NorthStarUK Blog

Another good idea to come out of Rochdale!

Last week I was invited to speak at a meeting in Rochdale in Lancashire. A group of folks are busy setting up an excited new venture known as Gateway Christian Education, aimed at supporting Christian home educators within the region. It is a radical proposal involving a sort of flexi-schooling model where parents an opt into particular activities during the week, ranging from all-age worship in a Monday morning to one-on-one tutorial support in particular IGCSEs on a Tuesday or Thursday.It is an exciting project and one that I was delighted to endorse; I have been a long-time advocate of Christians radically considering the school as an institution and coming up with an institutional alternative that does not resemble conventional schools. Although I am a strong supporter of home-based learning, I know that this is not for everybody; however, monolithic schools that promote a secular worldview and values are not the alternative either.

In recent years, many Christians have become involved in establishing Christian schools, that to all intents and purposes institutionally resemble ordinary schools – children are expected to attend for five days a week, they are segregated according to age, classes are managed by a single adult who makes virtually all of the learning decisions for that group of children. For those of us committed to looking for a Biblical educational model, this seems like a mimicking of the way that everybody else does it! What excites me about the Rochdale project is that these folks have started with a blank piece of paper and asked the most radical question of all – in educational terms; “if we were starting afresh, what would a Biblical educational organisation aimed at educating children and young people look like?”

Now, I do not think that the answer that the folks in Rochdale have come up with is the only one possible; the Lord who has provided us with such a richly varied creation would not permit that. However, I do believe that conventional schools with their rigidity and lack of parental involvement would not be the first choice model. The challenge for all of us involved in Christian education is to explore what a Biblical model of education would look like and be bold enough to move forward into something very different even when that ‘something’ appears quite scary!  If you want to know more about Gateway Christian Education please feel free to visit their web site by clicking here.

By the way – if you want to know what the first good idea to come out of Rochdale was, click here!

Students as owners of their own learning

A few days ago I spent an hour chatting with a friend about her 17 year old son who is struggling with A levels. She wanted my advice, although if truth be told, I think she needed to tell her story to somebody much more than hear what I had to say. I have known her son for many years; he is a great lad with many gifts, notably as an artist. He scrambled through his GCSEs, with mostly middling sorts of grades. His mum wanted to speak with me because he struggled to organise his work and submit work to deadlines during his GCSE years; apparently the problem is persisting now that he is studying A levels. Except in art, where he works with enthusiasm, the young man either submits only scraps of paper as homework or does not submit any at all. How is it that a young man studying subjects that he has chosen to do can appear so disinterested and can so struggle with managing his academic affairs?

Whilst it is true that one cannot diagnose a general malaise on the basis of a single case, my years of teaching in face to face schools have convinced me  that there is one thing in particular that schools do very badly; they struggle to empower children to take ownership of their own learning. Fundamentally, school structures remove real power from children and young people to such an extent that large numbers of children come to see school learning as something that is done to them or for them but not necessarily (in an empowering sense) by them.  With this mindset, teachers are there – so the student thinks – to ensure that they get through exams, and work is submitted because the teacher wants it. Learning is not a process owned by the student ultimately leading to maturity and self-awareness.

Fundamental to the way that NorthStarUK works is a firm commitment to establish structures and patterns that provide children with opportunities to take ownership of their own learning – what subjects one studies, when in the week each lesson’s work is undertaken, even when to take holidays; these are all aspects of NSUK life that enable a student (with enormous support from parents) to learn skills that will enable them to move into further study with maturity and understanding.

Within a family setting, these radical approaches to learning can relatively easily be assimilated. The challenge for those of us working within a school context is to find ways to increasingly empower students so that they too, acquire these skills.

Bruised reeds and smouldering wicks

I recently heard a sermon (or ‘preach’ as it seems to be called at one of my daughter’s churches) which looked at a wonderful verse in Isaiah 42. The verse reads, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out.”

At first sight these are strange verses and their meaning may not be particularly apparent. However, more than thirty years ago I had a friend at university to whom these verses were especially precious. In her previous year, she had suffered from something akin to a nervous breakdown. This had forced her to drop out of her course; in fact she was only in my year because she was retaking her first year. During her recovery, she told me, she had struggled as a Christian both with why she had fallen ill and the thought that she was letting the Lord down by not living a vibrant Christian life. A wise Christian therapist had pointed her to these verses and shown her that at the heart of the Christian faith is a God who has boundless compassion for those who are most week and vulnerable.

I was reminded of my friend as I listened to the ‘preach’. Two thoughts struck me – often home educators (especially mum’s) feel very inadequate for the task; those overseas often feel even more vulnerable. We have a God who is especially concerned with the ‘bruised read’ with the ‘smouldering wick’, about to be snuffed out! My second thought was that as home educators we often live exceedingly busy lives. We need to ensure that we have time to help the ‘bruised reed’ or the ‘smouldering wick’ – those people who need our support and care. My university friend of many years ago did not actually need me to say anything to her, but she did need somebody to listen.  If we are too busy to find time to care as a result of our ‘bookish learning’ then it would seem to me that the answer is simple – spend less time on the book work!

Faith Schools’ Fillip?

The following, written by Ross Evans NorthStarUK’s Senior Tutor, originally appeared Evangelical Times. It is a powerful reminder of the opportunities that currently exist within the UK:

Following the General Election, Michael Gove, the coalition Education Secretary quickly set out his priorities for schools.
He confirmed plans for “free” schools and more academies. “I believe, nothing is more important to the fairness of our society and the future prosperity of our country than getting education right.” The coalition government shares an ongoing concern with the previous government that too many children leave primary school every year without meeting basic standards in English or maths and too few 16 year olds get five decent GCSEs.  “So improving literacy, raising pupil’s attainment, extending parental choice, freeing teachers from bureaucracy, improving discipline and closing the widening gap between the richest and the poorest should be our shared goal” These are all reasonable aspirations although begging the question as to the values underpinning the aspirations.
Media attention was overwhelmingly directed towards the ‘ free’ schools and soon there was much debate, discussion and print. Assuming that enough of these schools will take off, how significant will they be in the bigger picture – only time will answer that question. In the meantime, what are these ‘free’ schools?
It is envisaged that these schools will be set up by a wide range of proposers, including charities, universities, businesses, educational groups, teachers and groups of parents. The claim is that in response to parental demand, they will improve choice, and drive up standards for all young people, regardless of background. Free Schools will provide an inclusive education to young people of all abilities, from all backgrounds, and will be clearly accountable for the outcomes they deliver.
What does this mean for Christian groups, existing Christian schools, parents, churches or other groups, who may be interested in this new opportunity?
Is this the opportunity that we have thought about and prayed for many times, that the principle of justice would allow Christian schools to be funded on equal terms with state schools. That at last, Christian parents who would like their children educated out of a Christian perspective would get the opportunity without having to pay twice – through the tax system and through fees. But will they want to? What are the possible advantages and disadvantages?
In the UK, with our roots deep in state schooling, the notion of Free schools, (the terminology itself is not helpful) is a problem. Maybe these new types of schools will in time, open up discussion of the more significant issue behind the notion of choice – to whom do our children belong?  The debate at this early stage has been heated, but after all the argument about buying privilege and whether it will or won’t improve standards, and the likely implications for the LEA management of education, I have heard absolutely nothing on this important question.
The biblical perspective is one of children as a gift to parents who are responsible for the nurture of their children. At some stage before they are five more and more parents voluntarily hand their children over to carers and then from five years of age to teachers. We entrust our children to these adults for many hours a week. How many of us know what values are being shared, or being modelled by the carers and teachers. In most cases in secular Britain, the values being shared are far from Christian. Let’s be clear, education is not neutral. All decisions, important or seemingly unimportant are arrived at out of the values of the Government, an Exam Board, or individual teachers. This is why the debate is so heated about Free schools. Do you believe that the State will run education best, or do you believe that parents should have much more of a say? But why do you believe what you do?
So an opportunity now exists for groups of Christian parents, or for Christian organisations to consider setting up a school. As for the opportunity for existing Christian schools to ‘opt in’ the situation is less clear and needs to be resolved. If managing bodies of existing Christian schools decide to go down this route and new Christian bodies take the opportunity, we need to be aware that the opportunity only exists as a result of a change of government and of ideology. It could be reversed in the future. What would that mean for Christian schooling? We can’t answer that question now. We can only say that at this time the opportunity is there.

Ofsted tentacles stretching towards home educators

The government’s Chief Inspector of Schools clearly has far too much time on her hands!  Christine Gilbert, clearly feeling that the challenge of raising the standards of education in the nation’s schools is not enough to keep her occupied, has decided to focus her attention on home educating families and, in the process got it all wrong!  According to Ofsted, a key finding of their report was that  the current legislation around home education severely hampers local authorities in fulfilling their statutory duties to ensure that home educated children receive a suitable education. And yet, no such duty exists! In English law, ALL parents are obliged to ensure that their children receive a suitable education by sending them to school or otherwise. Steve Richards, NorthStarUK’s Educational Director stated, “It is profoundly disturbing that Ofsted, itself, does not know the law and prefers to attempt to pressurise the new government into reviving Badman and Ball’s discredited agenda for state regulation of family life.”

In the opinion of NorthStarUK, this sort of discriminatory behaviour has to stop – home education is as valid a life-style choice as school-based learning – this is what is enshrined in English law and it is about time that Christine Gilbert focused on upholding the law and the rights of parents rather than engaging in the publication of bullying misinformation.

New broom sweeps clean in Coalition Department for Education

The Coalition Government’s new Department for Education has announced a series of radical changes which are likely to have a major impact on education in England and Wales. Not only does the Department have a new name but it has spent little time in announcing a raft of new proposals which are likely to provide schools with greater freedom – the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency is to be closed, a growing number of schools are to be offered the opportunity to become academies, the General Teaching Council is to be scrapped and today the Department announced that state schools were to be permitted to offer their students IGCSEs. Steve Richards, NSUK’s Educational Director stated, “We are delighted that state school pupils are to be offer the same opportunities as our students have enjoyed for many years in being able to study a rigorous qualification that has widespread international appeal. in an increasingly globalised society, this must surely be a good thing.”

In a further positive move today the government announced that the controversial Vetting and Barring Scheme – due to be introduced in July -  has been put on hold. Instead Teresa May, the Home Secretary has said that there will be a review of the entire vetting and barring scheme, with a scaling back to “common-sense levels”.  Many within the home education community will applaud this decision, along with the new government’s plans to  scrap  the ContactPoint children’s database.

Home education law ends up in right place!

All at NorthStarUK were delighted with the news coming from Westminster this week that Ed Balls’ campaign against the liberties of home educating families has finally ended up where it belongs – in the wash-up!  This is the term for the horse-trading that takes place in the days following the announcement of a general election to ensure that as much government business s possible is completed. Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs had made it clear that they would not support the clauses in the Children, Schools and Families Bill relating to home education – thus causing Ministers to back down or risk loosing the whole Bill.

Steve Richards, NSUK’s Educational Director and long time home educating dad, said this week, “No credit goes to Ed Balls for this decision, this was forced upon him; but all home educators will be grateful to those members of the Lords and Commons who have stood up for our rights and refused to cow down to significant ministerial pressure in recent months.”

We have no doubt that this is not the end of the battle – if Labour win the election Balls has promised to re-introduce the missing clauses and even if the Conservatives win it is likely that they will re-visit this area sometime in the future.  Let’s just hope that next time, decisions will be based upon honesty, integrity and sound research from experts in the field of home education from around the world.

Khyra Ishaq – a tragedy that has nothing to do with home educators

Now that the court case involving Angela Gordon  and her partner, Junaid Abuhamza, has come to an end with both receiving significant jail sentences, it seems appropriate that we at NorthStarUK make seem comment on the tragic case of Khyra Ishaq’s death. Ed Balls and Graham Badman have both used Khyra Ishaq’s death as an excuse to attack the freedom of home educating families in England; both pointing to the fact that Khyra Ishaq had been home educated for the final few months of her short life.  According to Balls and Badman, this is justification enough to warrant wholesale changes to the legislative framework involving elective home education and the establishment of the right of local authority staff to interview any home educated child alone and without the parents being present. Indeed, Graham Badman, in an attempt to link this tragedy with home education in general went so far as to say “There are a tiny minority of people who use the home education system as a mask for sometimes horrific abuse of their children.” For Balls and Badman, Khyra Ishaq was let down by an inadequate legal system that did not give local authority staff sufficient powers to step in and protect this poor child when she was in harm’s way.

The reality. however, was quite different. Concerns for Khyra’s safety were expressed within weeks of her removal from school, in fact the deputy head of her former school tried to visit the family and raise concerns . She expressed concerns to social services who refused to accept that there was any need for urgent action. In the ensuing months, the police, social services and educational staff all visited the home and Tony Brownbill, Birmingham City Council’s spokesman said that it had done all that it could, going on “Something happened in the house that no-one could get to because there wasn’t sufficient legislation to get in.” On 17th May 2008, Khyra Ishaq died.

In our opinion, the current legislative position is robust and clear – local authority staff are not obliged to agree to a parent’s request to home educate until they are satisfied with the provision being made by the child’s parents.  Whilst the law provides considerable flexibility about how this is to be achieved, it is nevertheless clear where the power lies – it is with the local authority. The 1997 Education Act states “If it appears to a local education authority that a child of compulsory school age in their area is not receiving suitable education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise, they shall serve a notice in writing on the parent requiring him to satisfy them within the period specified in the notice that the child is receiving such education.”  Ultimately, the local authority can compel parents to send children to school if they are seriously concerned with the educational provision being made by parents.

There is no need for the laws regarding home education to be altered and there is certainly no need to provide local authorities with greater powers.  After all, Khyra Ishaq was known to the local authority and it was Birmingham City Council staff who took the decision that she was not in any danger. Not only is there no evidence that greater powers are need, but there is precious little indication that these greater powers, if granted, would be applied with any greater wisdom the next time.

Jeremy Clarkson, home education and living in an imperfect world

There cannot be many people in the UK who have not heard of Jeremy Clarkson, the lead presenter in the popular BBC programme, Top Gear. Clarkson has acquired something of a reputation for having strong opinions, especially relating to the impact of what he sees as overly intrusive government in ordinary people’s lives. In addition to his TV appearances he also writes a column in The Times. He often writes with a very direct and some would say offensive style. However, often, his manner of writing hides some very perceptive comments.

In this week’s article, he writes about the UK government’s latest proposal to make it compulsory that all dog owners must have third party insurance so that they (the owners that is and not the dogs!) are able to pay damages when their little pouch attacks somebody. As a long time dog owner I think that the plan is barmy but of course what the government is trying to do is respond to dog attacks and the growing use of large and vicious dogs as status symbols and protection by young men in disadvantaged areas of our cities.

Clarkson also mentions home education in his article, pointing out that it is madness to try to legislate on the back of extreme cases of wickedness such as the death of Khyra Ishaq, whose mother removed her from school claiming she was home educating her. The government’s response to this was the Badman Report and proposed new legislation making it possible for local authority staff to interview children without their parents being present – because abused children are unlikely to say anything whilst the abuser is present!

Clarkson closes his article in a typically direct and crude manner but what he says is that this world is not perfect – bad things happen to very decent ordinary people; and it is nonsense to generate legislation that affects and controls ordinary people’s lives in order to try to stop all of the bad things happening.

What Clarkson is saying, of course, is very much in keeping with the worldview presented in the Bible – we live in an imperfect and fallen world where things are not as they should be, that all human beings behave stupidly and wrongly at times and sometimes that can seriously hurt others. Christians, however, would argue that the answer cannot be found in the hands of government, legislation will never change human nature. Only the gospel can affect people deep within their beings and give us all what Jesus called ‘new birth’. This is God’s ‘good news’ for a world where bad things happen.

Home Page News 1 March 2010

Fundamental to any education system is a system of beliefs – each country’s education system says much about what, as a collective, that country believes to be important in life. Increasingly over the last twenty years, the English ( and Welsh) education system has been characterised by a commitment to national economic development and state control. In this regard, Tony’s Blair’s New Labour and Margaret Thatcher’s New Conservatism had much in common – it was the Conservatives, after all who introduced the national ( or perhaps it is more accurate to called it a ‘nationalised’) curriculum back in 1988. Before the 1997 General Election Tony Blair described education as his government’s best economic policy; which was his justification for spending billions on educational improvements, which appear to have achieved little by way of improving educational standards or indeed society as a whole. Government control over education is tighter now that it has ever been and our children are increasingly being seen as belonging to the state. This is essentially why the Badman fiasco of the last year has occurred, elective home education is the last area of education in this country that the government does not control – no nationalised curriculum, no control over how much learning should occur, no control over the standards of parents, and no control over whether the state allows particular parents to educate their children (although in reality the legislation is already in place to ensure that parents do educate their children in an appropriate manner). In this context, it is little wonder that Graham Badman and the DCSF do not want to look at research that demonstrates the home education works, and by and large, works better than their schools! They are simply determined to bring home educators under the control of the state machinery that manages the rest of the children in this country!

For those of us who are Christians, we need to recognise that we are engaged in a conflict that, in an increasingly secularised society, can only get more challenging. Education is about raising the next generation – the difference between what Christians and the secularised state regard as success in this respect is a gaping chasm, which can only become wider in the coming years. At some point, Christians in Britain need to ask the question – ‘Can a secularised education system raise the next generation of our children – equipped and prepared to live for the Kingdom?’