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!

If closer monitoring of home education in New Zealand and the USA does no good, why would we need it in this country?

In recent days two linked objections have been raised to the proposition that new legislation is needed in this country to regulate home education. The first is that increasing or decreasing monitoring in two other countries does not seem to affect the outcomes for home education there; the second that there is no evidence that there is anything wrong with the current arrangements in this country and that consequently there is no need for any new law. I want today to examine the first of these ideas, that it is possible and worthwhile to compare home education in this country with that in New Zealand and America. I strongly suspect that those making this claim know as well as I do why it is impossible to compare home education in this country with either New Zealand or the United States, but working on the assumption that there will be readers who do not understand the difficulties, I shall try briefly to outline the problem.

Let us begin by looking at the most recent investigation into motives for home education in the United Kingdom. This was conducted in Wales, but there is no reason to suppose that the findings are not also applicable to England. The full report may be found here:



http://wales.gov.uk/topics/educationandskills/schoolshome/pupilsupport/homeeducation/?lang=en



What was discovered about the motives for home education? The report says:



Broadly, from the responses gathered at this stage, the motivations of the Home Educating community can be seen to fall into four categories on a spectrum and, in this description, in no order of percentage choice.





1. Response to behavioural /attendance issues

The extreme stance expressed by some authorities that the majority of HE parents choose HE to avoid prosecution when they and/or their children simply disengage with education is not endorsed by this initial scoping, but it is the primary experience of the EWS in relation to HE and, as such, is perceived to be a much more significant motivation than it is in actuality.



2. Lifestyle choices

At the other end of the spectrum, the political position of some home educators is that the family unit and not the state has primary responsibility for the education of the child and therefore that education is most suitably and efficiently delivered in the family context. Other ‘alternative’ lifestyle choices include those of the traveller communities, or various religious perspectives.



3. Curricular/structural issues

Between these two poles are children and families opting out of the mainstream, not to disengage from education, but after struggling with, and giving up on, the curriculum or structural difficulties of school life, be it the size, the length of day or the interaction with some teachers.



4. Special social, emotional, health or learning needs

Towards the choice of HE as a lifestyle are those opting out of the mainstream because of social, emotional or other learning challenges, delicate health issues, difficulties with transition, or, most particularly, the experience of bullying. This appears to be the largest group in the spectrum. Many of these, though originally choosing reactively away from school, do seem to find HE particularly suitable to meeting, or allowing for, those particular needs and come to embrace this alternative educational experience as a proactive and positive decision.



Lest anybody object that this research was carried out by those opposed to home education and accordingly biased against the practice, let us recall that Paula Rothermel found pretty much the same thing when she surveyed British home educators. The main motives that she found were things such as, ‘having a close family relationship and being together’.

Now I find all this pretty astounding.   I was sure that I could provide my daughter with a better education than she would receive at school and it therefore made sense from a purely educational perspective not to send her to school. Such people as me are mentioned in the list of motives, but one does not get the impression that they are a majority or even a significant proportion.  I have an idea, which is borne out by what little research has been conducted in this country, that very few parents in Britain home educate for purely educational motives of this sort. Research by both Paula Rothermel and Education Otherwise confirms this. When Education Otherwise sent out two and a half thousand questionairres, the main reasons that were given for home education were bullying and lifestyle. Education per se did not seem to be a big factor in the decision to home educate.

In America, the situation is very different. The largest piece of research carried out there into the motives for home education, that carried out by The National Centre for Education Statistics in America, showed that 50% of those asked about their motives gave as the answer, ‘Can give child a better education at home’. This indicates that the commonest motives for home education in America are very different from those in this country. There, parents tend to choose the practice because they believe that they can provide a better academic education. In the UK, it is at best a lifestyle choice relating to wanting to be close to the children and at worst, a reaction to problems at school. In other words, British parents are not in general choosing home education for educational reasons.

It must be fairly clear that if, as tends more commonly to be the case, American home educators are primarily concerned with good academic education, then their children are likely to be achieving highly; regardless of whether or not they are being checked by the authorities. To try and compare this situation with that in this country is pointless. Most parents here are either forced into a position where they feel they have no choice in the matter or wish to keep their children at home as part of a lifestyle choice. This means that we are not able to draw any useful conclusions by the American experience of monitoring and regulation. Unless somebody is able to come up with evidence that home educating parents in New Zealand are very similar in their motivations to those in this country, we may probably disregard what has happened there as well. All of which means that when considering new legislation, we would be well advised to restrict ourselves to thinking about what is happening in this country and not trying to rope in America and New Zealand.

What is happening in this country and what does the evidence suggest? I shall be looking at this in the next few days.

What did Paula Rothermel really say about the sociability of home educated children?

I mentioned yesterday a quotation by Mike Fortune-Wood, typical of many which supporters of home education make when citing Paula Rothermel’s research to prove their points. He said:

‘Home educated children have been shown to be highly social, balanced and to mix well with other children and adults. (Paula Rothermel’s work).’


I then suggested that the sample used to establish this by Rothermel was small and that the instrument used was not in any case an accurate way of measuring the sociability of home educated children. In fact, Paula Rothermel herself agrees with both points; although for different reasons than mine. I don’t want to get drawn into a long debate about the precise numbers tested. There are discrepancies in the figures used, but I want to forget that and adopt a wholly different approach. Let us begin by assuming that the tests used by Paula Rothermel were in fact wonderfully accurate and that the samples she surveyed were perfectly adequate. In other words, I am conceding, purely for the purposes of debate, that we should accept all the conclusions to which this research points. Where does that leave us on the question of how balanced and social the home educated children at whom Rothemel’s work was directed, really were? Let us look at what she actually said.


Here are a few quotations from Paula Rothermel’s findings that you will seldom hear being bandied about in home educating circles:



‘the home-educated children here emerged as mostly 'Abnormal' in terms of their 'Prosocial Behaviour'.’




‘Socially, the SDQ found 61% of the home-educated children to exhibit 'abnormal' social behaviour,’


‘the home-educated sample demonstrated more signs of aggressive behaviours than the schoolchildren from the Rutter et al study, particularly for home-educated girls where aggressiveness was at 22.7% as opposed to 5.3% for Rutter's girls’


‘Theft amongst the home-educated boys was substantially higher than for the schoolchildren’


‘A comparison with the home-educated sample's data and that provided by Ekblad (1990) relating to previous studies, revealed that the home-educated children were more aggressive than the norm and that the girls' levels of anxiety was higher than those found in other studies.’



What has happened of course is that those in favour of home education select bits and pieces from the research which support their own views. It is perfectly possible to do the same if you wish to use Rothermel’s research to denounce home education! For example, she found that a quarter of the home educating sample had behavioural problems; far higher than the proportion found in most surveys of schoolchildren. How Rothermel wriggles out of these uncomfortable findings is a wonder to behold. Having carefully chosen the tests, she then discovers, when the findings are not as expected, that it is the tests themselves which are at fault. Obviously, one cannot expect home educated children to behave in the same way as school children. True, the children came out within the normal range overall on the psycho-social tests, but on purely social aspects, there were found to be serious difficulties.

I said nothing yesterday that Paula Rothermel has not herself said about this research. I drew attention to the small size of the sample and she admits that the sample was small. I queried whether the SDQ would give an accurate picture and she says that it does not. I am busy today, but I shall be writing more on this topic in a day or to. In the meantime, readers should look once more at the quotations by Paula Rothermel which I give above and ask themselves why they are unlikely to see them anywhere other than this blog.

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.