NorthStarUK Blog

Home Page News 18th January 2010

At church yesterday the speaker asked us all – ‘what puts fire in your belly?’ ‘What, in your life, excites you when you think about it?’ He was particularly asking us to reflect on the work that we do for the Lord, and especially inviting us to focus on those areas that we are especially called to minister in, over and above everything else. As I sat there I thought about NorthStarUK and also about gifts – not the sort that we receive at Christmas, but rather those that our Creator gave us at birth. For many years I worked as a special needs teacher. Many of the students I worked with were amongst the weakest in the school, in terms of their academic prowess. But each and everyone one of them had gifts; they all had abilities given to them by their Creator. Often these were talents that school did not notice or value; nevertheless, they were still gifted individuals – indeed, much of my most important work, I felt, was to try to convince them that they had abilities, because many years of schooling had often caused them to lose confidence and led them to devalue themselves. It also struck me that schools do not have a very good track record of working with exceptionally talented individuals, either, unless these talents coincided with what schools were looking for. I thought of Mozart – a child prodigy; how would he have got on in one of our local schools – now it has to be admitted, he would almost certainly have known more about science or geography, but would he have had time to compose – he was writing music from the age of five! Schools inevitably aim at producing generalists; our Creator, however is more concerned to produce unique, talented individuals who have a role within their community. As parents, teachers and educators let’s spend some time this week reflecting on the gifts that each of our children has been given and help them to have a fire in their belly as they develop those gifts and talents in the coming years.

Just how much time does Ed Balls have in a week?

Just how much time does Ed Balls have in a week? In a week of headlines that clearly show the desperate state of the nations schools – including news of increased assaults on teachers, news that white boys from poor families continue to be let down by the schooling system, GCSE science grades are inflated, as many as one in eight primary school children had been given the wrong SATS results and almost 50% of 14 year olds admitted to having been bullied – Ed Balls has still found the time to pick on home educating families.

With less than six months left in the job, Ed Balls seems determined to leave his mark. Having publicly accepted every one of Graham badman’s recommendations immediately the Badman Report was published, he has now pushed ahead and drafted legislation in the Children, Schools and Families Bill that will see virtually all of Badman’s recommendations pass into law. Despite ample research that demonstrates that children taught outside schools are more likely to be successful – both educationally and socially – Ed Balls thinks he knows best. He plan to make every home educating family register with their local authority. Each year, parents will have to provide local authority staff with a clear programme of what they plan to teach their children. Each year, local authority staff with little or no experience of home educating will then be permitted to decide whether or not the family may continue to educate without schools! Even OFSTED does not inspect school that often!

In one simple legislative act, Ed Balls has transformed the educational landscape – responsibility for educating children has now been transferred from parents to the state. How ironic that that slippery slope which began with Margaret Thatcher’s National Curriculum in 1988 should finally bring us to the point where our children are not our own – they now belong to the state to be taught what the state wishes and in a place that the state designates!

Perhaps, after all, Ed Balls can afford to ignore the mundane and pressing problems of the school system – because he has his eyes on the bigger picture. Home education demonstrates that parents and children do not need schools, they do not need trained teachers and they do not need the state. Perhaps this is just too radical and too scary for poor Ed Balls to countenance.

The end of ‘Stalinist’ educational centralisation?

Broadly speaking, when it comes to education I take the view that more choice is always better than less choice. This was why, in 1988, I was opposed to the introduction of the National Curriculum in England and Wales. I argued that it would introduce an era of increased government meddling wand this would result in increased secularisation in our schools, far less choice for parents and students and no real improvement in education. I am not one to say ‘I told you so’ but I cannot help but feel that events over the last twenty years have confirmed my concerns; indeed, recent reports have suggested that maths and reading standards are no better than they were in the 1950s. The Cambridge Prmary Review, even went so far as to describe our current system as having ‘Stalinist overtones‘ in its obsession with central government control over all things educational!

This brings me to an interesting article that I read last week relating to Swedish ‘free schools’. Since the 1990s, parents, charities and even businesses in Sweden have been permitted to set up non-fee-paying schools, funded by the government; parents are provided with a ‘virtual voucher’ currently worth around £7,000 which they can spend at any ordinary state school or independent ‘free school’ that they prefer. In 1992, the Swedes dismantled a monolithic state-run education system (which already had very good standards, one might add) to create a radical system where student and parental choice was made a priority. What is now particularly interesting is that the Conservatives have expressed an interest in introducing similar reforms in the UK, if they win the forthcoming general election in 2010. I am not an especially political animal and I have to confess that I have never voted Conservative in my life! However, one cannot help but feel that educational choice and the freedom that would inevitably follow, would serve families far better than the pseudo-pontifical pronouncements of any Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. And even those of us who home educate, have to see this as a good thing!

Scheming plots?

There is growing evidence that very senior staff within local authority social services departments have worked very closely with staff from the government’s Department for Children, Schools and Families to undermine parents rights to home educate and to portray home education as a growing risk to child safety. Recently a member of the House of Common’s Select Committee for Children, Schools and Families asked Maggie Atkinson, Ed Balls’ candidate for the post of Children’s Commissioner, “What do you think we should be saying as a Committee regarding the legislative process and the Badman Report, and whether it is protecting children’s interests or trampling all over the interests of home-educated children?” Her response was “I would give you two words, and they are the first and second names of the child who died ‘Khyra Ishaq’.”

Ms Atkinson was referring to the tragic case of a child from Birmingham whose mother and step-father allegedly starved her to death. In the last months of her life Khyra Ishaq did not attend school. However, what Ms Atkinson did not tell the Select Committee was that, months before, Khyra Ishaq’s teachers had repeatedly warned social workers of their concerns but had been told that the situation did not warrant further inquiry. Ms Atkinson also choose not to inform the Select Committee of the nineteen children in Birmingam who have died of abuse or neglect since 2004, nor did she feel it necessary to tell the committee members that sixteen of these were already known by social workers, police or health care staff to be at risk of harm. And the evidence of collusion between senior social services staff and the government – on the 16th January 2009, Maggie Atkinson and Graham Badman along with John Coughlan and John Freeman (Joint Presidents of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS)) had a 24 hour session with DCSF staff to work on matters relating to the DCSF’s Children’s Plan; three days later the ‘independent’ Badman Review was launched.

Home Page News – 28th September 2009

The UK government seems determined to undermine home educators and make life more dificult for families who choose to teach their children outside of the school system. Not only have we seen the DCSF launch a review of home education amid fears that home education was being used as a cover for abuse or domestic servitude, but Graham Badman’s final report suggested the imposition of draconian control measures clearly targetted at discouraging parents from choosing home education. For various reasons, the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee has chosen to look into the way that Graham Badman undertook his review. As I reminded everybody last week, the deadline for members of the public to make submissions to the Select Committee was the 22nd September.

I was staggered, therefore, to read last week that Graham Badman has now asked local authorities to provide him with more information to help support the original data that his report is based upon. It seems that his original statistical data was based on a very small sample – he now needs more data to support his findings and recommendations! As somebody wrote last week – “he is looking for evidence to support his evidence!” This is little more than a tacit admission on his part that the data that he currently has will not stand the scrutiny of the select committee and that he needs to find more supporting data. One does not need to be a conspiracy theorist to smell a rat here!

Whilst Christian home educators and others must be vigilant and do all that we can to stop the proposed changes in legislation; at the same time, we have to remember that we have a sovereign God who we believe is in charge of this world. Ed Balls and Graham Badman are not the real ones in control – as much as they may think that they are. I visited the delightful Swallow Falls in North Wales over the weekend. One cannot help but be overwhelmed by the power and beauty of the water as it cascades down the valley. I was reminded not only of the wonder of creation but of the power of God’s grace – which is poured out upon this world so lavishly. At this time especially, those of us who are home educators in the UK need to hold on to this truth and thrive in the knowledge that our gracious God is in control.

Badman and the DCSF’s ‘doomsday’ scenario

Much has been written about the Badman Report and most home educators have, rightly, been indignant at the manner in which the Department for Children, Schools and Families aided and abetted by some in the educational media and children’s charities have decided to wage open warfare on sensible law-abiding parents whose only ‘crime’ is to step outside the government prescribed education system and try to offer their children something better!

Though there is ample research that demonstrates clearly that children who learn without schools do at least as well as their schooled peers, that their employment outcomes are excellent and that they integrate well into society, Graham Badman has chosen to ignore this. Was this consultation a genuine attempt to improve relations between local authorities and home educators or was it, in reality, little more than a ‘stitch-up’, a sham, where Ed Balls, Delyth Morgan and others within the DCSF could ensure that the last island of educational independent in this country was brought within the controlling tentacles of government? Badman’s unwillingness to acknowledge research that has findings favourable to home education and the membership of his advisory committee, which included three specialists on safeguarding children and a champion of ‘children’s rights’ and no current home educators would suggest that Badman and his masters knew quite well what recommendations they wanted to see at the close of this consultation.

Though Badman has been compelled to acknowledge that there is no evidence to support Delyth Morgan’s shameful association of home education and forms of child abuse, Baroness Morgan, herself, has never publicly apologised for this slur and Graham Badman’s recommendations clearly assume that home educated children are intrinsically more vulnerable and need greater protection from their parents, than those children who attend school!

Is the real issue that home educated children simply highlight the failures that are so common within the school-system? Perhaps the teachers’ unions dislike the fact that untrained mums and dads do a better job than their members or that unpaid parents with limited physical resources appear to be more successful than a nationalised education system costing billions!

Perhaps, in the end, this whole Badman exercise is based upon fear – the fear that more parents will recognise that successive governments over the last twenty years have experimented with the nation’s children, promising much, delivering very little and changing strategy often enough to disguise the outcomes of their actions.

Once parents recognise what has occurred, the number of families home educating could explode as thousands of parents decide to take full responsibility for their children’s education and leave the far riskier national school environment.

Is this ‘doomsday’ scenario what is truly behind the DCSF’s current attack on home educators?

Some thoughts on pedagogy from Switzerland

I recently returned from the EurECA Conference in Vevey, Switzerland. Apart from the memorable setting, overlooking Lake Geneva and looking at the peaks of the Dents du Midi in the distance, and the practical theme – How should Christians teach? – I will remember it for the insights of David Smith, now teaching at Calvin College, Grand Rapids USA, as he spoke primarily on pedagogy. He suggested we stop using the word methodology and re establish the word pedagogy. Briefly, his argument was that methodology is rooted in a scientific method, that if we teach in a specific way then there would be certain predictable results, whereas pedagogy stems from a community of learners living close to and learning from the ‘master’.

As I sat listening and making notes I found myself really thinking about how to start my teaching at the beginning of the year and how to start units of work in a more interesting way. David’s assertion was that how we start has a big impact on pupils and it really impacts on how they will react to our course over the year. As I reflected on how to apply this at Trinity School I also began to think – but how can this be applied to on-line teaching?

I know that my present lessons are better than when I started with NorthStarUK but the speed of change in schools classrooms brought about by constantly improving IT facilities, interactive white boards, You Tube clips etc mean that we can’t sit back either.

We clearly do a good job in teaching our NorthStarUK students from the results over the years, but as a Christian teacher I still want to do better. My personal challenge from the conference is focussed on improving the start of courses, but that is only the beginning, I can’t let the rest of the course become predictable and in the eyes of the students ‘boring’. So it looks as if there is yet more work to do in the next few months.

ContactPoint – safety in number?

Today, the UK government’s ContactPoint database goes live. Although initially the database will only be accessible to local authorities in the north west of England, the plan is to roll it out nationwide and permit just under 400,000 individuals to look at a raft of information about every child in the UK. Costing a quarter of a billion pounds to set up, the government has consistently argued that it will enable services for children to be coordinated and ensure that no child slips through the net.

ContactPoint will hold a raft of information about children in England, including their name, address, date of birth, health information including GP details and information about other professionals involved in providing care for a child.  Of particular significance to home educating families the database will hold  details about the child’s formal education provision.

Auditors, Deloitte and Touche published a report in 2007, however stating that the database could never be totally secure.  The government appears to acknowledge this since it has decided to shield the identities of over 50,000 who are regarded as particularly vulnerable.

Whilst some children’s charities have welcomes the new database, opposition political parties have been critical – the Liberal Democrats have called it “intrusive” and the Conservatives have raised concerns about security matters.

The Christian home education group, Home Service, has consistently opposed the implementation of ContactPoint, arguing that it will not achieve its objective of improving the connected-ness of children’s services nor will it improve the situation greatly for the thousands of children in England suffering abuse who are  already known to the local authorities.  In addition, Home Service has argued that the introduction of ContactPoint will rob home educators of their right to privacy. The currently legal position in England and wales is that most families are not required to notify the local authority of their decision to home educate their children.  ContactPoint will destroy this right because the database will each child’s school. This will enable local authorities and others to monitor home educating families in a way that was impossible previously and in a ay that current legislation does not require.

ContactPoint grew out of the desire to improve child safety in the aftermath of the death of Victoria Climbie. Will children in the north west be any safer today as a result of ContactPoint?  The tragic case of Baby P – where health care professionals and social workers were acutely aware of the child’s suffering but appeared to do nothing of substance to prevent it happening -  seems to suggest that the answer to this question is quite simply ‘No”!

“a better all round learning experience … attending school”

Over the weekend I was chatting with a teacher friend of mine about a 15 year old student that he has in his class who has severe learning difficulties, dyslexia and he has spent the whole of his secondary career learning to speak English as an additional language.  When asked questions in class he usually smiles and answers with just one or two words almost entirely unrelated to the correct answer; in exams his answers often consist of little more than words extracted from the question he is trying to answer. This young man is ‘statemented’, which means that his local authority has acknowledged that he has learning difficulties that are beyond the resources of his school to meet. Despite this, according to my friend, he has no additional resources allocated to him  – no teaching assistant sitting with him helping him understand what the teacher is saying or differentiating his work and for four years he has made little or no progress.

You may wonder why I have mentioned this young man in my home page news. Well, over the weekend I also read about the case of Elysha Robertson, a  seven year old in Rotherham who suffers from a disease related to motor neurone disease but so rare that doctors don’t even have a name for it. Elysha’s intellectual ability is unimpaired but the disease has robbed her of all movement from the waist up. She now communicates using her toes and is fed via a tube into her stomach.

Elysha’s mum withdrew her from a local special school because she felt that the school was not doing a good enough job of educating her daughter. Mrs Robertson has said “I want to teach my child at home because I believe she has made better progress than she did at Newman School where she was taught before.”

The response of the local authority has been aggressive and intolerant.  The Council’s social services department supported by the school is arguing that Elysha could be suffering from isolation and missing the company of other children, and has opted to use legislation relating to child abuse and neglect to call a case conference and demand that the Robertson’s attend.

A spokeswoman for Rotherham Council has stated ” .. the authority would always recommend that children receive a better all round learning experience from attending school.”  I couldn’t help thinking of the young Asian boy taught by my friend when I read this!

Narcissistic children and self-esteem

There can be no doubt that self-esteem is an important part of people’s lives. It is also true that we all like to be encouraged and affirmed in what we do and who we are – it makes us feel good about ourselves.

Historically, British schools have been pretty poor at developing pupil’s self-esteem; in fact I would argue that they have often done serious damage to pupils in this regard. Some years ago I came across a youngman in his 20s who when he was 16 and about to go into his GCSE maths exam had been told by his maths teacher, that it would be a waste of his time and that of the exam marker if he actually bothered to sit the exam. Five or six years later when I met this young man he still regarded himself as ‘stupid’ – not merely in maths but generally. I was reminded of this young man, this week when I read of a paper presented at the Association of School and College Leaders conference in Birmingham by Dr Carol Craig suggesting that our schools are in danger of producing narcissistic children who are likely to develop an “all about me mentality”. The ‘praise culture’ was something that also arose in a conversation I had with a former colleague a few weeks ago. We had worked together for a number of years in special educational needs within a mainstream school. She told me of a new member of staff who was inclined, in her opinion, to praise children for ‘almost anything’ – if a child sat quietly for five minute, he was praised before the rest of the class; if he wrote two or three lines in English, he was similarly praised. In the opinion of my former colleague this devalued praise – the child was simply being praised for what he should have been doing in the first place!

Teachers are, however, in a very powerful position within their classrooms. Ultimately, it is teachers who decide what is truth and what is not,what is correct and what is wrong. I have often chided teaching friends of mine by saying that as teachers we are the only individuals who ask people questions to which we already know the answer! That position of power is so easily abused when a child is scorned or even mocked for not knowing the answer that the teacher is looking for. In my experience, far from creating a generation of narcissistic egoists, my feeling is that teachers do not give children sufficient real praise. Those of us who are home educating need to guard against the same failing – our children need to be encouraged not only when they do well, but also when they have tried their best – and as parents we are best placed totell the difference.

By the way, if you are interested in what happened to the young man with the appalling maths teacher, heeventually went to university and secured a very respectable 2:1degree, but only after good people convinced him that his schoolexperience was inaccurate and that he was actually quite able!