And do such articles reveal anything of what they want US, the reader, to think?

You may well have come across yet another article about home education in the media today.

Home education has been a “thing” for, essentially, as long as people have had children.

So, has it struck you as strange that all of a sudden we are seeing a remarkably increasing flurry of mainstream media articles, almost inevitably painting home education in a negative light?  

With the Government wishing to ensure support for the controversial Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill at Westminster, does the timing of such articles strike you as somewhat coincidental?

Take, for example, today’s article in the Times, Original article can be found here:  

Comments on the article can be noted here

You will find a far more eloquent rebuttal than we can provide in this letter to the Editor.

What are the problems and points of concern with this article?

One sided

Written giving the depiction of someone who doesn’t even seem to appreciate their actual job role. And/or conveying that if they do, of seeming to be “determined” to act beyond it.

Claims to be a “homeschool inspector”. It becomes difficult to trust whatever may follow such a claim of something that isn’t even a “thing”.

“Homeschool” is not the correct term for the families that this person claims to try to “inspect”. The account refers to families who home educate. “Homeschooling” is the term most appropriately used for non-home educated children who remain on the school roll but are unable to attend for whatever reason, where the council remains under duty to provide education. the use of the term isn’t just incorrect, isn’t just misleading, it is the use of a term that readily sets up a bias in the mind of the reader that home education should look like “schooling” but just be at home.

Mainstream media, such as this particular news source, repeatedly misleadingly use the term “homeschooling” instead of home education, despite numerous attempts of home educators to explain this is inappropriate.

Do the media seek to promote a “home education should look like school” concept?

Would the media persist in the repeated use of inappropriate terms about any other minority groups or elements of society?

Inspector” – when there is no such duty in law, no legal basis for such a role – as the English EHE and the Welsh CME guidance both confirm.

The lawful remit is to “establish the identities of children who are not in receipt of a suitable education” and act only “if it appears” they are not, not to monitor those who are.

Even this “inspector” admits that they do not have a statutory duty to do what they are trying to do, but then complains that people won’t let him/her act beyond or outside lawful remits.

Have to be “quite determined” – to do what?

Seemingly to try to get access into people’s homes without lawful remit or reason other than the lawful lifestyle choices of the family?

Isn’t that seeking to control the will and behaviour of others to suit personal opinions and agendas, without lawful basis?

Is this the kind of person you really want to give markedly increased and unprecedented powers to?

Especially without any true accountability? With no independent complaints or advocacy systems. Without any appeals, mediation or tribunal mechanism. Even though Welsh Government acknowledged the need for such years ago but has failed to act on such recommendations.

And when the Welsh Government don’t even want a clause to apply to Wales that would give even give the opportunity for the community to give feedback on their experience of such approaches?

Ableist, lacking understanding of children and of home education.

“Home schooling used to be for religious reasons or based on lifestyle, like wanting to go travelling around the world in a campervan”. Is that really the narrow limit of understanding of the many reasons for home education over the years? this statement depicts such a narrow and stereotypical concept of home education, and would appear to reflect a lack of true engagement with home educators, the kind of engagement that comes from trust. Tell us you don’t understand home education without telling us you don’t understand home education.

“Tell us you don’t understand home education without telling us you don’t understand home education”

 is also demonstrated in the revealing quote, “trying to be their teacher is going to be difficult”. Trying to repeat any approach that has already failed is likely to continue to fail. Home education involves a very wide range of pedagogy, with many such approaches not being a “top-down” “teacher” and subordinate approach. Many approaches involve co-learning, facilitating learning, and are based on very relational engagement not on more authoritarian or didactic practices.

Likewise, displays the limited concept of considering education only to be valid and suitable if it is pre-planned by an adult, dismissing the validity and benefits of so many child-based and child-focused pedagogy. This is contrary to both the English and Welsh guidance on EHE that directs staff to respect a wide range of educational approaches, guidance that this employee is meant to operate under.

“Now parents see it as an easier option than fighting with their children about going to school every morning”.

That comment shows a jaw-dropping lack of understanding of a whole range of needs and difficulties that children face. It also is phenomenally patronising to the experiences and efforts of parents to act in the “best interest” of their children. The comment depicts so many parents as lazy and not caring,

not just those who home educate but all parents who have children that do not slot unquestioningly and without any problems into the fixed school system.

And surely if there is such a great conflict required to “get” so many children to school, then the question should be “why”? What is wrong with the school system? instead of deflecting blame onto parents and children, as so many of these articles seem to do.

“Are students confusing the normal feelings of adolescence and a lack of resilience with poor mental health? There are very distinct differences between diagnosed anxiety and feeling anxious about certain situations, but many parents and children in elective home education (EHE) are approaching them as the same thing”. A remarkably presumptive claim to know and understand what “many parents” are doing, to know and understand what so many children are experiencing.

Yet the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is based on the presumption that council employees such as this will always act in a child’s “best interests”, that in many situations they are better able than parents to do so, that they will always do so without bias, prejudice, presumption, mistakes, or unhelpful influences- let alone without good understanding of the child, without the trust of the child to confide, without the lived experiences of being with that child in the trusting confiding relationship that a child has with their parent. Without any independent redress.

Framing literacy and numeracy as “Maths and English” further demonstrates a limited understanding of a wider range of approaches to learning and education, reflects a limited school-centric conceptualisation. Likewise, the expectation that “every child, home schooled or not, is expected to be numerate and literate” is a rather ironic and revealing one, given the significant numbers of children who leave the state school system functionally illiterate or innumerate. The presumption in this media article is that this would not be the case if children had “teachers” and went to “school”.

The use of the term “pupil” for home educated children is quite revealing. A “pupil” conventionally refers to “a person, especially a child, who is taught in school”, and is not a term used by home educators to refer to home educated children and young people.
It connotes a particular style and approach to education, even if referred to tutoring outside of school.
 The use of this term in the context of this article betrays a lack of knowledge for someone who portrays themselves as an expert in home education, for someone who claims to have such insights into the lives and experiences of home educators, as well as reiterating a school-centric perception of education.

Further misinformation – the figure of 7,400 cited in the article is not the number of “Attendance notices”, more correctly referred to as School Attendance Orders. It is the number of notices issued under s437(1), asking for information to confirm that the child is in receipt of a suitable education, not notices to compel school attendance.
Plus, of course, just because notices of whatever kind have been issued, that does not mean to say they have been issued correctly. Certain LAs have a very high rate of issuing S437(1) notices, or School Attendance Orders in one LA, but when families move from those to other LAs, staff using the same legislation and powers can confirm there is no cause to believe the child is missing education. The marked discrepancies in use of existing powers, as seen by objective research of rates of instigation of legal proceedings against families is strongly suggestive of misuse of existing powers by certain staff or councils. There is no independent appeals or complaints mechanism for when there is a difference in opinion on what is considered to be a suitable education for each individual child, no mediation or advocacy service. The only way to address any mistakes or differences in opinion if a council instigates legal action against parents is for parents to allow themselves to be prosecuted by the council so that they can put their case to a magistrate. This is problematic enough as and when there is misuse of existing powers, yet the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would seek to give unprecedented powers to council staff but refuse to give any form of complaints, appeals, or tribunal mechanisms. Nor does it offer any form of support, mediation or advocacy service to parents forced to defend themselves and their children’s right to an education that is individual to and suitable for each child through the courts. Parents usually have to defend themselves in such cases, whereas the council have the full weight of their legal departments to draw from as representation. Hardly a level playing field. if the state does try to play at being co-parent, it’s not exactly an equal one in such matters.
But the presumption of the CWS Bill is that council staff will never act in a way that is misguided, biased, discriminatory, inflexible, but will always act in a way that is respectful and appreciates all approaches to education. Do we see any evidence in the account given by this “homeschooling inspector” that this isn’t always the case?

There are so many conflations.

Including conflating children ending up as “NEET” with the process of home education, rather than the underlying problems that school failed to address.

Including mental health problems that school may well have contributed to, and been exacerbated by any expectation that “fighting” between parents and children to get them to school is necessary and to be encouraged.

“Some parents argue that it’s infringing on their human rights. These are often the middle classes, who cannot comprehend what EHE means in socially deprived towns”. What can one say – presumptive, patronising, demeaning, discriminatory, lacking understanding and insight into lives and experiences?

Lack of understanding of education in general

“Parents have to make sure their child receives a full-time education but do not have to follow the national curriculum, leaving a lot to interpretation”.

Yes, exactly! Excellent!

The comment is conveyed as if it is a negative, as something that needs curtailing or legislating against.

But that is just one of the most wonderful benefits of home education. It enables the excellent opportunity for a “lot of interpretation” of what education means and looks like, for how it is delivered and implemented, and how received and built upon.

It allows that flexibility and diversity that benefits so many children,

not only those that the author seems to believe require “fighting” with to try to get to school,

not only those with additional needs,

but all children.

Surely society benefits from diversity? Including in approaches to education.   

Plus, of course, private schools don’t have to follow the National Curriculum either, and many choose not to.
The National Curriculum is hardly the gold standard for education, especially when you consider the outcomes of state schools – how many young people leave state schools without the benchmark of 5 GCSEs, let alone how many leave still being functionally illiterate or innumerate.

“Anyone assessing home conditions would expect that there would be a quiet space with a desk, a laptop and access to the internet as a bare minimum but many don’t have that. I have regularly found families living in multiple occupancy housing, with no suitable place to learn”. So, there appears to be a presumption that learning can and should only happen in certain places, in certain ways, via certain means. Only in designated “learning spaces”? Only at “a desk? Only involving the “internet”? Only if it is “quiet”? Thus, failing to grasp the many other ways children can and do learn, and how alternative locations and methods are often far more beneficial than being sat at a desk on the internet. Does the author also misunderstand true self-directed learning and risk false conflations?

And are staff already “assessing” home conditions and making such judgements even without legal remits to do so?

Is not forcing children to attend school when this is not the preferred approach to education or when it is inappropriate for them, when it does not meet their needs for a whole range of reasons, more “like rolling a dice” and “gambling with children’s lives”? Or would forcing children into school environments where they inappropriate or inaccessible, where they do not meet their educational or relational needs, when they are contrary to their wellbeing or their family’s choice, be far more certain than “rolling a dice” and “gambling” to damage the wellbeing and education of children?

Deflection from real problems

How can such a person be the one to “advise” any parents who are said to ring “begging for help” and be the source of “information” on how to engage in true learning, given such a lack of understanding of education beyond a “school at home” model?

When one model, such as “school” and adult led “teaching” has already failed, then trying to keep reinforcing and repeating the same approach is just to continue to try to force a square peg into a round hole.

One valid point is made in the observation that “The risk of fines only adds to the pressure. Persistent absence (defined as anything below 90 per cent school attendance) can lead to penalties of up to £2,500, or court orders”.

Any such pressure to deregister because of these is therefore a problem of the Government’s own creation.

It is a demonstration that punitive actions such as fines and court orders for families where school is proving not a suitable option, are counterproductive and ineffective. But this article, nor the person being quoted, do not evaluate or consider this.

Instead, the tone is of further parent blaming,

of a seeming attempt to sow seeds of distain or suspicion about parents who advocate for their children and choose not to take up the state in its offer of free “schooling”.

Likewise, the reference to the cost of sitting examinations is a valid point.

Yes, parents who home educate are responsible for the cost of education, including increasingly high prices for sitting external examinations as a private candidate.

 But again, this is a problem of the government’s own creation.

The government has the ready capacity to allow children to sit examinations as private candidates in its own schools, or in free alternative provisions that it already makes for other children who do not attend school but remain on the roll (as provided for children who are EOTAS, including those at pupil referral units).

Likewise, the government has opportunity and capacity to readily ensure paid for examination provision is affordable and accessible to all.

But no.
The government has refused to facilitate this, with the only “support” offered in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is for LAs to offer “advice and information” – advice and information from sources that, if this article gives any representative depiction of, are not exactly very informed or able to give truly beneficial, insightful or unbiased “advice”.

Are evaluations of the kinds of statements seen in this Times article, or expectations for public servants and council staff to behave in a way that is informed, respectful and within lawful remits, to “hung, draw and quarter”?

Are articles like this present one in today’s Sunday Times considered “journalism”, or could the term “propaganda piece” be more appropriate, given the imbalanced unscrutinised nature of the piece timely coinciding with governmental agenda?

Do such articles seek to persuade the reader to follow and appropriate the government’s intentions? Especially as a “Sunday” piece?
Is this appropriate conduct by the media?

Or, with more informed reading of such articles, are such articles demonstration of just why we cannot entrust council staff with unprecedented levels of power over ordinary families?

Especially without due accountability and redress for when such powers would be used mistakenly, inappropriately or because of bias.