Although I disagree with much of what you said about Schedule 1 of the CSF Bill, the reason for my post is to complain about the way you represented information put on this blog by Mrs Janet Ford, about her daughter’s social life and education. I have permission from Mrs Ford to raise this matter, as she has a busy schedule for the next couple of weeks.

You said: ”The home educators were insistent that their children had socialising experiences, although whether it is correct to include trips to the supermarket, as one did, or learning French with a grandfather learning at the same time, was open to question.” (Hansard)

This made it sound like a home educator said a French lesson with a grandfather, made for a social life, and it came across as belittling to Mrs Ford and to home education. In fact, Mrs Ford included the French lesson as only one in a long list of weekly activities, to show the overall variety of home ed activities as well as socialisation. You failed to mention her daughter’s weekly activities with 80 other home educated children, or her skating, dancing and trampolining sessions or regular sleepovers — surely more fair examples of Mrs Ford’s description of home ed socialisation.

Many home educators have been upset since the Badman Report because, in that report and afterwards, they have been misquoted, statistics have been skewed and partial information has been given. As I am sure you are aware, the Select Committee had strong criticism for Mr Badman’s methodology and for many of his conclusions.

Obviously, people have different opinions over whether the state should have more powers than it already has in family life. Many home educators have a different philosophy than you do about this.

But I would hope that you would share a desire for accurate reporting of what people have said.

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Original post of Mrs Ford 9th February 2010

I do wish you could see my daughter’s schedule before you make such comments. This week – Monday – skating with the home ed group (she got asked out by a school kid there, who thought it appropriate to follow her round shouting he wanted to bang her), followed by a French lesson with her Grandad (they are really enjoying learning the language together in spite of a 66 year age gap), Tuesday – English GCSE oral (two years early),but would usually be the weekly home ed meeting where she meets up with 80 or so other kids, Wednesday GCSE English Oral, but would usually be her Japanese lesson followed by a dancing session with the home ed group, Thursday – trampolining, followed by a talk on healthy eating followed by swimming (the home ed group has had to organise 3 groups to run concurrently at the leisure centre as over 70 kids signed up to this), Friday – meeting with friends to go shopping in town, Saturday – lunch with family and friends, Sunday – meeting with friends to go to the cinema. She is actually at home this weekend, usually she is booked up for sleepovers with her schooled friends who are not available during the week, poor things.

Incidentally, even though she didn’t decide to do a GCSE English and English lit until very late, and so had to do her 18 months worth of coursework within 6 weeks, we just got her marks for the coursework, A for English Lang and A* for English Lit, so her hectic social schedule doesn’t seem to be affecting her marks.

We would love to meet some of you people who have the power to completely change our lives and the way we educate our children, and as you have this power, it does seem only fair that you should at least make the attempt to understand how it can affect us. It is very easy to make judgements and pass laws without understanding the devastating effect this could have.

In our case, as we educate autonomously, with very little written evidence, using conversation, exploration, hands on experience and experimentation rather than workbooks, so anyone judging the content of our education would probably decide our children were not doing enough – yet our daughter has been tested by the school that is hosting her GCSE work, and got the highest score of any child they had ever tested, and our son was the youngest ever entrant on a PhD course at Manchester school of medicine. This is why we object to having people coming into our homes to make judgments on the content of our educational provision, who don’t have any knowledge of the methods used, as autonomous home education looks nothing like conventional school education, and yet it works exceptionally well.
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I am saddened that you appear to disregard people who are trying to reach out to you – Real people who are trying to tell you that Schedule 1 has great potential to harm their families and hence their children.

Sincerely
Norma Wilshaw

I was wondering whether you thought that many home educating parents de-registered their children from school due to bullying- thus depriving the children of a valuable life lesson?

I was also wondering if you could put an answer on this blog explaining what you consider this life lesson to be so that I can appropriately respond with an interesting experience .

many thanks.
Tania

And to be fair in retrospect, while your intentions where good Carl, watching their addresses did nothing to quell our fears as home educators.

In fact it became apparent that neither had any kind of ‘real’ grasp of home education, but rather preferred to rest on the laurels of their ill informed opinions and bigotry.

I appreciate you having the decency to stand up for someone you feel is being treated unfairly, but having watched the address, I think you might be batting for the wrong team.

I am currently listening to you address the house of Lords as I type this comment.

Being one of the original commentators on your blog I thought it might be worth while popping back having heard you speak.

Lord Solely you made mention in your address tonight, of the horrific case of Khyra Ishaq. I just wanted to point out a slight error in something you said.

You rightly said that Khyra Ishaq was withdrawn from school.

You then went on to join that dot with the one that suggests that home educators (like Khyra Ishaq’s family) could use home education to hide children away from their communities.

Khyra Ishaq was not hidden from the community. Several of her neighbors failed to report her abuse, her father did little to protect her, EWO’s saw her, social workers saw her, indeed I do believe policemen visited the house. This was not a child that was hidden from her community.

Where were Khyra Ishaq’s rights to have the community that she lived in, the community that SAW her, the community that should have protected her, FAIL her when she needed it most?

You speak of the rights of the child, you link that to home education, and yet here was an abused child, who was known, and had been seen and her rights were abused, by not only her parents, but those who when they failed, should have protected her- under CURRENT laws.

This was also the case for poor Chris Spry some years ago. People in positions of influence- that could have made a difference to these children FAILED to do so. Social workers, FAILED to do so. As a foster child, SURELY he would have been a ‘seen’ child and not one hidden away.

People in the community FAILED to make a difference in the lives of these children.

These where not abducted children who were hidden away in make shift tents, under a canopy of trees, in a walled off back yard (as the case last year in the USA).

These where children who were SEEN, NOT hidden living in communities that failed them.

Home educators advocate for the rights of children too, children like Khyra Ishaq who should have still been living had people done their jobs properly.

We advocate for the rights of our own children, to have an education that suits them, rather than en masse.

Being in such a position of influence, surely if you are going to hinge a parliamentary address on facts, then perhaps you should have those facts right.

I have offered to meet you and have not had a reply as yet.

Do the rights of the child include the right to not have to go to school and be educated elsewhere? It seems very one-sided to expect that home educated children should be given the option to go to school (and in practice, if you ask, we do give our children the option to go to school should they choose) and yet not give schoolchildren the choice to not go to school.

Khyra Ishaq was known to the authorities, and similarly any child withdrawn from school will also be known to the authorities and if there are concerns then there are already powers available to social services – not education welfare officers – to take action if they feel the need.

You have more faith in government delivering the support side of the Badman review, given that it is conspicuous by its absence in the Bill. Attempts to amend this in the Commons failed, which gives us some justification in our lack of belief that any of it would occur. Indeed, if the government would spend all that money on providing support and services, more home educators would be willing to engage and we might believe the claims that they support home education.

It comes down to the fact that home educators have been managing far better than schools for many years, with minimal support from government, only to find that all of a sudden we get hit with a load of bureaucracy. Had the government sorted its side first, and provided proper training for inspectors and demonstrated some commitment, we might now be at a different place.

I see Baroness Deech doesn’t like us much, we must obviously agree to disagree and we will fight to the bitter end to ensure that her extreme viewpoint does not prevail. My child has the right to freedom from government interference, something that sadly seems to be harder to come by now. The home education part of this bill erodes the rights of the child, it does nothing to enhance them. Scaring parents and encouraging them to hide from the authorities is not the way to help children, nor is forcing children back to school for the flimsiest of reasons.

Lord Lucas mentioned that change is inevitable, and I would at this point quote the farmer who, when asked for directions, said “If Oi were going there, Oi wouldn’t start from here”. Scrap Clause 26 and Schedule 1 and do a proper job in the next Parliament.

Up until all this came about, we have (mostly) kept our heads down and not drawn attention to ourselves.

We have heard from some people of their reasons to home educate, mainly from what I can see due to bullying/autism/school not being able to provide for SEN children etc, but we haven’t really sat down and said “why”. Why do we home educate? What was it that made us make this choice?

I guess what I am wondering is whether it would be helpful to try and give people who are not home educators an insight into our lives/reasons for choosing the path that we have done?

For my family there are many reasons, but one of which includes my own experience of school. I was never bullied or had any particular problem as such with school, but what it did, was crush out of me any passion I had for learning. One of the best days of my life was the day I walked through the school gates, knowing I never had to go back. It just simply wasn’t an environment I could learn in. At the age of 5 I told my mother “school was interfering with my life”. I left school with 2 gcse’s, one in art and one in needlework. So I suppose I could be classed as one of the state school failures.

The moment I left school, I started to learn and I have not stopped since. I have been to several colleges, got pretty good qualifications in the profession I wanted to be in. Have taken on course after course – some just for the hell of it, not because I intended doing anything with it. I now run my own successful small business and I am about to open a second.

I was pretty much written off in school. The two subject that I was good at and really wanted to take were music and Welsh. I was prevented from taking both for gcse, as there were not enough people to put on a class. It didn’t matter that there were other classes of the same standard going on, when I had free periods. So I took geography and computer studies instead, and flunked them both…I am so glad I had the parents I had, who told us all “we don’t mind what you want to do, as long as you do it to the best of your ability”.

I look at my children and they are so open to learning. They love it! They can’t help themselves! They are so full of enthusiasm. Life is one big adventure for them! I don’t want their passion for learning to be squashed out of them. I sincerely feel that as long as they learn to read, write and have a grasp of basic maths, they will be equipped to learn any topic and any subject that they would want to. Especially if I can help them to keep their love of learning.

I would however like to take this opportunity to comment on the socialisation concerns that keeps cropping up.

Back in the days where I thought my children would go to school (because all children go to school, don’t they?!) I had a chance meeting with a HE father and his two daughters, one day while sitting in the dentist waiting room.

I am almost ashamed to admit that I too brought up the “socialisation” issue with him. To which, he replied: “I assume you have friends? I assume your husband has friends? I assume that some of your friends are friends with you as a couple, and some are your individual friends? I assume you have friends that were/are work colleagues / friends from your child hood and friends you met via your hobbies and interests” To this I agreed whole heartedly. He then asked: “So, out of all the friends you have now, how many of them are friends that you had from school?”

My answer? 1! One! That’s it! That is the grand total of all the years I spent in school, with all the “opportunities to mix, socialise and make friends with children my own age” (etc.) that being in school gave me.

Perhaps when a socialisation concern comes into your minds, you could ask yourselves the same question?

Incidentally, my husbands reply was even worse – he’s not in contact with anyone he went to school with.