Worstall on home education

Tim Worstall makes a robust defence of a parent's right to home educate their children, here.

Tim is responding to a piece at the Huffington Post by someone called Russell Shaw whose main objection seems to be that lots of religious people home educate, and that the children will end up being taught creationism. Shaw doesn't explain why this is worse than going to a state school and learning very little at all, but he does feel that home education isn't serving society very well.

Which is odd, because I thought that the point of education was to provide a benefit to the child, rather than to the state or "society". I'm reminded of the theories of John Taylor Gatto, the educational historian and writer, who believes that state education was designed to do just that - to provide dumbed-down workers for the factories of the upper classes, rather than educate anyone.

The comments thread on the Worstall post is also interesting, with some agreeing with the claim that home educators have mainly religious motivations. This may be true of the USA, but it's certainly not right for the UK. The main (if not the only) researcher into the UK home education movement is Paula Rothermel of the University of Durham. She has performed surveys into UK home-ed and has the following to say on why people do it:

Over half of the reasons given for home educating related to school, such as, 'unhappy with current school education', 'class sizes too large' and 'bullying'. Almost one-third of motivations listed were child-centred; 'we wanted to stimulate our child's learning', 'it is the child's choice' and 'meets out child's needs', and one in five parents describe their motivation in terms of their philosophy, referring to their' ideology', 'lifestyle', their 'faith' and the 'lack of morality in society'. When families become acquainted with other home educators, as well as related literature, they adopted a more philosophical approach to education generally, often believing that the present education system needed reform.

Clearly religion is not a significant factor, then. Most people just think that school is crap.

Another criticism given by Tim W's commenters is that home-educated children are "weirdos". Here, I'm less sure of my ground, because I can't say I've ever met a home educated child. I've seen some on the telly, and they do appear different to schooled children. The thing which has always struck me is that they seem rather polite, and very clear-eyed; they look people in the eye and say what they think. They lack the wariness around adults and the emotional ticks and affectations of your average teenager.

Whether this is enough to suggest a categorisation under "Weirdo" is a matter of personal taste.

When people think of home-educated children who have been filed under weird, they often bring up the mathematics prodigy, Ruth Lawrence, who went up to Oxford at the age of eleven, graduated at thirteen, became a fellow at Harvard at nineteen and is now a full professor. Whether she deserves to be called weird is not clear from what I've read. She is certainly gifted, but she seems to have a perfectly normal life (marriage, children and so on). I can remember a minor kerfuffle when she publicly stated some of her views at a debate and rather upset some of her fellow students who couldn't handle someone so young saying what they thought. This seems to me to be more of a criticism of the other students than of Ms Lawrence.

But historically, going to university in your mid-teens was the norm, rather than the exception.  In the medieval period, someone aged fourteen was expected to be able to manage their own affairs and to be able to study independently of family. So to that extent, it's modern schooled children who delay tertiary education until the age of eighteen that are the oddballs, the exceptions, the weirdos.

Perhaps this is why teenagers can be so vile. Underneath it all, they know they should have flown the coop, but the law says they can't.  On top of all the hormones, you get a prison sentence.

It's not really surprising that they can be a bit unpleasant is it?    

Hidden curriculum latest

In the previous post, I bleated about the refusal of my children's school to release the curriculum to me. I've been apopleptic pretty much ever since. Yesterday, however, a few details emerged on some of the innovations in the learning experience that are being promised for the new curriculum, which is being introduced over the next year or so.

From what I can gather, the powers that be in Holyrood are demanding that schools take responsibility for reducing levels of dental caries in children. To that end, my children's school will be extending its tooth brushing programme. We will have to wait for the details of how many days per week will be spent on brushing and whether the more able children will be set courses in flossing and advanced mouthwash.

We also gather that children are supposed to know how to deal with an adult having a heart attack in their presence. Whether this involves the issuing of a defibrillator to every five year old is not yet clear.

I hope nobody thinks I'm kidding about any of this. 

The secret curriculum

The Scottish 5-14 curriculum is much less prescriptive than the English National Curriculum. Instead of defining in gory detail exactly what is taught, central government in Edinburgh sets out to define what children should be acheiving and how schools should teach. But the actual content they teach is only defined in rather broad terms. The detail is, by and large, left to schools to decide.This seems to be rather better than the way things are done in England.

Or perhaps not.

Concerned by an apparent lack of history being studied, I asked at my children's school for a copy of the curriculum they were working to. Some weeks later I received a copy of some Scottish Executive information about the kind of children they hoped that schools would be turning out, and a copy of the themes around which the coursework would be based. The details for this term, by class,  are reproduced below.

 

Now to my untutored eye, this doesn't look anything like a curriculum. It looks like a series of pages selected at random from a tabloid newspaper. There's lots of environmentalism. There's no history. There's lots of surrogate parenthood. There's multiculturalism and perhaps some EU propaganda but apparently, no maths.

Now I know for a fact that there is maths being taught because I hear it from the children at the end of the day. Confused, I went back to the school again to find out what the story was. There must be more to it than this.

The answer is that there is more to it. The teachers apparently create plans based on the themes above, setting out exactly what it is they are going to teach in each class. "They're hanging lots of different subjects off each theme". Which sounds very interesting. Maybe it's OK, there's a systematic approach lurking there, unseen behind a bland list of themes.

Big problem. I'm not allowed to see the teaching plans. That's right, folks:

I'm not allowed to see what my children are being taught.

I'm paying thousands of pounds a year in return for which the state is going to provide my children with an education. And they won't tell me what the hell it is they're teaching them.

And beyond that, I don't know what to say.

Public school education for free

File under hypocritical lefties:

Fiona Millar, AKA Mrs Alastair Campbell, is a journalist and a prominent campaigner for comprehensive education. Comment is Free regularly provides a pulpit from which she can unleash fire and brimstone at anyone who might be tempted to interest themselves in selective admission procedures, school choice or similar heresies against the Church of the Bog Standard Comp Triumphant.

Her latest jeremaiad was this piece at CiF on Monday, if you can bear it.

The amusing part about her article was not what she wrote herself (or even the sad fact that she can't seem to find a photo of herself in which she doesn't look like a harpy), but is actually a posting by a commenter calling himself Gerry M.

What Mr M points out is that Ms Millar seems to have contracted that strange affliction of well off left-wing parents which compels them to ensure that their own children get a rather different education to the one they demand for us proles. Well known examples like Ruth Kelly and Diane Abbott abound. The establishment our Fiona chose for her darling son Rory was the William Ellis School in Highgate. This is a state school quite unlike any other state school you've ever come across before. In fact, it's quite hard to find many differences between it and a rather expensive private school.

According to the Wikipedia article linked above, it has a budget of £13 million to spend on around 1000 pupils. For those who learned mathematics at a more traditional comprehensive school, that's £13,000 per pupil. It's pupils are all boys (which doesn't seem very comprehensive to me). It has playing fields, blazers, celebrity visitors (Alastair Campbell, Sir Clive Woodward, Michael Palin, June Sarpong, Brian Lara, David Miliband and Professor Tim Brighouse), and "newly completed Art studios, Technology and Science teaching spaces and [a] state-of-the-art Sports Hall". If music is your thing it's got a "24-track  sound and music editing suite with the latest computer technology" and can offer music tuition in just about any instrument you care to mention. All that seems to be missing is the stables for darling Rory's ponies, but hey, this is central London.

All I can say is "Wow!" And to think that some people pay to go private! 

Our Fiona is, of course, very much against academies and trust schools - she says that LEA control is the ideal that schools should aspire to. How then to explain her choice of a "voluntarily maintained" school, a majority of whose governors are appointed by an independent trust? Shouldn't she be repulsed by a school which became a specialist language school in 1997?

It's hard to imagine the mindset which would allow someone to justify this sort of hypocrisy to themselves. A normal person, with a normal conscience would cringe every time the thought crossed their mind. Is Fiona Millar such a person?

She doesn't look bovvered, does she?

 

Teaching to the test

Matthew Sinclair has an interesting post about getting a broad education. Having been to a state school he feels that he may have missed out on some of the things his privately educated counterparts may have enjoyed.

I just haven't had the same broad exposure and introduction to subjects beyond the exam, to the broader current of human knowledge, that many public school students have. I labour at remedying this but I'm starting from quite a distance behind.

He reckons that this is because many of his teachers may have been teaching to the test rather than seeking to educate the kids in their care.

Having also enjoyed the dubious benefits of a state education, I think he's right here. The other day, I was lurking at a home education forum where there was a discussion of how home-ed children who went up to universities couldn't work out why their schooled classmates only seemed to want  to know what was likely to be tested. Schooled children were just not interested in getting in-depth knowledge. They were, well, schooled, rather than educated.

Matthew quite correctly points out that we can probably deal effectively with this problem by extending the free market in education so that it covers all schools rather than just schools for the rich.

This point was also touched on briefly in a rather fiery exchange between DK and Dave Osler on Vox Politix the other night. Dave O seemed to think that education vouchers would further entrench the privilege of the wealthy (or words to that effect). This seems to me to be a completely bizarre argument. Making education for the poor and middlingly wealthy more effective is surely reducing the privileges of the wealthy. In the same way that most people can buy a car now (but the wealthy can afford swanky ones with leather seats and unuseable top speeds) we could have a system in which everyone got an education (as opposed to schooling) while the rich could afford a swanky one with top hats and stabling for Jemima's ponies.

If we sit back and ask what we want from the education system, the answer is that we want childen to get the broad knowledge of the world - "the best of all that has been known" - that Matthew and I didn't get. We can only give them this if we give them the same advantages - namely a private education - that the rich give their children.

Escape from the Braunjugend

If anyone wants a way for their children to avoid being incarcerated in school until the age of 18, they should apparently consider home education.

It strikes me that this could be a double-edged sword for the HE community. If disaffected yoof end up in sham-HE arrangements, it could be an open invitation for the government to shut down homeschooling completely.

Charities

It's a commonplace of blogospheric discourse that government isn't made up of the sharpest minds under the firmament. In fact there appears to be abundant evidence that the powers that be are actually the intellectual and moral dregs of society.

Here's just a tiny bit more confirmation.

The previous socialist administration in Edinburgh took a pot-shot at the private school system by means of instituting a review of the rules for the granting of charitable status. The idea was, presumably, to force up school fees sufficiently that only the very rich, and MSPs, would be able to afford them.

However it is also a commonplace of blogospheric discourse that whenever the government does something they forget to consider something pretty important, and this is no exception.

The current socialist adminstration in Edinburgh (that's different to the previous socialist administration you understand) have found that they have been left a welcome present by the last lot. The legislation targeted at private schools seems to have caught HE colleges in its crossfire.

All charities, including Scotland's colleges, are required to demonstrated to the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) that they meet the new charity test, set out the in the 2005 Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act. In a pilot, on John Wheatley College, OSCR ruled that the college did not meet the charity test because its constitution permits Scottish Ministers to direct or otherwise control its activities. This ruling means none of Scotland's colleges would currently pass the charity test and is why ministers are reviewing the situation. 

They're not bright and they're not clever.

Important news on school costs

Via the Adam Smith Institute blog, MJ Perry, a professor of economics from Michigan reports on tuition costs in US schools. It appears that private schools are cheaper than state schools.

Average private school tuition ($6,600) was about 1/3 less than the spending per pupil in public ($9,620) in 2003-2004 (the most recent year available), and average Catholic school tuition ($4,254) was less than half of public school spending per student.

It's been reported that the spend per pupil in UK state schools has rapidly been approaching levels in private schools. In fact, the government have often stated their desire to equalise the remaining imbalance. I've said in response that I believe that the only reason that private schools appear more expensive per pupil is because of all the fees they charge for fripperies like stabling for Matilda's pony and rifle range fees for Cuthbert.

This report from the US confirms that if only tuition is taken into account, private schools are cheaper.

Are there any arguments left for state education?

Dave Hill on education

Dave Hill has an interesting piece up at Comment in Free which picks up on some of the ideas he gained from an earlier visit to a home educating family. It's remarkable how many commenters on the posting think that vouchers might be a good idea.

Full and final perfection.

There is an epic profile of the children's author and poet, Michael Rosen in the Times today in which he sets out his vision for schools. My children have read some of his books, but the photo accompanying the article is, to my knowledge, the first time I've ever set eyes on him.

 

What was it about him which made me say to myself, "Lefty"? Perhaps it's because he has a face like something you might see around the nether regions of Glasgow on a weekday afternoon.

Either way, a gentle googling shows that he is in fact a magna cum laude among lefty intellectuals, having been thrown out of the BBC in the seventies when the vetting procedures suggested that employing him might not be a good idea. This doesn't seem to have affected his prospects much though. Apart from his books, he has also managed to write for the Socialist Review and Socialist Worker and has stood as a candidate for Respect. Of course with a background that dodgy he is a "must" at the BBC for whom he makes regular appearances.

So what has the good comrade got to say on the subject of education? Well, he's not exactly a fan of the way things are at the moment:

There had been “this extraordinary shift in the past ten years: you don’t talk about teaching and learning, you talk about management”, he said.

“The Government thinks it terribly important that you set up these weird incentive schemes in classes, so you get ticks, smiley faces and certificates. This is about competitive stigmatising. They think it’s rewarding the children; in fact, it ends up punishing most of them.”

He is angry at the rigorous testing regime which has reduced his passion, literature, to a series of tick-box exercises. Take SATs, the exams now given to every child aged 7 and again at 11, forcing children to think like Gradgrind, solely about facts.

And I'm sure he's right about the problems, but you have to wonder don't you? Here's a man who went to a grammar school, but who is vociferous in condemning any form of selection; a man who loathes private schools, faith schools and single-sex schools. The bog standard comp is the pinnacle of his educational universe, the summation of all his deepest thinking on children and their education. It is his philosophical apogee.

So why is the half-witted moron whinging? He has got exactly what he bloody well wants. He wants the state to run schools. He wants decisions made by the wise man in Whitehall. How the hell can you campaign for education to be run by the bureaucratic apparatus of the state and then start bitching when it turns into a bureaucracy? This slack-jawed numpty demands that educational outcomes be decided by the democratic process, and then can only belly-ache when it delivers what politicians rather than consumers want - just as it always does. Why don't you get involved in the democratic process yourself Michael? Oh yes, you did, and it made no difference at all did it? Well how about putting your children into a different school? What? They're all the same? You don't say. Still, it's been decided democratically that smiley faces and lots of testing is the way it's going to be. And that's the way you wanted it isn't it Michael?

What an idiot.

You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection.

Relevant skills

The Adam Smith Institute has a report on Terry Leahy's speech, in which he said that there was a growing problem schools failing to equip children with the skills they need to operate in the workforce.

From my perspective the chief skills, if you can call them that, which my children's state school tries to teach are recycling, greenery and a correct attitude to the environment. I don't feel that these are likely to be highly saleable attributes once they reach the workforce.

Having just been elected to the Board of Governors (or whatever it is they call it these days) I hope to do my bit to remedy this - watch this space. My straw polls of parental opinion suggest that I'm not alone in my concerns. It is rather surprising just how many parents have said to me that they view the emphasis on recycling as more akin to brainwashing than education. But despite this I'm rather dubious as to whether I will actually be able to remedy the situation.  It's a state school, after all, so why should anyone at the school or at the council give a stuff about what I, or even the whole of the parent body think?

A curriculum for.... what?

I've recently been involved in setting up the new school council at my children's primary school. This is essentially the old school board reformulated and somewhat emasculated. It's been an interesting experience. During our discussions we touched upon the new Scottish curriculum - the "Curriculum for Excellence" as it's optimistically entitled.

The game is rather given away by the title, IMHO. I take it as one of life's cardinal rules that one should never trust anyone or anything that has applied to it this kind of trumpet-blowing epithet. A banker will look after your money, a "banking professional" will probably steal it. Steer clear of "nursing professionals" - you will find a nurse much more effective. Never eat at a restaurant which says that it serves "Good Food".

So we can be fairly certain that the Curriculum for Excellence is not a curriculum for excellence.  But what is it a curriculum for?

Let's take a look at an example of what Scottish children will be learning in the future. It covers the whole of the 5-14 curriculum by level:

Early years

I have collected and sorted materials which can be recycled.

Level 1

Through my experience of different materials which I use, I can talk about the need to conserve Earth’s resources at home and in school and what I can do to help.

Level 2

I can assess the sustainability of my school environment and by helping to create and carry out an action plan to make improvements I can record how my responsible actions make a difference over time.

I can give a presentation to demonstrate my understanding of the importance of the water cycle in nature.

I can talk about the importance of water supplies to people all over the world and can demonstrate ways to clean and conserve water.

Level 3

By carrying out a variety of chemical reactions I can show how different environmental conditions can impact on the sustainability of Earth materials to help understand the importance of conservation.

I can apply my knowledge of pH to monitor the environment and demonstrate ways to overcome extreme levels. I can recognise the significance of pH in everyday life.

Level 4 

I can collect and analyse experimental data on rates of reaction and use this to discuss the use and sustainability of Earth materials.

I can research a major environmental or sustainability issue of national or global importance and report on my findings.

I can monitor the environment by collecting and analysing samples. I can interpret the results to inform others about levels of pollution and express a considered opinion on how science can help protect our environment.

So I was certainly right that it's not a curriculum for excellence. It's a curriculum for conformity, a curriculum for political correctness and a curriculum for greenery. But not a curriculum for excellence.

Good education due around 2050...perhaps

David Willett's speech to the CBI on the subject of education is set out in full in the Telegraph today. It's a good source for a more detailed discussion of some of the issues I raised in my post on the self-flagellation over grammar schools which is besotting and consuming the Conservatives at the moment.

A few stand-out points:

We already have more per capita funding than in the past and we officially have a system of school choice. But it hasn't transformed educational standards as we hoped. This is because there are no mechanisms in place to enable successful schools to expand, to take over failing schools or for new schools to be created.

So why don't you privatise them, you silly billy?

It is the failure to open up the supply side which is the reason why, despite years of ambitious attempts at education reform, Britain now lags behind many other advanced western countries.

Correct. So what have your two brains decided to do about it?

We must make it easier for people, including parents themselves, to set up new schools. New school providers must be able to enter the maintained sector, responding to what parents want. This is not how the system works at the moment.

Why do you want a maintained sector? You are trying to set schools free, aren't you? If they are in the maintained sector then governments can tie them up in red tape. You are playing into the hands of Whitehall and the teaching unions, Mr Two Brains.

[Blair] proposed, for example, that no new schools should be created by local authorities - a powerful device for bringing new providers incrementally into the maintained sector.

And you support this why, exactly? Do you think I want incremental change? What you are saying is that, for the majority of people, you are offering a good education to their grandchildren. And then only if a future Labour government doesn't reverse it all and hand the schools back to the teaching unions. It will be Railtrack all over again. 

At the heart of our education reforms is creating, in Tony Blair's words, 'self-governing independent state schools'. 

Oxymoron. Moron. Two brains, and both demented.

Bloody hell.

The unbearable statism of Tories

The catfight by the Conservatives over the issue of grammar schools has been mildly diverting, if only to confirm my belief that the majority of Tories are now so statist as to be hardly worth saving.

In an op-ed piece in the Times last week, David Cameron set out his vision, such as it is, for the future of education in England and Wales.   In his usual vapid, sub-Blairesque style he praises American charter schools and Labour's city academies (which are basically the same thing) and the voucher systems in Sweden, Holland and parts of the US. He tells us that he wants to open up the supply of education so that something called "social enterprises" can open schools too. He also says that money should follow the pupil. What he appears to be saying is that he will retain the model of a city academy - which is to say a school which is independent of local government - but he hints that he will try to increase the number of them by introducing a voucher system, and by making it easier for people to start their own schools. He is clear though that the freedoms he claims to want for these new schools will not extend to deciding their own admissions policies.

Is this enough to deliver a reasonably functioning education system? I think not. What Cameron proposes is not a market - at best it's one of those ersatz monstrosities so beloved of the Westminster village - the internal market. There are so many things wrong with the proposal it's hard to know where to start. For example, city academies are companies limited by guarantee. They are non-profits to all extents and purposes.  So we can expect education to move from the crazy dynamic of a bureaucracy to the much saner, but hardly earth-shattering dynamic of the Sue Ryder shop. This will be an improvement, no doubt, but we don't look to Oxfam to radically change the face of high street retail and so we shouldn't expect a non-profit schooling system to bring home the educational bacon. The education system needs entrepreneurialism and it needs hard-nosed shareholders breathing down the necks of managers. It needs managers losing sleep at night over whether they are losing pupils to a neighbouring school. It needs risk-taking and it needs investment. This is just not what non-profits do. So why, we ask, are the Conservatives - the party of the free market - proposing such a  statist halfway house. Why will they not just privatise it all?

Also, it is sadly indicative of an unreconstructed statist that Cameron will forbid selection. What does he know about it? Can't people try if they want to? And who the hell does he think he is to forbid it anyway?  I would have thought an applicant for a post on the below-stairs staff would have a better chance of getting the post if he told us how he would scrub the bogs so they shone, rather than giving us a lecture on what brand of bleach he's going to let us use.

There is going to be a great deal of devil in the detail too. After all, we know he will not allow selection, but the question is, what other requirements is he going to force upon the new schools. They will presumably still all be subject to inspection by the HMIs, who are, as is often acknowledged, a huge part of the problem because they insist on the use of antediluvian trendy teaching methods.  Again, it comes down to whether you believe that the best results will be delivered by a bottom-up market-led system, or a top-down experts 'n' inspectors system. Given that the latter has failed for the last thirty years, we are justified in asking why the Conservatives are not proposing to scrap it in favour of the system which allegedly forms part of their key beliefs. Why are they choosing statism?

Discipline is another mantra repeated by David Cameron, perhaps in the belief that by doing so he will appease the tweed-clad grassroots. The Conservatives will apparently legislate to allow headteachers to expel unruly pupils without fear of being overruled. Why, we wonder, does he feel the need to legislate? Wouldn't a free, private school be perfectly within its rights to expel anyone it wanted to? Wouldn't this be simpler to manage and simpler to implement? Why statism? Why not the free market?

Cameron is right about one thing; the argument about grammars is stale and irrelevant. He doesn't know whether they are better than the alternatives and neither does anyone else. The question is whether he has the maturity to stand back and let the market discover the answer. Unfortunately, on the basis of his column in the Times, he is still a long way from learning that lesson.  

For an example of a non-statist Tory approach to this issue, try this. 

Education as it is and as it might be

The papers have been full of stories of the senile dementia of the British school system. The Labour government's latest triumph is a £46million school which doesn't even come equipped with a playground - a decision which is hard to reconcile with any favourable impressions of the DfES. Can they have forgotten the playground? One should always favour the cock-up theories over conspiracy theories. But no, it turns out to have been a potentially decisive blow in the fight against school bullies. Funny, punishing the innocent never struck me as a way of discouraging the guilty, but perhaps I lack any of the post-modern nuance of the NuLab crony.

Meanwhile the BBC reports that school headteachers are warning over exam meltdown:

Exam reforms being introduced next year will cause chaos and lead to a fall in standards, head teachers have warned.

and over at the Telegraph, James Le Fanu reports on Professor Alan Smithers' views on schools which are that they

have been turned into exam factories at the expense of cultivating the inquisitive mind.

It's all so very depressing.  As far as anyone can tell, state education wil continue to decline and the political parties will continue to do nothing about it. When it comes to education politicians are a bunch of know nothing, learn nothing, do nothing wasters. None of the parties have a clue what to do - they are like rabbits in the headlights, transfixed by the fear of being different.

Which is a pity when there are plenty of answers out there. Take a look at this video of the thoroughly admirable and extremely subversive ideas of John Taylor Gatto (H/T Sometimes It's Peaceful). Then ask yourself if you'd rather your children attended one of his classes or was subjected to the delights of one of Tony Blair's City Technology Colleges.