Yesterday, I examined how the seemingly rational push for the delivery of joined up services (education, health and welfare) is built upon the little-challenged notion that the resulting efficiency and effectiveness benefits children. I argued that this assumption is dangerous and false – that joined up services are, in theory at least, efficient and effective for the system, often to the detriment of the child and his or her family. The increasingly compulsory nature of such a “massive, institutional machine that defines our educational, social, physical and mental normality for us”, particularly at an increasingly early age, is not even social engineering in disguise. It's blatant.

But onto Wednesday’s myth: Home education is school at home

According to the Education Act 1996, it is the parent’s responsibility to ensure that the child receives an efficient full time education from the age of 5, suitable to that child’s age, ability and aptitude, and to any special educational needs he may have – either by regular attendance at school, or otherwise.

Did you get that? The parent’s responsibility. Not the state’s responsibility, despite what conventional wisdom would have you believe. If the state was responsible for every child's education, imgaine how often it would get taken to court. In light of my recent posts about protection, joined up working and the database state, the implications of that are worth thinking through. Anyhow, the state school system is but one option of many that a parent – a paying customer remember – can select on behalf of their child.

Many families already exercise their legally protected freedom to choose by not sending their child to a state school, or by withdrawing them from it. Some parents believe that the educational standards in state schools are poor. Others have concerns about the extent to which their children are being “processed” by the state. Some children have been bullied or damaged to such a degree that the only option was to withdraw them from what is nevertheless accepted to be a “safe environment”. Other children with special educational needs fail to receive the support they need. Some families just want to do things their own way.

It’s a sad fact that we now live in a society where parents who enjoy spending significant time with their children are viewed as abnormal, clingy, or even perverted. Disconnected and fractured families are commonplace, and we view intimate closeness as pathological. We would rather turn to a book, an expert or the government than to each other to put this right. It is now culturally acceptable to doubt and criticise an alternative method of education (ie. not school) that entails parent and child spending their days together. Such a decision is cited as cover for enforced marriages, child labour, and abuse – with no evidence to support these assertions, yet plenty of evidence to demonstrate the considerable risks posed to children by institutions.

But we know that this consultation isn’t really about welfare, don’t we? It’s about state control over education.

Prior to the consultation, many education professionals had expressed their concern in defining a “suitable education” in relation to home educated children, claiming that the law as it stands is too vague to be interpreted correctly. This is simply not true. This confusion arises simply because, despite what the school system mentality has drilled into said professionals, there can be no single definition to cover the individual learning needs and requirements of every single child in the country, all of which are unique because every child is unique. That makes the prescribed job of those professionals very difficult, if not impossible. Perhaps, then, it is the prescribed job that needs to change.

The most important question that should be asked is can parents who send their children into a one-size-fits-all, national state school system ever adequately meets the requirements of this legislation?

There is an abundance of evidence to show that it is the state school system that is unfit for purpose, not the law, and certainly not home educators. Home-educating parents, whatever educational philosophy they follow, are streets ahead of the state when it comes to the probability of the delivery of a suitable education for their child. With only their own children to consider, and the intimate knowledge they have of each child’s ability, aptitude and special educational needs, they can interpret the law quite correctly – and more than adequately discharge their legal duties in the process. What’s more, they have a profound emotional interest in doing so because they are the child’s parents, not a proxy guardian.

Regarding home education as school at home is a truly naive assumption to make. Home education offers so much more than a school ever can, precisely because it takes place within an integrated family and community environment. Whether following a structured or more autonomous approach to learning, families are far better placed than schools to facilitate things such as:

• a personalised education,
• child-led learning,
• flexible delivery,
• multi-media education channels,
• positive community engagement,
• genuine citizenship,
• cross-generational friendships,
• practical life skills,
• hands-on work experience,
• vocational pursuits, and,
• mentoring relationships

In this context, Graham Badman’s suggestion of “support” to families in the form of online structured learning environments is pretty laughable for the majority. It’s a poor excuse for a not-very-contemporary solution that pretends to be cutting edge, and it fails to acknowledge the enormous benefits of home education – which very often takes place outside of the home. If children are expected to stay in the house all day, sitting at their desk, participating in a closed online community that controls their education to some degree, then why not send them to school and be done with it?

Offering “support” in the form of mandatory assessment or inspection also demonstrates little understanding of home education. Attempting to assess or inspect home education against a framework that is, by its very definition, a sub-standard universal education system completely misses the point by miles. School is not education, and education is not learning. And it is learning that is the real prize; something that is notoriously difficult, if not impossible, to measure objectively.

External assessment and inspection against a patently faulty framework that is assumed to be universally correct will only ever be detrimental to the many positive outcomes home educating families are currently able to achieve. Not everything can be fitted neatly into a discrete package of metrics – most things of value cannot. As long as there are individual learners and families, there will be individual preferences and choices, which are rightly subjective and personal if they are to lead to effective and valuable learning. There can never be a single, objective framework against which to assess or inspect, and neither should there be if we genuinely respect and value diversity. I am sure the local authorities have their diversity policies to hand for reference.

Is Graham Badman still not convinced? Then perhaps he can explain why so many schools are attempting to replicate many common features of home education. New examples of such “innovative” pedagogies make their way into the mainstream media and are applauded every day for their creativity and effectiveness – child-led discussion lessons, flexible timetables, nuture zones, the use of emerging technologies. But home educators have known and used these approaches all along. They are the real leaders in education and learning, not the schools. It’s about time they were recognised as such.