A slightly more considered post than yesterday’s, in response to some comments.

Two guiding assumptions:
a) any and every child naturally wishes to learn, and will do so autonomously and in a self-directed fashion unless other forces prevent that learning from happening;
b) an education system’s sole purpose is to encourage and enable that learning, ie to act against the forces which prevent the learning from happening.

So what would I do, if I were given dictatorial powers over our education system?

1. I would abolish all qualitative grading.
2. I would abolish all age groupings.
3. I would abolish the time-structure of schools – in practice, I’d abolish all “schools” as presently constituted.
4. I would (so long as central funding continued to make sense) shift funding entirely onto a voucher scheme.

Expanding these:

Qualitative grading – by this I mean giving marks from A to F. To my mind, all qualifications should simply be of the ‘pass/fail’ variety, in the same way as a driving test. Students can take the relevant test whenever they want, and when they can display the competency concerned, they get the little piece of paper saying so. No mess, no fuss, no grade inflation for political purposes (and grading should be completely independent of the government).

Age groupings – children (and adults) mature at different rates and in different ways – such is not news. Shoehorning people together according to their date of birth is arbitrary and has pernicious and destructive consequences, which only tend to be alleviated when a low teacher:pupil ratio allows a good teacher to provide the personal care which overcomes those consequences. Let the student, of whatever age, pursue their own interests and run with them. It works at the beginning of the educational process, and it works at the end – why do we think it essential to turn children into industrial feedstock in the middle?

Time-structure – we have an historical legacy leading to a raving mad pattern of organisation for educating. Long holidays for religious festivals and harvest; Fordism during the day. I would abandon these things completely. Students would seek a teacher able to give them tuition at the level and in the subject they desire. Similarly, teachers would seek students to whom they had something to give. Instead of schools there would be ‘academies’ (I wanted to think of a different word that didn’t have present-day connotations but couldn’t find one, and it is the correct word!) – something much more akin to a large library with lots of different services, open pretty much all year round, and most hours of the day, within which people can come and learn at the time and speed suitable for them. If it suits a teacher to gather some students together who are at the same level, and teach them as a group – fine (and either side can instigate that). Similarly, the teachers have total authority over how many students to take, and how they are to teach them. They could even band together if they so chose. The system I envision would, in short, have a lot more teachers (and give them a lot more power) and much less ‘schooling’ (see, Shlottie, I do actually rate teachers, on the whole ;-).

Vouchers – the money follows the student, and can be administered by the parents to begin with, but increasingly by the child as time goes on. The funding lasts for a lifetime, up to a certain level of attainment (first degree?). The funding is fine-grained, that is, it is meted out per “course module” or equivalent, not as a single grant per year. There are very few restrictions on what can be pursued, save that funding for some things are dependent on prior attainment, eg you can’t be funded to read English Lit until you’ve attained the necessary language skill.

Of course, all of this is the academic side of education – hence they would indeed be academies – and education involves a great deal more than this. Yet I wouldn’t see the responsibility for the wider education as resting with the teacher – it would return to where it belonged, to the parents and the wider community as a whole. If the time structure is abandoned then children would once more be a full and daily presence in people’s lives, and that could only be a good thing.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

WHEREAS the recommendations of the GRAHAM BADMAN REVIEW OF ELECTIVE HOME EDUCATION have been accepted in full by the Secretary of State.

AND that these grossly disproportionate recommendations hold serious implications for the civil liberties of parents, children and families in this country.

AND that these recommendations place primary responsibility for assessing the suitability of education and the welfare of the child on the state, rather than the parent – with no prior evidence that either is unsatisfactory prior to this grossly intrusive intervention.

AND that the recommendations of the review assumes that the home is an inherently unsafe or unhealthy place for the child to be.

AND that these recommendations undermine the role of the parent and trample over family freedoms in its haste to set parent and child up against each other, bestowing additional and selective “rights” on home educated children that only the government can adequately minister to.

AND that these recommendations destroy the very possibility of true autonomy in learning.

AND that these recommendations operate from a position of requiring proof of parental innocence rather than reasonable suspicion of guilt.

AND that these recommendations discriminatorily use the coercive and interventionist tools of parental licensing, warrantless entry to the home, inspection according to arbitrary external standards, and an unconscionable new power to interrogate the child without the parents present.

AND that the outcome of these recommendations will be horribly discriminatory to a minority community, the measures eventually having to apply to anyone who has their child at home with them: parents with under 5s, those whose children attend private school, and also those with school-aged children who are at home in the evenings, over the weekends, and throughout the summer holidays.

AND that the outcome of these inspections will be based on the very human whim and prejudices of a local authority officer, who will have the power to destroy the life and education that that parent has conceived for his or her child.

AND that if the government is to avoid further discrimination it also stands to reason that each child who attends school must be given the same “rights” as home educated children – to “have their voices heard” regarding whether or not they are happy to be educated in school, whether they are satisfied with their teachers and whether they feel safe in such an environment.

WE ACCEPT that it is right that appropriate and proportionate action, as currently outlined in the law, may be taken to rectify a situation if there are serious concerns about a child’s welfare, observing that a child being at home with its parents is not, and never has been, in and of itself a child welfare issue.

AND HEREBY RESOLVE that any such utterly disproportionate legislation if passed will fundamentally alter the relationship between citizen and state, and would constitute a fundamental violation of our rights,

AND that any such legislation is illegitimate on its face.

NOW UNDERSTAND that by this declaration, Parliament is PUT ON NOTICE that I and others will not co-operate with any such legislation, and strongly caution you not to consider, debate, or enact any such legislation.

~~~

We’re not actually home educating at the moment, but we remain very sympathetic to the cause.