It’s been a long time since the last update but things have certainly been happening. Since last summer we’ve both been involved in defending the right of home educators to practise informal/autonomous learning. It seems that the only people who accepted the Badman Review of home education was the government. Among a wide range of organisations it was severely criticised by:

1. The Parliamentary Select Committee although it was chaired by a Labour Party MP.
2. The two main Opposition parties: LibDem and Conservative.
3. The University of London Institute of Education; a world renowned centre for research.
4. Very many individual submissions, including ones from us.

All of this, plus repeated representations from home education organisations, had no effect whatsoever on the government.  Finally however they were forced to abandon it in the “wash up” as controversial legislation which would not get through parliament before the election without the Opposition parties’ approval.

So why was it opposed by the Opposition? Simply because of the sterling work of the home education organisations, especially EO and HEAS. They lobbied and badgered MPs to take notice and to learn about home education. This was no mean feat because there are not many votes to be gained by supporting home education. When this whole story is written up it will make fascinating reading.

Something else we’ve been doing is responding to an invitation from an international learned philosophical/educational journal to write an article. This was an offer we could not refuse! Getting articles on home education into mainstream academic journals is very difficult especially if you are challenging professional orthodoxy as we certainly are. At the moment it is being refereed so we are more than a little apprehensive. However we hope that philosophers will be open minded and that we will be able to get them interested in genuinely practical, rather than idealistic, educational alternatives. 

And what about our research on learning to read?  If anything the events of the last twelve months have made the need for research more pressing than ever. This is because the thankfully ditched government proposals would have forced home educators into using school methods. We have all been warned that the question of home education and legislation has not gone away for good and we need, realistically, to be ready for its return.  We want our research to make a robust, rigorous and reflective contribution that will aid home educators in speaking out for educational alternatives.   We are getting stuck in again with renewed vigour.  Hopefully we will not be deflected from it again. The good news is that we already have an academic book publisher interested.  

So, we are still alive and kicking!

“What do you all talk about on a normal year?” another first timer at HesFes asked me.  It was also my first experience of HesFes so I couldn’t give an accurate answer but the question did prompt a fleeting imaginative glimpse of all the interesting and important conversations that the Badman review robbed us of in that week.  Obviously the Review has become very, very important to all of us, but interesting?  I think we would much rather be talking about learning.

For now at least though the Badman Review has to dominate and if we can’t head off its recommendations then it will continue to dominate all our futures: parents, children and researchers.  Alan and I set out to research informal learning with a blue sky attitude - let’s just get out there and talk to people, see what we can find out.  If Badman’s clouds keep rolling in then that blue sky will be considerably diminished and the unique opportunity to study how learning actually happens through home education will be lost. I hope he knows what he stands to destroy but maybe the worst part is that he clearly doesn’t have a clue. 

In the meantime we still have questionnaire returns trickling in.  Thanks again to everyone who has filled one out for us.  We are past the 300 mark now and that means that this will be a substantial study with a weight of numbers behind it; hopefully that will help to satisfy some of the critics!  At first glance there seem to be as many ways of learning to read as there are children so sorting through those 300 is going to be an interesting task and something we are keen to get on with as soon as we have finished with the Badman letters, consultation returns, inquiry submissions and with making as much noise as we can about his horrible ideas.

It’s been a long time since our last blog and it’s down to me! It’s my turn. I said I’d do it and I meant to do it and then I really, really meant to do it. Still here I am at last.

The literacy research is going very well. From what was initially a trickle we’ve since had a flood of responses, about 250 to date, and from all over the world. From an initial glance at the replies it seems we’ve struck gold. For us it’s like a breath of fresh air. 

When you think of all the debate about what’s the best way to teach children to read in school undertaken by academics with years and years of training and research between them. And they are virtually all adamant that children in school need to be professionally taught to read or they’ll end up illiterate. They simply don’t counter the possibility of an alternative. Home educators are much more open minded. They are happy to explore all kinds of ways of becoming literate, many of which challenge so called professional expertise. And yet they are open minded enough not to deny that some children might need to be taught using professionally designed materials. 

We’ve already explored learning to read as part of our wider research but we can now focus on it much more widely and at greater depth. It will be some time before can share our new findings with you though we will be informally describing our first eyeballing of data at a talk we’ll be giving at HesFes in July.

Our intention with this blog is to keep a research diary so that we can update anyone interested on how things are going – or otherwise!  And to reassure everyone kind enough to have filled out a questionnaire that their answers have not simply disappeared into a black hole. 

In “How Children Learn at Home” we concentrated on how children learn school subjects informally at home.  Our aim was to build up a general picture of learning at home.   This time we are going to narrow the focus more specifically to reading. Having used the word “informal” already I must add that we are not just interested in the autonomous end of the scale here.  Parents who deliberately teach their children to read using a standard reading scheme are still informal in the sense that they, and their children, had the freedom to choose this path and the freedom to choose when, where, how and why to go about their learning.   It was obvious from doing the research for “How Children Learn at Home” that there are multitudinous paths into literacy and that every family has a unique tale to tell about their experiences.   Our hope now is to look across a whole sweep of different experiences in order to get a little bit closer to how learning to read is experienced by children themselves.  What makes children interested in reading?  Why aren’t some children interested?  How do children pursue their own interests with words?  How does reading fit into children’s lives?  If they are not deliberately taught how do they actually put the skill together for themselves? There’s a whole host of questions begging to be answered!  

Thanks very much to everyone who has filled out a questionnaire!  So far we have had a steady trickle rather than a flood, so if you haven’t and can spare us a few minutes please do fill one out.  If you feel more comfortable, then there is no need to add a  name or an address. Even if you do no names would ever be published.  For us whatever you say will be fascinating!