Archive for September 2009
The taste of the cake doesn’t equal the ingredients.
29th September 2009
This is Maddy’s Rubber Band-jo (her name for it). She made it today, when a couple of pieces of stuff that came to hand tweaked her interest and inclined her to try something out. First she put bands on a the box and came to show me that some of them made an approximation of a tune. And so i showed her that by changing the length and stretch of the bands, she could ‘tune’ it and produce everything she wanted for the whole tune. Being Maddy, she then went off and made it exactly as she wanted it to be, tuning it as closely as she could and practising until she was ready to record the finished result.
So was this Music? Science? CDT? Art and Craft? Or all of them – i’d say all. But she doesn’t know it and it didn’t need planning or evaluating or a learning outcome assessment. Maddy saw the point, she enjoyed it, she equated it to her guitar and she worked hard, with precision and her own plan, her own motivation and her own learning outcomes. She did a project. When Max came home he talked to her about soundwaves and frequencies and i daresay we’ll get to the science museum at some point, or somewhere similar – and it will all fall into place along side something she sees and recognises.
This reminds me of a couple of other instances recently. Both happened at the dinner table. In the first, some question or other about history launched Fran off into a description of the sons of William the Conqueror and their personalities, royal responsibilities, rivalries and more. Max and i gaped a bit, because although we know she likes history and although i’ve done this period with her recently in various ways, the knowledge that came out was not what i’d put in. She’d been away and read and remembered and she was telling me things i didn’t know. She was displaying the one learning outcome that has ever been important to me, that she learns to learn and learns to love to learn.
Similarly, we had a bizarre conversation about the sea on another day. Not being remotely scientific, i suddenly pondered whether the sea froze at a lower temperature than non salty water. I had no idea really, though in another moment i wondered whether in fact only the water part froze, leaving the salt unfrozen. (I do think, just mostly a bit slowly and you can hear the cogs!) Max said (it isn’t just me!) that he wondered if the snow at the poles was salty then and Fran promptly piped up that really it must be that only the water froze and the snow couldn’t be salty because when Captain Cook ran out of drinking water, one of his crew thought of melting the ice and that didn’t have salt in it.
And we kind of gaped again. Because of course Max and i could have thought our way through it, we just didn’t really have our brains in gear, but she pulled out a piece of information i didn’t know she knew, from something she chose to read about – and solved the puzzle well enough to convince both of us!
And that’s home educating. Not what you put in, but what comes out.
Where have all the Guidelines gone?
27th September 2009
In a curious twist of fate and in a moment of data loss that will no doubt be of extreme concern to Mr Ed Balls MP and the DCSF themselves, these Guidelines For Local Authorities on Elective Home Education, have gone missing from the DCSF website.
This is a strange thing; these guidelines were thrashed out as a result of the last EHE consultation, between government and home educators, and are the current best practise guidelines for LAs when visiting and being involved with HE families. That was done at public expense – only 2 years ago. YOUR MONEY. Which they are now spending AGAIN on the basis, presumably, that they didn’t do it well enough last time. Although, most people concerned seemed to think at the time that if there had to be guidelines for education officers visiting families, then these were a good example of how to conduct the event.
It must be very worrying for Mr Ed Balls MP that these have gone missing from the DCSF website, when so much money was spent on creating them and when it is so vital that there are proper guidelines in place so that no one ‘slips through the net’. Luckily for him, various people saved the guidelines and they are being hosted in a place where any HE family or LA who might want them, can find them.
Or indeed any of the MPs who might be involved in turning the LATEST review into legislation (your money again, only 2 years on from the last one). Or indeed the Select Committee who are just about to start looking at the conduct of the Badman Review process itself.
How odd that they might go missing from the DCSF website, just when people might legitimately want to look at them to see if the review was necessary in the first place, or if indeed it covered ground already covered by guidelines that would act within the law. Not outside it, requiring changes to our constitution to make it legal.
Odd indeed you might say. Unless you think that conducting a 3rd review into Home Educating families on the suspicion of abuse, despite no evidence at all that it takes place or has occurred, is reasonable. Unless you think LA officials/Social Workers (see how easy it will be for all HE children to become ‘known’ to the SS) should be allowed entrance to a family home purely because of their educational choice and those parents should be forced to allow officials they don’t know (and can’t prove to be safe) unsupervised access to their child. Purely because they are home educated. Without having to prove or provide any evidence of suspicion of abuse. Guilty until you prove yourself innocent. Never mind what the trauma to the child or parent might be.
Imagine if they did that just because of your race. Or religion. Or because of your colour. Or because of the area you lived in. Or the friends someone said you had.
Then it would be called persecution. And rightly so.
If any of the dreadful, shocking and invasive nannying stories in the press have started to twinge at the edges of your comfort zones recently, then it is time to stand up for the people already under fire and sign the petition.
They came for the parents of truants, but i did not speak out because my child always attended.
Then they came for the home educators, but i did not speak out because i was not a home educator.
They came for the people who spoke out, questioned and ridiculed, but i did not speak out because none of their concerns were ones which bothered me.
They came for the parents who wanted to help at Brownies, but i did not speak out because i had no time for volunteering at my children’s groups.
Then they came for the parents whose children were being failed in school, but i did not speak out, because my child was doing well.
They came for the parents who questioned medical decisions, but i did not speak out because my child was healthy.
They came for the parents who had concerns about vaccinations, but i did not speak out. No vaccine has harmed my child yet.
They came for the parents who shared childcare so that working was affordable and their children were happy and content but we used nurseries, so i did not speak out.
And then they came for me – and who was left to speak out for me?
There is a news story for every one of those lines. They are on the BBC, in The Times, in The Telegraph.
Still in your comfort zone? Please sign.
Posted in Uncategorized | 
Tags: home ed, home educate, Home Education, home education review | 
11 Comments »
Several Nice Days
25th September 2009
The weekend went by in a flurry; Saturday the children all started KYT (which means i now have those letters earworming in my head to the SKC tune) and pronounced it a great success, so that pleased us all. Amelie and i had a lovely couple of hours in town today, if you ignore the row in Vision Express over the fact that i couldn’t have a convenient weekday appointment for F and A because they only do children on weekday after school slots or last thing on Saturday 
We bimbled about looking in all sorts of places, having a bun and generally having quality time together. Very nice.
On Sunday Maddy started rugby. I think she liked it, she was quiet in some respects about it, but wants to give it a term and see how she gets on. She also fancies something like Karate too, so we’ll investigate that for all of them at some point as i would like them to have some self defence skills now they are getting a little older. Fran is extremely strong (she can stop me tickling her quite easily now!) but it would be good to know, as they all approach teenager years, that they had some idea of how to use their body strength to their advantage.
Monday i’ve blogged and Tuesday we did Gymmies and mostly got on with some bits of work and music. We seem to be able to fit loads into a day if we know the rest of the week is going to be busy and on those days it is normally easiest to just flit through music, EC, reading and some GP books. Josie and i started to read a P&J book. Amelie was reading Hill of Fire, approximately 18 months earlier than F managed it. Her literacy skills astonish me really. If i’d taught her, i’d still be impressed, but she’s done it all on her own! Big two did some good teeth work i must blog for the LA person next year (sigh) and Fran cooked lasagne.
Wednesday all 6 of us went to London by train and met up with lots of friends to go to a Royal Institute lecture called The Bigger Bang. It was excellent in lots of ways, much to look at and gasp at. Only real shame (certainly for all of us and our interested children) was the relative lack of actual explanation o what was going on. I guess all school aimed science is now reduced to entertainment rather than than education, perhaps with a slightly desperate “hey look kids, science is FUN! Come and do it at Uni!” – the lecture WAS fun but even Amelie aged kids from the home ed contingent would have liked to know some more whys, i think.
After the lecture (which Alison kindly took a scared Josie out of as she was revisiting the KS3 version later with Fran and Gwenny) our poor unsocialised children went in a group of 15 or so to Green Park to picnic, party and play. Was all very pleasant. Then we trooped back to do some of the RI basement while we waited for Fran, got back to Finsbury Park with plenty of time to spare and travelled home with the Beans.
Thursday Max and i had an appointment which left me slightly wibbly, so i took the kids for lunch afterwards as he had to dash back to work to manage a crisis. The middle two needed a healthy packed tea for Brownies, so we went around Tesco looking for healthy options, discussing food groups, balanced diets and the like – made it all very educational and sat nicely with the tooth stuff; almost as if i had planned it! Got the other two a packed tea too and Josie came with us to Brownies (and was lovely and very good and sensible) and Fran took hers to eat while she waited for gym to start. She has a 50 minute wait so we can get to Brownies, which isn’t ideal but she’s engrossed in HP6 atm, so quite happy. She’s completely thrilled as she managed to do her routine for the County Comp perfectly in front of the head coach, including her round off flic, so that made her very happy indeed. Once home, we pleased them with a surprise too – of which more another day 
Friday (today) started with a sewing project for Maddy and various other bits and bobs of work and a lot of questions about various topics pertinent to the moment. Then we walked into town (from a convenient but pleasantly distant carpark) and discussed courts and the legal system as we passed that building, banking and business cashflow while in the bank and reasons for uniforms and the concept of conformity while buying Brownie uniform in the school uniform shop. Fran looked at the uniform she could have been wearing and decided it looked boring. Then bought lunch (tedious Macdonalds in the absence of anything intelligent we could imagine wanting and to counteract healthy packed tea!) and ate it on the cathedral lawn. Which prompted a conversation about cathedral school, choristers and evensong! 
Took a trip into the cathedral to pay homage to Katherine of Aragon, look at the once burial place place of Mary Queen of Scots, discuss reasons for hanging effigies of men in agony on walls plated in gold and light a candle for great gran (Amelie insisted, bless her). Josie (child spawn of dark forces) started to mutter about how churches give her a funny feeling. Think i agree with her :/ Looked at the cathedral display and also at an “on tour” display about Henry VIII which had some good parts and also talked about relics after passing Chapel of St Oswald.
Was struck most of all by a panel listing all the Deans of the Cathedral from when Peterborough was Medeshamstede (i thought it was Guildenburgh, i will have to investigate) – up to and just beyond 1066 all the names are exceptional Saxon and then by 1098 all the Ethelfrics and what have you have just altered into Norman Henri’s and Williams. Really brought home to me what a catastrophic ethnic cleansing and complete take over the Norman Conquest must have been. I’ve never seen it so blatant illustrated before – it was slightly breathtaking. Wish i had take a photo.
Home via work to collect some puppet samples to try out tomorrow and then a bit of a rest and then started the dancing run. Popped into Halfords to recover from a muppet slamming on their breaks on the dual carriageway so they could reverse on to hatching and go up the sliproad they had missed (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and decided the most problematic thing about Halfords adverts is that you are then immediately disappointed by the surly nature of the real shop attendants.
Testing out blogging from iphone.
25th September 2009
Can’t say I can entirely imagine actually using this. But you never know! At least you will know when I have done as, along with random smatterings of iPhone replacement words, it will also have capitalised letter I ‘s!!!
Old and New
22nd September 2009
We’ve recently had the pleasure of uncovering some old friends who have wiggled back into our life through the best of routes Zoe and i were friends in an old life of mine and then we lost touch somewhere in the scrum of having young children et etc. Recently she got back in touch when one of her kids reached a point at school where home educating was the next obvious step for the family and thought i might have something useful to say 
Apparently she’d been stalking me through my blog for quite a while anyway!
We’re particularly happy as Zoe, Poppy and Skye are not only lovely, they are also local and the kids are of an age that fills in some friend gaps for my girls and the six of them have become friendly pretty much instantly. With things like gym, being girls and being home educated in common, plus perhaps the bonus of Fran having an understanding of school now, they’ve all hit it off nicely. Let’s be honest, Fran is always going to be happy to find another 11 year old girl who likes to be upside down! And Zoe and i seem to have picked up where we left off 7 years ago
Yesterday we took a trip down to see them and, (since they are also stalking us through our current interests ) we did some Celtic ‘stuff’ together.
I took fimo and the kids all made torcs and arm cuffs.
And then later on, after quite a lot of playing and much bouncing on the trampoline, we made oatcakes and butter.
(Remembered double cream is quicker and better this time!)
Fran and Skye had added back flics, tuck backs and back somersaults with half twists to their bouncing repertoire by the end of the day. I thought Fran would be exhausted but by the time she finished gym that evening she had, with the aid of an intensive coaching session, completely mastered her round off flic (fast cartwheel type thing with a back flip tagged on to the end). She was so happy she nearly cried
And everyone had done maths, music, english and science before we left the house in the morning!
Equations = Power
19th September 2009
Fran and i have been learning equations this last few weeks. I never liked equations; as a child, i struggled to see use for much of what i learned in maths and because i couldn’t see why or how to use them in real life, i didn’t really learn how they were working or why they might be helpful to me. In short, they confused me, bored me and distressed me.
What use is a + b i asked myself? When will i ever need that? What will it ever help me with?
As it happens, i’m married to a maths geek who loves equations nearly as much as he loves me (he assures me it is this way round!) and i have fortunately got 4 children who can not only add up but, freed from the tyranny of lessons that move too fast, don’t apply to real life or use language that bewilders them, quite like maths and are pretty good at it.
Besides which, most maths in this house becomes “how many cakes? how many plates? how many cakes on each plate?” Nothing very scary in that. So really a + b = c, if a is 4 and c is 7, doesn’t sound very worrying to Fran. She knows how to do that and we both learned a lot along the way to some of the slightly more complicated ones I’m much better at equations than i was a few weeks ago. Strangely, and in direct contrast to many of the people who would say “but you need to be a qualified teacher or good at the subject to HE”, all my children come to me rather than Daddy when they need help with their maths. They know perfectly well that i might not know how to help at once but that we’ll work through it together, and despite knowing daddy can do any sum they might ask him, they know his strength isn’t explanation We all have our strengths – and mine is turning things into cakes on plates.
A very, very important piece of information that Frances deduced on her own, within minutes of starting the topic and without teaching, was this
If a + b = 7 that does not mean you can deduce that a = 5. It MIGHT equal 5, but it also might be many other things.
I haven’t bothered to ask her (we are only on week 2 of equations after all) but i’m pretty sure she’d be able to tell you the answer to this too:-
If w/z = y and all the values are known, can you deduce a/b = 2y if b is a number that cannot be known and a is a number in no way related to w?
She’d look at me like i was an idiot.
Shall i tell you a bit about those equations? Because they relate a lot to something happening currently which might change the way we are allowed to home educate in the future.
w is the number of schooled children known to Social Services, while z is the total number of children in school. Now, neither of these figures should be hard for anyone with access to data to establish firmly, so for the sake of argument, we should consider them to be correct. Frankly, if the government can’t produce accurate version of both of those, god help us all.
This means that y equals the number of children in school known to Social Services. For the sake of argument, this data when collected to more closely look at all this appears to be for “all children” so that presumably includes the tiny percentage of HEd kids and under school age children, but the effect is much the same i would guess. HEd kids are less than 1% of the child population and under 5′s probably don’t magically stop being known to SS as they reach school age. Quite the reverse if anything.
So that explains w/z=y
The next one is a bit more complicated because the figures are less clear cut, but they are very important to Home Educators right now.
They were taken, for the review into abuse in home educated children, from a voluntary response (look up voluntary response bias on Google) by LEAs and out of a potential 150 LEAs; only 90 answered, of which the responses from 25 were used.
a = home educated children known to Social Services
b = home educated children known to the LEA
There are a few problems with these figures, before you start using them to compare against a set of other figures.
One is that in a survey of this type, the most likely respondents are ones who have a concern, or a prejudice, or an axe to grind.
Think for example, whether you would entirely trust a radio show survey finding on a subject about which a small section of the community feel strongly one way or another? You might get vociferous responses on both sides from many people, but they might only represent 5% of the country. It wouldn’t do, for example, to extrapolate that 95% of people in the country are against the trapping and feeding of slugs to frogs, simply because only 5% of the callers were for it. It might be, quite reasonably, that the vast majority of the country, rolled their eyes, laughed, didn’t have an opinion, didn’t get through or didn’t bother to respond because there was far too much work on their overworked desk that was more important. Or they were already on the phone. Or listening to something else. Or whatever else makes us not bother or not know.
The data is likely to be even less reliable if you then pick a selection of those answers from which to draw our conclusions.
Secondly, the number of home educated children “known to social services” is a bit misleading, because although that sounds like ‘being abused’ it actually covers far wider issues. For example :-
*already known to SS when they are removed from school due to school refusal, school phobia, bullying or truancy.
* reported to SS as a matter of course due to being removed from school (unnecessary but commonplace)
* reported to SS by a ‘helpful’ neighbour for being out of school
* disabled, with learning difficulties or requiring mental or physical support
* false positives, or discounted allegations of abuse which, even if discounted do mean that child has had contact with the SS
*lastly, actual true abuse or neglect
So.. hmmmm…. not really a very fair figure to use. Fortunately, some people have done sterling work in investigating a true “abused or neglected” figure which you can find in the links at the end.
And then there is the figure used as the number of HEd children. As Mr Badman points out in his report, there are 20,000 registered HEd children but may be as many as 80,000 altogether. it would seem fairer to use the likely larger figure, i you were going to compare against the “all children” or “schooled” children figure. But he didn’t, he used the smaller known HEd kids figure with against ALL SS cases and used it to extrapolate a figure for all HEd kids. If you become known to the SS, by default you are known to be HEd because that is how any system or any coherent action plan for a child is going to work. The comparison doesn’t really add up.
From all of that, the Badman Review concluded that HEd children were twice as likely to be known to SS as schooled children.
a/b = 2y
The only fair equation would be a/c = f where c is the total number of HEd children – and as that is currently unknown, it can’t be done. Then you would need to turn both figures, f and y into a percentage and compare them. In fact, the compulsory registration of all HEd kids in order to protect them from abuse is perhaps going to prove one thing quite conclusively – that they are MUCH LESS LIKELY to suffer abuse. Which, let’s face it, is going to make the whole thing look like an expensive white elephant.
Lots of people went to a lot of effort to try and provide more accurate stats than this, using freedom of information requests from LEAs and specifically finding out the reason children were known to the SS. The results were reasonably comprehensive and staggering and can be seen here in a simple format. From the information gleaned from a wide sample of LEAs, it appears the HE children known to SS due to abuse is 0.32%, as opposed to 1.3% nationally.
But on the facts Mr Badman chose to draw upon, we are slandered and ruined.
And frankly, i wouldn’t want him teaching my daughter to do equations, much less produce a bias free and researched report for the government.
Links to further reading are below – but if any of what you’ve read makes you think that using this review to change HE law on the basis it might be a cover for abuse is not right, please go and sign the petition
AHED – Lies and Damn Statistics
An explanation as to why some FOI requests were not granted, apparently because satire and questioning amounted to vilification. Someone evidently doesn’t remember Punch or read Private Eye. Odd really to be accused of bullying, when so many people say kids need to go to school so they learn to deal with bullying.
Press Release and round up.
New request for evidence to back up the review recommendations (from the same people who have already given it) with some odd extensions, for example a sudden request for figures of children who a runaways who were HEd. Strangely enough, the Select Committe gives the public (read HEers) till the 22/9 to respond but Mr badman has had that date extended to 1/10. And he is able to use the SCSF (whom the review was supposed to be independent from) to call for this extra ‘evidence’ via their website.
The Select Committee Review into the conduct of the review and the recommendations.
Further info and more links at Dare to Know and Sometimes it’s Peaceful.
There is something fishy in the State of England. And they are spending all our money doing it.
(Disclaimer; this has been done by me, using information as i understand it from other sources, who i hope i have mainly acknowledged but please add links into the comments if you would like them added in. Any mistakes are my own. None of this is new or ground breaking and is all done more thoroughly elsewhere. Think of this as an idiots guide.)
Posted in HE Politics, Uncategorized | Tags: home education politics, home education review | 7 Comments »
Mr Badman now seeks evidence to back up his claims of abuse and danger to home educated children
18th September 2009
An odd way round to do it 
Even if you don’t agree with Home Educating and you think my children deserve better than to be locked up at home all day, please read this then read this letter and then ask yourself if scrabbling for evidence after the event smacks a little of the WMD embarrassment?
In what profession is it acceptable to produce a report for the government on which legislation will be passed and lives changed and ruined – and then when challenged (and you can no longer hide behind pretending people are being mean to you by questioning your methods – how rude!) then you have to go and ask for data to strengthen your case, because your sample was too small (and also self selecting).
Just in case your children ever need the right to safety, even though you don’t believe it could happen right now, consider signing this petition and supporting Home Educators, against whom there is NO EVIDENCE of the suggested abuse, enforced marriage or domestic servitude.
Ask yourself if we want the freedom to parent/educate according to need (not according to the state) to be taken away from us?
Please do it – even if you never comment and aren’t even sure home educating is even the way forward. Do it just in case there comes a day when you are at your wits end for them. Or in case there comes a day when you know that tomorrow might be their last if they have to go back there. Or in case suddenly one of you is soon to not be in this world any more and you want the right to spend your last months as a family.
Or in case suddenly, just suddenly, the world opens up and you want to spend your time with your beautiful, wonderful children, blowing bubbles in the park with the sun on your face, dancing in the fountains and enjoying the sound of life going on around you.
Posted in HE Politics, Uncategorized | Tags: home ed review, home education politics | 1 Comment »
Kiddicare is now the leading privately owned baby shop in the UK. Established in 1974 in Peterborough Kiddicare have been able to uphold a high level of customer service and deliver discounted nursery supplies with confidence.
Kiddicare have over 100 different prams to choose from, which are suitable for newborn through to toddlers. For more information read our pram reviews.
Kiddicare stock a range of highchairs which are suitable to use at home or when travelling. For more information read our highchair reviews.
Child car seats is a very important purchase for any parent. Kiddicare stocks a vast range of car seats for all age groups to ensure your child is secure in your vehicle. For more information read our child car seat reviews.
Kiddicare have over 250 different pushchairs to choose from, which are comfortable and easy to set up. For more information read our pushchair reviews.
Kiddicare has an extensive product range of Maclaren pushchairs, car seats and accessories which are suitable for all age ranges. For more information read our Maclaren reviews.
Kiddicare has an extensive product range of Maxi Cosi car seats, pushchairs and accessories which are suitable for all age ranges. For more information read our Maxi Cosi reviews.
