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!

A Home Education UK 'briefing paper' on the Welsh proposals

It will have been rightly guessed by some readers that I would not long be able to stay away from the subject of the proposed Welsh legislation which will introduce compulsory monitoring of home education in the principality. I have been shocked over the last few days to read some of the arguments being put forward against this idea. If it is necessary to engage in deceit and spread falsehoods in order to oppose the plans; what does this say about the strength of the arguments being put forward?


Those opposing the Welsh proposals have been producing a series of so-called ‘briefing papers’. Essentially, these are no more than the opinions of various home educators who do not approve of registration and monitoring and hope to persuade others to share their views. There are two types of such papers. One kind is directed at professionals working in the field of education and is intended to show that home educated children are not at increased risk of abuse and actually do better academically than children in school. The other sort hope to  work up support from other groups such as Christians, by playing to their prejudices. Today, I want to look at a typical example of the first type; that designed to deceive teachers, social workers and other professionals.

This example is taken from the Home Education UK website:



http://www.home-education.org.uk/articles/wc/wc-he-outcomes.pdf
 




I have no idea of the author; perhaps it was Mike Fortune-Wood himself. The paper begins by suggesting that Welsh schools are not in general brilliant, which is true. Then it looks at American research which it is claimed shows that home educated children do very well; better in fact than those at school. There is much wrong with this section, but since I do not think that the American scene can really be compared with this country, we shall let that pass. It is when the author writes of British evidence that he reveals his true motives. and these are not precisely open and honest.  I do not have time to go into the whole thing, but a few particularly awful instances should suffice. Here is a quotation from the thing:



Although little research is available in the UK there is no reason to believe that the

results for children here would be any different and research that has been

undertaken supports that view. A 2002 study of 419 EHE families in the UK found:

‘The results show that 64% of the home‐educated Reception aged children scored over 75% on their PIPS Baseline Assessments as opposed to 5.1% of children nationally.





Either the author has not read the actual research or is deliberately setting out to mislead. In fact the PIPS Assessments relate not to 419 families but 35. What do readers think? Has the author of this supposedly careful and pseudo-academic paper read the research which he is quoting? If not, it casts doubt upon the value of the other figures which he adduces in defence of his argument. If he has read the research, then he is trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes and hope that they will not spot the inflation of the figures relating to the PIPS Assessments. Neither case exactly encourages confidence!

The indications are that this was a deliberately misleading. I say this, because a few lines later, we find this claim:



A Wiltshire based home education support group has kept records of children in the group since 2002. They found that the 52 older children involved had achieved 199 formal qualifications in 50 subjects with 69% of those qualifications being GCSE or IGCSE, 13% were A levels and others in Tertiary or performance. 50% of those qualifications were taken under the age of 16 years. 33% of those students achieving performing arts qualifications were awarded distinctions and 96% of other grades

were at A* ‐C.



I think that readers here will agree that the intention is to suggest that a longitudinal study has been made of a cohort from one home education group? Note that ‘records’ have been kept of ‘children in the group’. Let us be plain about this. We are being asked to believe that the figures for examination results are all from one group of children; those who attended a home educating support group in Wiltshire.  This simply cannot be a mistake; it must be a calculated falsehood, because the author gives the source for his claim. Here it is;



http://www.nwilts-he.org.uk/he_exams_wiki/index.php/Exam_results





Presumably, he banked on nobody bothering to check the references. This is an open page, where anybody from the United Kingdom may send any exam result which they claim a home educated child has achieved. Nobody checks, the things are all done anonymously and then added to the total. Far from this showing that 52 members of a single home educating support group did brilliantly academically, it merely suggests that a load of random people emailed this site from anywhere in the world and their claims were placed there without any sort of checking. Of course this group of 52 children had good academic results; only those who had gained qualifications were intended to be included on it!

There is far more wrong with this paper than just these two examples. The whole thing is an absolute horror. I am curious, for instance,  about the 10 young people with 49 A levels between them. Eton only manage an average of four A levels per pupil; according to this a home educating group in Wales is averaging around five a head. More research needed here!

The Christian connection

I hope that readers will forgive my dropping out of sight for a few days at a time when things get really busy on the writing front. I habitually write more than one book at a time theses days, which can make things pretty hairy as deadlines approach


I observed some rather virulent ant-Christian comments on a recent thread, which is interesting. Whenever a group like the Home School Legal Defense Association tries to get a foothold in this country, there are cries of protest from some British home educators. The general basis for those the objections is that the HSLDA are mad Christians who believe in Adam and Eve, hate gays and beat their children. Such people are contrasted unfavourably with our own liberal and progressive home education movement. Why, you only have to look at the terminology; home ‘school’, indeed!

I find all this curious, because of course home education in this country is also packed to the gunwales with Christians on all levels. This Christian influence is evident from top to bottom in the main organisations and is also pretty obvious at a local level too. To give a few random examples, the Chair of Education Otherwise is a very devout woman who is closely involved with her local Congregational chapel and Mike Fortune-Wood of HE-UK was until recently married to an Anglican priest. On a regional level, home educators in one southern English county have a strong and productive relationship with their local authority. Arrangements are made in this way for children to take GCSEs if their parents wish them to do so. All this is largely the work of two women; one of whom is a Jehovah’s Witness and the other a staunch Calvinist.

Not all Christians make a song and dance about their faith on the lists and forums and sometimes it only comes to light in passing that this person or that is religious. There are of course many home educating parents who have no dealings at all with the Internet groups and Christianity is often a strong feature there too. In my own county of Essex, for instance, there are probably more home educators who do not attend home educating groups or hang around on the net than those who do. Up near the port of Harwich there are many Witnesses who educate their own children and there is also a community of Hutterites living out in the sticks whose children never go to school.

I have a strong suspicion that Christianity is as powerful a motive for home education in this country as it is in the USA. Perhaps because church going is not as common in the United Kingdom, some of these parents do not make quite such a production of their faith as many Americans are apt to do. At any rate, I think it would be a mistake to assume that home education is mainly secular in this country and to contrast it in this way with the situation in the USA.

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.

The research shows…

No real research has been undertaken on home education in this country. That being so, those who defend the practice are compelled to fall back on some pretty feeble work and hope that nobody will notice how shoddy it is. When a couple of months ago Janine Ainsworth, Chief Education Officer of the Church of England, said that home education was not a good idea, Mike Fortune-Wood was quick to leap in with what he thought was some evidence which discredited Ms Ainsworth’s view. See;

http://www.home-education.org.uk/articles/article-c-of-e-reply.pdf

As usual, Mike Fortune-Wood’s statement contained some unintentionally hilarious passages. When he said, for example, that, ‘Practically all Home educated children take an active roll in their local communities.’, I don’t think that he was really suggesting that they tumble head over heels down hills, like so many Jack and Jills! Perhaps ‘role’ might have been a more felicitous choice of words. He went on to say, 'Home educated children have been shown to be highly social, balanced and to mix well with other children and adults. (Paula Rothermel’s work).' Which brings us neatly to the subject of feeble work and shoddy research.

It is astonishing how many people still trot out Paula Rothermel’s findings, under the apparent impression that they tell us anything useful about home education in this country. Let us see what they tell us about how social and balanced home educated British children are.

Reading about Paula Rothermel’s work, one often comes across large numbers. Thousands of questionnaires sent out, over four hundred families interviewed in depth; that sort of thing. The truth is a somewhat different. In February 1997, Rothermel sent out 2500 questionnaires to members of education Otherwise. A year later, she sent out a similar number, again only to members of Education Otherwise. Two hundred were also sent to religious groups and local authorities. A thousand were returned, of which four hundred and nineteen were chosen for further research. Already, we have run into a several serious problems.

The first difficulty is that this was a self-selected group, almost entirely from one organisation. (Twenty four out of twenty five of the questionnaires were sent only to members of Education Otherwise). Only a fifth of those asked, wished to take part by answering any questions. These are likely to be those whose home education was going well and who wished to tell others of it. In addition to this, they were people with high degrees of ‘document literacy’; those probably of a higher educational level than average. This is also suggested by the fact that a quarter of them were, or had been, school teachers. The final point to consider is that this was all fifteen years ago.

To sum up, the sample group of children tested fifteen years ago were self-selected members of a single organisation, whose educational standards were probably higher than average. Still, testing over four hundred children, even from an atypical group like this might still tell us something about home educated children. We now encounter two more difficulties which render the findings from this research project pretty well useless. The tests relating to social skills and the ability to get on with others were not administered to hundreds of children; not even a hundred children, nor even fifty. In fact the crucial tests about the ability of the children to get on with others and behave in a socialised way were only given to groups of twenty children. Not only that, but the parents did the tests, answering questions about their own children.

Here is one of the three tests used by Rothermel on twenty children:



http://www.sdqinfo.com/py/doc/b3.py?language=Englishqz(UK)



Click on the one marked P4-16 to see it. Has anybody seen the problem with handing a parent a form of this sort and asking her to answer the questions about her own child? I wonder how many parents will admit that their own child often lies and cheats? Or whether the average parent is objective enough to admit that her son often fights with other children and bullies them? Parents are the worst possible people to ask about this sort of thing! We all stick up for our kids and gloss over their faults, even to ourselves. Nobody will get an objective assessment of my daughter from me and I suspect that other parents are the same. A much more reliable way of establishing this sort of thing is for teachers and nursery workers to fill out these forms based upon their observations of children.

As I say, this really important test, which has led many to make such extravagant claims about what research has shown about home educated children in this country, was given to only twenty children. The answers were all those given only by the children’s mothers or fathers. When people like Mike Fortune-Wood say things like the quotation above about research showing that home educated children are highly social, well balanced and mix well with other children, what they are really saying is this; ‘Fifteen years ago twenty parents of home educated children claimed that their children were sociable and well balanced’. That is it, the whole of the evidence for this often repeated assertion.

Finita, la commedia

I dare say that loyal readers were made anxious a couple of weeks ago when I announced that Nikki Harper, ably assisted by Maire Stafford and Mike Fortune-Wood, was trying to have me arrested for a criminal offence. This supposed offence was poking fun at her on this blog. When she contacted the Lincolnshire police on July 11th, she did not put it in quite that way of course. Instead, she suggested that she was a victim of harassment, contrary to the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. It was a brave and inexpensive attempt to get at me, once she had discovered that bringing an action against me for libel would have ruined her financially.

I have gained a great deal of pleasure from this whole affair. It is the first time in sixty odd years that I have been accused of a crime and so it was a novel and interesting experience for that reason  alone. Even better was the discovery that Nikki Harper was every bit as excitable and verbose when speaking to a police officer as she was when complaining to Lincolnshire County Council about a circular letter which she received from them. The police file on Mrs Harper’s views and opinions about me and my blog is extensive, because of course she was unable to keep to the point without bringing astrology and spiritualism into the matter. One is reminded of Mr Dick from David Copperfield, who, it will be recalled, was unable to write anything with introducing King Charles’ head into the case.

When first Mrs Harper told them that this was a case of online harassment, the police assumed that I had been sending her abusive or threatening communications via email. Either that or pestering her family and friends by contacting them and saying things about her.  When, after some time, it merged that what had actually happened was that she had blogged unpleasantly about me and I her and that she had been coming onto my blog and rowing with me via the comments, they rather lost interest. It might be annoying for somebody to tease you on a blog; it is not a criminal offence.

I wonder if anybody can guess what advice the police gave Mrs Harper, if she wished to avoid becoming distressed and upset by me and my blog in the future? Yes, they told her that the best thing she could do was to avoid contacting me or having any further communications at all with me. They also suggested that if I had been telling lies about her, she might pursue a civil remedy. Case closed.

As a matter of interest, one of the things that this well known astrologer was irritated about was what she described as ’malicious tagging’ in my posts here. She told me in a comment here  that she objected to this. On July 6th, for example, she asked me, ’ What are your reasons for tagging this post with "Ashby Spiritualist Church"?’ She went on to suggest that this was part of a smear campaign against her. Talk of a 'smear campaign' leads one to suppose of course that she had no connection with the 'church'. The problem is that when you are writing for the Huffington Post about home education and introduce yourself there as an astrologer, that does rather bring the subject into the debate. When you are using your articles there to promote a book aimed at dragging  young people into this mad belief system and getting them to subscribe to this nonsense, that too makes your views on both  astrology and what is described as, 'mind, body, spirit',  a fair matter of comment. As for the Ashby Spiritualist Church, the linking of which with her name Mrs Harper views as a 'smear campaign'; she is being less than candid. Here she is promoting and advertising it in a tweet from March 1st this year:



http://en.twitter.com/SpiritOdyssey/status/175181439803994112





You can hardly demonstrate your involvement with the place one minute and then the next go racing  off to the police and say that you are being criminally harassed because somebody has  linked  your name to it on a blog!

Anyway, this will mercifully be the last mention here of Nikki Harper; a matter of some relief to us all. As long as she follows the advice of the police and avoids coming here or communicating with me, I see no reason why there should be any further contact between us. I am sure that this will be a great relief to her as well as me. She is currently in the process of trying to take Lincolnshire County Council to a judicial review for what she sees as their unlawful policies. This is proving harder than expected and will,  I think,  be enough to keep her out of mischief and away from here for the foreseeable future.

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.

A do-it-yourself guide to online harassment: Part 2

Maire Stafford is currently posing as the selfless defender of a woman who has allegedly been harassed by me on this blog. This dupe has been persuaded by Maire Stafford that I am, as she puts it, in the habit of, ’making very unpleasant accusations’ about people’s children. This at least was what she told me in an email. Maire Stafford has told her that she herself has been upset by what I have had to say about her on this blog. She is being less than candid; Maire Stafford actually began a vindictive campaign of harassment against me before I even started this blog. Come with me now, as the years roll back and we revisit 2009.


Up until the end of July 2009, I had been a member of several HE lists for years. I had encountered Maire Stafford, but not really taken any notice of her. On July 30th, a piece of mine was published in the Independent. That same day, Maire Stafford tweeted this:

http://twitter.com/Maire52/status/2927163148



Simon Webb is Judas! Strong stuff indeed from somebody I did not know and had barely exchanged a dozen words with on an internet list. From then on, Maire Stafford saw it as her personal mission to attack me. How did she do this? One way was to get people to post comments on the online versions of my article and also to encourage the spreading of untruthful rumours about me. Some fool posted this on the HE-UK list on July 30th;

There is a Simon Webb mentioned here as an Area Education Officer.... under
Badman! Listed is the
CFHE Directorate Structure Chart which is readily available on the
internet.... .


http://docs. google.com/ gview?a=v

m/request/7844/ response/ 21038/attach/ 2/cfe-structure- chart1106. pdf+Simon+ Web
b+badman&hl= en>
&q=cache:W9Udfm7eA8 AJ:www.whatdothe yknow.com/ request/7844/ response/ 21038/att
ach/2/cfe-structure -chart1106. pdf+Simon+ Webb+badman& hl=en




This was an attempt to prove that I was a former colleague of Graham Badman. Maire’s response was to post;



Brilliant research R.


Maire

She then touted this idea around and tried to get others to take it up and use it. Mike Fortune-Wood was quick to join in and posted a comment on the Independent site, claiming that I had lied to gain access to the HE-UK list and that I was a colleague of Graham Badman’s. Of course, he didn’t want to use his own name, these people are too cowardly for that, and so posted as Maesk123.

Meanwhile, Maire Stafford was doing her best to get people on various lists to criticise me on newspaper sites. Still on July 30th, she posted:


Couple of less supportive comments on there now, even a nothing to fear
nothing to hide one! Anyone got the energy to slam em.




‘Slam em’; this hardly ties in with her description of herself on her twitter account as shy and sweet! Her aim was to present me in as bad as light as possible. That same day, she posted again on the HE-UK site, saying of me:

Perhaps he has one of those illnesses, you know like people who confess to
murders they haven't done in order to get attention.




The next day, July 31st, somebody posted something unpleasant about me on the HE-UK list and Maire Stafford said:



This would look very good in the comments section under the article.


Maire




Here she is again on both HE-UK and EO, a day later:



What about lots of comments that support Jeremy but ignore Simon.


And don't forget to vote in the poll.


Maire




Now I do want to emphasise that this was all at a time before this blog even existed. I am not going to put all the things down here; there are simply too many. She was posting comments all over the place, telling lies such as that I was a local authority officer, that I was not really a home educating parent and, most ludicrous at all, that I was actually a home education inspector. She was tweeting these falsehoods, emailing them to people, commenting on newspaper sites, lists and forums. This was not limited to passing on rumours from others; she would make up her own.

This might not sound too bad, except that these lies soon spread round the world. In September 2010, for instance, a year after Maire Stafford had invented these stories, Kelly Green in Canada said of me on her blog, Kelly Green and Gold:


'He was an advisor to Graham Badman and the Department of Children, Schools and Families over the course of the Badman Review,'


A year later and the story cooked up my Maire Stafford is surfacing on the other side of the earth! Are readers beginning to see why I might have been a bit annoyed about this?

I gave another example of this yesterday. In the autumn of 2009, a rumour was circulating that I had told Graham Badman to ignore Paula Rothermel’s research. I was also alleged to have warned him that many home educating mothers were suffering from Munchausen’s Syndrome. This was so completely barmy that I could make no sense at all of it and wondered where it had started. Eventually, I tracked down the story to it’s earliest appearance. Not surprisingly, this was on the HE-UK list, which had served as a clearing house for these lies. On November 4th, Maire Stafford posted there, saying of me:


And considering it was probably him who told Badman that Paula Rothermel's
work was not sound I think he has an immense amount to answer for. Wouldn't
be surprised if this wasn't the source of the Munchausens fiasco too


I might have guessed; it originated, like so much of the other poison, with Maire Stafford.

Now I will freely admit that I began to get a little ticked off with the woman after all this. I barely knew her and here she as inventing stuff about me and doing her damnedest to make life difficult for me. I had said nothing at all about her at this time and was puzzled as to why she seemed so determined to try and harm my reputation. I certainly made a few sharp comments about her once the blog was running, but this was in an attempt to stop her carrying on in this way. Anybody who wishes to check up on all this can of course still see the messages on the HE-UK site on the dates I have given. That a woman like this, who has behaved in such a way, should now offer to help people who have supposedly been the victims of online harassment is little short of incredible.

I hope that readers will understand if I hold back a good deal of material in reserve, in the event that Maire Stafford really does try to stand up in court and portray herself as an innocent victim of my malice. I have in the past been in contact with people who have been bullied by her and two new people have now come forward to offer me emails and statements. Boy, am I looking forward to a court case! I have already drawn up a provisional list of witness summonses and I think that I can safely assure readers that Maire Stafford will not, by the end of it, be in a very strong position to represent herself as my victim; quite the opposite in fact.

A do-it-yourself guide to online harassment; Part 1

As readers will have seen this morning, I have been reported to the police for harassment. Fortunately, or I suppose unfortunately for those making the complaint, the police want a little more than just my making jokes about spiritualism. When Maire Stafford heard that the police were reluctant to act, and I think I ought to mention at this point that the whole idea of contacting the police in the first place was hers, she got in touch with Mike Fortune-Wood and asked him to help. She did not actually use the expressions stalking-horse, patsy or fall-guy when discussing this, but the gist was that she had managed to get somebody to pose as a victim.  There was now a golden opportunity for the pair of them to get their own back for all the jokes and snarky remarks which I have in the past made about them. There would never, she told him, be another chance like it.  Mike obligingly posted the following  on the HE-UK list, of which he is the owner:



Hi all


First off I don't want this to develop into a discussion topic, I still
regard this topic as restricted.


Those who don't know what this is about probably don't need to and those who
do will understand the context.


If anyone has had their personal details given out on Simon Webb's blog can
they please get in touch with Maire Stafford


mairestafford@XXX.com


This is urgent, if you want to do something about this today is the day.
Maire will explain to you what is being done.


Thank you.


Best wishes


Mike F-W
Your man in a hammock




What is being done is an attempt at making a case for what is known as ‘collective’ harassment. This is when somebody harasses members of some religion, ethnic group, profession and so on. It is a peculiarly ill-judged enterprise for several reasons and is doomed to failure, but we will let that pass for now. The fact is, these two are trying to do it.



Now what they both of course know, but the woman who was encouraged to go to the police does not, is that Maire Stafford and Mike Fortune-Wood worked a neat double act in the summer of 2009, whereby they used emails, blogs, HE lists, twitter and the comments on online newspapers to try and blacken my name. Some of this mud stuck; there are still people who believe that I was a colleague of Graham Badman or that I used to work for a local authority. This is the thing about activities of this sort, it is impossible ever wholly to set the record straight. This post is getting a little long and unwieldy, so I shall break it into two parts. This first part has laid the ground and tomorrow I shall demonstrate clearly, using her own emails, posts and tweets, just why Maire Stafford is the best possible person to consult on the subject of online harassment. She is a master at it and examining her tactics will show readers how this sort of thing may be done effectively. It’s no good just mentioning stuff on a little blog like this from time to time; you have to be proactive! Studying Maire’s methods will show how one home educator can really harass another successfully.

Maire Stafford, Mike Fortune-Wood and Nikki Harper try to have me arrested!

The title of this piece is not one which I could, in my wildest dreams, have ever thought that I would be typing. Never the less, it is actually the case. Having realised that action against me for libel would be horribly expensive and in any case unlikely to succeed, Nikki Harper has decided to go for the cheaper option of reporting me to the police for supposedly harassing her and her husband on this blog. As readers might know,  Mrs Harper posted a piece on her blog at the beginning of May, naming me and saying some unflattering and untruthful things about me:

http://secondaryathome.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/the-inadequacies-of-mr-anonymous/

Since then, I have made the odd reference to this woman and her husband’s eccentric ways of making a living. Then, a week or so ago, Nikki Harper began coming on here and getting herself worked up into a regular state.

Now of course this is nothing unusual on the internet; spats like that happen all the time. By a stroke of ill fortune for her though, Mrs Harper fell under the influence of that most malevolent of women, Maire Stafford. This is when things took a decidedly surreal turn, as Maire Stafford advised Nikki that she had a duty to beetle off to the police station and report me for saying upsetting things about her such as that she was an astrologer. Mrs Harper duly did so and, it will come as no surprise to readers to learn, she was promptly given the bum’s rush by police officers who have more important things to investigate than this blog; things like murders and rape, for example.

In order to give her the brush-off courteously, they being unwilling to be too brusque with somebody who was obviously distressed and whose mental state was clearly a little fragile, they told her that if I was in the habit of upsetting people in this way, then they would get in touch and have a word with me.

Enter, stage right, Maire Stafford. Readers with long memories will recall that Maire Stafford ran a campaign against me on the HE-UK list a few years ago, after pieces of mine about home education were published in the Independent and Times Educational Supplement. She devised rumours, spread lies, coordinated the online comments on the articles and generally made a thorough nuisance of herself. To give just one example, when Paula Rothermel claimed that Graham Badman had suggested that home educating mothers were suffering from Munchausen’s and also questioned the validity of her research; many parents were annoyed and upset. On November 4th 2009, Maire Stafford posted on the HE-UK list, trying to make people think that this was in some way my fault! She wrote,

And considering it was probably him who told Badman that Paula Rothermel's
work was not sound I think he has an immense amount to answer for. Wouldn't
be surprised if this wasn't the source of the Munchausens fiasco too


She also helped to spread the ridiculous lie that I was a former colleague of Graham Badman’s. Even this was nothing compared to a Tweet of hers in September 2009, to the effect that I was really not a home educating parent at all, but a home education inspector!  I don't suppose for a moment that Maire Stafford believed all this, she just felt that lies like this would make people view me with suspicion. Much of this malicious activity was undertaken on the HE-UK site, with Mike Fortune-Wood’s aid and encouragement. Maire Stafford is a strange woman. The very fact that she describes herself on her blog as being sweet, mild, timid and shy should be enough to alert any objective observer to the probability that she is actually unpleasant and aggressive and so it has proved over the years.

Yesterday, Mike Fortune-Wood appealed for information on his list that might help Maire Stafford to help Nikki Harper to get me prosecuted. The idea is that I have been revealing personal information about people here and attacking them. As a result of what she has been told by Maire Stafford, Nikki Harper is convinced that I  have, 'a reputation for attacking people, making very unpleasant accusations about their children', as she puts it.  I have no idea what these unpleasant accusations are about children, but Maire Stafford and Nikki Harper are currently scouring this blog for them. I will not go into all the things that were said about me on both HE-UK and various other lists and blogs in the past, but I will instead limit myself to remarking that it is a good thing that I was not the sort of chap to feel that he was being harassed online! It is to be hoped that this nonsense will end soon and I shall be able to get back to blogging about home education, which is after all the purpose of this place. I have an idea though that this business has a little way to run yet.

On the fringe

Imran Shah, a home educating parent from the south of England, is by all accounts a competent enough social worker. If I wished to know anything about child protection procedures for example, he is certainly a man whose opinion I would value. Unfortunate then that on Saturday he chose instead to deliver a lecture about neurology and endocrinology; subjects in which he is ’interested’. Mike Fortune-Wood would similarly be worth hearing if he talked about setting up a large support network for home educators. He is probably not a man though whose views on the law I would seek and yet this was a subject on which he felt able to pontificate at the same meeting on Saturday. Call me Mr Old-fashioned, but when I want to know about the law, I tend to go to a solicitor or barrister! Nor would I go to somebody who studied anthropology at university if I wished to find out about the acquisition of literacy and I think that Harriet Pattinson knows who I am talking about here.

One of the things which I have noticed about home educating parents is that they have a tendency to follow people who are not accepted experts in various fields. There are many neurologists and they have written books on the subject. Their work appears in peer-reviewed journals. Why not read what these men and women have to say about their specialist subject, rather than relying upon what a social worker tells us about what they have discovered? Some people have spent their professional lives studying in great detail the process whereby children learn to read. They too have published books about this. Why not read these books if you wish to know about the acquisition of literacy? I suppose that the answer is that people like Harriet Pattinson, Mike Fortune-Wood and Imran Shah are known to be autonomous home educators. This is fine and dandy, but does not of course make them experts about law or neurology. It simply means that they will tell other autonomously educating parents what they wish to hear; confirm them in their own beliefs if you will. This may be comforting and reassuring, which is why all those home educators gathered in London last Saturday, but it won’t really teach anybody much. They would have gained more from a couple of hours spent researching the topics in the local library. Or, they could do what I do. When I want to know something about some specialised topic which touches upon home education; I ask the experts. Even world famous scientists will often respond to email questions or answer phone calls. I am guessing here though that most of the audience did not really come to learn about either neurology or law; they wanted people to tell them that they were doing the right thing and not, as many privately fear, screwing up their kids educational chances. From that point of view, the day was a resounding success!