Maintaining the illusion of widespread opposition to the registration of home educated children

I wrote a couple of days ago of the way in which a small group of militants try to give the impression that they are speaking on behalf of the majority of home educating parents and promote the idea that most of these parents are fiercely opposed to the registration of home educated children or any monitoring of them. Only yesterday, a fine example of this racket turned up in a provincial newspaper. Here is a piece from the  Bradford Telegraph & Argus; which only appeared online yesterday;

http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/14637037.New_report_warns_that_Bradford_Council_has__limited_powers__to_monitor_333_home_schooled_children/

Within hours, two of the people whom I had mentioned in my recent post here had commented on this article. They may be seen in the comments as 770177wendy and llondel. They are of course Wendy Charles-Warner and Dave Hough and they are the owners of the Facebook group Home Education and Your Local Authority: Help Dealing with Officaldom. A number of points spring immediately to mind. The first is that one of these people lives in North Wales and the other in California. Why on earth are they commenting about home education in Yorkshire? We also observe that neither of these people  are even home educating their children in the United Kingdom; this being so, it is hard to see in what way they might be representing the interests of home educating parents in this country. There is also the fact that both have a variety of identities under which they comment. Why should Dave Hough be so averse to using his own name? Wendy Charles-Warner also posts under various identities. This is done so that the same names do not appear to be cropping up again and again. A final point is the sheer dishonesty of the things which are said in the comments there! Here is Dave Hough yesterday;


parents who have the option of remaining unknown to their local authority invariably choose to remain so and not make contact.

In the first place; how could he possibly know this? Secondly, let us remind ourselves of the advice which he dished out on the 'Officialdom' group, a little while ago, to a home educating parent who was moving house;

 post a letter with a second-class stamp on your last day there informing them that as of that date you're no longer in their area but that you will still be home educating. Don't give them your new address or area, and make sure the new occupants of the house and any neighbours also know not to tell them where you've gone if they know.

One of the reasons that home educating parents do not have contact with their  local authorties is because they are denounced and ostracised for doing so on many of the online support groups for home educators. They are called traitors and Quislings; those who do allow visits from the local authority  often do so secretly, for fear of the reaction from people like Dave Hough! The chief reason that people remain, or pretend to remain, unknown to their local authorities is because many of them rely upon support from Facebook groups containing other parents whose children are not at school. It is the reaction of some of the more vociferous of these parents which they fear, rather than the local authority itself.

Turning now to the comment posted by Wendy Charles-Warner, we see  she claims that;

 Freedom of information requests to Bradford Local Authority confirm that there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that a single home educated child in the region has been 'radicalised'.

Seriously? How would you find that out from a Freedom of Information Request?

The two people mentioned here today are of course not the only people patrolling the internet to find articles about home education on which to comment; although they are certainly among the most industrious. The fact is that about two dozen people, at least half of whom either live abroad or are not home educating their children in this country, are responsible for over 90% of the comments one sees about the dangers of registration and monitoring. They are part of a very small sub-set in the home educating community who are desperately anxious that local authorities and the general public should see them as being the  dominant trend in British home education.

Causing trouble for home educating parents

There is a longstanding and mistaken idea that there exists in this country a powerful home education movement, which constantly agitates for and defends the supposed rights of, home educating parents. Even the Department for Education has fallen for this false belief and it is one of the reasons why there are no plans to slip through a new law to regulate and control home education in Britain. It is felt that the campaign which was waged in the aftermath of the Graham Badman report was so fierce and produced such bad publicity for the government, that it really is not worth repeating the exercise. This is the chief reason that the DfE has no intention currently of pressing for a change in the law; it would simply be more trouble than it is worth to fight all those home educators again!

In fact, despite there being anything up to 80,000 home educated children in this country, which would mean perhaps 140,000 or 150,000 home educating parents,  opposition to  any form of registration and monitoring is actively maintained by only a few hundred people; many of whom are not even home educators. I say a few hundred, there is probably a hard core of a few dozen who are doing all  the work to maintain the position that registration of home educated children would be an intolerable imposition on parents.  Hardly any of the parents of the 20,000 or more home educated children known to local authorities have any problem at all with being known and the vast majority cheerfully accept visits if their LA wished to make them.

How many parents are really determined to fight against things such as the registration of home educated children? This is very hard to say, because the tiny handful who fight against this idea manage to make themselves look far more numerous than is really the case. They do this by adopting false names and being very industrious in complaining to online newspapers and so on whenever any article appears about home education. If there is a poll on the internet on the subject of home education, they organise via Facebook groups for anti-registration messages to be sent in bulk. What this means is that an illusion is created that there is some kind of mass movement against registration and monitoring. A typical example of the way that this is done may be seen by looking at a Facebook group called Home Education and Your Local Authority; Help dealing With Officialdom. This is run by a former home educator called Wendy Charles-Warner, using the name Jennifer Downing. Many of those fighting against monitoring prefer to use false names in this way; why this should be is something of a mystery! The other person  running the group is man called David Hough, who lives in California and will hardly be affected by any of the changes in British home education which he so vigorously opposes.

The two people who run what is generally known as the ‘Officialdom’ group are to be found all over the internet under various guises; seldom or never using their real names. If an article appears in a small, provincial newspaper which suggests that somebody wants the registration of home educated children, then people from this group will comment online, putting forward their anti-registration line. Here is an example; llondel is David Hough in America. He often uses this name or sometimes Thienz to post his comments;

http://www.droitwichadvertiser.co.uk/news/worcester_news/13790522.The__overwhelming_majority__of_home_educated_children_are_safe__says_senior_Worcestershire_Tory/

Readers might care to look for similar examples online; there are many. This sort of thing creates the impression that a lot of people feel as David Hough and Wendy Charles-Warner, the owners of the face book group, do about registration and monitoring; there is no reason to suppose that this is the case. Their group is devoted to stirring up parents and trying to set them in opposition to their local authority and the advice they give is always aimed at confrontation, rather than cooperation. Here is David Hough advising a parent on the ’Officialdom’ group whose local authority wishes to speak to her about her home educated child;

post a letter with a second-class stamp on your last day there informing them that as of that date you're no longer in their area but that you will still be home educating. Don't give them your new address or area, and make sure the new occupants of the house and any neighbours also know not to tell them where you've gone if they know.

An atmosphere is created of people on the run from the authorities and anxious to hide their children. It need hardly be said that this sort of behaviour only makes local authorities more suspicious of home educators and more determined to track them down! It is counter-productive. I shall give other examples of these sorts of covert operations by  small groups of militant former home educators in the next few days. In the meantime, it is worth bearing in mind that neither of the two people running this Facebook group are parents home educating their children in this country and so are not likely to be affected by any of the problems which might result from their activities.