One word? When seven would do…

First a disclaimer – I will write up something in the next couple of days for my public blog / facebook etc as I know there is interest generally but this is a quick brain dump for me about this afternoon. So I won’t be being cautious about what I write, changing names to protect the innocent or generally sanitising it yet. I will do so later but I’d really appreciate if you are able to read this and therefore have a password then you respect being privy to my thoughts about stuff that I want to keep private.

Today was a meeting with Ellie Evans from West Sussex LA. If you watched the Select Committee stuff you would have seen her on that. There is a thriving local group, ActivEO in the West Sussex / Hampshire area that organised a meeting with her at a members’ house to talk about how the LA can help Home Educators and how we can help them. We are not members of ActivEO although we have been in the past and lots of our friends, including Julie, are. I went along as it seemed like a safe, comfortable environment to ‘meet the enemy’ so to speak, in advance of the axe falling.

Caroline, who hosted it is a long term HEor with 4 children. She is one of the families in Free Range Education and has long been a ‘public face of Home Ed’ but only very recently been officially ‘known’ to the LA when trying to access exams for her oldest daughter. Two of her daughters were around, one of whom ended up being extremely combative to some us later. Her husband was also present.

Another couple (and two of their three children) were also there. They used school initially for the two older children and are currently also trying to access exams for their oldest. They are known.

A woman with a toddler and a pre-schooler was there. She has been researching ‘Home Schooling’ to be sure she can ‘teach her children at home’. She was keen to put across that her 4 year old can read and her toddler knows all his letters. She isn’t known but fully intends ringing the LA in September if they go ahead and Homeschool so she can register as EHE and get access to their help.

There was a Professional Home Educator there who is absolutely lovely but about as far away from me philosophically as you can get. She has 3 children and a HUGE timetable up on their kitchen wall with all their many activities. Their home is more resource stocked than a very good private school and she has a relationship with the LA dating ten years back. They are like ‘old friends’ and have lots of contact including her ringing them to tell them what topics they are covering and the LA helping her source workshops, events, sending her photocopied information and so on. She is a working model of how it can work really well if you want support.

There was Caz, a teacher herself, married to another teacher with a philosophical ideal very similar to my own but a very different route of coming to it. They were known after de-resgistering but having moved (to NZ!) they clearly haven’t been caught up with since coming home again.

There was Cate, mother of an adult son and two younger HE children. They are autonomous and she frets about not meeting the LA’s tick boxes with her not-reading-yet 11 year old.

There was a man who has a now adult autonomously educated son who didn’t read at 14 but now studies drama and makes his living from reading scripts.

There was Chloe Watson. I doubt she needs any introduction ;).

There was Chloe’s Mum. And her boyfriend. And Chloe’s Dad a bit later on.

And there was me.

And Ellie Evans.

First impressions of Ellie Evans? How can one woman wear so much make up? And how does she lift her hands up to gesticulate so much with the weight of those false nails? 😆 But I imagine it was a suit of armour because really, she’s just a person like all the rest of us and I believe she does have what she thinks are everyone’s best interests (including her own, naturally) at heart and it was pretty bloody brave to walk into someone’s house knowing she was facing a room full of Home Educators with several axes to grind.

There was no real agenda and I did feel there were several different agendas at play really. The ‘known’ folks were, I felt, keen to justify their status and demonstrate how very beneficial that has been to them, and to continue working with the LA to better improve relationships generally. And for all of the rest of us to do so too.

The unknowns were keen to ascertain precisely what is to be gained from being known.

Some were there to score points against each other.

My initial feelings are:

Positive:
Having met Ellie in person I am reassured that she does get Home Ed, she does understand (to an extent) autonomous Home Ed and that she is happy to tick a box and say some evidence of an education is being provide and move on to the next person.
She has a team of 3 people who do the EHE visits. She was very keen we didn’t refer to them as Inspectors as they are Advisors. Potatatoe, potartoe say I (or if you prefer registration, licence). They are all fairly universally recognised as ‘good’ by those who have encountered them. She was keen to put across that their remit would remain the same, any subsequent staff would be of a similar ilk, indeed she had already been approached by people keen to join her team who had worked with the traveller community and ‘you can’t get more used to different educational styles and philosophies than that’. She is keen to foster links with the Home Ed community and would like some of us to sit on a panel helping to recruit and train future advisors.

There is currently no joined up way of getting registered. She is in charge of Children Missing in Education and EHE children. Basically anyone not on a school roll is MiE unless they are on the EHE list. So that would be Davies and Scarlett. Except they are not on the list at all because unless you contact them, or the school does when they deregister or some ‘concerned’ outsider reports you then they don’t seem to have any method of finding you. She couldn’t answer quite how that might change when/ if a registration requirement comes into play. Which leads me to feel secure for a while longer in simply not being found.

From a purely personal point of view I have always felt confident that as an intelligent, articulate, passionate person with a strong belief in the way I am raising my children I could convince anyone that they are being provided for educationally. I am even more confident of that now. But that is selfish and leads me to…

Negatives

Ellie has a background in some way in Child Protection / Welfare I think and her views are totally clouded in the meshing of education/ welfare. No matter how many time we (Chloe, me, a couple of others) stressed that the two are not connected she refused to accept that. She actually said ‘I don’t want my face on the front page of the Daily Mail in connection with a childs death!’ I did question in what way someone with a remit of Education would ever have that as a concern when there are other agencies concerned with child protection but she refused to accept the division. She blanket accepts that Home Ed is a factor in the Khyra case (and I do accept people in her position will be running scared and taking every single precaution to ensure their necks aren’t on the line but not at the cost of me and my kids). To be fair though this argument isn’t one to be having with someone at her level I guess. If laws are passed that blur the lines between welfare and education then she will be accountable on some level.

A big part of the conversation was about us telling her what we’d like. She was clear about the fact that in order to get anything we’d have to be registered first and that as all budgeting is a business / supply and demand issue then in order to gain funding for exam places, subsidised music / sports / science / literacy / numeracy / whatever other demands we might make they need numbers and to get numbers we have to be registered. I accept that and if and when I want to claim my ‘goodies’ then I might consider registering. Until then I’d rather be left alone.

I was slightly disturbed by the atttitude of the known people with their ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to hide’ stance and you could feel Graham Badman in the room rather than Graham Stuart ;).

Ellie said she supported Badman to an extent and that she particularly supported the ideas of help for Home Educators. Except that she already knows about 400 Home Educated children in West Sussex that are registered and presumably have been for a while and so far there is no funding or support available for them (other than the reward of a pat on the back and a well done from one of the inspectors advisors and maybe some photocopied information).

So my concerns: There is nothing at all to be gained for me, Davies and Scarlett from being registered and known. There is no guaranteed funding / support / access to facilities / free exam places.

There doesn’t seem to be any imminent risk of a SAO either inasmuch as I am pretty sure we would be considered fine in terms of our educational provision but I am championing the right of a single mother in a council flat having a bad day to Home Educate, the rights of my children to autonomously Home Educate their children (my grandchildren) in the same way as they are enjoying being HE’d, I am securing my rights to continue this path should my marriage suddenly fail and me become depressed or alcoholic.

I am fighting to protect the right to home educate for as long as a child is considered safe to remain at home with their parents. At the point a child is at risk of abuse or there is a welfare concern then it is clearly not an educational issue any longer, up to the point a parent is considering capable / acceptable / worthy of parenting then in my opinion they are also by definition up to educating that child too. I don’t buy into the scenario of a lack of education being abuse, I can’t see that ever happening in isolation and I don’t think you can fail to provide an education, if anything that would be one of the very last things to go in an abuse situation because for me, by my beliefs and values simply living is education.

So Ellie took away her list of things like ‘lay on educational workshops in libraries, give us free exam places’ and off she went, with parting words that it was a two way street and she expected phonecalls to register on her EHE list on Monday morning 😉 😆

I was left feeling that LA is like the NHS. I’m glad it’s there, I am happy to support it with my taxes and should I wish to avail myself of it’s services then I want it to be there ready for me to do so. If I am ill and I cannot deal with it myself by lifestyle changes or over the counter medication, or googling my condition on the internet or finding a book about it at the library, or talking to friends, or even considering homeopathy (;) ) then I might visit the doctor. But the idea that I should be subject to checks to ensure I am getting enough exercise, eating the correct foods, not smoking or drinking to excess is not acceptable. Currently the responsibility for my health lies with me, as does the responsibilty for educating my children. When I want help, when I’m doing ‘topics’, when I need the external validation of being told I’m doing a good job or even the brain stretching exercise of writing a report to illustrate as such then I will know just where to go to access all of that. But do I want it forced on me? No I do not.

Nothing I heard today convinced me of any benefit to anyone of us being registered. I did hear things that convinced me of potential

benefits of others of being registered and I would support their choice to do so but it should remain just that – a choice.

And now, Kirsty and James have arrived. Will be back!