The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill - The child’s best interests: balancing rights and responsibilities in home education.

https://www.markmypapers.com/the-childrens-wellbeing-and-schools-bill/

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill -

The child’s best interests: balancing rights and responsibilities in home education.

“The notion of obligations comes before that of rights” - Simone Weil

Few issues have caused more consternation and debate within the home education community than the recently enacted Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. It has met with considerable opposition from those of us who have elected to educate our children “otherwise than at school”. Despite its recent parliamentary success, there remains significant momentum behind efforts to amend - or even overturn - this legislation.

The scope of the Act is considerable and is being heralded as the most significant piece of education legislation for a decade. In relation to home education, Sections 37 to 42 address children not in school.  While we await the consultation on the secondary legislation, a broad framework now exists outlining how parents will be expected to proceed, if they choose to educate their children at home. In some instances, parents will be required to obtain permission before deregistering a child from school. Local authorities will also be required to maintain a register of children not in school, with parents under a duty to provide specified information. This will include an estimate of the amount of time a child receives education from their parents and from any other educational providers, together with details of those providers where required. In certain circumstances, the local authority may also request a home visit. 

As with any community within society, home education is not monolithic. When we began home educating in 2003, the community did feel relatively homogenous. However, over the years it has become increasingly diverse, with people choosing not to send their children to school - or withdrawing them - for a wide range of reasons, not all of which are compatible with the educational philosophy held by others within the community. It has become more factional and therein lies one of the difficulties in discussing the Act.

In recent years, those who speak is favour of registration, monitoring or more structured approaches have often been made to feel like pariahs. The loudest voices have tended to come from those who argue that private family life should exist free from state involvement. Yet this position overlooks the fact that we all exist within society and share responsibilities towards it.  The private and public spheres inevitably intersect.

For eighteen years, we home educated our child, all the way through GCSEs and A Levels, ultimately leading to five Russell Group university offers. We never registered with the local authority because, at the time, we believed that education was a parental responsibility and that the state should not automatically oversee a lawful educational choice. I am, therefore, understanding of the concerns that this piece of legislation feels like a state overreach. I also believe—although I cannot know with certainty —that our child was able to flourish academically in a way that conventional schooling may not have enabled.

Alongside being a home educator, I am also a qualified social worker - formerly specialising in child protection - and a teacher. I am clearly not anti-home education, but neither am I uncritical of the status quo. As with most areas of life, there are two sides to every narrative. I have met many dedicated home educating families who provide rich, creative and highly individualised education for their children.  However, alongside these families, I have also encountered parents who describe their children as “home educated” despite providing little or no education designed to equip their children for adult life and employment. 

Some home educators focus, almost exclusively, on teaching life skills. These, of course, are important and a form of education. Yet, education extends beyond this. Formal learning also nourishes the mind and the intellect and provides access to opportunities that would otherwise remain closed. In some instances, the label of home education has functioned less as an educational philosophy and more as a means of disappearing from public view. As uncomfortable as it may be to acknowledge, this distinction matters, particularly given the marked rise in children not in school.

Defending the freedom to educate at home should not require defending situations in which children are effectively deprived of learning opportunities. A child’s right to receive an education should not depend solely on whether adults choose to fulfil their responsibilities. It is also reasonable to expect that those assuming responsibility for a child’s learning, should possess the knowledge and skills to provide suitable instruction themselves or have the means to secure appropriate educational support where necessary. Likewise, where teaching is delegated to external providers, proportionate oversight of those providers is a reasonable safeguard to help ensure educational quality and accountability. For these reasons, unlike many home educators, I support the registration and monitoring proposals contained within the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act. 

Registration is not, in itself, an attack on home education. As a society, we register births, deaths, marriages and professionals. Registration, while seen by many as a threat, can be reframed as a way of public authorities simply knowing who exists and where responsibility in the system lies. A register can also protect responsible home educators. At present, public debate is too often shaped by isolated failures or safeguarding tragedies. If local authorities possess a clearer understanding of the home education population, policymakers can better distinguish between families who are providing effective education and those where intervention may genuinely be necessary. I have long maintained that it was a mistake for the government to link home education with instances of child abuse. There is insufficient evidence to support such a generalised assumption, and in many high-profile safeguarding cases, failures have occurred while children remained enrolled at school.

Responsible home educators should not fear visibility, if transparency helps preserve public confidence in educational freedom. Home education can offer significant advantages precisely because it is not bound by the constraints of conventional schooling. It can provide flexibility, individual pacing, one-to-one attention, and learning tailored to a child’s interests, strengths, and developmental stage. In doing so, it can achieve a level of responsiveness that standardised systems often struggle to match.

Registration, however, should not become excessive regulation. The consultation on secondary legislation will therefore raise important questions about proportionality and scope. Parents must retain meaningful freedom over curriculum choices, teaching methods, and educational philosophy. Home education succeeds precisely because it offers diversity, flexibility, and responsiveness to individual children. The challenge for government is to preserve those strengths, while providing appropriate accountability.

The state has a legitimate interest in ensuring that children are safe and receive an adequate and appropriate education. Equally, parents have a legitimate interest in raising and educating their children without unnecessary interference. Good legislation should respect both principles, rather than treating them as mutually exclusive. Above all, the debate should not be framed as freedom versus control - there can be both simultaneously and they can coexist responsibly.  Rights, after all, carry responsibilities. Most home educating parents fulfil those responsibilities exceptionally well. As a community, however, we should not pretend that is universally true. The law should support freedom while ensuring that children whose education has been neglected, are not hidden behind the language of home education. 

Legislation should also be judged by how effectively it protects the minority of children who currently have no one advocating for their educational rights.  The devil, of course, will be in the detail. Home educators are right to express concerns about local authorities acting ultra vires and about the potential for mission creep. It is entirely reasonable to guard against registration evolving into excessive state intrusion, compulsory inspections, mandated curricula and stated pedagogy. Equally, registration and monitoring have the capacity to safeguard home education itself. Protecting educational freedom requires public confidence - it must be seen as a recognized educational pathway, rather than an unmonitored loophole. If that confidence diminishes, there is a greater risk of demands for more restrictive legislation. We should not forget that in many countries home education is illegal. Moderate regulation may therefore help to preserve the broader freedom to educate at home. Targeted oversight is preferable to blanket intervention, allowing authorities to focus resources where genuine concerns exist rather than assuming risk across the entire community.

Ultimately, the challenge is one of proportionality. Effective policy should support educational freedom while maintaining confidence that every child is receiving an adequate and suitable education. A well-designed system of registration and monitoring may achieve both aims—protecting vulnerable children without undermining the autonomy of the majority of parents who are already fulfilling their responsibilities.

Having exercised the freedom to home educate without registration, I understand the instinct to resist state involvement. Yet many years of experience - and the changing landscape of home education - have convinced me that a careful system of registration and monitoring can protect children's rights without undermining parental liberty. Parents have a legal right to choose home education under Section 7 Education Act 1996. However, children also have the right to receive an education that equips them for adult life and future employment. Education must expand, rather than limit, children’s life choices.  

Responsible home educators have little to fear from proportionate accountability. Many professions and institutions accept some level of oversight, without sacrificing their independence. Supporting reasonable registration and monitoring is therefore not a rejection of home education. Rather, it recognises that rights are sustained by the responsible exercises of obligations. It affirms every child matters and that education is important, regardless of where it takes place.

If Simone Weil was right that obligations precede rights, then the obligation owed to every child is an education that equips them to flourish. Protecting that obligation is not a denial of parental freedom but one of the conditions that makes that freedom sustainable. 

By Alison Nicole Blair-Bullett, former social worker and teacher in post compulsory education. Now a social science tutor, academic mentor and home education consultant.

I am delighted to be joining the British Sociological Association's Schools Strategy Working Group. There has never been a more important time to be studying sociology. We live in a tumultuous world. Understanding the complex ways in which society functions and how social relationships and structures shape human behaviour, is invaluable to finding solutions to what are often catastrophic issues. Critical sociological analysis, allows us to understand the challenges we face in living together, promotes informed decision making and, above all, encourages empathy and social responsibility. It equips individuals with the tools to engage with, and contribute to, a more just and cohesive society. In the words of Albion Woodbury Small - Sociology was born of the modern ardor to improve society.

An Education Revolution: Do we need a new paradigm for home education?

https://www.markmypapers.com/an-education-revolution/

An education revolution:

Do we need a new paradigm for home education?

Does home education have a future? If so, what does it look like?  And is a paradigm shift required? I approach these questions from a somewhat unique perspective, so providing some context might be a good place to start. On a personal level, although I loved formal learning, I loathed the social aspect of my school years.  Unquestionably, our decision not to send our son to school was influenced by this and we home educated for eighteen years. Professionally, I worked as a social worker within the children and family’s sector – including within child protection – and later qualified as a teacher.  I now work as a tutor, academic mentor and home education consultant. I can, therefore, see the past and the future of home education through a variety of different lenses.

Education, education, education, is a mantra with which we are all familiar.  Given its transformative powers, education is or, at least it should be, an issue of both personal and public concern. And whether we are discussing state, private or home education, each will have strengths as well as weakness, adherents as well as dissenters.  However, there is one matter on which most people will agree – education is not working for many children and that needs to change.

Media coverage, on an almost weekly basis, is sounding alarm bells over education provision in the United Kingdom. Whether it’s too much testing; the absence of special educational needs provision; low educational aspirations; declining standards; bullying; crumbling school buildings; teacher recruitment and retention difficulties, or children missing from school, we are left in no doubt that the education system is no longer functioning as it should. And that brings us to the Schools Bill and, more specifically, for the purpose of this article, to home education.

Families home educate for a whole host of reasons, and this makes for a schismatic community. This is something which often happens naturally within groups. While there may be a shared belief in the right to do something, it does not correlate that there is agreement on the process or the ultimate objective.  Think of it as a Venn diagram, but where there is very little intersection. At the present time, there appears to be a number of distinct camps within the home education community, which means that there is not one universal voice. Opinions about what home education should look like vary tremendously and it can be the cause of considerable friction, tension and hostility. For the purposes of this piece, the perspective is coming from a structured learning approach, where curriculums are valued, and academic pathways are followed.

Education is one of the key determiners in children’s life choices and life chances. It is important for a cohesive society that those of us who are able to contribute do so and that, within reason, we are self-supporting. There will, of course, always be members of society who need additional assistance, and it is incumbent on those of us who are in positions of advantage, to provide an environment where everyone can thrive. What remains the same, however, is that every child should have access to good quality education and that they should have equal access to the same opportunities. At the end of their educational ‘careers’, young people should have the knowledge and skills which will empower and enable them to contribute to society.

There has been a great deal of media coverage about children “missing in education”.  And, indeed, there should be genuine concern for those children who are not receiving a suitable education. There is a clear distinction, however, between this group of children and those who are genuinely being home educated.  Children in the latter category are not, by definition, missing from education, because it is being delivered at home and many are receiving a better education than they would in either the state or private sector.  And the increasing numbers of schoolteachers who are electing to home educate their own children, says a great deal about their own despair at the current system.

Many of those who are committed to academic pathways for their children, have home educated from the outset and all the way though to university admission. This has provided, for some of us, an opportunity for introspection and reflection. As with most issues in life, there are often narratives which compete with one another to be heard. And people’s experiences will influence their discourse, especially when it comes to matters affecting their children.

There are many who have concerns about the School’s Bill passing into law. Indeed, there is an action group devoted entirely to resisting this piece of legislation and some of the concerns are valid. There should be some caution over diluting the right of parents to determine the best interests of their own children, for it would represent a seismic paradigm shift – taking child rearing from the private into the public sphere. It has the potential to be seen as “state ownership” and clearly it is something which needs to be navigated carefully. Moreover, there are also concerns about the registration of children being home educated and the monitoring of their education. Partly, although not exclusively, the government is hoping that this will be an extra safeguarding measure. Sadly, children being on a school register has not stopped abuse happening and has made it no easier to detect. Someone intent on harming a child will find a way.

Furthermore, there are also concerns about how the local authority will determine what constitutes an appropriate education. How will it be funded?  Will those employed have a full working knowledge of different pedagogy? Will they be suitably qualified to be able to comment on different subject areas? What lateral freedom will be given to teach more unusual subjects?  Will home educators only be able to take those exams deemed appropriate by the local authority? And if it is to be subject to government intervention, what financial support will be given to home educators? Considering that there is a dearth of examination centres, many home educators rely on private provision. The cost of taking a GCSE privately can be in excess of £200, with an A Level being £400 plus and it is even more for science subjects where there are practical exams. Given that many home educators take eight or nine GCSEs and three A Levels, that represents a considerable sum of money which the government would need to find.

Without some formal learning and some qualifications, children are being done a great disservice. 

Conversely, however, there are reasonable arguments in favour of what the government is proposing. Firstly, mandatory registration (as opposed to voluntary registration) could assist in formally identifying those children who are not in school, to ensure that their educational needs are being met and that they are genuinely being home educated. There are children who, despite not being in school, are not being “suitably” educated at home either. It should be a concern that section 2:11 of the Department of Education’s own guidance states that, there is no legal requirement for children to acquire any specific qualifications. Without some formal learning and some qualifications, children are being done a great disservice. Secondly, it would enable education officers to aid those families who might benefit from additional support in their home education journey. It should not be a green light for overzealous intervention, and there is no reason why that should happen; it could simply assist in helping to ensure that children are receiving the education which they are entitled to and provide signposting to resources where necessary.

We live in a competitive world, and we need to work in order to live. Qualifications are, therefore, important in helping to secure employment. It may not be a system which many like but, nevertheless, it is the system we currently have. It is therefore of some concern, that the same government guidance on home education mentioned earlier, also states that home educators do not need “to provide a broad and balanced curriculum”; “to give formal lessons”; to “mark work done by a child” or to “formally assess progress”. While children can and do learn well informally, formal lessons give them an understanding of discipline which will be something to which they are subjected later in life. A broad curriculum gives children a taste of a variety of subjects and, through which, they will be able to decide for themselves what interests them and which ones they would like to pursue. Marking a child’s work and monitoring progress, allows strengths to be identified and weaker areas to be worked on. Just as with the school system, home education can and does have issues and it can go wrong.

Home educating a child is a step which should be considered carefully. It’s a huge responsibility and commitment.  Done well, it is intensive and requires a great deal of parental input. It can also be a lonely and isolating experience, especially for young people, and this is not something which the home educating community often has the courage to talk about. Reflecting on our own experience, I now see – and wish – that our son had experienced more learning with his peer group. This is something which could now be more readily achieved with the emergence of online education platforms. Children will have the opportunity to engage with their peer group, making learning a shared experience which is of enormous value. Moreover, having access to a range of adults who can teach and inspire children, enhances the joy of learning as a shared journey and brings a sense of camaraderie.

There are an increasing number of families choosing home education, who are seeking clear and definitive advice on structured learning, who are planning to take exams and who are anticipating university as the ultimate goal. But they also have concerns about how to do this, to ensure that their children’s futures are protected. For these families, it seems sensible to have some form of regulatory body who can assist them in ensuring that they have the right advice and resources.

There is a certain inevitably that the School’s Bill will be passed; it has come before parliament on two previous occasions and has cross party support. It seem highly unlikely that it will fail on the third time of asking. It is vital, therefore, that the government seeks the input, advice and experience of long-standing home educators, particularly those who put learning centre stage. We need to be involved in the dialogue to produce a paradigm which works in the best interests of children’s future education. Unless we are seeking to remove ourselves entirely from society and living, like Thoreau on Walden, then we need to accept that we all have a part to play in that society.

With the exponential rise in home education, monitoring of home education can help to ensure that a good quality of education is being provided to those children. Dissenters of that view will point to the fact that the current education system is not necessarily excelling in this department. While that may be true, home education has the opportunity to showcase just how well it can work; how successful home educated students can be and, in the process, we might well be able to educate other professionals. It is also a community which aims to raise educational standards, not lower them.

And where the government requires something of the home educating community, it is also reasonable to expect that same community will demand something in return. This means more, and greater access to, exam centres; funding for GCSEs and A Levels; a governing body perhaps, to provide accurate information on exams and higher education; a pool of well qualified tutors from who home educators, where necessary, can gain assistance and an assurance that those doing monitoring are professionally qualified, skilled and experienced. These suggestions will be met with unease by some, and their concerns should be listened to. Clearly the objective should be about ensuring and protecting the right of every child to a good quality education.

The future of home education has the potential to look really good. While it may be regarded by some as an unnecessary and oppressive encroachment, education officers – trained well – could be a valuable source of guidance and support to home educators. A governing organisation which sets out protocols to be observed and provides comprehensive advice on exams, apprenticeships and university entrance is much needed. At the moment, families tend to rely on an array of social media groups for this information. Given that there are now so many groups – many with a significant membership, where it is simply not possible to moderate all comments – not all the information is necessarily accurate. The nature of social media means that it is very easy for misinformation to take hold and so one centralised body to which families could be referred will go some way to ameliorating that situation. Funding could help to support home educated students to take the exams they need and greater access to exam centres would be welcomed by all. Using online education platforms to deliver some education would give home educated children a sense of connection; a feeling of belonging and of not feeling different. There is a human need to fit in and children feel this even more acutely than adults. It would stop the disconnect between being home educated and the educational norms of wider society. This does not have to be a naïve view, because home educators can and should be involved in the process. We all need to work together, to ensure that children have the best educational futures.

By Alison Nicole Blair-Bullett, former social worker and teacher in post compulsory education. Now a social science tutor, academic mentor and home education consultant. Together with Emma White and Jane Porter, Alison runs the group, ‘Home Education for Academic Excellence’.

An Honest Reflection of Home Education

https://www.markmypapers.com/an-honest-reflection-and-evaluation-of-home-education/

An honest reflection and evaluation of home education.

And why it should be considered carefully.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. 

Soren Kierkegaard

Long before our son was born, my husband and I knew that we would choose to home educate. Our decision was shaped by many influences, resulting in a well-informed choice in which we had complete confidence. It was, nevertheless, a decision we made which did not involve our son, at least in his formative years. This is something upon which we now reflect.

The background to our decision to home educate initially stemmed from our own ghastly experiences of the school system. Neither my husband nor I can recall a single, positive day from the fourteen years we spent in education. There was the incessant bullying; the Lord of the Flies playground experiences; the insipid, uninspiring teachers and the disregard of students who were academically “middling” – those who were very able, coped admirably; those who were struggling were given extra help and those of us who could have joined the very able, with just a little bit more help, were ignored. And there was never any scope to ask questions. We were expected to accept what our teachers said and, even though we both went to “good” state schools, critical thinking was discouraged. It had, for us, been a miserable existence and one which we didn’t want to inflict on our son.

Soon after we met, my husband introduced me to friends whose parents had made the somewhat radical and progressive decision – especially for the 1980s – to home educate. This was the moment when I realised the potential of a life for children without school; it changed everything for me. Simply knowing that there was an alternative path, allowed us to plan our future differently.

My experience as a teacher also influenced our decision. It might seem surprising that someone with such a negative school experience would want to become a teacher – let alone qualify as one – but I taught in further and higher education which is a world away from primary and secondary schooling. Students, on the whole, are more engaged; they actively participate in the learning experience, and teaching is no longer about “crowd control”. I recognised that, if our child didn’t go to school, he could have this style of learning from the outset, something which I knew would stand him in good stead for future years. He would have the freedom to question what he was being taught; learn to present his views with clarity and authority and he could have some agency over the subjects and specifications he studied.

Coming as we did from stereotypical middle-class families, both my husband and I valued education and, while a cliché, it’s transformative power. We had both been to university and we were academically inclined by nature. We wanted our son to have the primary and secondary education which we had longed for but had not received. I knew that I would deliver an education based on the classical model, with a Socratic method of teaching and that it would be structured. The desire was for our son to have an expansive education which, age eighteen, would give him life choices. I think it would be disingenuous to say that we had not anticipated university would be the ultimate goal but, honestly, it was more that we wanted him to have options. Having worked within education, I had also become increasingly alarmed by the slipping standards in the quality of teaching being delivered. I entered teaching with both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, as well as PGCE – and, incidentally, having also qualified and practised as a social worker – but I was working alongside colleagues, in further education, who were unqualified, and many were teaching subjects of which they had no knowledge.

It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well. 

Rene Descartes

All these factors, set our home education journey in motion and we were very conventional in our approach. We did what many parents do, and we read to our son at every conceivable opportunity.  By the age of three, we started to look at words together using the “look and say” method. I have never liked phonics, but we did have a brief foray into this world which lasted about three weeks. We changed back to “look and say” when our son asked, “what is a d-o-g? It’s a dog, isn’t it?” Reading was a big aspect of family life, and we were fortunate to have an extensive library, significantly stocked by attentive grandparents. Our son was reading fluently by the age of four and so we started to introduce him to a more diverse range of books, rather than the standard “help your child to read” ones. And by a more diverse range, I mean classics including classical poetry. There is nothing terribly exciting about reading Kipper books, but Ransome, Uttley, Defoe, Nesbit and Burnett provide children with adventure, visions and interesting worlds as well interesting words.

Writing was also something which we started early. Home education done this way is very hands on. We spent hours ‘playing’ with letters, seeing them as a tool to express wonderous things and recognising how they could build new, exciting worlds. It is wonderful when a child learns that they too can write stories and that the thoughts in their heads can be committed to paper for others to enjoy. And we did many collages and projects, something which I know our son would now say was “overdone”! But they were useful: he would hand write a classical poem and then identify the segments which interested him and illustrate it. And, since it was important to us, our son was writing cursively and confidently by the age of five.

We did adopt the mantra of reading, writing and arithmetic and these were our key areas of focus. If a child can read and write, they are empowered to find things out for themselves and will be able to access worlds which are different, exciting and which provide them with new learning. But this is not all we did. We also introduced aspects of philosophy to help train the mind to think logically but also laterally. And while we were not ardent advocates of a national curriculum style education, we did broadly follow it. Science was taught (although biology abandoned early on, since neither son or mother had any particular desire to pursue it!), as was history, geography, religion (with a critical gaze), politics and social science. I did also, for several years, introduce French but it held no interest for our son, so we gave this up as a lost cause! However, Latin – and a brief journey into Mandarin – did follow later.

Home education for us did, more or less, replicate school. We were fortunate to have a separate building for education, so that “home life” could be kept separate. Of course, learning was still integrated into everyday life, but we were able to keep my role as a teacher and my role as a parent separate. I’m not convinced, on reflection, that it worked as well as I had hoped. We started our home education day at 9:30 most mornings and finished around 1:30 in the afternoon, although with flexibility built in. The afternoons were always free and involved trips out, meet ups with other home educating families or some other extracurricular activity.

Although we were very focused on education, we had never especially pushed the academic side. However, it became clear, age ten, that this was something our son wanted, and he became interested in taking exams. We started preparing for GCSEs at age eleven although, in all reality, he was already fairly well prepared. He went on to take six GCSEs an academic year early, with the four remaining being taken during the pandemic, for which he was awarded predicted grades (based on two, invigilated, mock exams in each subject and a portfolio of evidence), and secured grades 8 and 9 throughout. Two years later, and still being home educated, he took his A Levels, securing grade A in all three subjects and receiving five Russell Group university offers. At the end of our eighteen-year journey, he is now happily installed in his chosen university and is going from strength to strength and from success to success.

What if we had the chance to do it again and again, until we finally did it right? 

Wouldn’t that be wonderful!  

Kate Atkinson

There is no blueprint for what makes a good parent. When you bring a child into the world, you do so on the basis that you want to give them the best possible life. It’s a monumental responsibility, which forces us to take decisions on an almost continual basis. Clearly, we will all make some decisions which are better than others and we will get many things wrong along the way. So, was home education successful?  What would we change? Would we do it again? 

When we elected to home educate, one of my biggest fears was failing our son academically. It felt incumbent on me to provide the best possible education; to not just be “good enough” but to be superb. And certainly our child achieved academic success. Of course, we have no way of knowing if the outcome would have been the same had he gone to school.  I think that, in all probability, it would have been a very different outcome. He is also self-motivated, self-reliant, self-confident, resourceful and happy. Again, I am not convinced that this would have been the result, had he gone to school. However, we often wonder if we were too entrenched in our ideology that we never open to the alternative – school? I don’t know, but quite possibly so.

There were some things which I didn’t see at the time, which I see now. Since our son was never registered at school, we were under no legal obligation to inform the local authority of our decision. On reflection, I wish we had; it may have been helpful to have someone else’s perspective. While he was given the opportunity to go to school on three separate occasions – age seven, eleven and sixteen – he seemingly chose not to. It’s possible, however, that the nuanced way in which I presented the opportunity, might have influenced his answer. If so, this was a mistake on my part. Nevertheless, our son arrived at age eighteen with life choices ahead of him and with an education of the highest standard.

Socialisation is another aspect of home education which is frequently discussed, and we did find this problematic, even with extracurricular activities. We ended up staying with a small group of people, who shared a similar approach to home education. Between the ages of six months and seven years, we tried lots of home education groups – often travelling quite a distance – but we found them distinctly challenging places to be. There was no structure to these groups and no rules. They became synonymous, for us, with everything which we didn’t like about our school years. They were actually quite unnerving places to be, especially if you announced yourself as a “structured home educator”. The extracurricular activities did provide our son with opportunities which he would never have experienced at school, but it wasn’t enough. The home education community, at the time, was not as big as it is now, and there were very few structured home educators. Things might have been different, had we been starting now.

We have always lived rurally, so our son grew up with acres of land in which to play and explore, surrounded by nature and animals – horses, dogs, cats and chickens. He had what in today’s modern parlance would be considered a natural, toxic free childhood. The enormous benefits of being in nature are well documented and rightly so. However, rural living also brings with it some challenges which are not, perhaps, experienced, by urban home educators in quite the same way – a sense of isolation and of being “other”. There is a tendency, for many of us, to hunger for what we don’t have and while we made many trips into large towns and cities, we always returned to the peace of the countryside and to a feeling of separation. It is another factor which I did not wholly take into consideration when we embarked on our journey all those years ago. It has come as no surprise to me that our son has whole heartedly welcomed city living; it provides him with connections, opportunities and experiences in abundance.

There are many things which I would have changed. Despite attempting to do so, I would have tried even harder to separate my role as mother from my role as teacher. Being both to a child can create an intense relationship and which, on reflection, has the potential to be a suffocating place for a child. I increasingly recognised the importance for children to be taught by others, so that they are exposed to different perspectives and learn to navigate different relationship dynamics. Education should be a shared journey, involving a variety of adults who can nurture and inspire, along with fellow students who can support each other. And I would not have necessarily home educated from the outset. While we had no wish for our son to experience the misery of our school years, there was no guarantee that he would have done.

The ultimate question is, would we do it again? I honestly don’t know the answer to that. I always had grave concerns about the standard of education being afforded to children and that only appears to have become worse. On this basis alone, I would be reluctant to send a child to school. The rise in mental health issues being experienced by school children is another valid reason against, as is the lack of agency given to children over what they can learn. Possibly, until there is a significant overhaul of the current education system, I think that home education would still be the preferred option. It is not, however, a decision I would been quite so convinced by, as I was back in 2003. And I no longer see it through rose tinted spectacles.

Of hindsight, Sophocles wrote, “I have no desire to suffer twice, in reality and then in retrospect”.  We all make decisions, at the time, which we consider to be the right ones. The results of our home education journey do indeed reflect that. Our son secured himself a place at a leading Russell Group university and is thriving there. He has embraced university life wholeheartedly – groups, activities, opportunities – achieving amazing things academically and politically. His oral and written skill are second to none and he is able to navigate any situation in which he finds himself.

There is a “but” though. While we always felt that we were well equipped to deliver a high-quality education, and while we were always mindful of the issues there could be with socialisation, I did not consider that home education would make him “feel different”. It just never crossed my mind. As adults we can indulge the decision to become nonconformists; we can embrace our revolutionary zeal. For a child, however, learning in isolation and not being among your peer group (no matter how awful that peer group might be) leaves, as a good friend and successful home educator of two boys points out, “a lone child marooned in an adult world”. Home education represents something different; a detraction from the norm and that’s not always easy for a child.

Home education is also a risk. If you succeed, your child will have amazing choices and a wonderful future ahead of them. But it is a heavy burden of responsibility to bear alone. The parent of a child who fails in school will blame the teachers. A child who fails at home, will blame the parent. And this could easily damage any relationship.

The landscape of home education is likely to change, if the School’s Bill passes into law. There are crucial discussions which need to take place about the nature of education in the UK, whether that is delivered through the school system or through home education. Interesting times lie ahead.

By Alison Nicole Blair-Bullett, former social worker and teacher in post compulsory education. Now a social science tutor, academic mentor and home education consultant.

Russell Group University Applications

 

These notes are designed, as guidance, for students who are preparing to submit a UCAS application to a Russell Group University.

There are twenty-four Russell Group universities in the United Kingdom, which are regarded as among the finest due to their teaching excellence and world leading research. Their academic reputation means that they attract some of the most able students, both domestically and internationally. As a result, competition for places is fierce and they are frequently oversubscribed. It means that students need to ensure that their applications meet, or exceed, entry requirements; that personal statements contain relevant information and that academic references appropriately support a student's application.

Russell Group universities are spoilt for choice when it comes to admitting students. If there are a hundred places available and two hundred able applicants apply, universities will, potentially, be looking for any reason (I refer to these as 'determining factors') to reject a candidate. It can be a merciless process. The guidance which follows is designed to give students the best possible chance of having their application accepted.

There are always exceptions to every rule. We all know someone whose child has secured a place at a Russell Group university, with lower grades than the "typical" or "standard" offer. They will be quick to point out that their success demonstrates there are anomalies. However, the fact remains that if you want to reduce the risk of rejection, you should familiarise yourself with the university's entry requirements and then comply with them. It may sound obvious but, each year, there are a large number of students who don't.

GUIDANCE

• START EARLY: as A Levels progress, start to focus on the subject which you might like to study at university. Do your research and identify the five (you don't have to select this number, but there is rarely virtue in limiting yourself) universities to which you would like to apply and then visit them. You need to be happy in the place in which, you will be spending the next three or more years. A university which might suit on paper, may not suit in reality.

• YOUR SUBJECT: decide on your degree path, which may be single or joint honours. While it is of course possible (and there will be students who have success), it is not always advisable to apply for two entirely different subjects (as opposed to a joint honours, where subjects frequently complement one another) in the same application. Not only does it say to a university that if you aren't accepted to read one subject then you will 'settle' for another, but it is also extremely difficult - again, not impossible - to tailor a personal statement which does justice to both subjects. It can result in a diluted and insipid statement. Be mindful that, if you apply for two similar courses at the same university, the application is likely to be considered by the same people. So, if you are rejected for one degree path then you are likely to be rejected for the other. Of course, the converse is also true and that being accepted for one degree path, is likely to mean that you are accepted for the other.

• PRELIMINARY WORK: once you have chosen your universities, look carefully at the course specifications and decide on the topic areas which interest you the most. Establish which tutors deliver these units, as this may assist in identifying any potential reading. Make an effort to read some of the books, articles or research papers.  You might also like to write to the department - in advance of submitting your application - and ask them for any recommended reading. It is important to incorporate academic reading into your personal statement - this is both welcomed and valued by universities. Some universities also hold subject masterclass days and these are worth attending.

• A LEVEL GRADES: as a general rule, your predicted A Level grades need to match, or exceed, the course requirements.  Students can and do apply with lower grades - either because of contextual considerations, or because they have something else of  significant merit to offer - but, again, it is a risk.  If you do apply with predicted grades which are below the entry requirements, do not be surprised if you still receive offers which reflect the "typical" or "standard" grades. Also be mindful that, for competitive courses, universities can make you a higher offer than those stated on their website. If you are tempted to apply with predicted grades which are lower, but feel that you won't achieve the higher grade offer on the day, consider if it might be a wasted choice applying to that university.

• GCSE RESULTS: You also need to identify whether the universities you are applying to have other exam requirements. For example, a specified number of GCSEs and/or certain grades. A number of Russell Group universities do take GCSEs into account, with as much as 20% weighting being placed on them. A student applying for a place with predicted A grades at A Level and ten GCSEs at grades 8 and 9 will clearly have the advantage over a student with the same predicted grades, but with five GCSEs at grade 6. For a number of universities, the GCSE profile of a student is important. You also need to remember to list all the exams you have taken and this includes exams which you may have taken twice in order to improve a grade. You cannot just state the higher grade.

• OTHER REQUIREMENTS: be aware that some universities will have additional entry requirements. This can range from a general minimum GCSE  requirement and/or, more specifically, a minimum GCSE grade in English language and/or maths. It may also be that the university has its own entrance exam and/or interview process. Remain mindful that some degree courses might require one A Level to be in an essay based subject. It is perhaps an obvious requirement for humanities and social science degrees, but could also include economics (even where it is taught as a more mathematical degree) and geography degrees.

• PERSONAL STATEMENT: this needs to be focused and should contain three clear elements: i) why you are interested in the subject? ii) what knowledge you have about your subject? and iii) what you can bring to the course and the university. Extraneous and irrelevant information should be omitted. 

Degrees which have a more practical element - medicine, dentistry and veterinary science for example - will undoubtedly benefit from the inclusion of experience in the field. However, such experience still needs to directly relate to your interest in the subject and what knowledge it has given you. For example: for veterinary medicine, if you are going to discuss a placement experience where you worked with lions you should relate this to some theoretical knowledge - "it was enlightening to learn that some lions have purple spotted spleens, as was recorded by Dr Tennyson Tiger in his seminal work Spleens of Lions. The current practice of injecting dye into the spleen has been shown to have a positive outcome for lions with this condition and I would be keen to do further research in this area", It is all about context and avoiding abstract facts which don't link. Everything you write must be relevant to the course. Anyone can work with lions, but what did you learn? Making the best use of your 4,000 characters means choosing your words wisely.

Russell Groups universities want to maintain their reputations for academic excellence, innovation and creativity. They need to know that the students they admit onto their courses are passionate about their subjects; that they have academic acumen; that they will be able to cope with the rigours of academic life; that they will contribute to discussions and that they will leave after three or more years as an asset to the university. You need to demonstrate to the university that it is worth their time investing in you.

 

Nota bene: The UCAS application is being modified - for introduction in 2025 - and instead of a personal statement, students will be required to answer structured questions. It does not change the current process that much and the questions will still require a narrative response. Essentially, it is a deconstructing of the personal statement to make what is required of students clearer. The questions merely act as prompts.

                 

• ACADEMIC REFERENCE: these need to be written by tutors or teachers who know how to write them. This may seem obvious, but not all tutors and teachers understand what universities are looking for and some may not be experienced, or skilled, in writing academic references. The reference needs to: 
  i) provide a brief overview of your academic achievements, focusing on perhaps one or two success and why these were important;
  ii) explain clearly what motivates you, why you want to study your chosen subject and, most importantly, what you will bring to the course;
  iii) clearly demonstrate, with examples, your commitment and enthusiasm for the subject. Skills and aptitude should be discussed as well as indicating why you will thrive in a university environment and on the chosen programme of study;
  iv) focus on you. It is not about the tutor;
  v) include information about your good time management and organisational skills, as well as your self motivation. For SHAPE subjects, evidence that you can participate in discussions and that you are able to present well-reasoned arguments, and
  vi) pick up on points raised by you in your personal statement and provide evidence to support what you say. 

• Nota bene: Similar to the personal statement, the academic reference will be changing slightly in 2025, to a more streamlined approach. Referees will be asked to respond to three prompts instead but much of the same information that was required before, will still be incorporated.

        

PITFALLS

• COURSE REQUIREMENTS: know the requirements of the degree course which you are hoping to study. If a university states that it requires a "strong set of GCSE grades, including the majority at 8 or 9", there is little point in applying if you have five GCSEs at grade 6, unless you can provide an explanation for why that is the case.

• PREDICTED GRADES: there is nothing to stop you applying to a university if one of your predicted A Level grades falls short of the course requirement. However, you need to be mindful that, even if the university still likes your application, they will, in all probability,  offer you a place on the basis of the grades stated as the course requirement.  So, you could apply with A*A*B but would still receive an offer of A*A*A*. If, on results day, grades have not been as generally good as predicted you may still secure the place with an A*A*B, but it is not a guarantee. In all likelihood, for Russell Group applicants, most students who receive an offer are likely to obtain the required grades on the day.

• SPLITTING EXAMS: on the whole, splitting exams will almost certainly work against you. While it is acceptable and, more recently, common practice to take GCSEs at different sittings, the same is not necessarily true for A Levels. Universities need to know that you can manage the workload - and the pressure - of taking three exams in one sitting. This will be an indicator of how you will cope at university and where there will be high expectations and deadlines which have to be met. Students at Russell Group universities have a significant workload and the pressures are real.

• FOUR A LEVELS: There is no advantage to taking four when the course clearly stipulates three. Universities will look to see that candidates have met the standard entry requirements and also take into account GCSE results, personal statements and academic references. During this process, there will usually be a 'determining factor' which means that one student will secure the place over another. 

• PERSONAL STATEMENTS: universities are not interested to know that you have a black belt in karate; that you can jump a tall building in a single bound or that you have trekked across the Serengeti as a wildlife ranger. The personal statement needs to stay focused on why you want to study your subject; what you know about your subject and what you can bring to the course. Any inclusion of extra curricular activities or interests needs to relate to the course. If it doesn't, don't include it. Please don't give too much credence to  exaggerated newspaper headlines declaring that university staff only read personal statements for "two minutes". While having not examined the quality of the Hepi research, a competent reader is, nevertheless, perfectly able to glean all the information they require within "two minutes" and personal statements are not that long.  However, it is another good reason for making succinct personal statements.

• ACADEMIC REFERENCES: referees need to ensure that they understand what universities are looking for in students and that they provide evidence their candidate can deliver this. Unless otherwise stated, universities only want one reference. Sending unsolicited, additional references will only seek to annoy.

OTHER KEY POINTS

• Submitting your application early will not mean that it is automatically considered first. There is a UCAS deadline for a reason, and as long as the application is submitted before midnight on the 29th January 2025 (except for universities with an October deadline) universities are required to abide by the "equal consideration policy". It does sometimes happen that a few students receive offers earlier than the closing date (for example, they may have applied with A Level results already 'in hand' or it might be an exceptionally impressive application for specific reasons), but it has no bearing on overall applications. It's not a question of 'first come first served' and places won't run out.

• Some universities will 'take it to the wire' (14th May 2025) to make offers. As stressful as this is for students, do not feel tempted to badger universities for a response. They have your application; it is being considered and they will respond. There are a few universities who  have a tendency to put students' applications "on hold". For some, this is standard procedure. It means that the student has met their criteria, but that they are waiting until after the equal consideration deadline, to consider all the applications against one another.

• Once all the universities have replied, you need to accept a firm and an insurance offer. It should be remembered that, if the necessary grades are obtained on results day, you will need to accept your firm offer and the university is duty bound to accept you. You cannot swap your firm and insurance choices. If you want to go for your insurance choice, you will need to go through clearing.

The Socratic Method

  

Socrates

c.469-399 BC. Athenian philosopher, immortalized in the dialogues of Plato, his pupil. True knowledge is gained through dialogue and systematic questioning.

I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only teach them to think.

Socrates

 

Teaching can be delivered in a variety of styles, with educators often having a preferred form – guided, in all likelihood, by how they learnt best - and which may be reinforced by a declaration that theirs is the most effective. Similarly, students will usually have their favoured method of learning, so that, for example, what might suit a visual learner might not necessarily suit an auditory one. However, it is impractical for a teacher – either working in a group setting and with a range of  different learners - to deliver tailored made education, which precisely accords with the learning styles of each individual student. Instead, they have to determine what might work for the majority and, perhaps more importantly, employ the pedagogy which they feel most competent to deliver. 

No one can be all things to all people and a teacher trying to deliver information in a style to which they are not suited is a painful experience for all concerned! We all have to work with our strengths. This, despite the fact that, increasingly, teachers are being encouraged to mould their delivery in line with Estrada’s suggestion that, “If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn”. Extremely difficult, I would argue, unless you are able to group together students who learn in a particular way and match them with a teacher whose style can meet that need.

Whatever the method, pedagogy can give rise to much debate. I have been in education my entire life, either as a student or as a teacher and sometimes as both at the same time. I have born witness to many different teaching styles, some of which have been effective while others have been less so. One's own experiences are, therefore, naturally bound to influence how one teaches. Learning works best for me when I am in the presence of someone who is truly passionate about their subject - I need to feel inspired - someone who can draw me into their words, who can focus my mind and who can then, gently, encourage me to evaluate what has been communicated. Someone who will engage in non-judgmental dialogue with me; who will value my contribution – whether they think it to be right or wrong – who will stimulate discussion; who will teach me to think laterally and who will show me that I have it within myself to create coherent arguments, which I am able to support. It is a method which is both empowering and which, I feel, probes the very soul.

I would suggest that, certainly for the arts, humanities and social sciences, the Socratic method is one that should be at the forefront of any teacher’s mind. Society, more than ever, is in need of great thinkers; of fresh ideas; of people who can effect positive change and who can promote social justice and equality. Our horizons need to be expanded and our common humanity embraced. We would all benefit from knowing ourselves better and the society in which we live. Most of us require a ‘spring board’ for our ideas; a way of ensuring that we have considered our arguments from all angles; that any ‘rough edges’ have been smoothed out and that we have remained standing, despite having been challenged. The Socratic method is able to deliver this. Of course, the process of questioning in this manner, might also mean that our original ideas have changed entirely.

This method of teaching has been around for a long time. It is a well tried and tested means of encouraging critical thinking and developing thoughtful dialogue. It originated with Socrates on “one starry night in ancient Greece” (the reference to please fans of The Big Bang Theory!). The experience is one of a shared dialogue between teacher and student, in which both take responsibility for moving the conversation forward through questioning. Probing questions are asked in an attempt to expose the values and beliefs, which frame and support the thoughts and statements of the participants. The inquiry progresses interactively and the teacher is both a participant and a guide. This has the effect of ameliorating the power imbalance which, otherwise, often occurs between teacher and student. The teacher may, after all, gain as much from the discussion as the student and there is no pre-determined argument to which the teacher attempts to lead students. This enables the learning to go in any direction and, frequently, you can end up on a completely different path to the one you started out on.

Unfortunately, some of us will be familiar with a teaching style which considers humiliation to be the best approach to aiding student learning. Many of us will have experienced that teacher who randomly picks on a student and demands that they answer a question, even when they may not have understood what is being asked or, indeed, the lesson which preceded it.  The Socratic method, while based on questioning, is most certainly not this. The aim is not to panic or intimidate students. The learning environment is a creative forum, where there are no wrong answers and where scrutiny of dialogue is done in a supportive, inquisitorial manner and not in an adversarial one.

The Socratic method involves active participation from both teacher and student and where the teacher is open to new learning themselves. It is a creative process, one which encourages the evolution of ideas, which tests the strengths and weaknesses of arguments and which can even change the original discourse. It is a method which does not seek deference to the authority of the teacher, but which empowers students to recognise that they have it within themselves to learn and solve problems.

The method is encapsulated beautifully in the speech given by John Houseman in the 1973 film The Paper Chase when he tells his students:

“We use the Socratic Method here. I call on you, ask you a question and you answer it. Why don’t I just give you a lecture? Because through my questions you learn to teach yourselves. Through this method of questioning, answering, questioning, answering, we seek to develop in you the ability to analyse that vast complex of facts that constitute the relationships of members within a given society. Questioning and answering; at times you may feel that you have found the correct answer; I assure you that this is a total delusion on your part. You will never find the correct, absolute and final answer. In my classroom there is always another question, another question to follow your answer. As you are on a treadmill; my little questions spin the tumblers of your mind. You are on an operating table and my little questions are the fingers probing your brain … You teach yourselves [the law] but I train your mind. You come in here with a skull full of mush and you leave thinking [like a lawyer].”

It is quite an abrasive description of the method (although employed to good dramatic effect) and, hopefully, there are not many educators with the foreboding reputation of Professor Charles Kingsfield! When applied well, this pedagogy cannot only aid learning but it can stimulate positive personal growth; allow for free and open speech and lead to new discoveries, either by supporting arguments and views or by opening up a whole new way of thinking about an idea. Instead of simply being  told what or how to think (a curse of the modern school system), the Socratic Method allows students to think for themselves. True knowledge is more than just the recitation of "facts alone" as Dickens's Gradgrind would have us believe. It is about obtaining a deep understanding of different views and arguments and about challenging our own thoughts as well as those of others.

The ability to think critically is a key skill and one which brings significant rewards. It is also a vital skill if we are to make conscious, well-informed choices and decisions. I would proffer that, for SHAPE subjects, there is no better pedagogy than the Socratic method to encourage and inspire others in the pursuit of wisdom.