Comments on: Home Schooling

By: Roger

Roger — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:21:11 +0000

I think your absolutely right. its about getting a balance. there must also be some form of monitoring system in place to ensure the quality of education.

By: Home schooling: what is the liberal approach?

Home schooling: what is the liberal approach? — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 10:21:36 +0000

[...] Lynne Featherstone wrote about home schooling on her blog in October, concluding: a really interesting conundrum – where everyone is trying to do their best by the children – but the state feels it isn’t safe to leave them to their parents alone and the parents think the state should butt out. [...]

By: PTLLS

PTLLS — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:47:52 +0000

In Europe lifelong learning takes now has a different approach, we hope to see more development as a result of new legislation, good luck all teachers!

By: jax

jax — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:30:32 +0000

I can't see that there's an awful lot of attacking by home educators going on here - a couple of the more negative commenters actually refer to home educators as if they themselves are not HE.

Please do not mistake our passion in defense of our children and our lifestyles as anger at you personally. Many of us are angry and feel betrayed by the libdem party line - I am one of them. I was a paid up libdem, but no longer, as I can't even have a constructive dialogue on this issue with the party, I just get this conundrum line. We are adults, it's supposed to be a grown up party. Please recognise that parents are best placed to look after their children and make choices for them, and it is only the state's place to get involved as a last resort. Not as a just in case, which is very very different.

Surely you can see that this step towards interfering in families is another reach from the overall control and surveillance state that I believed libdems were committed to scaling down?

By: Bruce

Bruce — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:43:13 +0000

Ms. Featherstone,

I must say I am a little surprised to see your complaints about the "slagging" you were receiving from home educators. I think, considering the rights they stand in danger of losing, their treatment of you and your colleagues has been relatively mild. I think Bishop Hill has said it better than I can:

"...there is a conundrum for us on the outside looking in at our representatives. When we observe our parliamentarians discussing the abolition of long-cherished freedoms, are we really expected to stand and watch with equanimity? Are we to make polite representations suggesting that perhaps the abolition of the assumption of innocence is not such a good idea and maybe politicians might like to reconsider? Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue....should it not concern us that we outside parliament are having to point out to our elected representatives that what they are proposing is such a disastrous infringement of our rights? How is it that we have elected people who need to have this explained to them? Isn't the first job of parliamentarians to defend the liberties of the people?"

My question for you is, why on earth would you feel the need to examine proposals that would violate the time-honored principles of innocent until proven guilty, the parent has primary responsibility for the well-being of the child, and there will be no invasion of the family home without just cause (and a warrant)? You spoke of complete and absolute freedom. Such a thing does not exist! We are all subject to law, and there are ample laws currently on the books to protect children, right now. Home educators don't need special ones.

By: James P

James P — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:36:26 +0000

You'd think the economic argument alone would carry some weight with this over-spent government. Every child in HE is saving them thousands of pounds a year!

By: Jeremy Poynton

Jeremy Poynton — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:26:32 +0000

"I do think that home schooling is something that parents should have a right to choose - but despite the protestations from my visitors that all home schooled children are happy and safe - I have heard about less happy outcomes."

Good lord. On the other hand, all state school pupils come out supremely qualified to cope with the adult world, don't they?

Lynne. Home education has gone on for decades without the state seeking to intervene. Apart from the fact that the state would, if it could, have CCTVs in all our houses (Helloooooooo Mr. Balls), what has changed to make the state decide this?

And does the state serve the people, or vice-versa?

There are basic matters of liberty and democracy at stake here. Already, damn near any public servant can knock on your door now and demand entry without warning. That never used to be the case. How has society benefited from this, apart from alienating many of us from the concept of "the state".

Certainly, 12 years of Labour means that I now see the state as my enemy, and I the enemy of the state. This farrago over home education is yet another case of the state overreaching itself, and forgetting how it serves - which is US, not itself.

By: Lynne Featherstone

Lynne Featherstone — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:02:32 +0000

It is because I am interested in finding a way to back home education and the freedoms you seek that I firstly took time to meet constituents at parliament, secondly took time to write about the issue very broadly on my blog; thirdly took time to read and response to comments - and am open to the arguments people people have made. But the home educators' responses that simply attack me for raising questions and even wanting to hear the arguments, daring to examine the concerns raised by the Badman Review and see what the challenges are to complete and absolute freedoms - then how liberal are they? If you cannot tolerate discourse and scrutiny ........

Anyway - you have all helped shaped my views and there are a few really good posts that I have found helpful and constructive. I do now have a much more informed position on home education than before and a much clearer one.

By: Jo

Jo — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:04:54 +0000

As to the state monitoring of state education this is not done on an individual level. Schools are monitored but as far as the education of each individual child goes - this is not routinely monitored at any level above the actual education provider. eg the school who are the provider look at individuals but not the LA or ofsted who are monitoring the quality of education overall.
Outstanding schools may well fail individual children but not lots of them.
Therefore it is up to the parent (as they have ultimate responsibility for their child's education) to assess if their child is getting a good enough education at that school.
If they are not convinced then they have the right to change schools, go private or home educate. They may even move their child to a less outstanding school because they think it will better suit their needs.
head teachers may say that they know best but at the end of the day it is the parent and not teachers or LA officials that know their children best and so have ultimate responsibility and the ultimate say in whether their child is getting a good enough education. This is as true in the state system.
This will fall down in a small number of cases. But it is still the parents who will most often have the best interests of their individual child at heart when compared to the state where averages and statistics are used.
Will we then also licence parents to have the right to change their child's school?
If 99.6% at least of home ed families are well functioning and have their child's best interests at heart then we surely don't need research to show outcomes are good enough. Parents who are that interested in their child's education would not continue down an educational path that did not meet their child's needs so the outcomes must be at least good enough. The number of cases where this doesn't follow will be tiny and surely no greater than the proportion that fall through the school system.
In state education, parents are also the final arbiter of whether their child's education is good enough. They are the ultimate inspector/evaluator of education provision for state schools too - in terms of their own child.

By: Jo

Jo — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:39:59 +0000

I think a lot of misunderstanding comes from the phrase "there are xthousand unknown" which is bandied about a lot. It sounds dark and shadowy and like a murky underworld of home educators. In reality the profile of unknown home educator is more along the lines of a parent who realised they wanted to home educate before their children reached school age; spent much time and effort researching home education and is confidently providing a great education for their child; usually much involved in their community and in touch with many home educators and not wanting to take the lottery of becoming known to their LA. It is not a dark and murky picture of people lurking in their homes doing nothing with their children.
Home educators are often accused of being uncaring when they try to talk of proportionality in terms of numbers of children being abused being so small that these measures are disproportionate. However the reality is that for every crime that their is, some will go undetected and fall through the net. In terms of school the number of children falling through the net must be huge in comparison to the home educated community. In order to catch these cases should we be doing home visits for ALL children. No because we do not think it is proportionate and would definitely be seen as guilty til proven innocent.
All the major cases of abuse involving ehe or not - have been known to services in one way or another.
There has been no problem of not knowing children exist but of knowing what to do to support them.
Registration would not have made any difference to Khyra Ishaq or Eunice Sprys children. They were all known about.
I have not seen any definition of what exactly the problem is except an uneasy feeling that children must be less safe if they are not seen by state employees on a regular basis and cannot be learning unless they demonstrate it to the state. I also have not seen any convincing reasoning as to why the proposals would effectively solve the perceived problems.