How well do home educated children do academically?

We looked yesterday at a ‘briefing paper’ about the proposed Welsh law on home education. This was designed to bamboozle education professionals into believing that there is good evidence that home education in this country is likely to lead to strong academic outcomes. One of the ways that this was done was to talk of a page on a website intended specifically for home educated children’s examination results and then pretend that these were the achievements of members of one home educating support group. We also saw evidence from the USA which apparently tended to suggest that home educated children did well academically and were more likely to go to college and university than schooled children. This is also implausible and for much the same reason.


The research quoted in the ‘briefing paper’ yesterday was that conducted by Larry Rudner and Brian Ray. Although extensive, it suffered from the same disadvantage as the statistics from the British website; that is to say, it was all self-selected. One sees at once the problem. Those volunteering to take part in such research are those for whom home education has been a success. Those who remain semi-literate after ten years of home education are unlikely in the extreme to offer to take part in any project looking at academic achievement. What is needed is a large group of young people, some of whom have been to school and others of whom have been home educated, so that we may compare their academic levels. Such a study has in fact been running in America for over ten years and the data from this provides a far more realistic and objective measure of the educational quality of home education than anything produced by Rudner or Ray.

Those wishing to attend college or university in the United States sit either the American College Testing assessment or the Scholastic Aptitude Test; the ACT or SAT. These measure such things as English, including reading ability, science and mathematics. Since the late 1990s, those taking these tests have been asked if they were educated at home. Of course, in a sense, this too is a self selected sample consisting only of those wishing to attend college, but that too reveals interesting information, as we shall see.

The first thing that one notices is that although home educated children taking these tests do tend to be slightly ahead of those who went to school, the differences are not dramatic. The ACT is scored from 1 to 36. The average schooled pupils score is 21, but home educated teenagers come in a little higher at almost 23. It gets really interesting when you break down the individual components of the scores. Home educated kids are quite a bit ahead on English, especially reading. This is not surprising really, since they spend much of their time in the company of adults; one would expect them to be more articulate and have a better vocabulary than those who spend their days in the company of other children. There is no difference at all in science and in mathematics, the home educated children lagged noticeably behind those who had been to school.

Another point to consider is that the proportion of home educated teenagers applying to go into further education seemed to be less than expected, given the numbers. In other words, it looks as though home educated children in America are less not more likely to go to university.

Of course, these figures must be treated with caution, but they are never the less intriguing. They do seem to suggest that the educational advantages of home education are not quite as pronounced as some would have us believe. The teenagers might have greater vocabularies, but they are worse at mathematics. There is no discernible advantage in science. The fact that a lower proportion of home educated children than expected is applying to go to university is also worth thinking about. This all gives a far more balanced picture of home education than one normally gains from looking at research financed by people like the HSLDA.

More about the monitoring of home education

When I wrote recently on this topic, I was surprised to find that there was broad agreement about many points. Here are a few more points with which few home educators will disagree. First, there will always be cases of cruel or abusive people mistreating or even murdering their children. Most of these children are at school and a few are home educated. Such abusers can be very cunning and a brief visit once a year will almost certainly miss some of these wicked parents.


A second point is that annual visits for every home educating family is an expensive and not particularly effective way of keeping an eye on the situation. To give an example, one need only look at my own case. Essex County Council chose to involve themselves and start visiting our home when my daughter was eight. We live in Loughton and their office is in Colchester. Each visit entailed a seventy mile round trip for the woman. By the time my daughter was thirteen and taking IGCSEs, it was clear to both us and the local authority that such visits were a waste of their time and ours. There are many similar cases. This sort of thing is not a good use of resources.

On the other hand, I do not believe that we should just assume that every parent is capable of undertaking this civic duty. Just as somebody who volunteers to undertake the duty of policing, as special constables do, is required first to demonstrate his or her fitness to undertake the task; so to with those who would educate a child. The easiest way to assess the suitability for exercising this duty is for somebody from the local authority to make an initial visit to the home and speak to both the parent and child. In this way, I would guess that a chat and a look around the home would make it clear that a large proportion of those parents were quite capable of taking on this duty. The remaining people, I am thinking a ballpark figure of perhaps 10% to 20% could be offered the choice of continuing to home educate with some involvement and monitoring by the local authority or, if they declined, a School Attendance Order would be issued.

Of course, such a rough and ready method would result in some unfit parents being overlooked and other perfectly capable parents being offered closer supervision. On the whole though, I think that this would work better than the current system, where some parents are never seen at all. The beauty of a system like this is that it would require no new legislation. All that would be necessary would be for local authorities to tell parents that they could not be convinced that a suitable education was taking place without visiting their home. Of course, parents have no duty in law to comply with this and those that refused would automatically be issued with a School Attendance Order.

I have an idea that a system of this sort would sift out quite a few parents who are not really educating their children, while leaving the 80% or so who are to get on with the job without any interference. For those who doubt that it would be possible to judge in the course of a two hour or so visit, which parents and homes were suitable for the education of a child; there are various strong indicators. The presence of many books is one. A home with no books on display is almost certainly a home where parents are not valuing learning and education. This would be easily spotted within the first few minutes of a visit.