When my brother told me that he was not going to send his children to school I
felt it was my duty to put him straight. Education is best left to the
professionals: how else are your kids going to learn how to socialise, play
team sports, behave badly in the lunch queue? But what I really meant was: I
am sending my children to school, so what’s good enough for me should be
good enough for you.
People who elect not to send their children to school are troubling to the
rest of us. They offend our sense of the way things should be: after all, we
went to school – and while they may not have been the happiest days of our
lives, going to class made us into the people we are today.
It’s the norm, and while we all have the right to educate our children at
home, in practice not many people do. The official figure for children being
educated at home is about 20,000, less than 1% of school-age children in
this country (although many believe that there are more such children we
don’t know about). Despite the relatively small numbers, the government has
commissioned a report on home education by the former director of children’s
services in Kent, Graham Badman, which recommends that all children being
taught at home should be registered with their local authority and their
educational progress monitored with home visits.
This suggestion appears to have been foreshadowed by several cases of child
abuse among home-schooled children, including one currently going through
court in Birmingham, where seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq was allegedly starved
to death by her parents. If the child had gone to school, the argument goes,
her dramatic weight loss would have been noticed by a teacher and reported
to the authorities. Badman told The Sunday Times last week that child abuse
cases were “roughly double” among the home-educated.
The children’s minister, Baroness Morgan, says, “We can’t afford to let any
child slip through the net, in terms of their education or safety.” If the
recommendations are adopted, parents who are not doing a good enough job
could be refused a licence to teach their children at home. It is ironic
that these recommendations should come in the week that a nursery school
teacher who had been checked by the Criminal Records Bureau and inspected by
the Office for Standards in Education has been charged with the sexual abuse
of children.
This point is not lost on the home schoolers, who are furious that the
government should seek to interfere. Peter Williams, who gave up his job as
a paint sprayer to educate his son, also Peter, because the boy’s school
refused to give him more than 10 days off a year to take part in chess
tournaments, says the report is “disgraceful”. “They are trying to clamp
down on home education under the disguise of welfare. It’s just a way of
attacking parents. They want power over us because of how we choose to
educate our children. They already have all the powers they need. Look at
Baby P – he was seen by everybody.”
Janey Lee Grace, a radio broadcaster who has spent the past 10 years home
educating her four children, has some sympathy with the welfare issue but
feels that any interference with the content of education is simply an
attempt to force children back into the classroom. “The state can’t stand
people who have any kind of freedom to just get on with it,” she says. “It’s
the same kind of dogma that says two-year-olds should be taught computer
skills rather than being out in their wellies in the sandpit.”
Many home schoolers take their children out of conventional education because
they are impatient with the test-driven culture of primary schools, and want
their children to develop at their own pace. Ann Newstead has four sons
between two and 13, and has taught her children at home since she took her
then seven-year-old son out of school because he was being bullied.
“I don’t accept the right of the state to tell me what is a suitable education
for my children,” she says. “Schools offer the shotgun approach to
education. You fire off a lot of pellets, so you don’t have to aim it very
well. That leads to the average pupil getting an average education. I offer
a different type of education for each of my boys – instead of a scatter gun
they get a marksman’s bullet. So, for example, my eldest son wants to be an
actor so he goes to a theatre group where he is preparing for his bronze
arts award. My 11-year-old son has Asperger’s syndrome – he learns online
and he loves maths. My seven-year-old son suffers from borderline
oppositional defiant disorder, which means that if you say one thing he does
another, and that’s very difficult. But had he been at school he would
probably have been excluded by now. And my two-year-old is just enjoying
growing up with his older brothers around.”
I remember feeling concerned when my nephew could not read at the age of
seven. I thought my brother was wilfully jeopardising his son’s future, but
he pointed out that in most European countries children aren’t taught to
read until six or even seven. And he was right. A year later my nephew could
read and write fluently, and is now at one of the best grammar schools in
the country doing a clutch of GCSEs. His two youngest siblings are still
being educated at home. They have extra help for maths and music but
otherwise they are taught by my brother and his wife.
A lot of “lessons” happen at the beach – fossil collecting for instance. I
don’t know how either child would do in a Sats test but I do know that these
confident, articulate children know more about Jurassic sedimentation than
any teacher I have met. In fact, when I see my eight-year-old daughter
reluctant to go to school because she has no one to play with or because
maths is “boring”, I wonder if I am doing the right thing by sending her.
There is definitely a case for secondary school: pretty much all cultures have
a mechanism where pubescent children learn independently of their parents,
whether they are Masai warriors or boarders at Eton. However, in the early
years, what children need to develop are confidence and curiosity. My
nephews and niece have that in abundance. I wish I could say the same for
all primary school children.
Instead of hedging in home educators with inspections, we should applaud the
parents who decide to take on their children’s education rather than packing
them off to school all day.
Additional reporting: Amanda Blinkhorn
