Who wrote the briefing paper which Education Otherwise is circulating to Welsh Assembly Members?

In September, a series of documents began to be put up on the Home Education UK site about the new legislation being discussed in Wales; that relating to the regulation of home education. Eventually, they were all melded together into one document, which bore the name of Wendy Charles-Warner. It may be found here:

http://www.home-education.org.uk/articles/wc/wc-wa-brief.pdf





On October 13th, Alison Sauer introduced this briefing paper to the Education Otherwise site, uploading it to their files. She said:

This is the Briefing Document from the Wales Facebook Group with Welsh intro and summary added. Most is in English.



It was at once greeted as her own work. Edwina Theunissen, a trustee of Education Otherwise living in Wales, said;





Thanks Alison, for this. It's the most impressive doc I've seen so far and should be a great help to home edders in Wales. It must have taken a great deal of time and effort so congrats to you and whomsoever your collaborators are.





Alison Sauer did not react by disclaiming responsibility for writing the thing, merely accepted the congratulations as her due. At this point, most people assumed that Alison Sauer was the prime mover behind the briefing paper. A day or two later of course, she initiated a campaign of harassment against me via Facebook; getting people to bombard me with silly emails and publicising my address and urging people to arrange for nuisance deliveries to be made to it. Her supposed grounds for doing this were that she did not feel it right that Wendy Charles-Warner, the supposed author of the briefing paper, should be mentioned publicly in connection with it. It is interesting to see what Alison was saying at this time. In emails to me she uses the expression ‘we’ a lot, which suggests strongly that she was something to do with both the briefing paper and also Mrs Charles-Warner. For example, speaking of Wendy Charles-Warner, she said;



we do try to keep her whereabouts confidential



The newspaper and BBC articles were not supposed to be published online and we do not draw attention to them on purpose.


Whom do readers suppose that Alison Sauer means by this mysterious ‘we’? We, as in ‘me and Wendy Charles-Warner’? Or perhaps, in light of later developments, 'me and Education Otherwise'?  In any case, it is clear that Alison has a stake in the briefing paper and is in some way very involved in it. As we have seen, trustees at Education Otherwise thought that she had written it and were dealing with it on that basis.

Four days later, on October 18th, Education Otherwise made a surprising announcement. This may be found here:



http://www.educationotherwise.net/ndex.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=334






It will be observed that the briefing paper is now being unambiguously attributed to Wendy Charles-Warner and that she has been appointed Education Otherwise’s official representative in Wales, a role previously held, incidentally, by Edwina Theunnisen. The briefing paper has been officially adopted and is now being printed and sent to all Welsh Assembly Members.

I have not room in this post for a detailed criticism of the paper. It is pretty dreadful and contains many errors and inaccuracies. That is nothing to the purpose here, except to mention that the style is unmistakably Alison Sauer’s. We have seen that it was accepted as such when first it appeared and also that she was using the term ‘we’ when referring, apparently,  to she and Mrs Charles-Warner.

What would Education Otherwise’s motive have been for misleading people in this way as to the authorship? There are two good reasons for concealing publicly the fact that Alison Sauer had a hand in this document. For one thing, her name on the cover would have discredited it at once as far as many home educators were concerned. After the fiasco of the abortive attempt to introduce new guidelines for local authorities about home education, anything with ‘Alison Sauer’ on the cover would be damned in the eyes of many. There is a more serious objection to using her name openly in connection with the briefing paper. Welsh Assembly Members are likely to look more favourably upon such a document if supposedly written by a Welsh home educator than they would if it had been produced by an English businesswoman. Some of them are already getting a little ticked off at the fact that most of the opposition to the proposed Bill is coming from England, rather than Wales.

As if that is not enough, there would be a horrible suspicion, were Alison Sauer to be seen as involved with the briefing document, that she was not completely unbiased and that there was a clear conflict of interest. As readers know, Alison runs an outfit known as SC Education:



http://www.sc-education.co.uk/home/






This company is working hard to encourage the spread of the flexischooling model of education. Indeed, according to her company website, Alison Sauer is  ' currently liaising with the DfE to promote flexischooling as a recognised and credible system.'  One of the alternatives advocated by the briefing document, instead of the compulsory registration and monitoring of home education,  is of course an expansion of flexischooling. If shown to be the author of this document, the unfortunate impression might be created that a commercial opportunity was being exploited here by Alison Sauer; that by pushing for an increase in flexischooling in Wales, she would be creating future work for her own company.  Another benefit of the system that the briefing paper recommends is, ' Investment in training for LA staff in the law and their duties'. By an uncanny coincidence, training LA staff in the law and their duties  is something else which Alison Sauer provides.

 I shall in another post examine the briefing paper itself in detail, but for now I wonder if Education Otherwise would like to explain in a little more detail the precise provenance of the thing? For some, it is beginning to look rather as though Alison Sauer now has her feet firmly under the table at Education Otherwise; a development which is unlikely to be universally welcomed!

A minor mystery

Since the recent unpleasantness with Alison Sauer, I have been puzzling something over in my mind and it is this. As soon as I came across reference to the Welsh Assembly Government’s plans for the compulsory registration and monitoring of home education, I felt that I should alert others to what was in the wind. I read about the plans on the night of August 4th and then posted about them the following morning. At that time, there had been no mention of this on any of the lists such as HE-UK or EO. Even Fiona Nicholson seemed to have missed it. As soon as I mentioned it here, on the morning of August 5th, others picked it up and started spreading the word to various lists and forums. I found this deliciously ironic, that I, who am viewed by some as the arch-enemy of home education, should be the one to tip people the wink about this development!

Once I had mentioned it, the news spread like wildfire and is of course now being talked about everywhere. I dare say that this would have happened soon anough, even without my intervention; I am not taking credit for that! Here is the mystery though. Soon after I had posted about this, Alison Sauer came on here and commented scathingly about several minor errors in what I had said. She seemed very tetchy with me and, I thought, annoyed to see the Welsh proposals being talked about. Judging from her comments, she knew all about the thing, certainly she knew far more about it than I did. Yet she had not said a word about this on any of the lists to which she belongs and if it had not been for my mentioning it, I gained the impression that Alison Sauer would have sat on the news herself. Why should this be? Why did it take me to alert home educators to what was going on, when Alison Sauer already knew all about it? I am puzzled by this and would be interested to hear of any theories.

Closing down the debate

Earlier this month, a ‘briefing paper’ was written about the proposed changes in the law in Wales touching upon home education. This document has been widely disseminated by the author and is freely available on public sites such as the one run by Mike Fortune-Wood, which may be found here:



http://www.home-education.org.uk/wales.htm






This document was written by a woman called Wendy Charles-Warner; her name may found below the introduction to the ‘briefing paper’ on page 3. So far there is, I suppose, nothing to which any normal person could object. Anybody who wished to find out where the author lives and what she looks like would only need to google her name; it is distinctive enough. The suggestion is being made that googling her name in this way could cause danger to her and put her family at risk. This sounds a little far - fetched, but was being claimed back in August by Alison Sauer in an email to a home educating parent who had used Mrs Charles-Warner’s name on a website. She was in danger in August then, if identified, but has since then appeared in four newspapers and published the document mentioned above, to which she was happy to put her name. She also did not object to her full address being printed in one newspaper and her photograph in another.

My problem with the so-called briefing paper lie with the claim made in the introduction, that:



‘Outcomes for children will be shown to be considerably better when

electively home educated than educated at school’



There is no evidence for such a claim and I have tried to discuss why this is so. A couple of days ago, I posted on a home educating list, drawing attention to what I saw as problems with the evidence that was cited in the paper. I did not identify the author's address at all, but merely mentioned that she lived in Snowdonia; a vague enough location. Alison Sauer then contacted the list owner and told her that Mrs Charles-Warner, who is a well-known and successful hotel owner who advertises her address commercially in a hundred different places, was put in danger by my post. It was removed. Over the last few days, I put up two posts here, going into a little detail about some of the difficulties of the author’s claim that home educated children do better academically at than those at school.

Alison Sauer organised a campaign via private messages on face book which was designed to stop people debating this aspect of the ‘briefing paper’. The result was that people were posting pornographic fantasies about the experiences of me and my penis in a massage parlour, to give one notable example. This made rational debate impossible and so I deleted the posts.

This sort of thing, attempting to prevent discussion of unwelcome ideas by means of threats, abuse and made-up stories, is something of a leitmotif  in British home education. It is not the first time that it has happened to me and it has been used with varying degrees of success against others who question the more extravagant claims of home educators in this country. There are a handful of people who orchestrate such activity. Alison Sauer is one, Mike Fortune-Wood is another. Both are, incidentally, involved with the document I have been talking about. Mike Fortune-Wood has gone so far as to engage in a conspiracy to try and have me arrested. Alison Sauer is currently trying to get Mrs Charles-Warner to take legal action against me for posting links on this blog to recent newspaper articles which featured her!

I must apologise to those who actually are interested in home education, but this sort of tactic does make it very hard to discuss things in a reasonable way. That is of course the whole aim; to close down the debate and make anybody who wishes to ask questions shut up and go away. I shall be out today and so unable to reply to any comments. Might I ask those who wish to speculate on the size of my penis to email me directly at simon.webb14@btinternet.com. ? I have had a few emails from both home educators and education professionals who were horrified at some of the comments on the posts which I deleted. I do not think that they really showed home education at its best!

Bumping into an old friend

Wherever I go on the Internet lately, I seem to keep bumping into the same person. It’s just like real life, really. You know how it is when you see  someone you know slightly while visiting the shops and then come across her the following day at the cinema and then a few days later,  find yourself sitting next to her in a coffee shop? Sometimes it almost seems as though you’re being stalked. This is how I am beginning to feel about Alison Sauer. Whether I am reading the online version of the Times Educational Supplement, browsing some forum or even reading my daily paper, there she is; touting for business. The woman is indefatigable and one wonders if she prowls the streets of Barnoldswick wearing sandwich-boards and crying, ‘Get your personalised education here! Flexi-schooling, special rates!’


I most recently came across Alison while reading an article in the Daily Telegraph which was published online. It may be seen here and Alison’s comment is the twelfth down:



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9553764/Ofsted-mixed-ability-classes-a-curse-on-bright-pupils.html




I followed the link to her company to see how things are developing there lately and two things struck me. The first was the testimonials from satisfied customers. The London Borough of Newham, for example, find her courses, ‘Very well facilitated - interesting, informative and food for thought’ I’m not entirely sure what they mean by ‘facilitated’, but at any rate they seem pleased with her. These recommendations put me in mind of the sort of things you see in advertisements for patent medicines or lucky charms on the back pages of certain magazines. You know the sort of thing, ‘Mrs BD of Giggleswick says, “Since I have followed Alison’s system, I am no longer troubled by litigious home educators and my health is a million times better. Thank you Alison and SC Education, you have been a life saver!”’

The other thing that struck me about the website, and I find this truly extraordinary, is Alison’s personal account of herself. She says:



Born in Yorkshire and educated in the North of England, Alison Sauer has worked for herself providing training and consultancy services to business, local authorities, educators and charities for over 20 years.
Alison is a director of The Sauer Consultancy Limited, a company which has been providing training and consultancy in home education to local authorities for more than eight years.
She has been involved in a number of consultations on home education including the consultations for the Scottish Guidance on Home Education, Children Missing from Education and most recently, the Badman Review and its subsequent analysis by the House of Commons Education Select Committee. In addition, she has advised and participated in a number of home education research projects and studies.
Alison is a member of the Centre for Personalised Education Trust (CPE-PEN), a think-tank organisation whose members include academics and teachers from both state and private schools. Working alongside CPE-PEN, one of Alison's current projects aims to improve the availability of flexischooling in state schools. This project involves networking with flexischooling headteachers, parents and local authorities, raising awareness of flexischooling, and analysing the flexischooling schemes currently operating.
In the past, she has represented voluntary organisations and been called upon as a home education expert for newspapers, radio and television. She has also written for ACE (Advisory Centre for Education) on home education issues.
Alison is a passionate believer in good organisation, communication and networking and endeavours through offering professional development workshops and courses to improve the skills of many organisations in both the public and the private sector.



What’s missing from this picture, boys and girls? Yes, that’s right; no mention at of the fact that she is herself a home educator! This is an odd omission. Of all the things that I have done in my life, I am proudest of all of having educated my daughter. When I wrote an academic book on the subject of home education, I made sure that this was mentioned in the blurb. I cannot imagine airbrushing it from my personal history in the way that Alison has done; anybody would think that she is ashamed of being a home educator! I think the explanation lies in the fact that, as I have remarked before, she likes to run with the fox and hunt with the hounds. Many local authorities are a little suspicious of home educators and if she represented herself as one, it might put the punters off. So when talking to other parents, she is happy to admit to not sending young Johannes to school. Dealing with local authorities though, he becomes an embarrassment; something to be hidden away metaphorically, like the kids in Flowers in the Attic.

More about making money from home education

A couple of days ago I posted about a local authority which is trying to get home educating parents to pay for courses at a further education college and suggested that it was an attempt to make money from home education. Commenting there, somebody has objected to the choice of the witnesses who gave evidence to the select committee on the same grounds; that they stand to make money from home education and should therefore have declared an interest in the proceedings from the start.

Now I must choose my words very carefully here and even so I shall probably be accused of being as stupid or mad as Peter Williams! After all, when I made the completely truthful and wholly unexceptionable remark that the majority of the eight witnesses were not technically home educators, it caused considerable annoyance. Since five of the eight do not have children aged between five and sixteen, that is to say of ‘compulsory school age, I cannot see how anybody can fail to agree that this forms a majority, but we shall let that pass for now. What of the suggestion that has been made to the effect that some also have a financial interest in home education, in particular  being paid by local authorities for various services? Did they form a majority of the witnesses? Did five of the eight witnesses have such interests? This is a curious point and one which did not occur to me before the anonymous comments on my last post. Let us consider the matter.

Since the object of this session of the select committee was to examine the support offered by local authorities to home educators, its form and extent, then it is probably true that anybody being paid to provide such support should have stated the fact clearly at the beginning. Such people are partial and we are entitled to weigh their evidence more carefully than those who do not stand to make anything from the recommendations of the committee.

Two of the witnesses, Ann Brown and Hannah Flowers, certainly have no financial interest in home education. What of the others? Julie Barker makes no secret of her work with and for a local authority. She is open about this. So too is Alison Sauer, who with her husband runs a consultancy which charges local authorities for providing services. Fiona Nicholson also runs a consultancy and is pretty active in attending meetings and running a website. I have no idea if she ever receives payment for any of this, but I am pretty sure that she hopes to; she wants to make home education her career. Zena Hodges is a trustee and ‘support adviser’ for the Home Education Centre in South West England. I have a suspicion that she is paid for her services, at any rate the constitution of the Home Education Centre specifically allows for this. It says that the committee members may make payments to themselves, provided that the payment is for skills and experience needed by the group. This is so neatly worded that I would be very surprised indeed if Zena is not receiving money in this way, although I am of course open to correction on this point. Jane Lowe has written a book on home education and is a trustee and also apparently a teacher with the Home Education Advisory Service.

It is fairly plain that at least half and probably the majority of the  witnesses called to give evidence to the select committee have or hope in the future to have some financial benefit from their association with a local authority in connection with home education. This was not obvious to the members of the committee and means that they probably did not realise that most of the people apparently speaking objectively about the relationship between home educators and local authorities stood to gain financially in some way if local authorities were advised to provide further services in this field. This does not of course mean that those who gave evidence were on the make! I don’t believe this for a moment. It does mean though that the proceedings were misleading and not transparent.

Another unfortunate circumstance was that the Chair of the select committee, Graham Stuart, has a close relationship with one of the witnesses, Alison Sauer. I do not, I hasten to add, mean a close personal relationship; this thought is almost unbearable! No, I mean that they have for several years been on first name terms and have collaborated in the past on a project which aimed to alter the relationship of home educating parents with local authorities. This was not made clear at the beginning of the session either.

The end result of all this is that anybody watching the evidence being given to the committee on September 5th would not know that the Chair of the select committee and most of the witnesses had various interests in either maintaining or overturning the status quo. This is not a good state of affairs; it does not make for openness.

Conformity and orthodoxy among well-known home educators

I have remarked before that an awful lot of the more well known home educators seem to conform to a fairly rigid stereotype. They tend to be left wing politically, often opposed to vaccination, prone to conspiracy theories, in favour of organic food; that sort of thing. I could draw up a profile of the typical high-profile home educator without too much difficulty. I have come across two recent examples of this tendency to conformity. The first is  that mother who was, allegedly, forced to flee the country in order to protect her children from social services involvement. I am sure that most of us remember the appeal which was circulating on the forums and lists three months ago, beginning;

 
A well-known member of the HE community and trusted friend needs our help. The person's family is facing a possible court order and they felt the need to leave the country very quickly in order to protect the children from unfounded interference based on home education as a risk factor.

It was signed by many of the usual suspects, including Maire Stafford, Barbara Stark, Alison Preuss and Neil Taylor. Readers will be relieved to hear that this unfortunate and persecuted woman made it safely to Ireland. What precipitated her flight? Let her tell us in her own words:

A few months ago I shamefully attended a meeting about how to obtain Organic Food, leaving my young children in the care of their 17yr old brother, when I should have been at home washing the clothes... This led to scrutiny from 'authority' figures & caused me to commit a further sin of defying that 'authority' when it sought to persecute myself & my family for my wayward ways, particularly my disgraceful choice to educate my children outside of the state system or allow my parenting, educational provision, or moral scruples to be inspected & dictated by dubiously qualified 'experts'


It just had to be a meeting about organic food! Mind, one feels instinctively that there is more to the case than meets the eye. Leaving a seventeen year-old babysitting is a fairly common thing to do; how did the ‘authorities’ even hear of this?  The whole of this explanantion appears to be written in code. I have heard of local authorities wishing to check on educational provision, but when was the last time you had a man from the council knocking on the door because he wanted to inspect your 'moral scruples'? It would be interesting to know if anything happened to any of the younger children being looked after by the seventeen year-old and how this family first came to the attention of social services in the first place.

The other well-known home educator whose views are exceedingly orthodox for this type of individual is Alison Sauer. While idly looking at her Facebook page, I noticed that her interests include attachment parenting and support of Dr Wakefield; the maniac who started off the whole autism and vaccination scare. Alison Sauer, needless to say, thinks he was right and is opposed to the triple vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella…

As others have pointed out here before, we cannot judge all home educators by those whom we see on the Internet; for which I thank the Lord! However, these people are influential and thousands of people belong to lists and forums where their views are propagated. Their bizarre thoughts and weird belief-systems therefore have a way of filtering down to other home educating parents, via groups composed in the main of normal people. It only takes one of two evangelical mothers who spend a lot of time on Home Ed Biz or HE-UK to spread alarm about things from a particular slant in an ordinary home educating support group. It is certainly worth keeping an eye on the ideas to which many of them subscribe, for this reason alone.

Home education conference

Somebody remarked wryly that this conference in Wales on home education has only one Welsh home educating parent speaking. The rest are either professionals or people from outside Wales.

http://bridgendhomeeducators.org/blog/october-18th-2012-home-education-conference/


Interesting to note that while both Fiona Nicholson and  Louisa Haywood-Samuel are happy to acknowledge that they are home educating parents, Alison Sauer carefully avoids mentioning this; the reason being that she wishes to present herself as a professional and not a parent. Precisely why she is taking part in this conference when she does not live in Wales is a question which several people have raised in emails to me! I am beginning to see why she was irritated at my mentioning home education in Wales on this blog; she thought that I was poaching on her preserves.

New incarnation of company concerned with home education

Puzzling over Alison Sauer's massive, and on the face of it inexplicable, irritation about my blog post on Welsh home education caused me to poke around a little and look at her business interests. I find that she is now running a new incarnation of the old Sauer Consultancy company. Details may be seen here:

http://www.sc-education.co.uk/contact/

The emphasis of this company seems to be flexi-schooling. See this group for a little more insight into Alison’s work in that field:




http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/flexischooling/message/5




Here are a few recommendations of Alison’s new company;



“Flexischooling has enabled us to develop true

partnerships with the parents. They contribute to the

curriculum and are involved in forward planning for

the school. There is no division between the children

in the playground. In fact, the only difference is that

the fl exischooling children want to fi nish their work

and not be restricted by the bell. I’d say that’s a good

thing.” Simon East, headteacher, Erpingham Primary

School, Norfolk


“Flexischooling has lead to us widening the horizons

for education provision. We even have one high

functioning autistic child on roll who will shortly

have a teaching assistant regularly attending

the home because we can fund it through the

fl exischooling model.” Janette Mountford-Lees,

headteacher, Hollingsclough School, Staffordshire




But hey, it’s not just head teachers who are so keen on Alison Sauer and her  company. Here is a ringing endorsement from a crony of Roland Meighan;



‘. Alison is doing amazing work across the country and working in close contact with the DfE‘





Working in close contact with the Department for Education? I bet she is! Readers might recall that a few weeks ago I drew attention to the draft of the new guidelines on home education, drawn up by a group led by Alison Sauer and including Mike Fortune-Wood. I noted that the members of this group were on first name terms with the MP who is currently chair of the Education Committee and had written on the draft various peremptory instructions to civil servants at the Department for Education. Things like;




‘This section needs completing by someone in the DfE with more knowledge than I have of the process’



‘I’m sure you can find someone to do this one Graham!’


Since Alison Sauer is ‘working in close contact with the DfE’, this is not at all surprising. Mike Fortune-Wood’s involvement is a little more curious and slightly suspicious, since for months he flatly denied having anything at all to do with the project. I am interested to find Alison Sauer, Mike Fortune-Wood and an organisation connected with Roland Meighan; all apparently on the best of terms with the Department for Education. I shall have more to say about this soon.

Beware; dangerous and inflammatory!

I must warn readers that they are about to read something which is inflammatory, perverse and conveys a sense of urgency and danger. Brace yourselves against some heavy piece of furniture and prepare to be alarmed. Ready?



Just on the offchance that nobody else has noticed, I thought that I would mention that next month a bill will be introduced in Wales which will require home educators to register with their local authority.



I must apologise to those who found this something of a damp squib, but commenting here yesterday Alison Sauer was most disturbed by the thirty six words above. So disturbed in fact that she had over seven hundred words of her own to say about this brief post! She had a number of objections. The first was that instead of stating that the bill would be introduced next month, I should rather have said that it would be announced next month when the Welsh Assembly meets after the summer break. Mrs Sauer also felt that I should have explained that just because a bill is introduced, that does not mean that it will be passed. I thought it quite unnecessary to mention this. Surely, since the Badman debacle, there can be few home educators who are unaware that introducing a bill and getting it passed are two very different things?

Before going any further, I might mention that apparently some people did not know about all this until I posted about it here. Within hours of my post, the subject had appeared on various list relating to home education. It seems that I was right and this one had slipped past many people's notice. This makes Alison Sauer's irritation all the more difficult to understand. I may not have phrased it as precisely as I could have done, but surely she would be pleased for home educators to find out things like this that they did not know about?

Other objections to this short post made by  Alison were that it was inflammatory and designed to convey a sense of ‘immediacy, danger and urgency’. I am sorry if any readers were inflamed by reading it and apologise to those who felt that they were in immediate and urgent danger as a result. Perhaps in retrospect, it was a little thoughtless and irresponsible of me not to have chosen my words better. I must ask those who really were inflamed by this post to calm their passions. I am worried now that last night might have witnessed scenes in Cardiff like those from an old horror film, with  a crowd of yokels carrying flaming torches and armed with pitchforks attempting to storm the Welsh First Minister's home as consequence of reading my inflammatory post. The last thing I intended was to stir up the Welsh population to mutiny and I would be most distressed to hear that I had been the cause of any unpleasantness.

Nor was this all that Alison Sauer objected to. She was concerned that I was using secondary, rather than primary sources in a blog post. Now of course as somebody who writes history books for a living, I am perfectly familiar with the concept of primary and secondary sources. I have never in all my life though heard of anybody criticising a blog post for relying too heavily upon secondary sources. The explanation is of course that Alison and her husband are both history buffs. They read a lot on this subject and so it would be natural that they might seek to apply the tools of scholarship to a casual, thirty six word, personal blog post. Alas, to the rest of us, this might seem barking mad. Still, that is what it is like when you are absorbed in a hobby of that sort. So keen on history is she, that Alison Sauer dresses up at weekends to enact battles with the Sealed Knot. Those interested in such things can easily unearth  some charming  photographs of her on google, dressed as both  a Victorian barmaid and a 17th Century camp follower. No harm in that of course, but it does, as we saw yesterday, give one a rather skewed perspective when reading things that are not history books. Primary and secondary sources in a blog post, indeed!

One final point is that I was very puzzled about just how angry Mrs Sauer seemed to be about this little post. She was careful to point out that, ‘This is all I know and I have no involvement other than as an observer.’ Since that went without saying, I could not help but ask myself why she would tell us that and just why this business mattered so much to her. I did a little digging around and found that one list was saying that one person was already involved in the proposed consultation over the proposal to register home educators in Wales. This person ended by asking , “Guess who that is?’ I wondered if this was a hint about Alison Sauer.  I was curious and asked Alison if she had any particular interest in the thing. She says she does not.

I hope that this has reassured any readers who were inflamed or put in apprehension of danger by my drawing attention to what is being proposed in Wales. I read the post over and over and still cannot see that it is anything from which I might gain, as Alison Sauer puts it, ‘a perverse joy.’ Without giving away to many details of my private life, I think that I am prepared to share with readers the information that there are things in my life which do furnish me with perverse joys. Blogging about the activities of the Welsh Assembly is not one of them.

A man of influence

For several years, the idea floated around some sections of the British home educating community that I was a man of great and malign influence; that I had the ear of Graham Badman, was able to muscle my way into giving evidence to select committees and I don’t know what else. Such rumours were sedulously spread by the likes of Maire Stafford and Mike Fortune-Wood. Somebody commented here to this effect only a few days ago. Alas, it is not true, but today I want to look at a man who really does have such influence, somebody able to send civil servants at the Department for Education scuttling off to do his bidding. He is a modest man, too modest and retiring perhaps, and I feel that his role in manipulating things behind the scenes has not been sufficiently celebrated. Step forward our very own Mike Fortune-Wood. What? You laugh? You doubt my word? Mike Fortune-Wood, the scourge of the educational establishment, playing kiss-in-the-ring with the Department for Education? Let us see.

When the ‘new guidelines’ for home education were being drawn up in 2010 and 2011, nobody would admit to being involved. One story was that they were a solo production of Alison Sauer’s; no more than a money making dodge by her. Mike Fortune-Wood in particular, denied flatly that he had anything at all to do with them. He said this several times on the HE-UK list. In fact of course, as he has recently admitted, he was  up to his ears in the business. He and a group of other well known home educators, both here and abroad, were busily engaged in trying to frame a document which would have had a profound effect on every home educating parent in the country. Mike Fortune-Wood’s reticence was understandable. He wished to run with the fox and hunt with the hounds. If the enterprise was favourably received, he would bashfully step forward and receive the plaudits. In the event, it was roundly condemned by most home educators and so he was able to disown it and pretend he had had no part in it. This is known as ‘plausible deniability’; a way of oiling out of responsibility for one’s actions.

The legend arose that only rough drafts were made and that the document would have been put out to consultation with all home educating parents before it was finalised. This was untrue. Have a look again at what it has been alleged was merely a rough draft:



https://www.box.com/shared/6lk1826muy




Clearly, it is nothing of the sort. Alison Sauer, Mike Fortune-Wood and so on put a good deal of work into this and the fact that it was regarded not as a rough draft but a finished product may readily be seen by looking at the notes in red on pages 69, 70 and 87.  These notes indicate the only sections on which work still needed to be done.

The comments are addressed to Graham Stuart, Chair of the Education Committee, and they are staggering in their implications. On page 69, we read:



This section needs completing by someone in the DfE with more knowledge than I have of the process



So the members of the group producing these guidelines felt confident enough to direct that civil servants should work on this draft and follow their instructions? On page 87, we see that Alison Sauer, Tania Berlow, Kelly Green and Mike Fortune-Wood have run out of energy and hope to pass the final stages on to others; again to civil servants from the Department for Education. We read:



I’m sure you can find someone to do this one Graham!



Someone? A friend of Graham Stuart’s? A member of his family? No, a civil servant of course, you fool!

It is not to be wondered at that Mike Fortune-Wood was not overly keen to have all this come to light. For years he represented himself as the mortal foe of local authorities and government departments dealing with education and now we find him on perfectly amiable terms with them and expecting civil servants to do his research for him! I have been fortunate enough to be forwarded an archive of the work undertaken on the so-called ‘new guidelines’, which show in detail the involvement of all concerned. I may, in the public interest, put this up here in the future. In the meantime, a big round of applause for Mike Fortune-Wood; a true man of influence in the places that really matter, such as the Department for Education.

'School-at-Home'

Yesterday I posted a light-hearted and purely personal account of my daughter’s early childhood. This was in response to several requests from people commenting here, that it would be nice to get away from ideology and talk about my own methods of home education. Almost incredibly, this innocent tale of visiting zoos and going down mines was interpreted by one reader as a coded attack on the idea of autonomous education! Perhaps I should abandon the idea of a chatty and non-confrontational approach here and resume the normal, endless and sterile  debates on ideology? We shall see.


It is often suggested that those not enamoured of autonomous home education are in the habit of misrepresenting this pedagogic technique. Some readers, principally those who have just arrived on planet Earth or who have been in a coma since 2009, might be surprised to learn that I have myself been accused of this! This topic has been pretty well worked to death and so I want today to look at how structured and methodical home education is caricatured and mocked by those unable or unwilling to undertake it.

When it became known that Graham Stuart, Chair of the Education Committee, was involved in drawing up new guidelines in elective home education, there was great unease among many home educating parents in this country. So vociferous was the opposition, that the idea was eventually dropped. Still, looking at the guidelines which were produced gives us an insight into the thought processes of many high profile autonomous home educators, both in this country and abroad. The guidelines may be found here:



https://www.box.com/shared/6lk1826muy
                                                                                                                                                                       



Now there was at first an attempt in some quarters to portray this document as being produced solely by Alison Sauer. It gradually came to light that many other well known home educators had also had a hand in it, people like Tania Berlow, Mike Fortune-Wood, Imran Shah and Kelly Green in Canada. That being so, it gives us an insight into the prejudices which afflict quite a few home educators in this country; especially with regard to structured home education.

Let us look at page 64 of this document. We find a section headed School-at-Home. The very fact that this ludicrous expression is used in what it was hoped would become an official  document tells us much about the mentality of some home educators. It is perfectly fair to talk of ‘autonomous educators’ because this is actually an expression used and accepted by them. People call themselves autonomous home educators. I have never in my life and nor I suspect has anybody else, ever heard anybody call themselves ‘school-at-home educators‘. This is because ‘school-at-home’ is a pejorative phrase dreamed up by those who are opposed to the  structured teaching of home educated children. ‘Autonomous home educator’ is a neutral term; ;school-at-home’ is a sneering and disapproving expression coined by those who think that this is the best way to describe structured home education. That this is so can easily be tested. Google around a bit and you will soon find people who are happy to call themselves ‘autonomous’ or ‘autonomous educators’. Now try and find anybody who calls themselves ‘a school-at-home type” or claims to do ‘school-at-home’. You will find nobody, because this is not a real description of any kind of home education. It is always used by those opposed to an type of home education which they do not themselves practice.

We are told, also on page 64,  that these ‘school-at-home’ parents use a curriculum to cater for the whole of their children’s education. This is a ridiculous idea. I would be very keen to hear of such a parent. No home educating parent relies on a curriculum to cater for the whole of a child’s education; the very idea is a nonsense. Perhaps readers could tell us of any such parent? As God he knows, I was a fanatically structured home educator who worked his child hard, but the curriculum occupied only 10% or 20% of my daughter’s education. As the post yesterday showed, most of her education was not via any curriculum but was derived from real-life experiences. The same is true of all other structured home educators whom I have known.

What about the idea that, ‘Families maintain a clear distinction between education and leisure, and often keep the school rhythm of terms and holidays’. Who does this? Has anybody ever known a home educating parent who says to her child, ‘Oh, we won’t be learning anything next week, Jimmy; the schools have a half-term holiday.’ Completely grotesque. Of course many home educating families whose children have friends at school might make opportunities for their children to meet up with those on holiday from school, but this has nothing to do with a particular type of home education.

I find it fascinating to see how the term ‘school-at-home’ has become used by those who do not in general favour the regular and systematic teaching of children. It sounds like a neutral description, but is in fact designed to display contempt for other home educators. I think that autonomous home educators using the phrase would do well to think twice before accusing others of misrepresenting a type of home education.

Christopher Warren and the British home education scene

Back in March, a man called Christopher Warren posted on the Badman Review Action Group. I raised a few questions about the suitability of such a person being on that list and people got so angry that there was talk of chucking me off. I left, having drawn attention to the dangers of becoming mixed up with such a character. Here are a few links about Christopher Warren:

http://www.nccg.info/fastfacts.html


http://www.nccg.info/jannicke.html


http://www.nccg.info/memberindex.html


Of course, this might all be lies, although there is a great deal about Warren and his cult, the New Covenant Church of God on the Internet. By his own account, he is a very odd man. See his official site here:

http://www.nccg.org/warren.html


Gay readers will perhaps be surprised to learn that they are possessed by demons! I have suspected for some time that this awful man was involved with helping Alison Sauer draw up the new EHE guidelines. If true, the very presence of such a person anywhere near the things is enough to contaminate them and make them unacceptable to anybody who feels strongly about child abuse; which I am guessing includes most of us. Just what is his involvement in the business?

Much of the activity in the British home education scene is shaped and guided by a small number of people. One sees their names crop up again and again, both on lists and forums, in letters to newspapers and at Parliament. Alison Sauer is of course one of these people. She is advised by and has had many telephone conversations about the new guidelines with, Kelly Green in Canada. This American woman got Alison to write an introduction for her book. She runs a blog called Kelly Green and Gold. Apart from Alison Sauer, Kelly Green is in touch with other home educators in this country whose names will be familiar to many. People like Tania Berlow, for instance. Reading her blog enables one to work out who has been involved in drawing up the EHE guidelines. On December 30th last year, you will see this on Kelly Green’s blog:

‘I want to thank Pat Farenga, Alison Sauer, Tania Berlow, Diane Varty, Leaf Lovejoy, Grit of grit's day, and many other correspondents for helping me shape’

Pat Faranga is nothing to do with the case, she thanks him because he gave a glowing recommendation to her book. Alison Sauer, Tania Berlow and Leaf Lovejoy though have all been involved in drawing up the EHE guidelines. This is interesting. But wait, what’s missing from this picture boys and girls? The above quotation is not as it was first posted by Kelly Green. She actually included somebody else in her thanks and then removed his name after I drew attention to him in March. Fortunately, her original post was archived. Try this. Google CCM Warren and Diane Varty and see what comes up. You will find this:

‘ I want to thank Pat Farenga, CCM Warren, Alison Sauer, Tania Berlow, Diane Varty, Grit of grit's day, and many other correspondents for helping me shape my’

See what’s happened here? She has taken one member of the group working on the guidelines out and replace it with another. Out goes Christopher Warren and in comes Leaf Lovejoy. Interesting, no?

I have know about this for some time, but it was only yesterday when Jacquie Cox who also worked on the EHE guidelines confirmed it, that I knew for sure that Warren had been involved in the thing. The question which British home educators need to ask is this. Are they happy to see a dangerous madman like Christopher Warren working at the heart of a project which, if successful, will affect every home educating parent in the country? What does it say about Alison Sauer, the motivating force behind the thing, that she is happy to accept advice and guidance from this man? There are many other questions, but I think that I shall put them into another post, because this one is getting a little too long. I urge readers to look into this for themselves and not to take my word for anything. Check out the New Covenant Church of God, see what you can find out about Christopher Warren and the allegations surrounding him about under-age girls and then ask whether this person should be involved at all with home education in this country. What impression does this give those critical of home education about the sort of people that home educators are prepared to consort with?

Alison Sauer and Education Otherwise; a correction

Last week, Shena Deuchars of Education Otherwise was very keen to distance the organisation from Alison Sauer, after somebody commented here that she used to work for EO. Shena said, very definitely in response to this idea:

‘"But Alison Sauer did once hold a position within the EO organisation, until recently wasn't it?"

No, she did not. I have phoned her this afternoon to ask. I am assured that she has never been an LC, a trustee or a volunteer in any capacity.'

Now of course, I know perfectly well that Alison Sauer has in the past represented Education Otherwise at national level. I am sure that others also know this. Just look at this piece from The Scotsman:


http://news.scotsman.com/education/Home-educators-failing-children.2470084.jp



I love the dogmatic way that she paints home education in her own image!

‘If you are a professional teacher you don’t know what you are talking about when it comes to home education. We don’t do any teaching. Our philosophy is self-directed learning’

Don’t you just adore that ‘we’ don’t do any teaching? 'Our' philosophy is self-directed learning. Is that official EO policy that she is expounding here? I wonder why Education Otherwise are so keen to disown her now?

Who actually produced the new guidelines on elective home education?

One of the most curious and disturbing things about the new EHE guidelines is that not one person has so far come forward and admitted to having written any part of them. This is odd. Even Alison Sauer will not confirm that she wrote a single word of this document. Since this might have an enormous effect on how local authorities deal with home educating parents in the future and in view of the controversial nature of the sections on special needs, perhaps it might be worth trying to work out who was involved in the thing.
We know that one member of the team who produced the guidelines was a woman called Rainbow-Leaf Lovejoy. (Stop sniggering at the back; that’s her real name. I have an idea that she is known to Allie who comments here pretty regularly).Tania Berlow was also mixed up in the business, but to what extent is unknown. A woman called Jacqui also worked on the guidelines although, according to her own account, only to find out what was going on.

The secrecy surrounding the guidelines is not accidental. I have been contacted by a number of people who emailed Graham Stuart MP about their concerns. He passed their details on to Alison Sauer, who then got in touch with them. Several people were invited to become involved, but it was made plain that the whole thing was top secret and that they must agree not to tell anybody that they were involved or reveal the names of any others who they got to hear of who were working on the guidelines. This secrecy is alarming, considering that this is a project which might affect many thousands of parents.

I think it is almost certain that Kelly Green, an American living in Canada who writes a blog called Kelly Green and Gold, was also a member of this group. The problem here is that she is a very ignorant woman who claimed on her blog that Graham Badman was a civil servant at the Department for Children, Schools and Families and that I was an adviser to the Department. She knows nothing about British law and I cannot really see how she became involved in the matter. Alison Sauer’s husband Ralph helped to produce an earlier document about the so-called ultra vires practices of some local authorities and so it is possible that he was also involved with the guidelines.

I am very puzzled as to why Alison does not simply release the final draft of the EHE guidelines. She commented on here, telling us that the version at which everybody is currently looking is not the final one, but I don’t know why she does not simply let us see the one which she sent to Graham Stuart. I have a suspicion that when this does emerge, there will be even more irritation and outright anger than was caused by the draft which is currently in the public domain. Otherwise, why not simply show it to us?

A final, but exceedingly serious, problem with the new EHE guidelines produced by Sauer Consultancy Ltd

I have over the last few days pointed out one or two difficulties which are likely to arise with the new guidelines which have been produced by Alison Sauer. Still, perhaps they won’t be adopted in the end? Even so, a considerable amount of damage has already been done. Influential MPs such as Graham Stuart, Chair of the CSF select committee, and Lord Lucas have learned a lot about home education from their dealings with Alison Sauer. They evidently believe that she has given them an objective view of home education in Britain and they have now passed her views on to Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister. The thing is, they have been given a weird and distorted view of home education and unless somebody sets them straight, the home educating community in this country could be heading for trouble.

I want to look today at how Alison Sauer thinks that home education works in this country. She explains that it is a spectrum with autonomous or child-led education at one end. This is fair enough, although there might be a problem with her understanding of this concept. Still, it is true that some home educators call themselves ’autonomous’ or 'child-led’; it is a genuine trend in British home education. At the other end of the spectrum is, according to these guidelines, ’school-at-home’. Now I have never in my life heard anybody say that they are a ’school-at-home’ educator. That's because this is a pejorative expression coined not by those who follow a structured education, but by unstructured educators who wish to be derogatory about structured home education. Many structured home educating parents are really irritated by being described as doing ’school-at-home’. To use this phrase to describe home educators who actually teach is a little offensive. Has anybody ever heard of a home educator who says, ’We do school at home’?

According to Alison, such parents use a curriculum to cater for the whole of their children’s education. Has anybody ever met such a parent? Even more bizarrely, she claims that such families:

‘maintain a clear distinction between education and leisure, and often keep the school rhythm of terms and holidays’

This is such nonsense that it made me laugh out loud! Has anybody here ever heard a structured home educating parent say, ’No more education for Jimmy for the next few weeks; the local schools broke up for Easter yesterday’?

I can imagine that at this point some autonomous educators are chortling with glee at the idea of structured education being misrepresented in this way. Perhaps before they fall off their chairs laughing, they should read Alison’s description of autonomous education, where they will learn that ’learning takes place without teaching’

The strange ideas contained in this document may well have been accepted by people like Graham Stuart and very possibly Nick Gibb as being the standard model of home education in this country. It is not; it is one person’s idea on the subject. When that person believes that, ‘A Local Authority is responsible for any child of compulsory school age that has been brought to their attention as having, or probably having, special educational needs’, you are in serious trouble. Even if these guidelines end up in the bin, the damage has been done and some in parliament have now a strange and distorted view of what home education in this country is actually about.

The new EHE guidelines and special needs

Although we are told that the version of Alison Sauer’s new guidelines for local authorities now circulating is not the final one, I have been assured that the section on SEN is unchanged in the final draft which Graham Stuart now has. This was confirmed when somebody helpfully sent me some notes and handouts from a training session run by Sauer Consultancy Ltd for a local authority in the north of England.

My jaw dropped when I read what Alison wished to remind local authorities about in the new guidelines and I am not sure that the implications are yet clear to most parents. She says on page 20:

A Local Authority is responsible for any child of compulsory school age that ‘has been brought to their attention as having (or probably having) special educational needs.
Where such a child comes to the attention of the Local Authority, the Local Authority has a duty to establish whether the child has SENs that are not currently being met.

Now this, although surprising to many home educating parents of children with special needs, is perfectly true. If you are home educating a child and somebody rings up your local authority and says that she believes your child to be dyslectic or have Asperger’s, then the Local Authority have a legal duty to assess your child and see if you are providing for these needs; which may or may not exist. This is a power of which very few LAs are really aware or ever consider exercising. Most home educators are glad about this; they do not want their local authority knocking on the door to ask questions and carry out assessments unless they the parents invite them to do so. This section from the 1996 Education Act makes the situation clear. It is s321 (3):

(1) A local education authority shall exercise their powers with a view to securing that, of
the children for whom they are responsible, they identify those to whom subsection (2)
below applies.
(2) This subsection applies to a child if—
(a) he has special educational needs, and
(b) it is necessary for the authority to determine the special educational provision
which any learning difficulty he may have calls for.
(3) For the purposes of this Part a local education authority are responsible for a child if
he is in their area and—

.....................................
(d) he is not a registered pupil at a school but is not under the age of two or over
compulsory school age and has been brought to their attention as having (or
probably having) special educational needs.

Now the question is, why on earth would Alison Sauer wish to remind local authorities that they are responsible in this way for all home educated children who have, or might appear to have , special educational needs? Do most home educating parents of such children really want their local authorities to assume responsibility in this way for their children? Or have they taken their kids from school precisely because they no longer wish the local authority to be responsible in this way, because they wish to take over that responsibility themselves? I wonder if anybody can imagine the effect that reading the bits quoted above would have upon an overly zealous Educational Welfare Officer investigating a home educated child whom she thought might have special needs? After all, the local authority is responsible for this child and has a duty in law to check that his needs are being met.

I must emphasise that this part of the act is not only concerned with statemented children, but with any child, whether or not at school, who somebody tells the council might have special needs. As I say, few local authorities currently assume this duty, but they still have it legally. The question is, why on earth would anybody involved with home education wish to remind them about this and urge them to start knocking on the doors of all home educated children with special needs so that they can take over responsibility in this way? The 2007 guidelines for local authorities, by comparison, limited themselves to a few words about children with statements and said nothing at all about this general duty. Are the new guidelines an improvement in this respect?

The new EHE guidelines

The guidelines which Alison Sauer produced may be found here:

http://www.box.net/shared/6lk1826muy

The new EHE guidelines for local authorities

When Alison Sauer began writing extensive new guidance for local authorities, telling them how they should deal with home educating parents, it was not hard to foresee that it would all end in tears. For one thing, she had no clear mandate to undertake this work on behalf of other home educators and for another, there was an obvious conflict of interest in that she runs a company which trains local authorities in how to deal with home educating parents. In other words, the whole thing looked to many like a job creation scheme for the Sauer Consultancy; the company which she and her husband Ralph set up. A further complication which raised eyebrows was that the job of writing these guidelines had not been put out to tender, but apparently awarded to the Sauer Consultancy under a nod and a wink from the chair of a Commons select committee.
Something which has raised the liveliest suspicions about those involved in this project is that it has all been done on the quiet, with Alison Sauer refusing even to confirm that she is involved in the business at all. This is frankly odd. The story went round that various people were helping with this, including Tania Berlow, who said last year:

I am the only person who has stuck their head above the parapet and has said publicly that I have become one of many who are now inputting into a draft process which will be opened to all HErs once it is drafted.

The allegation is now being made that Alison Sauer alone wrote these guidelines single-handedly and ignored anybody else’s suggestions.
The Sauer Consultancy does not just advise local authorities on home education, but covers a wide range of ’cultural services’, whatever they might be! They provide:

Project Management
Export and Cultural Consultancy
Tenders and Contract Management
Training in Tenders and Contract Management

Their clients include private companies both in this country and abroad; it is not some little outfit just concerned with home education. Just why a commercial enterprise like this was given the job of writing new guidelines for local authorities is something of a mystery. Were any other companies approached and offered the job? Will the Sauer Consultancy benefit if the guidelines are adopted, for example by training local authorities in their application and interpretation? Did Graham Stuart, Chair of the relevant Commons select committee, offer this commission officially or is it just some private project of his? What is his connection, if any, with the Sauer Consultancy? Until these questions are answered, I think that we might all be a little cautious of the new EHE guidelines, regardless of their actual content. The conflict of interest when a business is asked in this way to produce statutory guidelines regarding a field of work in which it is involved is enough to raise cause grave concern.

There is one final problem, one which nobody seems yet to have noticed. The Children Schools and Families Bill 2009 was examined by the Commons Children Schools and Families select committee. This was an impartial examination of the parts of the bill which worried home educators. I know; I was one of the witnesses who gave evidence to the select committee. The job of the select committee is to examine such things. What will happen if questions are asked about these new guidelines? Suppose that some sections of the home educating community cuts up rough about them as they did with the Badman report? The Children, Schools and Families select committee can hardly be expected now to view the matter objectively, because its Chair, Graham Stuart, was intimately involved with producing them in the first place. He could hardly offer an impartial opinion on something for which he was himself responsible. quis custodiet ipsos custodes?