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Select Committee witnesses

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If you haven’t seen the list of witnesses for the select committee the phrase read it and weep comes to mind.

From Home Education Forums

The Children, Schools and Families Committee will be taking formal oral evidence as follows:

Monday 12 October 2009 at 4.45pm

Wilson Room, Portcullis House

Witnesses:

Graham Badman CBE;

Ms Diana R Johnson MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools, and

Penny Jones, Independent Schools and School Organisation, DCSF.

The purpose of this session is to examine the evidence base for and recommendations of the DCSF commissioned review of elective home education in England.

Wednesday 14 October 2009 at 9.30am

Wilson Room, Portcullis House

Witnesses: (At 9.30am)

Jane Lowe, Trustee, Home Education Advisory Service;

Fiona Nicholson, Trustee /Chair Government Policy Group, Education Otherwise;

Simon Webb, home educating parent;

David Wright, home educating parent, and

Carole Rutherford, co-founder, Autism in Mind

(At 10.30am)

Colin Green, Chair, Families, Communities and Young People Policy Committee, Association of Directors of Children’s Services;

Ellie Evans, Head of Children Missing Education team, West Sussex County Council;

Sir Paul Ennals, Chief Executive, National Children’s Bureau, and

Phillip Noyes, Director of Public Policy, NSPCC

No Paula Rothermel. No one from AHEd, or AEUK. The two home educating parents are both men, which doesn’t strike me as desperately representative of the demographic of home educators as a whole?

If you feel like dropping a complaint in (and I really feel you should) the email address is csfcom@parliament.uk

The Members of the Committee are:

Mr Barry Sheerman (Chairman), Labour, Huddersfield

Annette Brooke, Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and Poole North

Mr Douglas Carswell, Conservative, Harwich

Mr David Chaytor, Labour, Bury North

Mrs Sharon Hodgson, Labour, Gateshead East and Washington West

Paul Holmes, Liberal Democrat, Chesterfield

Fiona Mactaggart, Labour, Slough

Mr Andrew Pelling, Independent, Croydon Central

Mr Andy Slaughter, Labour, Ealing, Acton and Shepherd’s Bush

Helen Southworth, Labour, Warrington South

Mr Graham Stuart, Conservative, Beverley & Holderness

Mr Edward Timpson, Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich

Derek Twigg, Labour, Halton

Lynda Waltho , Labour, Stourbridge

so if any of them are your MP, suggest that it would be a good idea to stick a flea in their ear too.

Please spread far and wide.

Pondering that statement of intent from the home education review.

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We all have plans for the future and hopes for our children. It’s kind of what parents do. And it is our responsibility to equip our children for a life in the community that they are part of – sounds like a sound statement of responsibility to me.

But how did the Badman home education review(pdf link) leap from that to an annual statement of intent? Is it a good idea? Necessary? How would you do it?

Right at the moment these ponderings are very relevant to us, as you’ll know if you’ve read any of my previous posts about autonomy and curriculum. I’m still working on getting the balance right for us day to day, but one thing that this has brought back home to me with a resounding thud is that I could not have sat down and written a plan for the next 12 months. Well, I could, but we wouldn’t have stuck to it for more than a couple of days. And then if someone wanted to judge my educational provision against such a forced plan, presumably I’d have failed and I’d be measuring the kids up for uniform right about now.

But it’s the flexibility of home education that is its power. I have two children (soon to be three) to cater for, not thirty or more. I can chop and change how I’m doing things to respond to expressed interests and perceived needs of those two individuals, and I can know them far better than any teacher can ever know individual pupils.

For example, atm, I’ve split handwriting and spelling out of English comprehension and grammatical studies for Big. While we are still using Focus on Literacy: Pupil Textbook Bk.5, instead of her struggling to write out her answers, we talk them through together and I write them down. This has several plus points, for starters she’s having to think harder about her answers rather than just dashing something off to satisfy the need to write something down. I’m finding out about her strengths and weaknesses – her absorption of the detail of the excerpts she’s reading is phenomenal, as she quoted directly from the passage after just two read throughs to answer one question. But her ability to logically structure a sentence is probably on a par with most nine year olds – she doesn’t think where it’s going when she sets off so it wanders. Discussion allows us to fine tune this, and means, I hope, that she’s getting far more out of these short sessions together than she would out of doing it alone in a longer space of time.

The handwriting and spelling we’re addressing separately using copywork and spelling sheets, again in short bursts.

How though, did we decide on the core subjects that we’re following? Is this a curriculum that is good enough for everyone to use?

No, this is purely personal choice, based on our beliefs and experience. Tim and I have made a judgement about the skills that we value most and see being needed in the future. We are not so arrogant as to think that we can foresee what they will need in terms of knowledge in the world around them once they are adult, and we both know from personal experience that all the teaching in the world won’t get information into your head if you aren’t interested in it. What we think is important right now are the basic skills of being able to communicate verbally and in writing (hand as well as type), which means a certain level of legibility and spelling has to be achieved. We think children need room to learn to learn, and guidance to achieve that – so while we do answer Small’s frequent questions on what words mean (over the last couple of days he’s wanted to know about revolution, genre, and consistency to give just a few examples) we’ve also given him a dictionary and are showing him how to use it.

He loves to use his science book, which doesn’t just teach him about science, it shows him how to structure investigations and follow instructions. And he’s learning how to use a computer as a tool instead of just a toy – so he has downloaded things, changed his profile, created files, saved them and uploaded them. Knowing how to learn to use new tools was something I don’t think either Tim or I learnt at school, and we certainly didn’t learn about computers, the web or programming then (in the 60s, 70s and 80s 😉 ), but we’ve both managed to acquire the information we’ve needed since to have very successful and continuing careers in IT.

I can safely say that the vague bits of history that I recall about Disraeli and Gladstone have been no use to me whatsoever in my adult political life – when I’ve been interested in an issue, I’ve done research, watched TV programmes, read up on wikipedia and talked to ppl who knew about it. So I’m not worried about individual factoids when I read history

with the children, I just want to give them a glimpse of the bigger picture and we do it with fun outings and narratives. If they want to go into more detail they will – as Big has many times with Victorians, Elizabeth I and now her Lady Grace Mysteries.

So, is a prescribed curriculum necessary for home education? I don’t think so, and I think it would utterly be the wrong decision for it to be imposed, even just some basic educational standards plucked out of thin air. I think it’s individual choice and the responsibility of each and every home educating family to decide how they do it, and not something that the government should be sticking their grubby paws in to. And let’s think about it – how many of these government ministers actually have any real knowledge about education? They’ve been through it, and their children might be going through it too, but they haven’t done research, won’t listen to researchers such as Paula Rothermel who have studied it, and I don’t rate their opinions as highly as I do the home educators I’ve met who are living home education every day.

Unwarranted government intrusion into family life.

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I was watching the local news tonight, and it turns out that the two policewomen banned from looking after each other’s children live in this area, so were interviewed on the show. They were doing each other a favour – job sharing and childcare sharing, in much the same way women in communities have done for time immemorial.

Recently however, the government decided that anyone undertaking childcare for reward, and that reward could be just reciprocal childcare, needs to be registered as a childminder. Which means being qualified in first aid, having your house inspected, having to keep records and having to follow the Early Years Foundation Stage. (I’m sure I’ve missed a few bits out there, but that’s the gist of it I think.) And as these two policewomen hadn’t done any of that, looking after each other’s children was breaking the law.

Funny how we don’t yet have to do that to actually have children, but rest assured, if the government could find a way to bring that law into being, they would. After all, they are trying to control pretty much ever other aspect of family life.

The two children involved are in nurseries now, and the women are considerably financially worse off. The taxpayer is going to be worse off too, as the women are applying for benefits to assist with the elevated costs. And the majority of ppl that I’ve spoken to about this think it’s ridiculous. I’m also betting there’s a lot of ppl reviewing their holiday childcare arrangements – situations where families take it in turns to look after friends children could fall foul of the same legislation if it’s on more than 14 days a year, and that’s quite easy to achieve.

So, is it reactionary to think that a mother ought to be able to choose a friend to look after her child? Is it dragging your heels to not want to have to go through an inspection system or teach to a curriculum that many early years experts think is utterly ridiculous and has no grounding in pedagogical research? Or has the government gone a step too far, in the same way that they have over the Badman home education review?

Because they have gone a step too far. The insinuations over a small number of cases where home education has been a factor in abuse and neglect are nothing more than insinuations, and even if there were a small number of cases, it is not proportionate or targeted to bring in an annual licensing system for all home educators in response to that.

Put it this way, approx 5 children drown in garden ponds each year. Does this mean we should ban them? Or inspect them for the correct safety measures and fine ppl, even those without children, if the ponds are not covered correctly in weight bearing meshes?

No, it doesn’t. Be far more sensible to ban cars tbh, as road accidents are well up there in the cause of death stakes, and we’d be able to breathe a lot better.

We can’t rule out every cause of accident and injury to our children. We can take sensible precautions, but the Badman review isn’t that, especially when it conflates welfare with education. Just the same as demanding two friends are registered and following a curriculum – that’s another conflation of welfare and education that shouldn’t have taken place.

I am not behind the times, nor am I alone in my defiance of these laws and proposals – it is the government that is hurrying too fast into an Orwellian future that we don’t need, didn’t ask for and don’t want. Time to take a step back, Ed Balls, and listen to the ppl who are telling you you’ve got it wrong.

Oh dear, Mr Badman, don't the figures add up?

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The Select Committee day of investigation into the conduct and findings of Graham Badman’s Home Education review is fast approaching. Someone has now found this little gem:

Please see the attached letter from Graham Badman.

Graham would like to make local authorities aware of the forthcoming Select Committee hearing in early October which is likely to examine the evidence from the various sources which led to the 28 recommendations in his Home Education Review.

In the course of the review statistical evidence was collected from a sample of local authorities on vulnerable children who were home educated. This provided persuasive evidence for change.

However, it was a small sample and we would like to supplement this data in order to provide more statistically rigorous information to the Select Committee about safeguarding and educational issues that affect home educated children.

So there is a nod to the fact that the information used in the review and on the basis of which legislation is being prepared is not statistically rigorous enough to satisfy a select committee – methinks then that it shouldn’t be enough to satisfy a government to consider legislation.

And why does Graham Badman get to call for more evidence at this point? Surely if the review was well enough put together he should be able to go before the select committee and say that, there should be no need to scrabble around for further details to support it?

Someone is running scared.

Time to redouble our efforts methinks. Is your local group involved in putting together a submission to the select committee? If not, go on, you know you want to. You’d better get your skates on though, as unlike Graham Badman, home educators only have until 22 September to get their submissions in. Why does he get until 1st October? And why does he get to call for evidence through official channels, surely he had access to those while doing the review – we don’t get these shortcuts. Sigh.

ETA further blogposts on the same issue:

Dare to know: Graham Badman now requesting further evidence

Corvidae corner: a small announcement and a rant

What's it all for?

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The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable-

(a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and

(b) to any special educational needs he may have,

either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.

So what’s a suitable education?

From Home Education.org.uk

1.5 There is no absolute definition of what a suitable education is. An interpretation was provided by an appeal case brought in Worcester Crown Court in Harrison & Harrison v Stevenson (1981). The parents appealed against their convictions for failure to comply with school attendance orders. The Court held that education is suitable to a child’s age, ability and aptitude “if, and only if, the education is such as:

(i) to prepare the child for life in modern civilised society, and

(ii) to enable the child to achieve his full potential.

Hm. Full potential? How precisely is that judged? Think an awful lot of school headteachers would be quaking in their boots if that was the standard they were held up to!

This one seems more workable.

1.6 In another Court case DfES, ex parte Talmud Torah Machzikei Hadass School Trust (1985) a definition of suitable education was offered as follows:

” education is ‘suitable’ if it primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he is a member, rather than the way of life in the country as whole, as long as it does not foreclose the child’s options in later years to adopt some other form of life if he wishes to do so.”

So, needing to equip a child for life in their community. Tbh, that sounds fairly basic. I also read an article in the Guardian – synchronicity as I’d been pondering all of this in the car on the way home yesterday, and then found this Drop GCSEs. We should be teaching our children to think in the evening.

I’m not sure about teaching our children to think. I think maybe encouraging them, giving them space, allowing them to form opinions, having conversations, asking and answering questions, providing opportunities for debate and exploration will probably suffice. Although I suppose you could call that teaching. I’m just afraid of the idea of having a timetabled lesson in the art of thought, which I suspect would achieve precisely the opposite.

But I do think that equipping them for a life in their community is fairly reasonable, and probably what parents through the ages have aimed for. Preferably a happy life at that. So my responsibilities as I see them (and I refer to my moral responsibilities as a parent, rather than any legal version of it all) are to encourage/ require my children to develop basic skills. Reading, writing/ typing, arithmetic. Tool use – pens, pencils, scissors, oven, sewing machine, hammer, washing machine, computer. Which mainly comes out of involving them in every day life. I don’t view computer time for the sake of learning to use a computer to be a particularly effective way of doing it, although I am also aware that my children are net literate without being particularly competent at installing software for example, but I’ve got my eye on that.

But the thing that seems most important to me is the learning how to learn. So finding out how to research something on the internet *and* how to question what you’ve found. Evaluating information you are given by other ppl. Using a library. How to find an expert in something you want to learn more about. Very few of these things are an integral part of a school education as I understand it, from what I’ve seen of my young relatives in schools. There is still too much sitting and waiting for knowledge to be delivered. It’s the aim of our education system after all. First of all you’ve got to control the children, then you’ve got to impart information to them so that they can pass a test on what they’ve been taught, and if you don’t get that done properly, your school is marked as failing.

If children are allowed space and given encouragement, I think they’ll just go on learning. They learn to walk and talk from the examples around them. They are set up to be little learning machines if you don’t interfere with that. Education experts know that, but there isn’t any money in it, and you don’t get to control the output. Which I think scare the ppl in charge of education in this country, which is why they are now trying to control us.