HomeSchooler.org.uk

Dear Ms Gilbert,

We are a national network formed to take action in defence of the freedom of families to choose to educate their children outside the school system. At the time of writing, we have 733 members.

Some of our members have been approached by their local authorities and asked to participate in a research exercise being undertaken by Ofsted. Having read your letter which was supplied in answer to a Parliamentary question on 10th November (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm091110/text...) and having also seen the questionnaires your inspectors are sending to home educators in the sample authorities, we are gravely concerned by the erroneous assumptions which appear to be underlying the process.

Our concerns are:

1. Parents who provide education for their children directly are not subject to inspection by Ofsted, nor by local authorities. We do not understand why Ofsted is undertaking to provide "independent inspection evidence about the quality of provision and outcomes for this group of children and young people". Is this about the quality of education provided by parents, or about the quality of services provided for home educating families by local authorities? Your letter to the minister is not clear on this point.

The letter to parents also does not explain the purpose of the survey. It compares the process to an inspection in a school, and states that the inspectors will not be able to comment about the local authority when meeting with parents. This suggests that the purpose of the exercise is to inspect the local authorities. However, the accompanying questionnaires ask about the content of the children's education in some detail. This is nothing to do with local authority services, and indicates that your survey is an inspection of parents' own educational provision. The letter does not make it clear to parents that there is no obligation on them or their children to respond to the questionnaires, nor that their provision is not being inspected by Ofsted.

2. Why are electively home educated children and children who go missing from school being studied together? These are two very different groups of people, and there is no reason to lump them together in this way.

3. Your letter to the minister claims that the 15 selected local authorities are 'representative'. This may or may not be the case depending how they were selected but because there is no requirement for parents to notify their local authority if they are home educating, there is no way of knowing what proportion of home educating families are known to the local authorities in the sample areas and how representative they will be of all home educating families in the area. Have local authorities been asked to contact all home educating families known to them, or has there been some preselection of participants? As we will explain further below, there are also serious problems with the design of the questionnaires, which are very likely to lead to a misrepresentation of actual EHE practice. For these reasons, we think it would be unsafe to draw any general conclusions from the 'data' you may gather through this exercise.

4. Parents and children in the sample authorities have been sent questionnaires which clearly reveal a lack of understanding of how home education works in reality. We do not understand the purpose of the questionnaires, and are extremely concerned that the answers given by a few parents will be used to draw false conclusions about home educating families in general.

To give some specific examples:

5. In both questionnaires, many of the questions presume a particular educational model, in which children are taught by an adult, education happens in a specific place, and some activities are particularly designated as 'study' or 'work'. For many home educated children, learning happens in a more holistic way than these questions recognise. Your questionnaire will therefore lead to these children and their parents being forced to misrepresent their true experiences, or being unable to fill in the questionnaire.

6. The lists of leisure activities and subjects for 'study' appear quite random. Why, for example, are three different types of dance included (dance, ballet, tap) while there is no mention of drama, music, or any of the hundreds of other activities children may participate in? Why does the list of subjects include pottery and electronics, but not history, geography or any languages other than English? Many home educated children learn about all kinds of things through living their everyday lives, without differentiating between different 'subjects'. For these children and their parents, it is not necessary or possible to demarcate 'study' of English from that of religion, or cooking from science. This question will therefore be meaningless for them.

7. What is the purpose of asking both children and parents whether the children read every day and for how long? For anyone who can read, reading is not a discrete activity that happens for a specific period of time each day. As well as enabling people to sit down and read a book, it is a skill used in all other aspects of life, and therefore cannot be measured in the way suggested by the questionnaire.

8. How will your research take account of the fact that some children may have not considered their plans for age 16? Or that their plans may change between now and when they reach that age? Many home educated children choose paths at or before age 16 that are not included on your list. For example, following courses of study other than GCSEs (eg Open University courses, Diplomas, or IGCSEs), becoming self-employed, or some combination of these with continuing home education.

9. Why does the children's questionnaire ask about whether children felt they could talk to adults at school about any problems, but not about whether they have someone to talk to about any problems now that they are home educated?

Having seen the memorandum submitted by Ofsted to the Children, Families and Schools Select Committee's inquiry into the Badman Review of Elective Home Education (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmchilsch/mem...), we are very concerned about any research into home educated children's lives being carried out on behalf of an organisation which believes that parents should be subjected to a CRB check before being permitted to educate their own children.

We are struck by the contrast between Ofsted's concern for the rights of home educated children to express a view about where they should be educated, and the response of schools and local authorities to those school pupils who express a view on their place of education by truanting or refusing to attend school. Will Ofsted now be recommending that the views of children being registered at school should be sought, and that statutory guidance should be issued to local authorities on the steps to be taken if a child does not wish to be educated at school?

For your information, a recent survey of home educated children and young people found that over 95% of the 771 respondents felt that their rights had been taken into account when the decision was made to choose home education. (http://www.ukhome-educators.co.uk/Survey/Home%20Educated%20Children%20Su...). Indeed many stated that the decision had wholly or primarily been their own.

We suggest that if you want to understand home education, you begin by reading the available research on the subject. For example:

- Paula Rothermel's 2002 study of over 1000 home educated children (http://www.pjrothermel.com/phd/Home.htm)
- How children learn at home, by Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison (Continuum International Press, 2008)
- The Face of Home-based Education 1: Who, Why and How?, by Mike Fortune-Wood (Educational Heretics Press, 2005)
- The Face of Home-based Education 2: Numbers, Support, Special Needs, by Mike Fortune-Wood (Educational Heretics Press, 2006)

We look forward to receiving your response to our questions and comments.

Yours sincerely,

Dani Ahrens
on behalf of the Badman Review Action Group