No wonder local authorities are alarmed about home education!

I have several times been accused in recent days of asking questions to which I already knew the answers. I have to say that this is quite absurd. Not  only did I not have a ready-made answer up my sleeve, I could not in a million years have guessed how other people would respond to the case which I cited forty eight hours ago. I described a child who was not being educated and yet whose mother claimed that he was.  I fully expected readers to agree that this was something of a problem and to discuss ways that genuine home educators could be distinguished from situations where no education is being provided. This is a problem and I can see why some home educating parents get a little tetchy when their local authority acts as though all home educated children are missing from education. However, this was not at all the way most people saw the example that I gave. Instead of agreeing that here was a child who was not receiving an education, the general view seemed to be that he was doing fine and should be left alone. It was suggested that playing computer games all day and then hanging round the streets with a bunch of kids who were gradually moving further into petty crime was a perfectly adequate education.

Even weirder, most of those commenting seemed to place responsibility for truanting upon the local authority, rather than the child’s parents. This is very curious! Home educators are always talking about the sanctity of parental responsibility and then as soon as a kid truants, it is no longer the parents’ responsibility, but  that of the local authority.

Having found that not one reader feels that anything needs to be done to help a child who does not attend school and is not receiving an education from either his parents or anybody else; there is little more to say. This was a genuinely unexpected turn of events and I am sure that any local authority officers reading this blog will draw their own conclusions about the matter. The conclusion is, as far as I am able to make it out, that a number of home educators believe that if a child truants and is then withdrawn from school by his mother in order to avoid prosecution; then that is fine and the child should simply be ignored. Any child who is claimed to be home educated should face no further attention from the local authority, regardless of whether or not this is really the case. Parents should not be responsible for ensuring that their children attend a school at which they are registered and if the child fails to attend then this is the fault of the local authority. Playing computer games all day, after not getting up until after lunchtime is a pefectly adequate eduction for a fourteen year-old.  I can assure readers that my open ended questions a couple of days ago were not intended to elicit such views as this! I am frankly taken aback at what has been said.

I cannot help remembering the newspaper articles which I wrote on the subject of home education a few years ago; the ones that first made me an object of hatred for the loopier type of home educating parent. In one passage, which caused particular anger, I said:



Autonomous education is based on a simple principle: that children alone are the best judges of what they should learn and when they should learn it. If a child wishes to spend the day slumped in front of a television or games console, this is not a problem, the choice is his. Many autonomous educators go even further, asserting that it is for the child to decide on bedtimes, diet and other aspects of lifestyle.

I can still recall the fury which this caused. I was told that I knew nothing of autonomous education and that the idea of supposedly home educated children sitting around all day playing Grand Theft Auto was ridiculous. I knew then that it was not, of course, and it is interesting to find it being confirmed here that quite a few home edcautors see nothing wrong with this lifestyle.  Indeed, although I never used the expression, somebody reading about the child whom I described who was missing from education, did in fact call this autonomous education. I think that there is nothing more that I can add to this debate. Obviously, if a child hates school and truants, then I think that a parent should be able to provide an education for the child at home. I am a fanatical supporter of home education. When this is not done though and a child is left to his or her own devices, then I believe that the local authority should intervene and help the parents to provide an education for their child.

Identifying children missing from education; Part 2

This will be a brief post, for I am very busy today. I am constantly enchanted at the way that asking simple questions of home educators provokes such bizarre responses by some of those who comment here. Apparently, asking open ended questions like this  is symptomatic of great fear and narrow mindedness in those asking them!

I am glad that I had an opportunity yesterday of seeing what readers thought when confronted with a genuine case of a child missing from education. Not one felt that anything should be done about the child and many seemed to think that he was actually better off  as a long term truant than he would have been if he had remained at school. One person even thought that getting up at one in the afternoon, spending the next few hours playing computer games, before hanging out with a bunch of kids who were drifting into petty crime, actually constituted an acceptable education! I can see that most readers feel that such children should be left alone, because the alternative might involve them personally in some slight inconvenience, if, that is,  local authorities began trying to sort out genuinely home educated children from long term truants and those missing from education.

I was asked yesterday by more than one person what I would do about such children; those who drop out of school in this way. The general feeling seemed to be that the local authority was somehow responsible for children like this who truant. This is unlikely. Most children do not truant or drop out of school. There are a few who do, even in the best schools. We need to ask ourselves why most pupils remain at school and a few do not. Often, there are common factors in the home lives of truants; it is more likely that these are responsible for the problem than that it is the fault of the school. As I am sure readers know, academic success or failure has far more to do with home background than which school is attended; five times as much, according to some research. From this perspective, truanting is more often than not a sign of something wrong at home than  a problem at school.

What can be done about such children? Making the process of becoming a home educator a little more complex would be helpful. Many of the sort of parents like Jack’s mother, whom we met yesterday, would think twice if they knew that they would be interviewed before being able to deregister their children from school. I have seen a few parents who would be discouraged from sending off that letter if they knew that they would be visited regularly and have to explain to somebody just what they were doing about their son or daughter’s education. True, this would be irritating for genuine home educators, but it would only be a minor inconvenience for most.

Some children simply do not wish to learn about photosynthesis or 19th century poetry. Often, this too says something about their home background, but what can we actually do about it? A local college has a scheme now where ‘disaffected’ boys of fourteen and fifteen can learn about vehicle maintenance for a few days a week. A deal is struck with the boys whereby if they attend school on the other days, they get to muck about with engines for two days a week. This approach is worth expanding.

Already, this post has eaten into my time and so I must call a halt for now.

Home educated children missing from education

As some readers may be aware, there has recently been a consultation about revising the statutory guidance on Children Missing from Education or CME. Needless to say, this has provoked anger among certain home educators who are concerned that the CME agenda might end up with local authorities chasing home educating parents. This would be absurd, wouldn’t it, because home educated children are not missing from education at all?

This is really an etymological and perhaps philosophical problem. Can we change the essential nature of a thing by altering its name? To make this clear, I want to look at a specific case and then invite readers to suggest their own solutions. Local authority officers read this blog, as do civil servants working for the Department for Education; so this is an opportunity to explain to them where they are going wrong!

Fourteen year-old Jack has a history of playing truant and under-achieving at school. He has very limited literacy; barely enough to read the simplest of texts. This is not caused by dyslexia, he has been tested for this, but because he mucks about in class and misses a lot of school. His mother has to leave for work early and Jack is left to get himself up and to school. He often does not manage to do so. Soon after his fourteenth birthday, Jack stopped going to school altogether. He is over six feet tall and his mother cannot physically make him get up. He usually rises at about one or two in the afternoon and then watches TV or plays on the Xbox until his mates finish school. Then he hangs round with them. He seldom gets to bed before two or three in the morning.

Naturally, his mother was  worried about being prosecuted for truancy, but a friend told her that if Jack was registered as being home educated, then she won’t need to worry. She accordingly downloaded a template for a deregistration letter from an internet site and sent it to the school. When the local authority asked to visit, she also downloaded and adapted an educational philosophy for an autonomous education and then sent them that, declining a visit.

Here then is the real situation. A semi-literate child is receiving no education of any sort whatsoever. He will not only pass no GCSEs, he is unlikely to attend college and his mother is not the type to arrange an Open University course. His older friends are all unemployed and make a living from a combination of benefits and petty crime. Jack is moving in the same direction. He is, without a shadow of a doubt, a child missing from education. The question is, should describing a child missing from education in this way as being ‘home educated’ be enough to prevent the local authority from taking any further action?

I invite readers now to take the role of a local authority officer and decide what to do next. Should they issue a School Attendance Order? On what grounds could they do so? They have no solid evidence that Jack is not receiving an education. Should they turn up on the doorstep and try to speak to the mother or child? We all know how some home educators view the practice of ‘doorstepping’! Perhaps they should simply write the kid off and forget him? Do we really want local authorities to abandon a vulnerable child in this way? Should they send another letter?

I will be interested to know how readers think that a local authority should actually deal with a child of this sort who is missing from education. As I said earlier, this is a golden opportunity for you to tell local authority officers where they are going wrong and how they should deal with cases like this without resorting to doorstepping or other unacceptable strategies.