Yet another government review of Home Education

[AMumInScotland]

government review

They're just going to keep on at this. We have 4 weeks to respond!

Not read through it yet myself properly, but according to another forum the questions are:

1. Do you think the current system for safeguarding children who are

educated at home is adequate? Please let us know why you think that.

1. Do you think that home educated children are able to achieve the

following five Every Child Matters outcomes? Please let us know why you think that.

1. Do you think that Government and local authorities have an obligation

to ensure that all children in this country are able to achieve the five outcomes? If you answered yes, how do you think Government should ensure this?. If you answered no, why do you think that?

1. Do you think there should be any changes made to the current system

for supporting home educating families? If you answered yes, what should they be? If you answered no, why do you think that?

1. Do you think there should be any changes made to the current system

for monitoring home educating families? If you answered yes, what should they be? If you answered no, why do you think that?

1. Some people have expressed concern that home education could be used

as a cover for child abuse, forced marriage, domestic servitude or other forms of child neglect. What do you think Government should do to ensure this does not happen?

I'm wondering here if some people see autonomous learning as 'let your children get on with it and ignore them'?

It absolutely is not and would be completely neglectful to do so.

Parents who take an autonomous approach are likely to explains about exams, why sitting them might make their lives easier later on, other options that could be taken to achieve the same ends.

However, ultimately it has to be the child's decision and IMO all parents should take that seriously, but certainly autonomous he-ors would.

picsesmoon I would love to show off how well autonomous learning works to an HE inspector, but it wouldn't be in my children's best interests and, unsurprisingly, I put them first!

"there needs to be some system in place to ensure that they are happy and learning SOMETHING!"

But if schools can't do this-with daily input from teachers, inspections by Ofsted and millions and millions of pounds being poured in and the Prime Minister stating "Education Education Education" is his number one priority, how the hell would inspections by demanding LAs to a HE family, do this?

Every Child Matters?
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

Very good point julie! So many children don't learn anything in school - I'd be willing to bet that, on a statistical basis, a far higher percentage of HE children are successful in their chosen life than schooled children.

"There is no scientific basis whatsoever for the almost universal assumption that this traditional means of educating children is essential if they are to progress after reaching school age. It?s just that we are so inured to school type learning that it is very difficult to imagine any alternative."

Thomas on Informal/Autonomous Home Education

"Another aspect of formal learning that soon goes is a heavy reliance on exercises and testing as evidence of learning. This is obviously necessary in school. Otherwise a teacher wouldn?t be able to keep track of progress or give feedback. It?s unnecessary at home simply because learning is highly interactive. This means that parents know exactly where their children are at. It?s not a question of doing exercises to ascertain what has been learnt and what hasn?t."

Alan Thomas goes on further to quote other researchers looking at informal education.

"As Cullen et al (1999) noted in relation to informal adult education: ?getting at informal learning through research requires considerable effort and perseverance. By its very nature it?s elusive and not readily available for scrutiny and measurement? (p.7). Henze (1992) also comments on the ?evanescent qualities of informal learning and teaching and the difficulty of capturing it in natural settings [so that] it is rarely documented or studied?"

and I agree wholeheartedly.
It is not readily available for scrutiny and measurement or documented. But it is damned efficient-it has got my children who were all failing badly in school, to the stage where they are happy, confident, articulate adults, (that in itself a massive change from the suicidal unhappy people they were in school) and who were/are capable of A level/OU standards by the time they reached the end of their compulsory education age.

But it wouldn't have been efficient if they had been made to produce 'work', or be inspected or guided by someone else's idea of what an education looks like-because it's nature would have changed entirely, by the very process.

thats really interesting riven - i wonder whats made her think that way? She makes a good point that if you have no hobbies to turn into careers you ought to have something...but I would see uni as the place to get those not school. I fail to see what school tests give anyone especially as nowadays many degrees are modular and heavily assignment based over exams - so school tests can't even be argued to be preparation for uni anymore.

Interesting chatting with home ed teens isn't it? I really enjoy spending time chatting with Dd and her home ed friends.
They all seem to know so many different things, guess that's what comes from groups mixing who have so many styles of education and very different influences.
I love the way people's attitudes and ideas develop over time, changing as they grow and experience different things in life.

I guess as a parent of autonomously home ed teens, I see that my job was to help facilitate whatever they wanted. Of the two now not being home educated, one of them wanted more formal education at the end, like yours and went to FE college, one chose a completely different route, got a huge range "of life experiences life experiences and is doing well and is happy with her life.

Ours education has been informal and seems to have been very efficient. Our youngest teen is of the opinion that it is important for her to have qualifications, even though she has a couple of 'hobbies' that she takes seriously and could become job related, that's why she has chosen to do OU courses as that is the way that she feels is the most suited to her.

I guess we are all different and know different things. Because biology and in particular human biology interests me, I am constantly amazed how little others seem to know about the working of a human body for instance-we all have a body to look after. But others are much better than me at other sciences. For me it's finding what interests our children and how they want to go about life and helping them to facilitate that isn't it?

One of my brothers in law, is really clever at all sorts of things. He once even rebuilt and put in a whole new floor on our 35' caravan, strengthening it more than the manufacturer ever had. As he was explaining how he worked out this and that, he also said "but of course A (my dh) is the clever one in our family isn't he? He is the one with an education"
I laughed out loud, my dh wouldn't know how to do anything like the practical things my BIL can do. Dh considers his brother the clever one in the family.

Different people value different things I suppose-and to my mind that is okay too.
I never expected to produce to children who would be considering sailing for a living for instance! People would have different opinions on it, but I wouldn't judge it of more or less importance than other knowledge, if others do, that is okay by me and mine.

At different times my teen children (in school) have said that lots of their peers "don't know anything"

If a job that you want to do does require qualifications then obviously you would need to get those qualifications.
But as someone else has said getting qualifications at school doesn't always mean that you have the right qualifications for something that you decide you want to do later.

I agree with a lot of what people are saying about autonomous education. HOWEVER - is is a serious bugger if you discover that you need GCSE English and Maths to do whatever you what to do next and you haven't got them.

"However, ultimately it has to be the child's decision and IMO all parents should take that seriously, but certainly autonomous he-ors would."

But how would a child KNOW that they needed As in A level physics, chemistry and biology if they want to go to medical school, and that it's pretty bloody hard to get those if you haven't done the basics first?

But a GSCE is just a piece of paper to say you've sat an exam and passed it. If you've got a good grounding in English and/or Maths, a good understanding of it (which doesn't, btw, require spending two years of studying - evidence is showing more and more that this can all be learnt in an autonomous way), then you will only need a couple of weeks to check you've covered all the syllabus of that particular exam board, and revise anything you aren't confident with, and then you can take the exam and probably pass it very easily. I've seen it done!

"But how would a child KNOW that they needed As in A level physics, chemistry and biology if they want to go to medical school, and that it's pretty bloody hard to get those if you haven't done the basics first?"

Not quite sure if I've misunderstood this question...a child would know it because if they wanted to be a doctor, they'd probably have researched it and/or their parents would have told them. They probably know the basics anyway if they've got an interest in it, and if they don't, because of being actively interested in it, it wouldn't take them long to learn it.

So you look at the requirements for the course or job you want, discover that you need GCSE English and you haven't got it. Problem is, the exams are sat a couple of times a year and you've just missed one. So you have to wait 6 months at least to sit the exam, then another however long to wait for the results - by which time the job's gone, or the course is full. Why not just get the basics under your belt at the time it's easiest - you have FAR more choices in life with a couple of bits of paper. It may not be fair or right, but it's how it is.

And they may not realize they want to be a doctor until they are 16 or so - A level time.

I know that everything can be studied as a mature student - but it's a bloody sight easier to do it with your peers. And (this is unfair but true as well) women in particular need as long as possible to build up their professional life, so that they have time to fit in having a family if they want to!

Or it might instead be that, freed from the expectation of spending the years 14-16 wading through 10 GCSEs, someone realises aged 14 that what they really want to do next is train as X, and they find out that to do that they need 5 GCSEs including maths and English. So they spend 6 months preparing for those and have them under their belt at the age of 15, giving them another year before they are allowed to start the training course for X aged 16. And in that year, they do lots of work experience related to X and they continue learning mandarin and unicycling.

Getting off the conveyor belt can work to someone's advantage timewise. I completely concede that it might also be inconvenient if someone only realises late in the game that they want to do something other than what they thought they wanted to do. But that holds just as much for the friends of mine who were persuaded by school/parents to do 3 "sensible" A levels which didn't get them prepared for the art foundation course which was their real dream, so they had to spend a year post-A level getting themselves a portfolio together for that and THEN pursue the Art route a year or even 2 years after they might otherwise have done if people had been listening more closely to their stated ambitions all along.

I think it's really important to remember that someone in an autonomous education is likely to be talking with adults both within and beyond the family about their aims and aspirations and routes to get there. Autonomous education doesn't mean benign neglect, it means taking a child's interests and aspirations seriously.

I do think it's interesting that whenever I post on a HE topic, nobody ever seems to say "Oh, here is an adult who was home educated who has 5 home educated adult nieces and nephews, maybe she has an interesting take on the subject"! Rather the reverse - I often seem to find my views completely dismissed!

Or maybe it's because I'm really boring!

No one's dismissing your views, seeker, just disagreeing with them based on our own experiences of home educated people, and based on the research we've read about home education.

Besides, the way I see it, we're not disagreeing about HE at all, but about parenting. I won't force my children to do anything. I expect them to be rational enough to be able to make their own choices, and so far my expectations have been fulfilled. If my children don't see a need to do GCSEs after all they're told about them (how they might save them time later on etc.) then I'm not going to force them to do them - it would be counterproductive IMO and IME. If it's them that's made the choice, based on everything they know about them, then they are the ones who are responsible for that decision.

My job, as a parent to my children, is to guide them (not mould them), ensure they are able to find whatever information they need to do whatever they want to do (not necessarily to find it for them) and to support whatever choices they make.

Do you apply that to everything? What if your children wanted to do something that is harmful to them - like, say, drink alcohol or take drugs? Or go back to school? Don't we SOMETIMES have to accept that because of our experience and knowledge we DO know better about SOME things than our children do?

And don't they have a right to our guidance?

And a 25 year old with no qualifications who wants to be a barrister is going to have a heartbreaking struggle - particularly as she was allowed to make her own choices as a teenager, and she didn't see the need to do GCSEs because she was going to be a famous fashion designer and didn't need qualifications!

"Do you apply that to everything?"

Yup

"What if your children wanted to do something that is harmful to them - like, say, drink alcohol or take drugs?"

That's a biggie! Probably another debate entirely and best not to go there on this thread.

"Or go back to school?"

Are you including that in your list of harmful things? Only joking! I would respect that and let them go (albeit reluctantly!)

"Don't we SOMETIMES have to accept that because of our experience and knowledge we DO know better about SOME things than our children do?"

Yes - and they usually also accept that.

"And don't they have a right to our guidance? "

At which point did I say I didn't offer my guidance to them?

Very interesting Peter Hitchins article about the government review, which makes many of the points the HEers have been making, though perhaps with a tad more Daily Mailiness to it (well, duh, what with it being a Daily Mail blog)

And Seeker - your question about guiding our children and sometimes knowing better than them. My educational philosophy is pretty closely based on the Popperian TCS. This philosophy is absolutely based on sharing one's best ideas with ones children, and having them share their best ideas back, and building respect for the good ideas whoever has them. It's a philsophy which is just beautiful and empowering for all concerned to see enacted (you should see Lindenlass in action IRL )

I find your views most interesting seeker, I think that the views of adults who were HEd as a child are the most interesting on any of these threads. I also think that Riven has many valid points. I do think that HEd children need to be guided, I know so many people who have done the wrong thing, or not bothered at school, and although they have managed in the end it has been bloody hard work and I think they have all wished they had just got on and done it at the traditional age.
I know that there will always be the exception and some DCs will do their own thing and all doors will open. However most DCs will not be in that position, the world is not waiting for them with open arms. There will be those who think that it is refreshingly original not to have gone down tradition routes but there will be just as many who have deep prejudiced against HE.
School fail and damage some children. They also nurture and inspire-many a person owes their success to a caring or inspirational teacher who spotted their potential and encouraged. Sadly school is the only place where some children feel safe and valued in their chaotic lives. Some families are very damaging to DCs. Children are at greatest risk of abuse in their own home by people they know. Some of you make it sound as if all families are wonderful and anyone can HE if they want to and all parents know best. I think that LEAs ought to get their act together and be supportive, but I do think they should be free to visit, with prior agreement.
In answer to a question earlier on, I don't see why it is damaging for my DCs to show off something they are proud of, if they are agreeable. Everyone likes praise.

'I don't see why it is damaging for my DCs to show off something they are proud of,'

I don't either piscesmoon

if they are agreeable

Thats part of the problem for me and mine. What if a child is not agreeable to showing someone else their written items?

What if the child is not agreeable to meeting with someone from the LA.

How would I strap my 15 year old down, say and make him meet with the LA-if he is not agreeable??

OAU. Bit crap at the moment actually, due to acute exhaustion, due to two nights awake most of the time caring for sick children

Have been yoga-ing tonight though - first time since I was pg - so hopefully life will soon become more serene

I think the hardest thing for many adults to accept is that sometimes children might know better than they do! Once you accept that you can be wrong, then you can being to move towards living more equally with your children. But that's surely impossible if you're taking the stance of 'I know best because I'm older'.