Home education review - the death knell for home education?

[espadrille]

No you dont need qualifications to home educate. You need the time and patience that is expected of you as a parent.

 

I think though that although I run my training Company and many of the people who come on my courses are teachers, I do think that I would find it hard to teach my own children.

I think that my daughter would find me boring!!!

[hennypenny]

I think though that although I run my training Company and many of the people who come on my courses are teachers, I do think that I would find it hard to teach my own children.

I think that my daughter would find me boring!!!

 

A lot of people say this, but in fact it is not hard at all Home educators tend to think of themselves as facilitators rather than teachers.

 

What happens is that after a while you start to rethink the whole idea of one person "teaching" another, and realise that learning actually happens much better if the child is deciding for themselves what they want to learn, and that they learn much more efficiently when they are one to one, so the time spent at school is not needed to be replicated at home.

 

You start to wonder how the idea that a person needs someone else to teach them ever came about. I suppose in an information poor society, when books were rare, it may have been necessary for one person to be a repository of knowledge and to pass that on to others. But we are now living in an information rich society, it is easy to find out information oneself, without someone else needing to show how. Once the child has been helped to read they really need very little further direction. Because there are no artificial divisions of interesting knowledge into "subjects" children can just learn what they find fascinating and can spend as long as they need on one area without a bell ringing just as they are getting into it, and needing to stop and move on to something else. In my experience, with my children, I have found that they tend to completely submerge themselves in one area, sometimes for up to 3 months or so, before feeling they have completely learned everything they want to about that area and then moving onto another. They would have found hour long sessions such as they have at school bewildering, how could they stop and think about something else when they were really immersed in their own interest?

 

If it is something they are interested in then no one needs to "teach" a child anything at all, it is sufficient just to make as much opportunity for the child to learn as possible. For instance, my daughter got interested in Japanese because she liked Pokemon. From that she moved on to watching Manga cartoons on the internet, then reading the books. She found a website where people can learn languages from each other, and which has free language lessons, so she did those. She communicated her interest to me, and so I started to find things she might be interested in, such as taking her to a Japanese restaurant, going to the Japan day at the University, picking up the odd Japanese item from car boot sales, discussing with her various aspects of Japanese culture, religion etc. Eventually she said she wanted to have more input, so I found her a Japanese tutor who now comes once per week and talks and plays with my daughter and 3 of her friends. They have now all progressed to a stage where the next step is to look into how they can sit a GCSE, so that is next years project.

 

My son had a computer game which involved mining minerals which caught his interest, so we then had many years of rock collecting, talking about the people who mined the gems and stones he collected, visiting mines and quarries, then making jewellery with the gem stones he tumble polished himself. This all led on to fossils found in rocks, then onto natural history and evolution, and learning through natural exploration and because it was fun (not a worksheet in sight), the conversations and topics discussed ranged far and wide and this eventually led on to him doing science A levels at college, a biology degree and then a bio-medical research phD.

 

People learn the things they are interested in. Someone can sit and talk at another person as much as they want, but what sinks in is only what catches their interest. Home educators cut out the boring stages and move straight on to the interesting bit. In my experience, children are really keen to make sense of the world around them, and they are interested in learning the things they need to know to help them live in that world, so they naturally cover all the subjects in one, called life.

[Lady Star]

Home education may not be a smoke screen for physical abuse, but I have a brother in law with a child that he keeps out of school due to his wifes inability to leave the house... He works away from home, so cannot take the child to school regularly and therefore it's easier to leave the child in the house with her and call it 'home education' - He is 11, and cannot read and write... Their home is also in a remote location, so the boy has virtually no contact with anyone other than his mother, and has no friends... To me, this is also child abuse - I have no idea what will become of this boy but noone in his family seems to care enough to report his parents... We have never been told their exact address (they live just outside of London) so that we can't report her... We only have the week day address for my brother in law...

[Lady Star]

It is saying that they want to have the right to refuse permission to any family who may want to home educate. They want to be able to judge in advance whether a family is likely to be able to home educate successfully. What do you reckon the chances are of someone who is disabled, or who lives in the wrong area, or is a traveller, or who has had a previous dispute with the LA? These are all people who have had difficulties with the LAs under the current system, but are allowed under current law to remove their children from school, which is why the LAs have asked for the powers to be brought in - they feel they should be able to decide which parents should be allowed to home educate. And yet the research showed that the most startling advances were made in children from working class backgrounds when home educated, who progressed at a better rate than the children with university educated parents - which took even the researchers by surprise!

 

The question of proof is a problem for a lot of home educators, as when following an autonomous method, there is often no proof. When children are given the choice of following their own educational style, very few (amazingly enough) choose the traditional sit down and do workbooks style, so often there is little traditional style work to show. It is really difficult for most of us who have been schooled to get our heads around the fact that children are capable of learning in different ways, which are not visible and do not produce traditional style written work. We all need to get schooling out of our heads to understand it.

 

For instance my own son had decided that he did not want to write, until he was 11 years old, so we had no written work to show the LA visitors. By 13 he had passed his first GCSE (Maths higher) and had 3 level one qualifications in IT and by 14 he was in college doing A levels, followed by uni for his degree and now he is doing his PhD.

 

Another child I know didn't learn to read until he was 13 (he is very dyslexic), but is starting college to do A levels at 15 in September, reading fluently, having gone from nought to Harry Potter in a matter of weeks when trusted to find his own learning path with help from his parents.

 

Autonomous education works, I have personally seen its results in my own children and in hundreds of others over the years, as well as their being 50 years of research proving its efficaciousness yet the Badman report described autonomous education as 'little better than child-minding'. They just cannot understand that there are different educational models to school. Because there is often no proof to be seen they think parents are doing nothing with their children, and yet the truth is parents are working very hard to facilitate their children's interests, finding items that may possibly interest them, searching out places to visit and having conversations that can lead from frogs innards to the outer reaches of the solar system within minutes. Life is never boring when home educating.

 

The LAs want all our children to learn to their curriculum, to do school type work, marked and dated, tested and measured, and whilst this suits some home educators who do school at home, there are very many of us who have not used school because we want something different for our children. We want the freedom for them to learn in their own time, self directed, and without being tested and put under stress, as we don't think any child grows more for being measured.

 

Schools have hoops to jump through because they are acting on behalf of the parent, and they have to account for their actions to the parent, so they are required to report and keep records for the parent to see. In home education the parent is taking direct responsibility for the education of their child as is their duty in law, they do not need to account to themselves! If the state asks parents to account for their childs education, then the state is saying that it is the parent of first resort and not the parents of the child, the state is taking over the duties of parenting. The state should only ever be the parent of 2nd resort, for if the parents are unable to fulfil their duties. I personally feel that the more hoops the schools have been given to jump through the worse the education received by children has become.

 

The statistics below are collated from the governments own websites

 

Each week: 450,000 children are bullied in school.

Each year: more than 360,000 children injured in schools

Each year: at least 16 children commit suicide as a result of school

bullying

Each year: an estimated 1 million children truant

Each year: more than 1 in 6 children leave school unable to read, write or

add up

 

Home educators do not receive any funding from the state or anywhere else, they still pay their taxes but save the state around £5000 per year per child, around £55,000 over the compulsory education years of each child, why should they have to account to the state, when the states own record is so abysmal? The state already has the power to intervene if they have good reason to believe that a child is not receiving an education, they can already ask the parent to provide proof of an education taking place and they can send a child to school if they are not satisfied that the parent is providing an effective education. Why do they need more powers? Then for them to claim that the powers are needed to prevent child abuse, when they have only found 2 cases of abuse (where the children were already well known to social services before their removal from school) from a population of 50,000 home educated children, is a disgusting smear, and we believe is an attempt to scapegoat a minority group in order to divert attention from the social services failures in these cases.

 

We believe that it is a short step from insisting on entering home educators home and interviewing the children to using these powers to enter all homes with children - maybe your cupboards contain junk food, or you are extended breastfeeding, anything could be used as evidence of child abuse. It is the home educators today, next the under 5's? Then children in the summer holidays who need their homes checking during the holidays as 6 weeks is quite long enough to abuse a child? It is the whole culture of lack of trust of parents to parent their own children without oversight which is scary.

 

 

It seems that you know quite a few children who couldn't read or write at 11, like my husbands nephew - I am not sure how I feel about this, especially since I was reading classics at 8! It seems a bit late in the day to start reading and thinking that it's ok to be unable to - what if the child never learns? I see this in adults too often in the course of my job, and it's devastating for them, both in finding work and keeping a job...

 

I am also concerned about children who only engage in activities which they themselves find exciting, or who don't get to engage with other children, occasionally in a conflict situation - how well will these children cope when they enter the workplace? How will they find their position in the pecking order? Cope with conflict, or even cope with aspects of their work that they find dull? These things are part of everyones lives, and these are the things that school teaches you outside the classroom...

[hennypenny]

Hi Lady Star

 

There are adequate protections in place already, without any new rules. If you think your brother-in-law's son is being abused then you should certainly take steps to report this, although I think it might be better if you were to find out more details first as there are a huge amount of unsubstantiated referals to social services of home educated children. It may well be that the child is already known to the LA and has regular visits from the advisory service.

 

Maybe there are things you could do yourself, such as have the lad to stay and show him around some museums and fun places? Once you met him you would have a better idea of whether any learning is taking place. There is certainly no reason for any child not to have friends, as there are active home ed groups in most locations now, and even if the mother is unable to leave the house there would usually be someone who was willing to help by picking the lad up and taking him to group. Maybe the family need help finding the support which is out there?

 

I have met several children who have been late readers, they have simply done their learning through other media, such as listening to books on tape, audio visual learning etc. These have usually been the children who have turned out to have some underlying problem such as dyslexia so would have been late learners at home or school, the difference being that at home they have not been made to feel that there is some problem with them, and so when it has finally clicked they manage to learn very quickly and catch up. I have never met a single HE child who is still not reading by 16, which cannot be said for schools, with 1 in 6 leaving school functionally illiterate.

 

You do not need to be concerned about children who are interest led, it works exceedingly well, mine have both gained a very wide and balanced knowledge base, purely because never having been taught that learning is boring, they find everything interesting.

 

Home educated children are not kept away from the world as schooled children are, and so they don't tend to have a big problem when moving into the world of work, as they have been out in society all their lives. I always remember asking the tutor at a college open evening, whether my son was doing ok considering that he was 2 years younger than the other students. She looked sheepish for a moment then confessed that she had totally forgotten he was younger, as he was the one that the others all went to with their problems, and the one they looked to for the answers. We have never found he has had any problems adjusting to a world of work, he had several holiday jobs and always got excellent references and invitations to come back. When he was 17 he was working as an assistant tutor at a ju-jitsu club and was asked if he would like to take on the position of North of Sheffield manager, running several clubs, which he had to turn down as he was going to university, but they obviously had no problems with his maturity or commitment or he would not have been offered the job.

 

People have often said that children need to learn that work is boring, frustrating etc, and so school should deliberately show this, but in my experience they manage with these aspects of work much better when they have previously learned that life doesn't have to be like that, and when the consciously choose to do the job anyway.

[Ouija]

I think kids will learn that certain things are boring/less fun/less desirable that others whether they do it at school or not. Having to sit down during travel is extremely boring for a young child and most will do that at some point. Having to help put their toys away at bedtime, when they'd much rather carry on playing and not go to bed. Mild examples to adults I know, but from a child's point of view much worse, and they're learning that alongside the "fun stuff" there is also the "boring stuff" and the responsibility.

[Lady Star]

Hi Lady Star

 

There are adequate protections in place already, without any new rules. If you think your brother-in-law's son is being abused then you should certainly take steps to report this, although I think it might be better if you were to find out more details first as there are a huge amount of unsubstantiated referals to social services of home educated children. It may well be that the child is already known to the LA and has regular visits from the advisory service.

 

Maybe there are things you could do yourself, such as have the lad to stay and show him around some museums and fun places? Once you met him you would have a better idea of whether any learning is taking place. There is certainly no reason for any child not to have friends, as there are active home ed groups in most locations now, and even if the mother is unable to leave the house there would usually be someone who was willing to help by picking the lad up and taking him to group. Maybe the family need help finding the support which is out there?

 

I have met several children who have been late readers, they have simply done their learning through other media, such as listening to books on tape, audio visual learning etc. These have usually been the children who have turned out to have some underlying problem such as dyslexia so would have been late learners at home or school, the difference being that at home they have not been made to feel that there is some problem with them, and so when it has finally clicked they manage to learn very quickly and catch up. I have never met a single HE child who is still not reading by 16, which cannot be said for schools, with 1 in 6 leaving school functionally illiterate.

 

You do not need to be concerned about children who are interest led, it works exceedingly well, mine have both gained a very wide and balanced knowledge base, purely because never having been taught that learning is boring, they find everything interesting.

 

Home educated children are not kept away from the world as schooled children are, and so they don't tend to have a big problem when moving into the world of work, as they have been out in society all their lives. I always remember asking the tutor at a college open evening, whether my son was doing ok considering that he was 2 years younger than the other students. She looked sheepish for a moment then confessed that she had totally forgotten he was younger, as he was the one that the others all went to with their problems, and the one they looked to for the answers. We have never found he has had any problems adjusting to a world of work, he had several holiday jobs and always got excellent references and invitations to come back. When he was 17 he was working as an assistant tutor at a ju-jitsu club and was asked if he would like to take on the position of North of Sheffield manager, running several clubs, which he had to turn down as he was going to university, but they obviously had no problems with his maturity or commitment or he would not have been offered the job.

 

People have often said that children need to learn that work is boring, frustrating etc, and so school should deliberately show this, but in my experience they manage with these aspects of work much better when they have previously learned that life doesn't have to be like that, and when the consciously choose to do the job anyway.

 

It was by having the boy stay at our house that we first realised the problems he was having - he is a overweight child, and wasn't picking things up at school - he was bullied a bit when he first began at school and that is the reason his Dad cites as being the driving force of the kid having to spend all his time at home - but when we dug a little deeper it became apparent that he wasn't being taught anything at home, rather spends his days watching wrestling on dvd and playing computer games, many adult certified. His mother has other, much older, children. She also had to home school them, as she didn't like leaving her home. These young women struggle to hold jobs such as shop work and cleaning - neither have any formal qualifications, have a poor vocabulary and struggle with the basics... I was shocked when one told me her mother had had her write a essay on the fire at Hillsborough! She'd been taught that the Liverpool supporters had died in a fire! I heard and saw things in my husbands nephew that indicated that he too had been misinformed when it came to history... This just seems very worrying?

 

I know what it is like to be bullied at school -if I hadn't had a few digs when I was at school, I probably wouldn't be as strong a person as I am now - I know who I am, understand that life isn't always fun and frollics and have never had any problems keeping high paid work... In my work I see people from all backgrounds, most state educated, but by no means all, who struggle with literacy and numeracy - I can see how awful and embarrasing it is for them, and I can't understand how it can be ok for a 11 year old to be unable to read and write... If he is dyslexic, at least in a school this would be picked up early on - rather than the child and parent not knowing there is a problem until later in life?

 

Do you know of groups that meet and bring HE kids together? This boy needs to be socialised, he has told me himself that he misses his old school friends - he lives 20+ miles from the school he used to go to, so can't just pop over to see them...

[hennypenny]

If you have substantiated concerns about a child then you should inform the authorities, that is the same for any of us. However be aware that home educated families are often the target of unnecessary referrals because people don't understand that home education is legal and often it can look as though the child doesn't do much work looking in from the outside.

 

Home ed children in Sheffield usually attend the local group Sheffield Home Education Network, where there are something like 150 children who come along (not usually all at once, thank goodness!), with activities taking place on almost every day of the week. Maybe you could have him to stay and bring him along to the Sheffield group to meet some other children there? Or maybe you could take him to hesfes, with 2000 home educators attending which is in a couple of weeks in Kent :-

 

http://www.hesfes.co.uk/where.html

 

There are websites giving details of local home ed groups, try these:-

 

http://www.education-otherwise.org.uk/localgroups.htm

 

http://www.home-education.org.uk/local.htm

[espadrille]

My daugher is now friends with a girl who has so far been home educated.She has just started at my daughters school. I think that so far she has been educated at home.

She seems to be enjoying being in a school. For whatever reason her parents must have decided (or maybe she did) that she wanted to be at school.

I guess she would be able to tell the story from someone who has experienced both ways.

[hennypenny]

Hi Espadrille

 

That is the beauty of it, children can choose and use whatever system is best for them at the time. A lot of home educated children try out school to see if it suits them - my son did when he was 11, he stayed 8 weeks but then chose to come out again. My daughter tried it for one day and decided it wasn't what she wanted.

 

I know quite a few home educated children who have gone into school to do their GCSEs as it has been made very difficult to do them from home. One girl has negotiated with the school a deal that she can go to school every day except Tuesdays as she wanted to keep coming to the home ed group meetings and keep up with all her friends