A final few words about Cheryl Moy

My posts about Alison Sauer, Cheryl Moy and Wendy Charles-Warner seem to have struck a chord or touched a nerve with an awful lot of people. Since many of them were opposed to Cheryl Moy and had unflattering things to say about her, I think it only fair to let her own words speak for her; so that we can make an objective judgement about what sort of person she is.

As some may know, Cheryl posts on Mumsnet under the pseudonym of Pinkchez.  Here she is six weeks ago, offering advice about an aspect of the statementing process:

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/special_needs/a1688836-Is-it-true-if-you-home-educate-you-lose-the-statement


I think that the easiest way of seeing whether people falling out with Cheryl is down to her or is rather being caused by jealous and spiteful parents who are not as caring as her, is to look at an earlier thread on Mumsnet.

In April 2009, the school  which Cheryl’s oldest child was attending wanted to have him assessed as being possibly on the autistic spectrum. She was bitterly opposed to any such move, because she felt that her son was actually gifted and that any diagnosis of this sort would in some way be a bad thing for him. She went onto Mumsnet on April 24th 2009 to ask on a special needs thread if other mothers had children who had  been misdiagnosed and also to announce that she was setting up a support group. Here is her original post:

How many parents have got kids with these diagnosis but arent convinced its right, I have teachers doin their best to get my son labelled, but it isnt going to happen, he is highly gifted, his IQ is in the top 2% of the population at 8, but this comes with some issues, he is scared of new situations, doesnt like shopping centres above ground floor, chews clothes, wont sit still, gets bored etc,
does this sound familiar?
I'm trying to establish a support group if anyone is interested?


The exchanges which followed may be found here:

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/special_needs/744555-misdiagnosis-of-autism-aspergers-ADHD/AllOnOnePage


All the parents were sympathetic and did their very best to help Cheryl with advice and by sharing their own experiences. She grew increasingly angry with everybody and it took her just four days to explode and fall out with all the other parents. Here is her final post:

some people on here need to get off their high horses and see what else is happening beyond their experiences
and can i add having letters after your name means bugger all.
most have you have completely mis understood why i came on here, luckily for those that have contacted me, i now have enough open minded non ignorant/arogant people to create a support group. i do not want your opinions regarding my son, i didnt ask for them, good luck to your kids they are gonna need it with parents that have serious issues like some of you. and i dont care if this offends, you should learn to read and understand my very first message. if you didnt understand it u shud have asked instead of attacked.


As can be seen, here is Cheryl going into a group of strangers, all of whom had children with special needs, and apparently asking for advice. Her unfortunate manner managed to alienate everybody else and she ended up after a few days by accusing the other parents of attacking her. Not only that, but she tells them that they themselves  have problems that are likely to have an adverse effect upon their children! I think that this sheds some light upon the difficulties that others have with Cheryl Moy and also on her own personality. As for a woman who behaved like this then setting up a special needs group, as she claims to have done last month…

Socialisation

When I was interviewed on Radio Sheffield the other day, it was perhaps inevitable that one of the questions asked should relate to socialisation. I often get a little tetchy when this subject is raised in connection with home education and it was all I could do to stop myself swearing at the idiot asking the question!

     What nobody with children at school ever seems to realise is that the socialisation which is the norm at schools is actually of a very limited and specific type, which is often not transferable to real life. To explain what I mean by this, it will be necessary to relate a personal anecdote.

     When my daughter was thirteen and also in the summer when she was fourteen, the local authority here in Essex managed to get hold of some money to run a series of events over the long summer holiday. These were courses and activities aimed at children and young people of all ages. They ranged from archery and canoeing to poetry and self assertiveness workshops. All were completely free to the young people taking part. My daughter signed up for masses of things for each of those summers and had a great time.

     What I found profoundly depressing was that many of the activities had to be cancelled, because not enough children wanted to take part and it was not worth laying them on only for one or two. This was puzzling, because a constant complaint round here is that there is nothing for young people to do.  I was so curious about this that I looked into it a bit; asking the parents of schoolchildren that I know, why they thought that their own children had not been interested. The answers were interesting. Typical responses from the young people themselves were statements such as, “I wouldn’t know anybody.”  or “None of my mates are going.” The idea of turning up to met a bunch of people that they did not know was frankly unnerving for these schoolchildren. My own daughter and also incidentally a few other home educated children locally, just turned up alone and joined in. This was an uncomfortable idea for many children of school age, which is why so many events were not run in the end.

     In effect, the children at school had been conditioned to socialise with a group of thirty or so other young people, none of whom varied in age by more than twelve months. They were keen to mix with these children, but not with anybody who was slightly young or older. They certainly did not want to spend the day with strangers. This is in sharp contrast to many home educated children, who are used to mixing with unknown people of all ages; from toddlers and babies, all the way through to very old men and women. 

More about Alison Sauer and her chums

My recent post on Cheryl Moy and her pernicious influence garnered many comments. I wish today  to address some of the points raised in those comments. Those writing seemed to be divisible into three categories. There were those who agreed with what I said and expanded upon it, those who disagreed and felt that Cheryl had been unfairly maligned and finally those who felt that it did not really matter and that if people did not like Cheryl and cronies of hers such as Alison Sauer; then they should just give them a wide berth. Let's look at  the idea that those who do not get on with Alison Sauer and her various proxies should simply keep out of their way; a reasonable point on the face of it, but in practice easier said than done.

     Many home educating parents, especially those who have withdrawn their children from school, miss the camaraderie of the school gate. They wish to associate with other parents, talk things over with them and have some sort of social life based upon their child’s educational arrangements. This is perfectly understandable and explains why many join home educating groups or online communities. Surely, there are so many such things running that it should prove possible to avoid falling foul of Alison Sauer and her  various chums? In practice, new parents very frequently stumble across Alison without even trying. I have been accused of having an obsession with Alison Sauer which, if true, would be unfortunate indeed! I think it is more the case that at every touch and turn, I come across her and her influence on the British home education scene. Let us see how this works by imagining a newly home educating mother who has decided to make a few connections on the internet with other home educators.

Almost the first online group that one comes across when googling is one largely run by   and solely moderated by Cheryl Moy. Cheryl chooses who may join this group and is very ready to chuck out anybody who either disagrees with her or even asks too many questions. Let us suppose that our hypothetical mother then decides instead to join  Education Otherwise. Alison Sauer and her friend Wendy Charles-Warner have their feet well and truly under the table in this organisation.   The moderators of the support list for EO are, like Cheryl Moy, always ready and willing to chuck off the list those to whom they take a dislike. Perhaps our mother has a question about social services involvement? Ah, there is an official contact at Education otherwise to deal with this sort of question. It is… Cheryl Moy.

Dear me, thinks our mother, this won’t do at all. I don’t care for these women and so I will go elsewhere on the internet. She googles home education and finds that Roland Meighan  is a well-known and independent figure in British home education. He runs a charity that anybody can join for a small fee. Our mother signs up to Personalised Education Now and then to her horror finds out that one of the trustees is Alison Sauer! She flees in terror and then finds Home Education UK. This is one of the biggest lists and support groups. What she may not know is that Mike Fortune-Wood who runs it is an old friend of Alison Sauer’s. he was involved in helping her draw up the guidelines on home education for local authorities that were so nearly foisted on us. He too has a strong connection with Roland Meighan and has been paid for his work at Personalised Education Now.  

Our mother has now been through four of the biggest groups in the home education scene. She decides that since Alison Sauer and Cheryl Moy seem to be all over the place, she will now contact an MP who has an interest in home education and acts as its advocate and defender. She emails Graham Stuart with her views. But wait, what happens next? Graham Stuart passes her details on to Alison Sauer and the next thing she knows is that Alison has sent her a sniffy email. (No, I am not making that up. Several people who have contacted Graham Stuart have had their names sent to Alison Sauer!)

It is very difficult to avoid coming across Alison, Cheryl and Wendy if you are interested in home education in this country. If they were pleasant and good natured people, this would not be a problem. They are not. I know for a fact that people who disagree with them are threatened with legal action; both civil and criminal. I know that others have been told that information about them will be passed to social services. How do I know this? For one thing, Alison Sauer has told others that Wendy Charles-Warner  intends to take legal action against me for revealing that she lives in a manor house surrounded by a sixty acre estate. I know because people have actually gone to the police and accused me of stalking and harassing them on this blog. I know because I have received nuisance deliveries to my home, after Alison Sauer publicised my address and suggested that people might arrange nuisance deliveries. I have received many emails from other parents, thanking me for drawing attention to the problem; people who have become frightened of what these characters  might do next. One mother was worried that her children might be taken into care, after she fell out with two of these women and hints were made that social services might get involved.

The suggestion that home educating parents can just give Alison Sauer and her friends a wide berth and keep clear of them is ingenuous. They crop up in all sorts of unexpected places in connection with home education and it is hard not to encounter her if you are at all interested in the topic of home education. She was heavily involved in both the Welsh consultation and the flexi-schooling business. In fact, I defy anybody to take an active interest in home education in this country and not to keep tripping over Alison and her confederates.

A problem with Education Otherwise

Murmurs of discontent are growing about Education Otherwise; oldest of the home education support groups in this country. Part of the problem is that they are allowing some pretty strange types to get their feet under the table and these people are behaving in ways that do not bring any credit at all upon the organisation.

Take, for example, Cheryl Moy, who claims to be Education Otherwise’s  social services liason officer. It is not clear just what this post entails, but there is concern that Cheryl is using this supposed position to bully parents. Indeed, she has been known to threaten that  home educating parents who do not do as she tells them will be reported to social services. She is also rather aggressive to people generally and runs a large national face book group for home educators as her personal domain; deleting comments and members if there is any opposition to her views. 

Cheryl Moy is of course Alison Sauer’s best friend and they run together an odd group called HE Angels. Alison Sauer also has a position with Education Otherwise, as does another of her close friends; Wendy Charles-Warner. People find that raising concerns about one of these people soon brings down the wrath of various others and the result is that although unhappy with the conduct of Cheryl Moy, a lot of parents are reluctant to speak out about her and Alison Sauer.

It might be no bad thing if Education Otherwise were to specify the roles that these women hold in the group and perhaps tell everybody just what their remit is.  If the present situation is allowed to continue, it is unlikely to do the reputation of EO much good.

An interview with BBC Radio Sheffield

I thought that readers might like the opportunity to hear me talking about a favourite subject of mine; that is to say, home education. Here is a link to an interview which I gave on home education this morning. I am on a little over two hours into the programme:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0163hjr



For once, I find myself compelled to agree with my critics! Several people have asked the perfectly fair question of what on earth I am doing, shooting my mouth of  here about home education in Sheffield. There are sound grounds for asking this question, seeing that I neither live in nor have any connection with Sheffield and am not in any case a home educator. There is an explanation and it is a curious one.

 The researchers for the programme approached several people whom they thought might be able to speak authoritatively on  home education in Sheffield. One of these was Fiona Nicholson, who lives in the city, acts as a consultant on home education and has a site on the subject called Ed Yourself. The researcher spoke to her and she refused to take part in a programme about this subject. They also spoke to Edwina Theunnison, who is a trustee of Education Otherwise. She too declined to take part. This being the case, I thought that I ought to step into the breach! If these others had agreed to be interviewed, then I would not have involved myself.

I must draw attention to the Ingle family, who also spoke. Their son did A Levels at home, which is something I could not have faced in a million years. Here is a piece about them:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/08/16/a-level-results-2012-home-schooling-effective_n_1786949.html

More Sauer Consultancy related confusion!

Following from yesterday's post about the muddle surrounding Alison Sauer's various companies and trading names, I observe that on her facebook page there is another company or trading name associated with Sauer Consultancy Ltd. This is named as SC Management; obviously a variation of SC Education. This enterprise apparently is concerned  not with education, but rather;

' Project Management and Consultancy in the Chemical, Process and related industries'





The difficulty here is that there is already a registered company called SC Management Ltd and it has been running for forty years. I really can't understand why Alison and her husband play around like this with companies and trading names which are so similar to others that confusion is bound to result. I mean, Midlands Productions Ltd and Midlands Productions Limited, SC Education and SC Education Ltd, SC Management and SC Management Ltd. Am I really alone in seeing the scope for misunderstandings and mix-ups?

The nature of this blog

From time to time, somebody commenting here will say something so weird, that I feel that I must have slipped into another dimension or parallel universe. This happened yesterday, when the remark was made, apropos of this blog, that, ‘your kudos is less than your ego suggests’. This was pretty bizarre, but actually sums up the apparent attitude of quite a few of those who comment here. Perhaps it might be a good time to make one or two things clear.

First, this is a purely personal blog, visited at most by a few hundred people each day. It does not represent anything other than my own musings on a subject which is dear to me; that is to say home education. Quite a few of those commenting here get irritable if they feel that comments have been deleted or altered; even my own comments on posts that I have myself made! This happened only the other day. The impression I get is that some of those who come on here regard this in the way that they would a blog run by an organisation or company; that is to say that I abide by certain conventions or rules. I do not. It is a personal blog and although I do not operate any moderation, if I should take it into my head to delete anything, then I shall go right ahead and do so. Many blogs on home education in this country do not allow unmoderated comments to appear; I am under no sort of obligation to allow anybody to say anything here. It is, as I said, a personal blog. I might mention that soon after I started this blog, I tried to turn it into a team effort, allowing anybody who wished to do so to contribute posts. See;

http://homeeducationheretic.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/turning-this-into-team-blog.html


Despite the huge number of angry people who were at that time commenting here, not one wished to put his or her own point of view forward in the form of a post here. I even contacted all the more well known people in the home education scene and invited them to contribute. Nobody wished to do so, probably because it would have meant putting their names to their opinions.

I shall not have as much time to spend on this blog in the next few months as I might wish and that brings me neatly to another point. I do not have unlimited time to spend  here and sometimes, when the debate seems to me to becoming fruitless, I stop visiting the comments on some threads. This is not discourtesy on my part; still less is it the case that by failing to respond, I am tacitly admitting defeat on the point under discussion. I simply do not have the time. I am currently turning out six to eight books a year and in addition to that I am writing for various magazines and newspapers. There really is not time to answer every comment here.

Finally, I must respond to the person yesterday who felt that I had less kudos than is in fact the case. I am assuming that whoever said this knows what kudos actually is; that is to say praise and acclaim. I can truthfully say that I have never received any praise and acclaim for the opinions that I share on here! Once in a while, somebody will rather grudgingly concede that I might have a point, but that is about as far as it goes. Can anybody point out to me any kudos at all that I might have received here? This is a genuine enquiry, because it is always possible that on some of those threads to which I have stopped responding,  there is much kudos to be found. I could, I will freely confess, do with some!

SC Education

One of the most tiresome things about this blog is the way that some trifling remark of mine will be seized upon and analysed to death; those commenting being quite unable to let things drop. We saw a good example of this today. Somebody who has started commenting here recently asked who Alison Sauer is. I gave a brief and accurate answer:

She is rather a controversial figure in the British home education scene. A home educating parent herself, she runs a business which offers training to local authorities on the best way to deal with home education. Because she has a financial stake in this way, some people mistrust her and feel that she is not objective. Currently, she runs an outfit called SC Education which promotes flexi-schooling. Again, this could be a conflict of interest when she is campaigning about home education. She is a close associate of Mike Fortune-Wood, who runs the Home Education UK site and also of Wendy Charles-Warner, the Education Otherwise representative in Wales.


Of course, it could not end there! One person told me to ‘get my facts straight’ and another said that, ‘her LA training business went bust and so did her flexischooling business SC Education.’ This is not altogether true and so I responded by saying:

To be strictly accurate SC Education did not exist in the first place! She was trading under this name, but it was not registered at Companies House; which is sailing pretty close to the wind.

I thought that this would be the end of the it, but of course I was reckoning without some of the more, shall we say, determined characters who comment here. They seemed to think that this was an outrageous slur upon Alison Sauer and  indicated that I had an obsession with her. Let us just clear this up and see what the situation actually is with Alison Sauer’s various companies. I certainly do not think that the information I gave was ‘smearing’ her, as one person suggested.

Alison Sauer has a limited company called Sauer Consultancy, which she runs with her husband. Among other things, this company advises local authorities about home education. She and her husband are  also the directors of  Heatherside Homes Ltd; a company involved in property development. At the end of February 2012, Alison and her husband began two new companies and this is where things get a little confusing. She began calling her old company, Sauer Consultancy Ltd, SC Education. This was not a separate company, it was simply Sauer Consultancy, trading as SC Education. I’m not sure why she did this. I’ve been told that she felt her name was not a brilliant advertisement in view of some of the stuff which has happened in the past and that she wanted a neutral company name that would not be immediately associated with her. I don’t know how true this is.

Now there is no reason why you should not call your business by any name you like, as long as nobody else is using the name you have chosen. You must not however misrepresent yourself as  a limited company if you are not. If you are a limited company, then you must tell people who you are when you do business with them,  your registration number,  registered office and so on. This is where Alison fell down a little, because she began to stop telling people what the real name of her company was. Take a look at this;


http://www.sc-education.co.uk/details/article/test/



Now anybody reading this will draw at least one erroneous conclusion about the state of affairs. The first thing which is obvious is that this is  a company which is registered in the United Kingdom. At the bottom is the registration number and the registered address is also given. What is the name of the company? Well the heading is SC Education and the text refers to, ‘SC Education and its legal advisers’. The conclusion is inescapable; this document relates to a company called SC Education. Only of course it doesn’t; because there is no such company. Here is a person dealing with the public, but not revealing the name of her company. This is what I meant by ‘sailing close to the wind’. It is not a serious matter; the most that might happen is that she could get her knuckles rapped by the people at Companies House, but it is certainly misleading and confusing.  How mentioning this could be thought of as a ‘smear’ is quite beyond me! Confusion is almost guaranteed here, because until eighteen months earlier, there had been another company registered with this name at Companies House.

There is nothing criminal about any of this, it is the sort of thing that people do quite often, but it is never the less not strictly open and above board. SC Education have been representing themselves as a limited company, but do not really exist as a company at all.  I hope that this clears up this simple misunderstanding and explains why I said that she was sailing close to the wind.

Another book...

Readers might like to see this piece of mine from today's Daily Express, about yet another book of mine; this time about the 1970s. It is not often that one gets paid to review a book which one has written! I have been putting up stuff like  this about my writing, as an explanation of why I sometimes drop out of sight or stop answering comments on posts here. It is not that I am lost for an adequate response; that very seldom happens! It is simply that I am too busy with my real work. This leads some simple souls to imagine that they have won a glorious victory in the comments here, when it is really that I have more important things to do than quibble endlessly over every minor point.

http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/fashion-beauty/388595/Growing-up-in-the-decade-that-style-forgot

Growing up in the decade that style forgot

IMAGINE being a teenager in a world without mobiles, texts, computers, internet access, DVD players or games consoles. A time when sharing music meant not clicking a mouse but taking a vinyl record round to somebody’s house, when making a quick phone call would probably involve queuing outside a red telephone box.

By: Simon Webb

Published: Tue, April 2, 2013

0Comments

Flares and satin were all the rage at the start of the decade

Life in the Seventies was very different from now and nowhere are developments more pronounced than in the technology used for entertainment and communication.

Today, many teenagers would find life without a mobile phone unimaginable. So it comes as something of a shock to learn that as recently as three or four decades ago fewer than half of British households had a landline.

For the majority of people receiving calls at home was impossible and making one entailed using a call box. One of the first questions they would ask of new acquaintances was: “Are you on the telephone?” Nowadays this sounds as bizarre as asking somebody if they have electricity.

For most youngsters the only way of communicating with friends was to walk to their house, or cycle round on your Chopper bike, and see if they were in.

At the beginning of the Seventies, record players and transistor radios were the only means for kids to enjoy their music. Seeing singers and groups perform meant tuning in to Top Of The Pops on Thursday evenings. There was no way to record programmes and so it was necessary to watch them as they were broadcast – more often than not on a black and white television. Being able to listen to favourite music on demand was not something young people took for granted. Records were expensive and it was possible to build up only a modest collection at home.

Making tape recordings from records or radio broadcasts became possible as the decade progressed but the quality of such illegal “downloads” left a great deal to be desired. Some lucky teenagers had their own cassette players, although these were expensive and the music sounded nowhere near as good as it did on record players. Perhaps the greatest dream of many was to be able to play their music on an eight-track stereo. This system, with its chunky great cassettes, appeared in 1970 but had dropped out of use by 1980.

Sitcoms such as Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em epitomised family television

There has never been a decade quite like the Seventies

Without the internet and the ability to access music and information about singers at will, news about the music scene had to be gleaned from such magazines as New Musical Express and Melody Maker. Fan magazines catered for the need to know more about the private lives of the members of such bands as the Bay City Rollers as well as providing the pin-up posters to be found on nearly every bedroom wall.

Television was far more of a social activity for families. With only one set in the average home and no video recorders, everyone had to watch the same thing at the same time. There were only three channels and this effectively meant that almost everybody would be watching certain popular programmes such as The Generation Game or Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em. These days the different generations watch whatever they want on their laptops, televisions, DVD players or a host of other electronic devices. Viewing is no longer the communal activity it once was, which is a pity. The television was a focal point for households in the Seventies and the teenager sitting and laughing at On The Buses with his parents inevitably felt a closer bond with them than one watching an entirely different programme from the rest of the family up in his bedroom.

The Seventies has been called “the decade that style forgot”. Teenagers wore some of the more outlandish fashions which have come to sum up the era. Platform shoes, flares, bell-bottom jeans and hotpants were all enthusiastically championed. The strange thing about many of these phenomena is that they emerged promptly in 1970 and then disappeared in 1979, fitting neatly into the decade. The 16-year-old girl wearing platforms in 1970 would have been a daring trend-setter but nine years later no sartorially savvy teenager would have been seen dead in them.

This was the period when young fashions spilled over into, and had a profound effect upon, the adult world. Photographs of families at the seaside during the Sixties show middle aged men sitting on the beach wearing collars and ties. By the Eighties this would have unthinkable. The longer hair adopted by many youths in the Seventies, together with the more casual way of dressing, became universally accepted.

The most noticeable difference between the lives of teenagers then and the way things are today lies in how they communicated with one another. As private telephones were available only in a minority of households their use by teenagers was strictly controlled. Phone charges were very high and most young people would only be able to make brief calls. This meant that practically all conversations took place face to face; social life invariably meant meeting other people and talking to them.

These days an enormous amount of interaction takes place via the printed word on Facebook and by texting on mobile telephones and it is possible for someone to enjoy a rich social life without having to leave their bedroom. This type of existence would be a bizarre concept to a teenager from the Seventies.

By 1979 fashion was beginning to change, as the Bay City Rollers made way for Bob Geldof

Yet the digital revolution which made such things as mobiles and the internet possible had its roots in this fascinating 10 years and was one of the things that made it such an exhilarating time to be young.

When the decade began we all used mechanical typewriters, cameras, gramophones, clockwork watches and slide rules – the kind of technology that had existed in Queen Victoria’s reign. By 1980, however, there were push-button telephones, digital watches, electronic calculators and even the very first computer games.

Making the transition from child to adult during a period of such dramatic change was tremendously exciting. There has never been a decade quite like the Seventies. Few generations can say that they have witnessed the birth of a new era but millions of now middle-aged men and women really did see the drab, post-war world transformed in front of their very eyes.

To order a copy of A 1970s Teenager From Bell-Bottoms To Disco Dancing, by Simon Webb, (The History Press Ltd) at £9.99 send a cheque or PO made payable to Express Bookshop to: 1970s Offer, PO Box 200 Falmouth TR11 4WJ or tel 0871 988 8367 or online at www.expressbookshop.com UK delivery is free. Calls cost 10p per minute from UK landlines.