Category Archives: Learning

How do you rate you Local Authority EHE department and staff?

Home education

Many home educators have problems when dealing with their Local Authority. These often stem from the prevalent pro-schooling culture, lack of understanding about why parents choose to home educate and how it differs so drastically from school, and widespread misinterpretation of the law. Experinces vary drastically from authority to authority and with different staff members.

The HED : The Home Education Database (http://www.theartofsurvival.co.uk/hed/) website allows home educators to

  • Find out about the EHE staff at your Local Authority and read reviews of them.
  • Submit information about, and rate, the staff in your area.
  • Find home education groups near you.

Food chains

Children's books, Learning,

A few resources on food chains.

Websites

Books:

  • The Magic School Bus Gets Eaten: A Book About Food Chains
  • Yum Yum (Wonderwise)
    It reads very well as a story, without any extra information disturbing the flow, making this great as a story book.
    Beautifully illustrated and not too simplistic in its view of food chains. It extends the concept to food circles/cycles and includes what happens when an animal dies, the fact that plants use nutrients from decomposed animals as food, and illustrates that there may be different consumers of that same plant (in this case).
  • Staying Alive: the story of a food chain

Things to think about

Food chains give a simplistic and potentially misleading view, which is more accurately shown in a food web and food cycle/circle. The missing piece of the puzzle with much of the information is that plants require nutrients as do fungi and algae. These come from decomposted plants, animals and their waste materials. The emphasis on linear chains and the misleading idea that plants are the start of a process requiring nothing but water and sunlight, obscure the vital imporatance of recycling nutrients – the very foundation of a healthy ecosystem. Importance of parasites is often overlooked as well.

1st issue of EOS – Education Outside School

Home education, Magazines and blogs,

The first issue of the eagerly awaited home education magazine EOS is now out.

It’s available in an online format only, at www.educationoutsideschool.co.uk, free of charge. It is hoped that it will be a much needed resource for new and experienced HE families, but something which also makes an informative and valuable contribution to how HE is seen in the UK, and beyond – a step towards normalising home ed and give it a more positive image.

‘Unsatisfactory’ education

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Part of problem here is a wide cultural gap between the school culture and informal learning culture common in home educating families and communities.

Whilst LA officers went to school, taught in schools and predominantly have experience of group based state education – SATs, National Curriculum etc home eduction is NOT school.

It uses very different methods because it is one to one, highly personalised. It is conversation based and independent learning is the norm. Many (maybe most) people without experience of alternative education are unable to assess it, and often are unable to recognise it in progress.

Not only that but sometimes LA officers deem education unsatisfactory because they have an artificial set time for education in mind – and home ed happens every moment of a child’s day – as they play, talk and explore their world. Other times it is deemed unsatisfactory because a family chooses to submit a written report rather than accept visits which can be highly stressful and particularly damaging for children with special needs or who have had bad experiences in school.

Sending teachers and school inspectors to assess home education is like getting the Pope to assess a Muslim, Jewish or CofE’s families religious views and practices.

There are many different approaches to education – many of which are not used in state schools so experience of school based education is hardly a qualification to assess home education.

Well they would say that wouldn’t they

Home education, , ,

No surprises in DCSF’s report on the responses to the home education consultation. The report of the consultation largely dismisses the reponses of home educators to the consultation. Response after response is dismissed on the grounds that home educators would say that wouldn’t they.

What DCSF fail to grasp is the home educators and home educated children are the stakeholders and the experts here. We are the experts in education outside school, in the welfare of own children and the children in our community. We are the people who live this life and know how the proposed changes will impact on our children and community.

We are also people with an interest in education, often with a broad knowledge of different educational philosophies and practices.

The few areas where responses have been taken into consideration have just replaced one rock with another hard place. So rather than criminalise parents for not registering, or doing what they say at every turn LA will punish them and their children by forcing them into school. Hardly a better outcome for children removed from school because school cannot meet their educational and welfare needs, or because of bullying. Where is the child’s welfare in this?

Home educators will in turn say – well the DCSF would say that wouldn’t they. They wouldn’t want their actual stakeholders to get in the way of decisions they have already made. However articulate and logical an argument may be it is incredibly difficult to persuade somone with a widespread preconceived cultural idea – in this case that school = education that they don’t understand or know enough about something to pass judgement on it. In other words those with a pro-school prejudice are hardly independent when it comes to making decisions about a way of life that calls their own educational choices into question.

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations/index.cfm?action=conResults&external=no&consultationId=1643&menu=3

Diversity in Education is precious in a democracy … Open Letter

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Brighton and Hove Home Educators have drafted and open letter to The Guardian and The Times, intended for publication on January 11th 2010, which is the date of the second reading of the Children, Schools and Families Bill in the House of Commons.
Please read and sign the letter at http://bhhe.wordpress.com/diversity/.