Deepish inside, p22, the article was “UK students lose out in sciences” by Nick Mcdermott.  The article quotes a report by Civitas that shows that while the annual number of students in so called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) courses rose by around 6500 in the 10 years 1997-2007, in fact this is largely due to an increase of 12,308 in overseas students and a fall in UK students of nearly 6000.  Given an overall increase in student numbers of 600,000 in this period and employers “calling for more science graduates”, the STEM drop is particularly marked.

While the figures I assume are correct, the Mail article leaves the false impression that the overseas students are in some way taking places from the UK students, indeed the article’s title “UK students lose out” suggests precisely this.  I can’t work out if this is simply the writer’s ignorance of the UK higher education system, or deliberate misinformation — neither are good news for British journalism.

Of course, the truth is precisely the opposite.  Overseas students are not in competition with UK students for undergraduate places in STEM or other subjects, as the number of UK students is effectively controlled by a combination of Government quotas and falling student demand in STEM subjects.  The latter, a disinterest in the traditionally ‘hard’ subjects by University applicants, has led to the closure of several university science departments across the country.  Rather than competing with UK students, the presence of overseas students makes courses more likely to be viable and thus preserves the variety of education available for UK students.  Furthermore, the higher fees for overseas students compared with the combined student fees and government monies for UK students, means that, if anything, these overseas students subsidise their UK colleagues.

We should certainly be asking why it is that an increasing number of overseas students value the importance of a science/engineering training while their British counterparts eschew these areas.  However, the blame for the lack of UK engineering graduates does not lie with the overseas students, but closer to home.  Somehow in our school system and popular culture we have lost a sense of the value of a deep scientific education.  Until this changes and UK students begin to apply for these subjects, we cannot expect there to be more UK graduates.  In the mean time, we can only hope that there will be more overseas students coming to study in the UK and keep the scientific and engineering expertise of universities alive until our own country finally comes to its senses.

However, this is also a wonderful example of the way open data can be used to challenge unsupported views including official ones or ‘common knowledge’.  Of course, during the recent voting reform referendum, David Cameron expressed his disinterest in data and statistics compared with gut feelings, so the availability of data is only half the battle!

1. Thanks to Laura Cowen @lauracowen for re-tweeting this. [back]
2. See BBC News: Cameron: ‘Eton should set up a state school’ [back]

An Independent article on this lists various high profile figures who got third class degrees (albeit all from prestigious universities), who would therefore not be eligible – including Carol Vorderman, who is the Conservative Party’s ‘maths guru’².

The proposed policy and the reporting of it raise three questions for me.

First is the perennial problem that the reporting only tells half the story.  Who are these one third of language trainees and one quarter of science trainees who currently do not have 2:2 degrees? Are they recent graduates who have simply not done well in their courses and treating teaching as an easy option? Are they those that maybe made poor choices in their selected courses, but nonetheless have broader talents after careful assessment by the teaching course admissions teams? Or are they mature students who did not do well in university, or maybe never went, but have been admitted based on their experience and achievements since (as we would do for any advanced degree, such as an MSc)?  If it were the first of these, then I think most parents and educators would agree with the government line, but I very much doubt this is the case.  However, with only part of the story how are we to know?  I guess I could read the full report, or maybe the THES has a more complete story, but how many parents reading about this are likely to do so?

Second is the implicit assumption that degree level study in a particular subject is likely to make you a good teacher in that subject.  Certainly in my own first subject, mathematics, many of the brightest mathematicians are unlikely to be good school teachers. In general in the sciences, I would far prefer a teacher who has a really deep understanding of GCSE and A level Physics to one who has a hazy (albeit sufficient to get 2:2 or even 2:1 degree) knowledge at degree-level. I certainly want teachers who have the interest and excitement in their topic to keep up-to-date beyond the minimum needed for their courses, but a broad ‘James Gleik’ style popular science, is probably more useful than third year courses in a Physics degree.

Finally the focus on degree classification, suggests that Michael Gove has a belief in a cross-discipline, cross-department, and cross-institutional absolute grading that appears risible to anyone working in Higher Education. Does he really believe that a 2:2 from Oxford is the same as a 2:2 at every UK institution? If so then I seriously doubt his ability to be hold the education portfolio in government.

To be fair this is a real problem in the Higher Education system as it is hard for those not ‘in the know’ to judge the meaning of grades, especially as it is not simply a matter of institution, often particular parts of an institution (notably music, arts and design schools) have a different profile to the institution as a whole. Indeed we have the same problem within the university system when judging grades from other countries. This has not been helped by gradual ‘grade inflation’ across the education sector from GCSE to degrees, driven in no small part by government targets and independent ‘league tables’ that use crude measures largely unrelated to real educational success. Institutions feel under constant pressure to create rules that meet various metrics to the detriment of real academic judgement³.

If the government is seriously worried about the standard of teachers entering the profession, then shift funding of courses towards measures of real success and motivation – perhaps percentage of students who subsequently obtain public-sector teaching jobs. If the funding moves the selection will follow suit!

… and maybe at the same time this should apply across the sector.  A few weeks ago I was at the graduation at LIPA, which is still managing near 100% graduate employment despite the recession and severe cuts across the arts.  Not that employment is the only measure of success, but if metrics are to be used, then at least make them real ones. Or better still drop the metrics, targets and league tables and let students both at school and university simply learn.

1. Hit headlines about a week ago in the UK, just catching up after holiday! [back]
2. “Reforms of teacher training will bring mass shortages, report finds“, Richard Garner, The Independent, Thursday, 11 August 2011, p14-15. [back]
3. In fact, I came very close to resigning earlier in the summer over this issue. [back]

“What does qualification mean? … Grammatically, a qualification limits the meaning of a sentence. And that’s what qualifications seem to do to people. When you become a lawyer it becomes impossible to think of yourself outside that definition. The whole of the education system is designed to fit people into employment, into the system. It’s not designed to realise their full creativity.”

Now Stuart may be being slightly cynical and maybe the ‘whole of education system’ is not like that, but sadly the general thrust often seems so.

Indeed I recently tweeted a link to @fmeawad‘s post “Don’t be Shy to #fail” as it echoed my own long standing worries (see “abject failures“) that we have a system that encourages students to make early, virtually unchangeable, choices about academic or career choices, and then systematically tell them how badly they do at it. Instead the whole purpose of education should be to enable people to discover their strengths and their purposes and help them to excel in those things, which are close to their heart and build on their abilities.  And this may involve ‘failures’ along the way and may mean shifting areas and directions.

At a university level the very idea behind the name ‘university’ was the bringing together of disparate scholars.  In “The Rise and Progress of  Universities” (Chapter 2. What is a University?, 1854) John Henry Newman (Cardinal Newman, recently beatified) wrote:

“IF I were asked to describe as briefly and popularly as I could, what a University was, I should draw my answer from its ancient designation of a Studium Generale, or “School of Universal Learning.” This description implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot;—from all parts; else, how will you find professors and students for every department of knowledge? and in one spot; else, how can there be any school at all? Accordingly, in its simple and rudimental form, it is a school of knowledge of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners from every quarter. Many things are requisite to complete and satisfy the idea embodied in this description; but such as this a University seems to be in its essence, a place for the communication and circulation of thought, by means of personal intercourse, through a wide extent of country.”

Note the emphasis on having representatives of many fields of knowledge ‘in one spot’: the meeting and exchange, the flow across disciplines, and yet is this the experience of many students?  In the Scottish university system, students are encouraged to study a range of subjects early on, and then specialise later; however, this is as part of a four year undergraduate programme that starts at 17.  At Lancaster there is an element of this with students studying three subjects in their first year, but the three year degree programmes (normally starting at 18) means that for computing courses we now encourage students to take 2/3 of that first year in computing in order to lay sufficient ground to cover material in the rest of their course.  In most UK Universities there is less choice.

However, to be fair, the fault here is not simply that of university teaching and curricula; students seem less and less willing to take a wider view of their studies, indeed unwilling to consider anything that is not going to be marked for final assessment.  A five year old is not like this, and I assume this student resistance is the result of so many years in school, assessed and assessed since they are tiny; one of the reasons Fiona and I opted to home educate our own children (a right that seems often under threat, see “home education – let parents alone!“).  In fact, in the past there was greater degree of cross-curricula activity in British schools, but this was made far more difficult by the combination of the National Curriculum prescribing content,  SATs used for ‘ranking’ schools, and increasingly intrusive ‘quality’ and targets bureaucracy introduced from the 1980s onwards.

Paradoxically, once a student has chosen a particular discipline, we often then force a particular form of breadth within it.  Sometimes this is driven by external bodies, such as the BPA, which largely determines the curriculum in psychology courses across the UK.  However, we also do it within university departments as we determine what for us is considered a suitable spread of studies, and then forcing students into it no matter what their leanings and inclinations, and despite the fact that similar institutions may have completely different curricula.  So, when a student ‘fails’ a module they must retake the topic on which they are clearly struggling in order to scrape a pass or else ‘fail’ the entire course.  Instead surely we should use this this as an indication of aptitude and maybe instead allow students to take alternative modules in areas of strength.

Several colleagues at Talis are very interested in the Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU), which is attempting to create a much more student-led experience. I would guess that Stuart Hill might have greater sympathy with this endeavour, than with the traditional education system.  Personally, I have my doubts as to whether being virtually / digitally ‘in one spot‘ is the same as actually being co-present (but the OU manage), and whether being totally student-led looses the essence of scholarship, teaching¹ and mentoring, which seems the essence of what a university should be. However, P2PU and similar forms of open education (such as the Khan Academy)  pose a serious intellectual challenge to the current academic system: Can we switch the balance back from assessment to education?  Can we enable students to find their true potential wherever it lies?

1. Although ‘teaching’ is almost a dirty word now-a-days, perhaps I should write ‘facilitating learning’! [back]

There are two issues here.  One is for the island and other small communities, as the funding formulae assume class sizes that are untenable in a small school; that is making sure the cuts that come, and we know they must, are applied fairly.

The second is  wider, remembering that all parties in the election promised to protect ‘front line services’; this is part of  a cut across all education provision in the region – everywhere there are less teachers … and this is before the harshest budget cuts begin.

I too have worried about the demise of interest not just in computers, but in science and technology in general.  Also, the way Apple exercise almost draconian control over the platform is well documented (even rejecting an eBook application for fear it could be used to read the Karma Sutra!).

However, is the problem the closedness of the platform?  On the iPhone and other smartphones, it is the apps that catch imagination and these are ‘open’ in the sense that it is possible to programme your own.  Sure Apple charge for the privilege (why – the income surely can’t be major!), but it is free in education.  So what matters, app development, is open … but boy is it hard to get started on the iPhone and many platforms.

It is not the coding itself, but the hoops you need to go through to get anything running, with multiple levels of ritual incantations.  First you need to create a Certificate signing request to get Development certificate and a Provisioning profile based on your Device ID … sorry did I lose you, surely not you haven’t even written a line of code yet, for that you really need to understand the nib file … ooops I’ve lost the web page where I read how to do that, wait while I search the Apple Developer site …

Whatever happened to:

10 print "hello world"

This is not just the iPhone, try building your first Facebook app, … or if you are into open standards X Windows!

Nigel Davies said his 7 year old is just starting to code using Scratch. I recall Harold Thimbleby‘s son, now an award winning Mac developer similarly starting  using Hypercard.

If we would like a generation of children enthused by Facebook and the iPhone, to become the next generation of computer scientists, then we need to give them tools to get started as painless and fun as these.

The central premise of Tomasello’s book is that:

(1) only cultural development can explain the remarkable development of the human race in the past 200 thousand years, as the changes we have seen are simply not explainable in terms of genetic evolution during that timescale

(2) the crucial genetic step that has fuelled this cultural explosion and the essential difference between humans and other animals is our ability to attribute intentionality to each other, to interpret others’ actions as being for some purpose.

Early on Tomasello describes this as:

“the ability of individual organisms to understand conspecifics as beings like themselves who have intentional and mental lives like their own” (p. 5, Tomasello’s emphasis)

While I agree with the broad argument, this specific statement is almost the opposite of the hypothesis, which I often talk about, concerning the origins of self-consciousness. In particular I suggest that the very concept of self may be an accident of sociality; we are aware of ourselves as intentional beings because we are aware of the intentionality of others.

By self-consciousness here I mean not feeling awkward in company, but the explicit awareness of oneself. This is not the same as consciousness, or simply being aware (one of the deepest mysteries), but more the declarative knowledge that one has intentions, actions, and thoughts.

My own argument runs like this.

In order to survive and prosper we need to be able to predict the actions of other creatures and our fellow humans. When chasing a rabbit it is useful to know that the rabbit will run away when it sees you approach, and that it will try to reach a nearby rabbit hole. Similarly, it is useful to know that one’s fellow hunters will attempt to cut off its escape route. These reactions during hunting could be purely instinctive, and probably are for many creatures such as pack animals, but with higher reasoning we can be more creative in terms of the strategies we use whether as hunter or prey; and this higher-order thinking is most effective when we can predict the actions of other creatures.

When the creature we are predicting is behaving largely instinctively, then our predictions can be similarly relatively simple. However, if the creature we wish to predict, a fellow human, is also able to employ these higher-order strategies, then we need to understand these in order to understand the other’s behaviour. In order to predict the behaviour of our fellow hunter, we need to take into account her understanding of the rabbit; and moreover, her understanding of ourself¹.

That is, to understand others one has to think about oneself as if from the outside — self consciousness!

Returning to Tomasello, his argument is about mutual understanding as a means to learn through creatively emulating others, whereas my argument above is more about the instrumental understanding of others. Being able to understand motivation helps both. The instrumental case, I’ve already described – by understanding what motivations drove your behaviour I can more accurately predict under what circumstances you will behave similarly.

Tomasello’s developmental case is similar. If I am able to imitate others then I have additional behaviours that I can employ, but I still have to learn pretty much for myself when they are appropriate. However, if I know why someone else is behaving in the way that they do then I can instantly know when those behaviours are appropriate for me. When the reasons for behaviour are readily visible in the environment, for example, a sound in the bushes and everyone running, then no model of mind is necessary to learn the association between stimulus and imitated behaviour, but where the behaviour is the result of inner thoughts and drives then we need correspondingly more complex responses.

Tomasello (p. 99) argues that this is also essential for language development as we have to understand the perspective of others as we interpret or frame utterances.

One of the key aspects he identifies is precisely that language requires us to see ourselves “from the outside”, which is entirely consonant with my own argument that the notion of self is an accident of social intercourse. The issue is about which comes first phylogenetically, self or other. Tomasello (p. 70) notes that social theorists “from Vico and Dilthey to Cooley and Mead” stress that our understanding of others rests on parallels to our understanding of ourselves; I would simply add that the reason we have access to knowledge about ourselves may be precisely in order to understand others.

When discussing how children acquire a sense of self, he notes that research has shown that infants do not conceptualise or explicitly talk about themselves before they do about others. So, while it is not true that ontogeny inevitably recapitulates phylogeny, this is certainly suggestive evidence that self is at least no more primitive than other.

While my own and Tomasello’s position both rely on the understanding of the motives and intentions of others, there is also that much deeper sharing of feeling and emotion when we empathise with others. It maybe that empathy is more primitive than the awareness of our own or others intentions as we do not need to explicitly know what someone else is feeling, nor be able to articulate one’s own, in order to simply feel with them.

It is easy to see why it is useful to understand others emotions – if someone bigger than me is feeling upset and angry it may be better to steer clear. But the roots of empathy are less clear and obviously rooted in social cohesion and bonding; it is a feeling not just with others, but intrinsically for them.

This getting alongside others is exactly what Christmas is about “the word became human” (John 1:14, New Living Tr.) and Immanuel means precisely “God with us”; the ineffable becoming an infant.

Another term in the original Tomasello quote is “conspecifics”. We have a special understanding other creatures of the same species as ourselves. This is clearly important for imitation and learning, there is no sense in imitating the behaviour of creatures very different from ourselves, such as birds, as we may be physically not able to do the same things (can’t fly!) and anyway may not share the same kinds of motivations (e.g. making a place to lay eggs).

This works also within species, we need to learn the things that we are able to and need to perform and so it is those closest to us in terms of aspirations and abilities who are the most obvious to imitate. Yet it maybe those who are more different and more experienced who have most to offer. Diligent students understand this and step beyond the obvious peer group, but also the best teachers are able to see the world from the point of view of their students.

I read with fascination as Tomasello described many experiments of his own and others that look at small infants acquiring language. However, I also noted that the focus of them all was on the way in which the infant had to make sense of the parent or other adults words and gestures. In fact, it is also the parents who try to make sense of the inarticulate sounds and embryonic gestures of their child.

look down		bend down		stoop down

People differ in the way they interact with small children: some stand fully up and look down, some bend over the child from the waist, and some squat down or sit on a low chair so that they are the child’s level. It is the latter I always know are going to be the ‘naturals’ with children².

To be a good teacher you sometimes need to become like a little child – Christmas.

1. This is effectively a second order model of mind, First order model of mind is when we understanding that others have beliefs, motivations etc.; that is that they have mind. Second order is when we reason about their understanding of our minds, third order when we think about how they think about us thinking about them! One of Piaget’s critical development steps is when a child moves away form ego centrality to be able to understand other people’s different knowledge and physical point of view – first order model of mind. In autism this does not develop normally with corresponding social and other developmental impact. While most of us manage first order and second order model of mind without difficulty, but third order is more difficult and fourth and higher orders get hard to deal with except more analytically. This was wonderfully demonstrated by the Kursaal Flyers‘ 1976 one hit wonder which as the opening line: “Little does she know that I know that she knows that I know she’s two timing me.” (music at lastfm, lyrics at justsomelyrics) – fourth order model of mind! There was a video at the time that acted out the scene described in the song lyrics. [back]
2. Of course, while people tend to interact naturally in one way or another, you can explicitly choose how to address a child. [back]

The report is set in the context of both an increasing number of overseas students, attracted by the UK’s educational reputation, and also the desire for widening access to universities.  I am not convinced by the idea that technology is necessarily the way to go for either of these goals as it is just so much harder and more expensive to produce good quality learning materials without massive economies of scale (as the OU has).  Also the report seems to mix up open access to research outputs and open access to learning.

However, it was not these issues, that caught my eye, but a quote by Thomas Kealey vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham,  the UKs only private university.  For three years Buckingham has come top of UK student satisfaction surveys, and Kealey says:

This is the third year that we’ve come top because we are the only university in Britain that focuses on the student rather than on government or regulatory targets. (Edgeless University, p. 21)

Of course, those in the relevant departments of government would say that the regulations and targets are inteded to deliver education quality, but as so often this centralising of control, (started paradoxically in the UK during the Thatcher years), serves instead to constrain real quality that comes from people not rules.

In 1992 we saw the merging of the polytechnic and university sectors in the UK.  As well as diffferences in level of education, the former were tradtionally under the auspices of local goverment, whereas the latter were independent educational isntitutions. Those in the ex-polytechnic sector hoped to emulate the levels of attaiment and ethos of the older universities.  Instead, in recent years the whole sector seems to have been dragged down into a bureacratic mire where paper trails take precidence over students and scholarship.

Obviously private institutions, as  Kealey suggests, can escape this, but I hope that current and future government can have the foresight and humility to let go some of this centralised control, or risk destroying the very system it wishes to grow.

I was driving back up country and listening to Tuesday’s Woman’s Hour¹.  The guest was Helene Guldberg from the Open University, who had recently published views that anti-bullying initiatives were undermining children’s ability to acquire conflict management skills for later life.

While I share her concerns that we tend towards a nanny society, I cannot imagine that she would feel that being mugged in the streets was helping her to learn how to live in a world where bad things happen,  yet she, and I know she voices a common prejudice in educational theory, feels that violence that would be criminal against an adult is somehow acceptable for a child.  Evidently it is all childhood innocence and any sense of cruelty is simply our adult projections.

In her own moment of exquisite cruelty, Guldberg responded to an email from a woman in her 50s, who felt her life permanently scarred by school bullying.  The woman found it hard to trust anyone, because the instigator of the bullying had been someone whom she thought to be her best friend.  In the classic ‘blame the victim’ fashion, Guldberg explained that this was simply the fact that if we tell children that bullying will scar them for life, then it will.  The woman’s pain was not anything to do with the bullying when she was at school, but effectively self-inflicted … this despite the fact the 35 years ago no-one was telling children that bullying would do harm, as the universal view then was exactly what Guldberg now expounds.

Hearing all this, I recall my own school days and in particular infant school where most of the boys belonged to a class ‘gang’.  Now I would have been perfectly happy if our class gang had fought other classes – I was never one of life’s pacifists.  However, the purpose of the class gang was not to fight other gangs, but to pick on some member of the class, often one of the peripheral members of the gang if there was no-one else.  Now I should explain I was not of a particularly high moral frame; however, I was a romantic and had been brought up with tales of King Arthur and watching Robin Hood on television; so the idea of picking on the weak was against everything I believed in².  I refused to join in and so became, disproportionately, the one picked on.

What is particularly striking in retrospect is that those at the heart of the gang leadership, and so of course never picked on by the gang, were the more ‘respectable’ members of the class, the ones the teacher would ask to look after the class if they had to leave.   As far as I can gather, this was not out of some misguided attempt to reform the bullies through responsibility, but purely ignorance.  The teachers were aware of the ‘naughty’ children and those that the gang leaders egged into fighting and hurting others, but not those who seemed on the surface to be the good ones.

This blindness seems odd, but appears to be common.  I recall when our children were small (and home educated), someone telling us about the school their son was at, how good it was and the excellent social environment, but seemed oblivious to the fact that each day he came back with items from his school bag missing or broken and that he kept asking to be picked up from school rather than walk the short distance home.

Later in high school I recall the dynamics were different; there the bullies tended to be the more obvious candidates: big, tough and often less advantaged.  For different reasons I often found myself at the rough end of things; I would try to talk myself out of trouble (those conflict management skills!), but in the end would never back down, no matter the odds.  One of my front teeth is still a little black from a head butt, but today, with knives everywhere, I wonder whether I would have acted the same, or if I had what the consequence would be.

In some sense, in both earlier and later school, I ‘chose’ to be one of the victims, and perhaps as it had an, albeit over romanticised, ethical aspect one could say that it may have strengthened me.  However, most of the victims were not in that position: the less clever children, the first Asian boy in school, the brothers who always had snuffles and so were labelled ‘snotty’, and when my father had died I still recall the taunts of ‘old grey hairs’.  Those who were weaker or simply cannier learnt to appease and submit, but were consequently far more likely to be repeat victims than someone who, even if hurt, would not be cowed.  I am sure the boy I knew in high school, who was learning these important life skills of appeasement and giving in to intimidation, would have developed a rounded and resilient attitude in his later life if he had not committed suicide first.

The presenter, Jane Garvey, and another guest Claude Knights from anti-bullying charity ‘Kidscape‘ did an excellent job in challenging Guldberg’s views, but she seemed completely immune to any evidence.  However, I don’t recall anyone questioning the life skills learnt by the bullies themselves.  The tough but ‘respectable’ boys, who were at the centre of the gangs in early school, are just those who are likely to have become policemen or soldiers.  What did they learn?  Might is right?

And the same attitudes are prevalent in more professional settings; some years ago a team at KPMG were helping us in our search for continued funding for aQtive, our dot.com company.  All the people there were wonderful to us, but looking at their dealings with one another I was often physically sickened by the combination of fawning to superiors and bullying of juniors that I saw.  All good lessons learnt in public school.

For that matter the circle completes and even some teachers repeat the lessons they learnt at school.  I still recall the grin on our lower-school headmaster’s face during school assemblies, when  he would take some child who had committed a misdemeanour, grab him or her by the shoulders and then, in front of everyone, violently shake them in synchrony with his words.

It is not only the victims of school bullying that are the victims; the bullies themselves are victims of those like Guldberg who tell them it is alright to misuse power – and in the deeper weight of things it is perhaps more terrible to learn to be cruel than to learn to be afraid.

1. Oddly there isn’t a “Man’s Hour” as I guess that would be sexist? … In fact thinking about men’s magazines, perhaps I can see the point. [back]
2. Although, I didn’t take part in the systematic bullying of the class gang, I am sure there were times during my own childhood, when I hurt others. I am not writing from a moral high ground, I just want us to take all the pains and joys of childhood seriously. [back]

We chose to home educate based partly on our own experiences of school and partly by meeting the children of other home educating families and being amazed at their maturity and balance compared to other children of their age.  While we made an explicit decision, others are forced into home education, sometimes through learning difficulties or dyslexia, sometimes through school phobia.

One woman I knew eventually decide to home educate her son when he was 14.  At 10 he became school phobic due to a teacher, who was notorious for making his children unhappy; for four years she cooperated with the local authority as they tried to get him back into school, including being sent into short periods of residential care.  It was only when it was clear that he was going to get to 16 with no GCSEs and no future that she reluctantly took him out of the school system and he eventually obtained several exams studying at home with her help.

My wife and I were fortunate in our dealings with authorities as we were obviously well educated, could write fluently and persuasively, and knew the law and our own rights inside out (and were helped enormously by the support group Education Otherwise).  However, not all home educating parents have our advantages, and the difficulties and costs of home education are exacerbated by sometimes intimidating demands from education welfare officers or LEAs.

My impression was that, during the period of our daughters’ education, things improved and LEAs better understood home education.  However, I recently heard (due to a petition on the Downing Street web site) that, I guess as part of the interminable re-hashing of all sectors of education, things are being made more difficult again by repeated reviews of the legal status of home education.

There are numerous examples of public figures from artists to US presidents¹ who have been home educated and all the home educated children that I have known, although having all the pressures and problems of any child growing up, are in their various ways successfully following their chosen paths.  When so many aspects of our education system are under threat, I wonder why on earth government feels the need to meddle with things that have and continue to work well.

The petition:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to to remind his government that parents must remain responsible in law for ensuring the welfare and education of their children and that the state should not seek to appropriate these responsibilities.
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Homeedreview/

1. another support group home-education.org.uk have  a list of famous home-educated people [back]