Exploring prehistoric London

Massively off-topic and absolutely nothing to do with home education, but here by special request are a couple of self-guided walks which explore prehistoric London. They cover places that you will seldom find mentioned in tourist guides! If anybody is interested and wishes to email me, I can supply a few others.




The ritual landscape of Greenwich

We begin this walk from Greenwich High Road, which is a short walk from the Docklands railway station of Cutty Sark. We walk first up Croom's Hill, along the side of Greenwich Park. This is a very old road indeed. Croom in old Celtic meant crooked and the road does bend and twist as it ascends. The suggestion has been made that the Celtic name makes this the oldest road in Britain still in use. At the top of the hill, we veer right into Cade Road and then carry on along Shooters Hill, until we reach a small road on the right called Point Hill. On the left is Blackheath, a grassy common. Walking down Point Hill will reveal to our left a small area of grass, enclosed by railings, which is known locally as The Point. Until the nineteenth century, the Point was known as Maidenstone Hill. It is part of the chalk escarpment which runs from Shooters Hill towards London. Watling Street, the Roman Road from Canterbury to London ran along this ridge of high ground, before descending to Southwark. This is also the route of a Celtic track which ran from Canterbury to St Albans. The Point is a curious place. According to some of the more fanciful works on early London, a stone circle once stood here, but there is not a scrap of evidence for such a thing. The view of London across the nearby rooftops is spectacular. We are in effect standing on the edge of a cliff here; an unusual experience indeed in London!

Beneath the ground here is the series of caves known as Jack Cade's caverns or Blackheath caverns. These are almost certainly of prehistoric origin and were discovered accidentally in 1780. Photographs taken inside, when they were reopened briefly in 1938, indicate that they are a Dene Hole. These bell shaped caves are found throughout South east England and these caves are fairly typical examples. Dene Holes were dug in chalk in prehistoric times, chiefly in Kent. They were probably chalk mines; the chalk being used to improve the quality of agricultural land. Flint can also be obtained from chalk mines and it is perhaps the case that these caves provided both these very useful materials. These caves are unusual in that they contain both a well and also a carving on the wall of a horned god, possibly Cernnunos. A similar, but much smaller, carved chalk image of a goddess was found in Grime's Graves, a chalk mine in Norfolk. There has been extensive mining for chalk in this area, right up to modern times. A consequence of this is that the appearance of large holes in roads is not unknown. Because even so functional an activity as mining was seen in a religious context during the Bronze Age, it is by no means impossible that this site was used for worship as well as the extraction of minerals.

We retrace our steps now and enter Greenwich Park by the Croom's Hill Gate, which is on our right as we head back down Croom's Hill. The path ahead leads to grass, with a few trees scattered here and there. Unless one knew what to look for, it would be entirely possible to miss one of the most interesting pieces of London's ritual landscape which may still be seen more or less as it was created. On either side of the path are hillocks and bumps in the grass. Close examination reveals that these are round, like inverted saucers. In fact these are round barrows; burial mounds from the Bronze Age. Actually, they are even more interesting than that. These early Bronze Age barrows, which were dug in the chalk, were reused over a thousand years later by the Saxons. Greenwich is a Saxon settlement and they obviously recognised the barrows here as a burial ground. This is yet another example of continuity of use of a sacred place. The Saxons who first came to this country were not Christians.

At first glance, these barrows or tumuli do not look at all impressive. They are though only the last remaining examples of what was once a huge chain of these monuments stretching from Kent to London. Others are still scattered in odd locations within a few miles of these ones. A little west of Greenwich, near Woolwich Common, is the only surviving barrow of a group of seven. The others were razed during building work some years ago. It is to be found at the junction of Shrewsbury Lane and Brinklow Crescent. A mile away on Winn's Common lies another tumulus, almost invisible in the shaggy grass.

The barrows in Greenwich Park must have looked startling at one time. Because of the geology of this area, one does not need to dig deep before striking chalk. These mounds were perhaps shining white when first completed and would have been visible for miles around. We continue walking towards the building ahead, which is a planetarium. Skirting round this and carrying on in the same direction, we pass the bandstand on our right, before coming to a small area enclosed by iron railings. This is all that remains of the Romano-Celtic temple complex which once dominated the road to Londinium. All that now remains is a small block of mortar with brick tesserae embedded in it. At one time, it was thought that this might have been a Roman villa, but the discovery of coins and parts of a statue have shown it to have been a temple. The arm of a female figure holding a long, rod like object have been found here. The best guess is that this was a cult figure of Diana, goddess of the hunt. This shrine was the first building which one would encounter when arriving at Londinium from Canterbury or Dover. The road which runs alongside the park here, in the opposite direction from which we came, is called Maze Hill. There was once a turf maze here, traces of which may be seen when the grass is parched. If we walk back to the planetarium and turn right, the hills by the Royal Observatory will lead back to Greenwich High Road and the station.



From the source of the Walbrook to the Thames

We start this walk at Shoreditch High Street railway station. Leaving the station, we walk along Bethnal Green Road, taking the third turning on the left, Club Row, which takes us to the site of Friars' Mount, which is now the large, circular garden called Arnold Circus.

There is something of a mystery about this public garden. The Walbrook rises from several sources a little to the North of the City of London. In prehistoric times, this was all marshland and the name of the Moorgate district reflects this. One of the principle springs which merged to become the Walbrook, started near St Leonard's church in Shoreditch. In addition to the spring itself, there were two other notable features in this part of London. One was a sacred well; the so-called Holy Well. This well gave its name to the Augustinian priory which was founded nearby in what is now Holywell lane. The Holywell priory was built on the site of the original holy well, almost certainly a case of the Christian church appropriating a pre-existing sacred site. Near to the well was an artificial mound called simply The Mount. It later became known as Friars' Mount, by association with the monastery. The Mount was probably another example of a Tot Hill such as was raised on Thorney Island and it may or may not still exist.

In the late nineteenth century, this part of Shoreditch had become a slum know as the Old Nichol. It covered much of the area between Old Street and Brick Lane and had become so notorious as a rookery or slum district that eventually it was swept away in a huge development of houses and flats for the working classes. Much of this redevelopment centred upon the site of Friars' Mount and a public garden was planted where Friars' Mount once stood. This garden is still there; it is called Arnold Circus and it is where we now stand. It will be seen at once that the garden at Arnold Circus is in fact a large mound; it is about fifteen feet high. Alfred Watkins believed this to be the original prehistoric mound of Friars' Mount and incorporated it into one of his Ley Lines. There is however some doubt as to whether this is really the remains of Friars' Mount at all. During a dig in 2009, the Museum of London discovered that a good deal of this mound was composed of rubble from the demolition of the Old Nichol slum. The suspicion was that it had all been piled into a heap and then planted with trees and flowers. In short, far from being a pre-Roman mound, this was no more than a massive Victorian rubbish dump!

There is a question mark about this explanation though, which seems to leave open the possibility that part at least of the garden at Arnold Circus is genuinely ancient. If thousands of old bricks, pieces of old tile, and cartloads of builders' rubble were to be piled fifteen feet high and a layer of gravel spread over the heap, it would not really be a fertile environment for planting trees and bushes, nor for establishing flower beds. And yet, as may readily be seen by glancing around, this mound seems to be covered with tress and bushes. In the centre of the garden, where there is a tarmac surface and a bandstand, there may well be some nineteenth century hardcore, but the bulk of the mound is made up of earth.

It might be unwise to attach to much attention to the legends and lore of primary school children, but before undertaking their excavation, Museum of London staff asked local residents how much they knew about the raised garden. Children in nearby flats believed that an ancient king was buried beneath the mound with a hoard of treasure! Far fetched as it might be, one is tempted to wonder if this could be a genuine folk memory of a barrow grave. Still with the lore of schoolchildren, something like a taboo is attached to this mound. There is a school nearby and plenty of families, but one never sees children playing here. Some parents do not like the place and forbid their children to enter the garden.

Whatever its origins, there is something a little other worldly about the Arnold Circus garden. There is certainly nothing like it anywhere else in London and it is hard to avoid the suspicion that this might indeed be the remains of some sort of mound dating from before the Roman occupation. It is by no means inconceivable that the slums of Old Nichol were built over Friars' Mount, which was revealed once more during the demolition.

Leaving Arnold Circus by Calvert Avenue, we arrive at Shoreditch High Street and then turn left. The church on our right, just before we turn into the High Street, is St Leonard's. This is one of the churches whose bells feature in the nursery rhyme, Oranges and Lemons. We are now heading South along the route of Ermine Street, a major Roman Road which led from London to Lincoln. The fourth turning on the right is Holywell Lane, where the priory used to be. The Holy Well itself was also somewhere in this vicinity. There can be little doubt that this area once formed part of the ritual landscape to the North of the Thames. A prehistoric mound, a holy well, boggy land and a spring all suggest this. When we see that a Christian religious house has been built over the top of this spot and the very name of the holy well adopted by the church, this practically clinches the matter. Walking down towards the City of London, we come first to Shoreditch and the Bishopsgate. The Walbrook runs alongside to our right, flowing under Liverpool Street Station. The area around the station was a huge Roman graveyard which lay just North of Londinium and stretched as far as Spitalfields. In 1999, an elaborate Roman coffin was found there.

Shortly after passing Liverpool Street Station on the right, we come to Camomile Street on the left and Wormwood Street on the right, which leads on to London Wall. This was where Ermine Street left Londonium. There was a gate in the city wall at this point. We turn right at this point into Wormwood street and walk along until we rejoin the Walbrook as it flowed under the wall at Moorgate. It was near here that many skulls were recovered from the bed of the river in the nineteenth century. In addition to human skulls, many face pots have also been found in the valley of the Walbrook. Almost all the complete examples known come from this area. Turning left into Moorgate, we walk above the course of the river towards the Bank of England. When we reach Lothbury we turn left and find the church of St Margaret's Lothbury. The vaults of this church were built over the Walbrook. Crossing the road, we arrive at the Bank of England, We are now in the valley of the Walbrook and the river still flows beneath our feet. During building works at the Bank of England, the Walbrook was seen flowing beneath the basement. Across the road is Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London. This too sits immediately above the course of the Walbrook, another curious instance of important buildings in the capital being located above old rivers.

Leading East is Cornhill, which was one of the two hills upon which Roman London was founded. The basilica was on Cornhill, it is now buried beneath Leadenhall Market. In the opposite direction, Cheapside points the way to Ludgate Hill. On the bank of the Walbrook near here stood a temple dedicated to Mithras. Mithraism, which had its roots in Persia, was a religion popular with Roman soldiers. Curiously, it was very much concerned with the death of a horned animal, a bull, whose sacrificial blood brought salvation. We have encountered this motif of the horned animal so often, that it should not really come as a surprise that a cult in London had at its heart the death of a bull. When this temple was discovered during building work in 1954, it created a sensation. Crowds queued for hours in order to view the archaeological site. It was hoped to preserve the building in situ, but this proved impossible. It was moved a few hundred yards to Victoria Street, which runs South West from Mansion House. It is worth visiting; the only temple to be excavated in the city.

Walking a few yards down Victoria Street brings us to the temple of Mithras on the left. Although this is the only temple discovered in London, there is a suspicion that the lower valley of the Walbrook near here was a religious area, with the banks of the stream being perhaps lined with temples and shrines.

Returning to mansion House, we walk down Walbrook. This street runs parallel with the river, which is about a hundred yards to the right and heading in the same direction that we are. Half way along this street on the right hand side was where the temple of Mithras was originally found. When we reach Cannon Street, we pause for a moment. To the right, there is a perceptible dip in cannon Street, marking the place where the river crosses the street towards the Thames. It is very easy to see when looking up and down Cannon Street that this is a river valley. We turn left and walk up Cannon Street for a short distance. Set in the wall of an empty shop is an unremarkable piece of white stone This is the London Stone and it has a very long history. According to some legends, this is part of an altar to Diana from a temple built by the Trojan prince Brutus which supposedly stood on Ludgate Hill. A more probably theory is that it is a Roman milestone, from which distances to the city were measured. What is certain is that it has been a part of the London scene for at least a thousand years and possibly twice as long.

We retrace our steps and cross Walbrook, heading for the dip in the road which marks the course of the Walbrook. We cross Cannon Street and then walk into Cloak Lane. 'Cloak' is a corruption of the Latin Cloaca, meaning sewer, which gives us an idea of how the Walbrook was treated by the time that it had reached this far in its journey to the Thames. If we walk to the Thames embankment, it is possible actually to see the Walbrook discharging into the Thames about a hundred yards to the West of Cannon Street railways Station. It is only possible to see this at low tide. We can now walk back to Cannon Street tube and railway station.

The task of Sisyphus

Readers with a smattering of erudition will no doubt catch the above allusion, which is to an ancient king condemned by the gods for his hubris. He was doomed to spend eternity rolling a heavy boulder up a hill each day; only to see it roll down again at nightfall, leaving him to attempt the task anew each morning. I know the feeling!

I set out a few weeks ago to explore the rationale behind the Welsh Assembly’s efforts to enforce compulsory registration and monitoring of home educated children. I hoped to do this by looking at a new aspect of the case each day and in this way gradually building up an understanding of what was going on. I need not have bothered. Even establishing the simplest and least controversial of facts proved too much and so I  have abandoned the attempt. Perhaps this was the intention of some of those commenting here?

To give an example of what I mean, I took two things for granted recently; two things connected with home education which are absolutely and incontrovertibly true and about which there cannot be the slightest doubt. Even with these simple facts, I found myself bombarded with objections and argument. No wonder we never got past the initial stages of considering the proposed Welsh legislation!

Here are the two, very basic and obvious statements which caused such debate;



The five outcomes of the Every Child Matters agenda were incorporated into the 2004 Children Act and are now the law of England



There has for years been a concerted campaign by some home education organisations and academics against the concept of a ‘broad and balanced curriculum’



Now I was not inviting readers to decide whether a couple of propositions from Russell’s Principia Mathematica were veridical. I was presenting two pieces of information, both of which had a bearing on discussions about the new Welsh law, and using them as givens so that we could look more closely at what is going on in the minds of those both in Wales and England who are demanding further powers with regard to home education.

It was a hopeless endeavour and  I shall according leave the topic of the Welsh legislation alone for the foreseeable future and concentrate more upon my own idiosyncratic views and opinions of things relating to home education in England. There is also, incidentally, the fact that I am currently writing three non-fiction books and a novel simultaneously and this is taxing even my powers,  to the extent that I have less time to engage in debate with those commenting here. Since it is discourteous to ignore comments, it seems better to limit myself for a while to posts such as this, to which nobody could really take exception.

Home educated children and the 'broad and balanced curriculum'

Regular readers will know that I am something of a connoisseur of hypocrisy among home educators. Not that I believe there to be more hypocrisy among them than the general population, but rather that some of the more prominent among them tend to be very po-faced and sanctimonious and so the hypocrisy is all the more entertaining.


A few days ago on the television news, Robert Goddard of ATL, a teaching union, said this:



`All evidence suggests that whilst some young people that are home educated do get a broad and balanced curriculum, there's a lot of evidence that suggests that quite a few of them don't. We feel that registration and monitoring of that provision will help towards all young people getting those skills and knowledge that they need to excel in life’



Inevitably, some home educators promptly went mad and accused him of a ‘slur’ against home educating parents. What evidence did he have that quite a few home educated children were not getting a broad and balanced curriculum?

Well of course, anybody who took part in the Graham Badman enquiry and the associated fuss will know full well that an awful lot of home educators were and are bitterly opposed to giving their children a ‘broad and balanced curriculum’. They have a visceral dislike of any curriculum; especially one which is broad and balanced. The concept of broad and balanced curriculum was regularly denounced on home educating blogs, forums and lists as a coercive tool, one which right-thinking home educators should reject. Here are Alan Thomas and Harriet Patterson explaining why they don’t think it is necessary for home educated children. See section 5 of the following:



http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmchilsch/memo/elehomed/me1602.htm




Last year, the Department for Education website said this about home education:



'parents do not have to follow the National Curriculum. However, parents should deliver a broad and balanced curriculum'


This caused such anger among many home educators that Fiona Nicholson got together with Ian Dowty to try and make them remove it. The very idea, that home educating parents should be delivering a broad and balanced curriculum! It was outrageous!

And so a few years down the line, after having fought vociferously for their right not to provide their children with a broad and balanced curriculum, somebody from one of the teaching unions notices this and remarks upon it. He is at once attacked. How dare he suggest that quite a few home educated children are not receiving a broad and balanced curriculum? Why, it is a thing beloved of home educators, all of whom do their very best to ensure that their children receive such a curriculum.

This is such a monumentally awful piece of barefaced hypocrisy, that it goes straight into the Simon Webb Hall of Hypocrisy Fame. Indeed, I think that it will be a strong contender for the Seth Pecksniff Memorial Prize for Arrant Hypocrisy. Seriously, has anybody ever heard a better example of the doublethink which goes on in the world of British home education?

Alternative provision funding, colleges and home education

A difficulty with some home educating parents is that once they have been out of touch with mainstream education for a while, they rather forget how things work. This is leading to yet another confrontation, this time regarding the alternative provision funding which Westminster makes to local authorities for children under sixteen who attend colleges rather than schools.


I must say, before I point out why this scheme is doomed, that I cannot for the life of me see why any parent in her senses would want to send her fourteen year-old daughter to a further education college, where she would be mixing at once not with other fourteen year-olds, but with young men of eighteen or nineteen. This seems quite mad to me, but then it is really no affair of mine. Let us ask why local authorities, schools and colleges would all be very wary about such an enterprise and probably try and stop it dead in its tracks if humanly possible.

What we have to bear in mind is that many fourteen year-olds currently at school, particularly the more mature ones, do not like being kept at school. They hate being treated as children, dislike wearing uniform, do not really want to call adults ‘Sir’ or need to ask permission to visit the lavatory and so on. They remain at school because most of their parents are unable or unwilling to educate them at home. If a method existed though whereby they could simply move from school to college and study there, there would be a great demand for it. In the last few months, it has started to become known that this is possible. All the parents have to do is de-register their children, allow them to ’deschool’ by watching television or playing computer games for a few months and then apply for a place at college. I know of at least one parent who has been bounced into doing this by her fourteen year-old son. She would not have dreamed of home educating, but is quite happy for her son to transfer to the local college. If the idea becomes widely known and catches on, there will be many more such parents.

If the present trickle were to become a flood, this would cause a massive change in further education colleges. At the moment, because nearly all the students are over sixteen, nobody needs to worry much about things like the age of consent, which kids are heading off to the pub at lunchtime, stringent child protection policies and a host of other things. If it is known that two students of seventeen have nipped back to somebody’s house and had sex at lunchtime; nobody cares. The situation would be very different if the place had a substantial proportion of fourteen and fifteen year-olds. It would quickly become a nightmare, with the lecturers having to assume the responsibilities of teachers acting in loco parentis. The students at college are currently past the age of compulsory education and this affects how the staff view them. This too would change if there were a lot of fourteen year-olds about.

There are other problems. The funding would tend to flow form the schools to the colleges. This would screw up the finances for local authorities. What would be the reaction for the general public if instead of children being kept on school premises, they were wandering around the town at all sorts of odd times? Why just fourteen year-olds? Why not thirteen or even eleven and twelve year-olds?

As long as arrangements of this sort were informal and rare, nobody much minded the occasional fourteen year-old attending college to study. It has been going on from time to time for many years. This is quite a different thing from making it an official policy of which anybody may take advantage. One final point and this really does puzzle me, is this. I can understand parents wishing to assume responsibility for their fourteen year-old child’s education; I did so myself. If they no longer wish to do so, if they want others to undertake the job on their behalf, then there exists a nationwide network of institutions dedicated to that end. Such places are present in even the smallest villages and will educate children whose parents do not wish to do so for themselves. These places are called schools and if home educating parents wish to stop educating their children at home then they can always send them to one of these establishments. Why must home educators try to ensure that the entire secondary educational system in the country is altered, indeed revolutionised,  for their convenience?

Getting into university, or not

One of the saddest things one ever encounters in the world of home education is watching that moment when a parent realises that the dogged pursuit of ideology has irrevocably screwed up a child’s life. Sometimes this moment is almost invisible. For example, seeing a mother on a blog who says, ‘We have decided not to do GCSEs’. Because it is of course parents who arrange and pay for the taking of such examinations, this may be translated as, ‘I   have decided that my child will not be taking GCSEs’. Sometimes, this particular decision is not altogether catastrophic for a home educated child. It is still possible to find some Further Education colleges which will allow a child in without GCSEs, although this is becoming rarer every year. Even then, it will seldom be for A levels and so the parent’s decision has effectively restricted the kid’s life chances at the age of twelve or thirteen. Even if she takes A levels, many universities will raise their eyebrows if she applies without having any GCSEs as well.

What is even worse that the above scenario is the parents who steadfastly refuses, and teaches her child to refuse, to consider gaining any formal qualifications up to the age of seventeen and then still hopes to be able to swing a place at university. Often, these people have been lured on in their folly by the story of Ian Dowty’s son getting into Oxford without any GCSEs or A levels and are unaware of the background to this story. They breeze up to some university in the Russell Group when their daughter or son is seventeen and try to get the child in on the strength of a portfolio or life experiences. This is truly tragic, because they have not the slightest chance of succeeding in this endeavour. Here is a very well-known home educator having this ‘Eureka’ moment of discovery last week. She writes:
Has anyone had any success with Edinburgh University?


We've just had a disappointing response to my home educating daughter's enquiry about what they 'need' for entrance. The bod suggests that my daughter put her home educating experience in her 'personal statement' and I feel like suggesting where the bod should put a copy of her mechanical response to student enquiries.

It's the usual demand for A levels or an Access Course.

Yet when we went up for the Open Day the head of the department was quite positive about her chances.

XXXXX

P.S. She wants to study Japanese at University level and Edinburgh's MA is 'supposed' to be the 'best'.

I find this almost literally unbelievable. Approaching one of the best universities in the United Kingdom without any A levels and hoping for her child to be given a place on the say-so of the mother! I am particularly enchanted by the anger she expresses towards Edinburgh University, as though it is somehow their fault that she has not arranged for her daughter to take A levels! Here is a woman who took her daughter on a misguided and foolish educational journey, only to find that the result is likely to be complete failure for the child. Can anybody imagine anything sadder?

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.

Clearing the ground…

One of the frustrating things about this blog is that I often assume that readers, being composed in the main of home educators and former home educators, will share with me a common knowledge about the situation regarding home education in this country. Many do not and I find myself having to explain even the most basic details before I can even think of progressing to a discussion of more complex matters, such as the possible need for new legislation. To give one example of this, somebody is still arguing on a thread which began a few days ago as to whether the five outcomes of the Every Child Matters agenda are binding in law. This is important, because any and all debates at every child protection conference in England will be dominated by Every Child Matters and the five outcomes. If the five outcomes are, as some described them in the comments here, no more than, ‘a policy of the last government’ or part of ‘a discussion paper’, then why on earth are social workers, teachers and local authority legal departments behaving as though they are the law of the land? It is this kind of nonsense that makes it very hard to get a proper discussion going here.

Every Child Matters was a green paper, largely concerned with child protection. One of its key recommendations was that professionals involved with children, including local authorities as a whole, should work actively to ensure that every child had access to five outcomes. These are; to be healthy, to stay safe, to enjoy and achieve, to make a positive contribution and to achieve economic wellbeing. The green paper gave rise to an act; the Children Act 2004. This enshrined in law some of the Every Child Matters agenda. For instance, the five outcomes became legal duties for local authorities to work towards. The wording was changed slightly and so the original five outcomes from ECM became;



physical and mental health and emotional well-being; .
protection from harm and neglect; .
education, training and recreation; .
the contribution made by them to society; .
social and economic well-being.


This means that the five outcomes of Every Child Matters are now part of the law of England and everybody working with children is mindful of this. Local authorities have a duty to work towards ensuring that all children in their area have access to these outcomes. It will be observed that education is one of them. The section about economic well-being is also connected with education, because the more qualifications a child gains, the more likely she is to get a good job and stop being poor.

I am aware, and so are local authorities, that some non- statutory guidance suggests that the 2004 Act lays no new duty upon local authorities as regards elective home education, but there is more to the case than that. I don’t propose to discuss that in detail; all that I felt I needed to do was demonstrate that the five outcomes of the Every Child Matters agenda are alive and well and that local authorities have a binding legal duty to ensure that every single child in their area, not just those at school, have access to them.

Having cleared up this misunderstanding, I hope in the next few days to return to the question of the urgent need for new legislation.