent moving from one district to the other.
So, after all this, "negligible" sounds like a good enough estimate for the LAs to work from. Then if they have reason to believe there is a problem in a particular case, they should do something about it.
ReplyDeleteUntil then, they should concentrate on inadequate education in schools and child abuse - much of which they know about already.
How many parents send their children to private schools, and never tell the LA (as there is no need to)? That could perhaps explain a large number of the 300000/500000.
ReplyDelete