Monster & Teeny

where we’ve got to. Then again you might not, I’m a bit rubbish at updating here very regularly. But I do have a proper legitmate excuse this time.

Earlier on this year we packed our lives into a rather old campervan and after many, many months of planning we headed off taking ourselves on the road for a year. We’re travelling around the UK WWOOFing. 

Internet access is limited but I’m trying to keep a fairly regular blog of our adventures over at www.wonderingwanderers.co.uk so please do come over and catch up with us there.

I’ve been thinking a bit about motivation recently. I have Home Ed friends who use tick sheets to mark off time spent on various educational tasks over the course of a week. Some translate those ticks into rewards, some are motivated simply by a nice full sheet of ticks. Some say they like to have a visual marker of what has been acheived, some want some nice hard evidence for the LA should they come calling. Many of my friends tell me *they* are lazy and need external motivation to do stuff and indeed our whole society is set up in this way really so for most people it’s a good tool for the future as well.

You often hear people ‘rewarding’ themselves. I see status updates on facebook of people listing all they had just done: shopping, tidying, cooking and finishing with their reward - a cup of tea, a sit down, a slice of cake.

We work, very often in jobs we don’t like or get fulfillment from for our pay packet, our 4 weeks holiday a year, our decent pension so we can enjoy our retirement.

We encourage our children to eat their vegetables at tea time, with the lure of pudding afterwards.

We tell them to be good so Father Christmas comes each Christmas and rewards them with a sackful of shiny wrapped presents.

We introduce the concept of pocket money, often giving the chance to earn it by doing tasks around the house and give them disposable income or talk of saving up for more expensive consumerism.

As I said for most this is perfect training for life. Our society is set up on the basis that if you do X, you will get Y. Work hard, revise, pass your exams, get pieces of paper to prove you are qualified which should translate into a better paid job. Work hard, work long get pieces of paper in exchange for your labour to enable you to buy stuff.

Does this work? I’m not entirely sure.

 It didn’t work for me. I worked quite hard at school, got my pieces of paper and went on to do A levels. I didn’t work quite as hard as I got distracted by shiny things (insert your own ideas of what those shiny things might be ). I did get back on track and worked hard, got pieces of paper to buy stuff with a job title which meant nothing outside of the walls of where I worked but *everything* in there, but as I spent most of my time inside those walls anyway that was all that mattered. This time I didn’t get distracted by shiny things but I could feel that this was not the be all and end all it had been made out to be. I had different priorities, like a life! I then stepped off the carousel altogether and threw myself into my current life. A wife - no pieces of paper, no promotion prospects; a mother - no leaving certificate or graduation ceremony, various voluntary work or sponsored charity things, the odd piece of paper but to be passed on to someone else rather than exchanged for stuff to fill my life up with.

Does it work for others? I don’t know, you’d need to ask them that. But in the main I hear more gripes about Monday mornings than Friday evenings, more enthusiasm for time spent with family or friends than with workmates, more passion about leisure activities than paid for ones. Of course it is often those pieces of paper that pay for the enjoyed times, I do see that link. I just think we all too often have the balance wrong. We feel we *need* or *deserve* the things we use the money for to make up for how much we hate what we do in order to get the money. When you start to strip that away you wonder whether if we did less of the work we’d need less of the reward. I’m not saying no work and no reward but maybe you need to slide it all backwards a bit, maybe the reward is simply less of the work in the first place, maybe it’s about finding the joy in the act of the task itself and if there is no joy then maybe just not doing it.

We know ourselves and our children best, or we should. I think most Home Educators certainly are in touch with their children and understand them. I think knowing ourselves well enough to establish what we want and what is the best route of getting there. For us it’s predominantly paper-free

I’ve seen a couple of references to ‘the blogring’ on a couple of friends’ blogs and noticed a few people blogging about matters educational. Also Jax has made noises about tidying the blogring up admin wise and it reminded me I’ve not been here for quite some time.

So I’ve been in and swept away some cobwebs, changed the picture for Monster to a more up to date one and changed his age (he turned 10 last month, it still said 9) and then thought actually maybe I should write something while I’m here.

I’ve been blogging now for about 7 years. My first blog bore the name that this blog here has ‘Monster and Teeny’ as those were the nicknames of the children. Back then Monster was 2 and Teeny, well she was teeny. We were newcomers to the Home Ed world, still finding our feet and our path and meeting new friends along the way. I joined the Early Years Home Ed yahoo group (back then it was Muddlepuddle), started a blog and joined the blogring and signed up for camps and groups and bought a shelf full of books.

Over the years that original blog has become more of a diary, it’s all still there and I still keep it updated but it is very much written for me these days. I still share it with a few friends and one day the children can read it too but it’s not about Home Ed as such and therefore doesn’t belong on a blogring sitting under a Home Ed banner. I started this blog because when I read round the blogring a few years ago I realised there was no one doing Home Ed quite like we do and I know that in our early days it was the online support of yahoo groups and reading about the highs and lows of other Home Educators daily lives that inspired me, gave me faith and kept me going.

The thing is though, I often don’t have much to say about Home Education. Not in a blog post anyway. I could sit and talk about Home Ed and my beliefs about parenting and child rearing and education and how people learn all day every day (and often do). I could share the highs but it would feel like bragging or being smug about believing my way is the right way, I could bemoan the lows but it would feel like wallowing, trying hard to find the glass half emptiness when actually I’m pretty much always a glass half full type of woman.

I could just slip quietly away and leave this here, Monster forever 9 (well 10 now), Teeny forever 7, the top post remaining a day in 2010 when we visited friends and checked on some sheep for people to find and wonder if we ever carried on and grew up, moved on or just stayed there trapped like characters in a book, ending when the last page was turned and the cover snapped shut.

And you know what, in times to come that may well happen But for today I am back here, with something to say, so I’ll say it and see what happens next.

I’ve been reading lots about approaches to Home Ed recently and enjoying hearing how different families use motivational tools, record progress, mark off achievements, follow bought in curriculums and what their aims for the future are. These all seem to be working well for the families who use them and I love reading about just that - Home Ed in progress, succeeding for those doing it . It’s heartening to hear about so many different approaches all working in different ways for different families and really does go to show how education should be diverse, tailor made, reactive and evolving, individualised and smooth, happy and enjoyable. 

We don’t use workbooks or curriculums. We don’t have ticksheets, incentives or motivational tools. Philosophically I am opposed to carrots and sticks, extrinsic rewards, stickers, tick boxes and certificates. I don’t judge those who use them and for whom they work but they are not for me. I have read Punished by rewards and I subscribe to the way of thinking outlined in that. If they don’t feel right for you, if they are not working, if the sense of achievement you were seeking isn’t met at the end of a week with every box ticked then that is fine in my opinion. Think instead about what motivates *you*. Is it the journey or the destination? Is it the process or the result? Is it all or indeed none of the above? What is your desired end point and by which route would you like to arrive there? 

For us our end result is happy, healthy children. Of course happy and healthy are both subjective and indeed altogether too dependent on external and out-of-our-hands factors. Currently both my children have colds and earlier on today as a result of a minor squabble in the back of the car I yelled at them. At that moment they would have appeared neither happy nor healthy with snotty noses and sad faces but I certainly don’t take that as a fail.

So let me amend that slightly. My end result is young adults who are able to identify and articulate what they need and desire to make them happy and healthy and understand how to and are motivated to achieve those states themselves.

I often describe our Home Ed style as autonomous. If that is met with a blank look I elaborate that it is child led but in theory it is still facilitated by me. I spend a good proportion of my time signed up to email lists, reading about things on the internet, looking out events and courses and day trips that the children would enjoy. I order books and dvds and find things on the TV that might interest them. I am the one who manages the diary and books in visits to friends, days at home, mixes the early starts with a slower morning here and there, does the driving, checks we can afford it and suggests half an hour running round the garden when things are getting fraught. I think there is a common misconception of autonomous home ed that parents have a laissez faire attitude towards education and parenting in general and allow their children to do whatever they want, whenever they want and remain hands off.

So I see my role as a listener, a suggester, an introducer. I hear them make requests, see sparks of interest and find ways of helping them learn more. We intersperse visits to places with TV documentaries, real life visits to shops, banks, libraries, museums, pick-your-own farms and pretty much anywhere and everywhere else that crops up in real life.

Could you do it this way? Maybe. A good friend once said to me that if she’d had my children she might have considered autonomous Home Ed, but as she had her children instead their rather more structured method was more appropriate. I often wonder if Monster and Teeny had a different mother things would be different too. I guess what I am saying is it has to work for every ‘partner’ or ’stakeholder’ in the equation. You need to find the right path for you and for your child(ren), the one that makes you all more or less happy, has a potential end result you are all satisfied with the propsect of and committed to achieving, one that suits you all and fits in with the rest of your lives, which does none of you any harm.

Bad days? Well yes of course we have those, we are human beings and therefore prone to messing it up fairly regularly, falling out, being unkind, shouting, screaming and stamping our feet, not thinking of others, losing our patience and our tempers,  having a bad day, changing our minds and generally having moments where the everyone else doubts they can spend another minute in our company let alone day in day out contact. I suspect that is simply par for the course in every family though. Sometimes we even have a bad day or a bad run of days at which point we all sit down, thrash it out, agree to all try harder and move on with renewed committment to making our lifestyle work.

Six? How did that happen then?!

I seem to be slipping later each year and like last year I struggled to find anything like a typical day around here. I guess the answer to that one is there is no such thing as a typical day around here but today had plenty of what is important to us, what we strive for, what plays a big part of our lives and where we are right now. 

That includes friends, learning something new every day, seeking out new experiences and firsts, stepping up to responsibilities, laughing, singing, talking, nature and animals, learning from others in all sorts of different environments, giving our time and working together, relaxing and enjoying each others company. Today we spent a lot of time in the car which isn’t ideal and doesn’t necessarily characterise how we live our lives but it is certainly one of our biggest expenses and resources.

So we started the day off with breakfast, getting dressed and so on. No photos of that as we were all up and moving at different times but were out of the house pretty early today so here’s our first photo of us leaving the house and getting into the car, otherwise known as the Nicmobile

First stop was some chalk downland about 10 miles away.

I have been doing volunteering as a shepherd or ‘lookerer’ for the local council. This involves being on a rota to visit a small flock (currently just nine) of sheep kept grazing to protect local chalk downland and reduce the use of fossil fuelled grasscutting machinery. The scheme has been running for a while and is working really well with the flock checked twice daily by volunteers. I attended a one day course last year to learn more about sheep and grazing for conservation, how to ‘turn’ a sheep, common sheep ailments and symptoms to look out for, errecting and maintaining a temporary electric fence enclosure and more. I have passed all this knowledge onto Monster and Teeny and the come along with me and do most of the lookering themselves with me just nominally supervising. Last week we had the excitement of a limping sheep that we managed to catch so I could inspect it and report my findings to the shepherd. Today we had another limping sheep, although not so bad so we didn’t bother to catch it but just reported it to the shepherd who was attending this afternoon anyway.

So Monster and Teeny head count the sheep, check they are all able to get up, walk and run, cast an eye around the perimeter fence for damage and check the sheep have water. 

We also enjoyed a bit of a Fox & Child moment watching a vixen and her four cubs playing in the sunshine in the next field along. We were too far away to get a decent picture and as we tried to move closer they scarpered but it was lovely to catch the glimpse of them .

Back to the car: 

This time back past home and 20 miles the other way to a localish marina where some new friends have their boat anchored. We only met them last week but hit it off and arranged to meet up again today. They are Home Educators with a same-age-as Teeny daughter and a slightly-older-than Monster daughter (who is currently in school but about to come back out. They sold up everything to buy a boat and go off sailing, boat-school the girls and generally live their dream. After some amazing adventures they are back in the UK for a while to earn some cash, repair the boat and recuperate before planning to head off again.

The marina is very posh indeed with many boats costing far more than most of us will earn in a lifetime let alone have spare to spend.

We fell rather instantly in love with their boat

Monster for it’s playground / home /adventure setting all rolled into one:)

Teeny for the wildlife that came calling

and me for the fab design features making the most of every bit of space - loved the little galley

We had chats, playing, explored the boat and had some lunch before heading for a wander round the marina and over to the beach for beachcombing, crab collecting and erm, pretending to be a seaweed monster from the deep!

Back to the car again this time heading for home for a couple of hours. Home is just as important to us as out and about and if we don’t have at least one day every fortnight with nothing planned but hanging out at home we all start to get a bit burnt out.

Teeny made herself very busy, first she took her ducklings out. She hatched them 2 and a half weeks ago from eggs she’d been incubating and they have imprinted on her and think she’s their mummy You can read more about the Hatchwatch 2010 adventure over on our self-suffish blog. They are currently still living in a box in Teeny’s bedroom at nighttime but are now able to go out in the garden for most of the day providing we’re around to protect them from seagull or other bird of prey attacks.

Monster got out the geomags. His current favourite passion is Harry Potter and he made some HP characterrs merged with Ben 10 Aliens to play with

Meanwhile Teeny had appeared back in the house again and was carrying out one of her favourite past times - making potions! This time it was to use to clean seaside treasures such as shells.

The cleaning idea got her thinking so she gathered up some coppers and a glass of coke to leave to soak overnight to see if what she’d heard about coke cleaning things up was true.

(it always amuses me when my autonomously Home Educated kids wind up doing the same sort of experiments that more structured HE children do, or I remember doing in school. They follow just the same formula of knowing a theory, devising a way to test it and then drawing a conclusion from the evidence but it’s all on a whim or because it’s something they heard somewhere, or an idea that just occcured to them rather than out of a book or someone else’s head).

Teeny checked the ducklings were secure and safe in their outdoor pen and we grabbed swimming costumes and headed off to the swimming pool for their weekly swimming lessons. I often go in too but didn’t today and observed them instead. Obviously I can’t take pictures in the pool so here they are brandishing swimsuits ready to go in:

and here they are an hour later on the way back out again. They both have half an hour of lesson and half an hour of free time in the bigger pool using the slide, diving boards etc. as their lesssons are staggered.

and here’s a ‘just for the fun of it’ silly photo they posed for and asked me to take and include in their day

and yes that is the sea you can see in the background. We love living near the beach and always mean to spend a lot more time there, but it does at least always appear in the background of our lives. We live about a mile away from the beach and probably drive past it most days, always observing the tides, what colour the ocean is and what boats, kite surfers etc. we can see out at sea.

 Back home it was teatime for Monster and Teeny, and bedtime for the ducklings who happily follow Teeny back into the house. It won’t be long before they are staying out all day and night but they have a few weeks before then and need to grow some feathers!

Usually bedtime would be a story together but today we had a dvd that everyone was wanting to watch. It didn’t really hold my attention so I went off for a bath but left Monster and Teeny and their Daddy all cuddled up together watching.

A story doesn’t have to be in a book to be enjoyed together.

Bedtime here means both Monster and Teeny listen to audio books in their beds. Teeny was listening to Chronicles of Narnia and Monster to one of the Harry Potter series. Most nights they listen for half an hour or so before feeling tired and turning the audiobook off to go to sleep. Other nights of course they listen for hours and hours and are still awake when we go to bed! As I say round here the only thing that is typical is that today will be nothing like yesterday and probably not a lot like tomorrow!

Home Educators are today celebrating the fact that due to the General Election being called the clauses of the csf bill specifically targeting Home Education have been dropped. I suspect we were not as close as we’d have liked to having them dropped if the timing of the election had not been on our side, but this is to be celebrated nonetheless.

I have always said, long before it was ever mentioned in parliament that it would be naive to believe we’d continue to ‘enjoy the freedom’ we have to educate our children as we see fit right the way through our personal home ed career (currently a further 11 years should Teeny continue to be HE’d right the way through to 18), let alone should I one day have grandchildren Monster and Teeny wish to autonomously Home Educate in the same way they were.

The trouble is to the casual observer, the ‘man on the street’, the checkout operator in the supermarket, the little old lady in the post office queue, other parents, the rest of the nation it seems quite reasonable that we should be ‘checked up on’ to make sure we’re ‘doing it right’. We have, as a society, moved so far away from believing that we are capable of raising our own children, without strict guidance and help that all deviations from the norm are viewed with suspicion.

Home birth (when there are perfectly good hospitals with trained midwives and drugs?), breastfeeding (when you could measure out scoops of formula and be able to report with accurate precision to the oz how much your baby has?), not using nursery (how will they get used to being away from you? When will you get your me time?), not sending them to school. All of these make people squirm a little, feel a bit uncomfortable, maybe slightly challenge that Gina Ford /Supernanny / ‘because my health visitor said so’ comfort blanket.

I distinctly recall feeling very wobbly when I first brought Monster home from the hospital. I’d had him in hospital as I was sure I didn’t know how to have a baby. I was even surer I didn’t know what to do with one when I brought him home with me. I read books, forums, listened to friends, medical professionals, people in queues at the supermarket and found most of it conflicted either with what everyone else was saying, or with what felt right inside. I allowed myself to be pulled about by that weird form of ‘other people’s wisdom’ for nearly 2 years. But I gradually started to feel more confident about my own ability to know what was right for my child, listen to my own inner wisdom and indeed Monster himself. By the time I had Teeny I had a home birth because I was confident that my body knew precisely how to birth a baby, I became more adept at doing what felt right, what suited us as individuals and as a family, listening to myself and my children and needing only their health and happiness as proof positive that everything was going just fine.

I am worried still though. I do believe that whatever happens in the election the issue of regulation for Home Education will return. If Labour are re-elected I suspect it will be straight back on the agenda, if another party win then it may take longer but it will return to the forefront I am sure. I suspect that by putting up such a strong fight we will have shown Home Educators as a force to be reckoned with which may cause potential opponents to raise their game, and indicated just how widespread we really are, thus putting us on the radar further.

So, what is my solution? Well I don’t have one really. I do know that compromises or trying to offer some watered down solution isn’t an option for me. I detest the nanny state, the notion I mentioned above of parents not really being good enough to raise our own children. I fret that any move away from the complete autonomy to educate our children as we see fit and the ultimate responsibility for educating children remaining with parents would be a tragedy and an outrage. 

I am happy to support the welfare state through my taxes and national insurance. I think the nhs, though not without faults is a fantastic system, state education, similarly not without faults and in need of reform and improvement is something we would be a poorer nation without, ditto social services (again in need of huge reform, attention and assistance). But they just that ’services’ to be used at free will rather than imposed upon us. I want the nhs to be there should I need it for me or one of my family. I don’t want to be checked up on to make sure I am keeping myself healthy when I don’t visit the doctor. I want state education to be there for those parents and children who are not willing, able or otherwise inclined to educate at home but I don’t want to be checked up on or visited to ensure I am doing it right if I don’t use it myself for my children. I want social services there to protect the uncared for, the abused, those without a voice of their own. But can anyone remember the last case in the UK where abuse was uncovered that social services had not already been alerted to?

 The process of putting people in touch with health, education and welfare systems is, I believe, the one area we have already got right, the one area we need to tick off as done and channel attention and resources and funding towards doing it right once they have got into the system. Throw the money at ensuring every child already in school gets a decent education, that every patient on a waiting list gets seen and treated, that every family in need of support gets it, that every child suspected of not being safe or loved is given safety and love and protection from those seeking to cause them harm.

So for today, we can celebrate, tentatively and not without trepidation and expectation of further fights to come. Never letting down our guard or being aware that while we’re safe for now the end is far from in sight.

2009 proved to be a great year in many ways although there was the dark cloud of the Badman review and resulting fall out hanging over us.

We continue to have a dialogue with our MP, sign petitions and open letters, add our voices to those who are shouting on our behalf whilst trying not to let this threat take over our day to day life. And of course extracting every single drip of educational value to be had in learning about government, politics, parliament and how you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.

We had great holidays, times with friends, new experiences, learnt new skills, found new passions and enjoyed life to the full. Some of what we set out to do happened, some didn’t, some was lost along the way because more interesting things came along instead. There were parties, new friends, old friends, laughter in the sunshine, splashing in the puddles and throwing snowballs at each other. When men in suits tried to take away our freedoms we blew bubbles in their faces, shouted loud enough for the media to listen, sat outside parliament with our banners and cluttered up their foyer in our rainbow clothes.

We grew fruit and vegetables while our chickens gave us eggs to eat and hatched new chickens too. This year we’ll grow even more.

So, what else is on the agenda for us in 2010? More of the same is the short answer - I know what I’m hoping the year will bring, I know what plans I have made but who can tell which way the road is going to turn once it gets out of sight? 

Monster and Teeny plan to continue with their regular groups - Wildlife Explorers, Swimming lessons, Sea Scouts, Brownies, Badgers, Young Archaeologists Club. They are going to a monthly Home Ed book club and we’re looking into circus skills, art lessons and possibly some music tuition - all in a skills swap type capacity with friends rather than formal, paid for lessons.

We have several camping trips and day trips already planned throughout the year aswell as several holidays. We’re looking forward to more parties and get togethers with friends.

Specific requests include:

Monster - learn to ride a bike, improve reading and writing through practise, he wants to attend Badger camp again (his first time away from home was a week long camping trip with Badgers in 2009, he got loads out of it and is keen to do it again this year). He wants to spend a night or two camped out in his own little tent and learn more bushcraft / forest skills / survival stuff. He’d like to learn more about animation and visit any museums or exhibitions that would help with that.

Teeny - still wants to see dolphins! We have another summer trip planned to hopefully make that happen this year (we failed last year despite holidaying in classic dolphin spotting locations and going on a dolphin spotting boat trip - we did see seals which she said were almost as good!). She’d also like to see elephants. She would like to visit a jungle, but along with her desire to stay in the ice hotel near the north pole she appreciates this might be a dream she has to realise under her own steam in years to come! Teeny would also like to learn to ride a bike, improve her swimming and hatch ducklings.

I love their hopes and dreams, I love how they mix practical, academic, whimsical, achieveable and utterly outlandish. I adore that all of these feel within reach to them, I am proud that together we manage to achieve so many of the things they want to do. I love the fact that my autonomous, non-tested, no-pressure children set their own goals, give thought to the direction they want their lives to take, put effort into coming up with ideas and are heavily responsible in making them happen. 

I seem to have taken part in several conversations about maths recently. One was with a very dear friend who is also a maths tutor when I shared how I had suddenly got my head round 7 x 8. It’s the single most asked times table line I think, one I always forgot when not being chanted with 6 x 8 said first (in the same was as Teeny still can’t start counting in the late teens, she needs to have started from one to get her momentum). I realised that if I think of 5 x 8 which I *know* is 40 plus 2 x 8 which I *know* is 16 and add the two together it is a sum that means something to me rather than a line from a rhyme which means nothing.

 I know there is value in mnemonics - I probably still couldn’t recite the colours or the rainbow without thinking of poor Richard of York, tell you how many days are in April without thinking of ‘30 days hath November’ or indeed ever be sure of how to spell receipt with the old ‘i before e…’ rule but I think there is a danger in relying too heavily on being able to recite words without actually corresponding them to numbers.

I’ve very deliberately not even talked about ‘maths’ as a concept to Monster and Teeny. I know far too many adults who are maths-phobic and claim to be ‘crap at maths’ despite using it in practical application every day without even thinking about it. I know my own ability to work out percentages was massively improved when working in a job with 20% staff discount, my ability to work out number bonds right up to 100 got great when I worked on tills and had to work out change, along with just knowing which coins to grab to make up the right amount in the smallest number of coins. Now I work in a library my skills at leaping plus 21 is pretty good to know what date to set stamps for books being due back.

Money, I think for most children, is a great manipulative. Time is another - from how many days til my birthday to how long til lunchtime. Does this mean that in an autonomous education there are going to be gaping holes maths-wise? Possibly. I can see there is every change pythagorus may never just crop up in day to day life but I think there is also a lot of space for crossovers of concepts to happen which for me is a good thing. I don’t see why ratios, percentages, decimals and fractions should be seperate. If you don’t need to do pages of sums for the sake of it, or divide all of this mathsiness stuff into little boxes surely the issue of ‘getting fractions but not understanding algebra’ won’t be so much of a problem?

I suspect that the ‘tricks’ of times by ten means stick another zero on the end without it actually meaning anything won’t happen here. Yesterday Teeny lost a tooth, which round here means she wakes up with a pound coin under her pillow the next morning. I overheard her and Monster chatting about counterfeiting coins which is something we talked about a while ago and whether you could ‘turn a penny into a pound’. Monster said ‘you can turn a penny into a pound by adding nine tenths of the pound and nine of the pennies to the first penny. Which seemed like a very convulted way of saying it but demonstrated he has grasped fractions with his 9/10 and presumably units, tens and hundreds too. He then said there must be one thousand pennies in ten pounds which they both ‘whoa’ d at for a while as that seems loads and finally he clarified with me that 10+10+10+10+10+10+10+10+10+10 is the same as 10x10. 

I think DS games, board games, toys like lego and geomags which involve counting pieces to construct and general life with the need to use numeracy to exist means Maths holds no fear for them, as and when life dictates they need to add another ability to their numeracy to work something out they learn how to do it either by trial and error or asking. At some point if they do need to get a maths qualification I have no doubt it would be pretty straightforward to pull all of that practical application experience together, realise that all of those different ideas have names and rules attached and can be seperated out and categorised but that basically it’s all just moving numbers about in slightly different sizes and methods.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldhansrd/text/91126-0011.htm#09112630000780

Lord Lucas: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow that speech, and I think that I agree with every part of it, especially the bit saying that we have the right to spend our own money on ourselves and have fun, so our children had better learn to work for a living. As I get older I agree with that more and more, although I do not think I did 40 years ago.

I am going to devote my speech to the home education part of the education Bill-although I cannot call it that because the word "education" has been expunged from every Bill and from the title of the department. I shall refer to it as the schools Bill. Several clauses are devoted to the regulation of home education; that is, people who educate their children at home. This part of the Bill is ill thought-out and unjustified, and I hope very much that we will delete it. In its current form it is a skeleton exposing home educators and their children to the unknown because so much will depend on how the regulations are written. Nothing in it secures their rights as home educators to look after their children in the way they see best. There is an unfortunate conflation of education and welfare which makes the business of improving or looking after the education of these children much harder.

There is no recognition in the Bill of the curricula and forms of education which are commonly used in home education, particularly in autonomous education. Instead, the impact assessment refers to the exemplar curricula which will be produced by the QCDA. In other words, everyone is to be corralled into state education and not allowed to go their own way. There is no reference to the training of local authority staff, which is recognised to be one of the major deficiencies in the current arrangements. There is no proper arrangement for independent appeal when a local authority decides that a person may not home educate. There is a skeleton in the Bill, but it is a skeleton that could be filled out in almost any way.

In this country, we have long had a duty as parents to educate our children and a right to decide how they should be educated. Many of us choose to entrust the state with their education-but that is us entrusting the state with our duty and us exercising our right to choose. The Bill turns that on his head. The arrangement here is that you cannot home educate unless you get the prior permission of the local authority, which has wide grounds for refusing. It can object in any way to your plans to educate your child. It can object and refuse you permission to home educate if you do not allow someone from the local education authority four hours of unaccompanied access to your child every year. Would we contemplate allowing that for our children under any circumstances? What right have these people to do that to home-educated children when there is no real cause for concern?

We are considering a section of the Bill which will cost £20 million per annum, which is about £1,000 per home-educated child. These children receive no money to help pay the costs of examinations; no money to buy textbooks; no money to buy materials; no money and no tuition to help them over difficulties in education. Now the Government can find £1,000 for each of these children-and will spend it on auditing them. Not one penny will go to help the children; it will all go on auditing them. What have these people done to deserve that?

Four separate communities are bundled together under the title of home education. First, there are those who opt for what might properly be called "elective home education". They are people who have decided, as a matter of principle, that they will pursue an educational philosophy which is not available from the state. Most of this is autonomous education; most of it is a form of education which does not involve curricula or planning but involves going on a journey with children which results in education. This is, of its nature, foreign to many school-based systems, but it has proved immensely successful.

The second group might be called "the despairing". These are people whose children have been bullied at school to the point where they will no longer go to school; or those who have children with special educational needs which are not being properly catered for and who have therefore decided to turn their lives upside down and educate their children themselves. These people do society a great deal of good by doing so.

The third group consists of the Travellers, who are bundled in here as home educators, which many of them are. Finally, there is what one might call the