It’s the first day of a new school year at the progressive comprehensive and one of the new arrivals is Ruth who has been home-schooled for quite some time by her divorced father. Ruth is only back in mainstream schooling because of pressure from her mother. It is clear that this is a highly dysfunctional family (or ex-family) and home-educated Ruth is portrayed as arrogant, over-confident, mouthy and devious. She dominates her first English lesson, dismissing TS Eliot’s The Waste Land as “simplistic”.

The script implies very clearly that these character flaws are the result of her isolating home-schooling experience.  She is very unhappy to be back at school, attempts to get expelled and is a problem for the new head teacher (Amanda Burton) in all sorts of ways. Before the end of the first episode, she has run away and had to be rescued from the  freezing moors amidst much melodrama.

We can be fairly sure that if Ruth reappears in subsequent episodes, we will see the socialising influence of school life as she matures into a kind and sensible young lady. The message will be that she is much better off in school than while she was being “hot-housed” by her father.

All this may make good television drama but it is a world away from the typical family that takes on the challenge of home schooling.  Although there are a small number of single parents who home-educate their children, it is much more likely that the mother and father are still very much together and equally committed to home education. Home schooling is not associated with dysfunctional family situations, quite the contrary.

Home-educated children do not turn out to be arrogant and sociopathic and there is no reason why home schooling should be an isolating experience. There is a strong and mutually supportive community of home schooling families out there as well as any number of other “normal” opportunities for children to integrate with their peers. They usually emerge from the experience balanced, resourceful and independent, but every child is different.

It would be good to see some positive and accurate depictions of home schooling and its effects in the media but perhaps they do not make such exciting television. It is to be hoped that Shed Productions, who are responsible for Waterloo Road, will offer a more constructive perspective in future episodes.

The summary of the survey reads as follows:

‘Ofsted’s latest survey highlights the challenges local authorities face in identifying and tracking children who are missing from education. Children missing from education, and whose whereabouts become unknown, not only risk failing academically but are also potentially vulnerable to physical, emotional and psychological harm.

‘The Children missing from education report surveyed 15 local authorities of different sizes across England, in both urban and rural areas. It found that none of the authorities felt confident that they knew about all the children living in their area in order to fulfil their duties to keep children safe.’

The first and most obvious point to make is that although some children may be (shamefully!) missing from certain local authorities’ records, this does not mean they are missing from education. On the contrary, we can be sure that many of them are receiving a full and carefully-constructed education within the home environment.

At Oxford Home Schooling, we are supporting thousands of students in this category, most of them working successfully towards Key Stage 3, GCSE and A-level qualifications. Some of these youngsters have been assisted by their local authorities, others have been studiously ignored.

We are not aware of a single home-learner who is “vulnerable to physical, emotional and psychological harm”, although one can never be complacent.  We work closely not just with the students but with their families and in the vast majority of cases, the families are close-knit, supportive and conscientious in their commitment to a high-quality education within the home environment.

Once again the tragic case of Khyra Ishaq is hauled into the debate, e.g. in the BBC’s report on the Ofsted survey, as if the tragedy would have been averted if the local authorities had had slightly different powers. In that case, the authorities had enough information and enough power to intervene but, for various reasons, did not do so in time.

The obvious lack of education taking place was the least of the apparent problems.  But the authorities had the power to ask the Ishaq family to demonstrate that full-time and appropriate education was in place and, if evidence was not forthcoming, to issue a School Attendance Order. This seems to me to be an appropriate set of safeguards and procedures and it is a shame that they were not observed. For Ofsted to claim that local authorities are unable to deal with home-educated children is disingenuous in the extreme.

Ofsted are best known for their inspections of schools so it should come as no surprise that they are in favour of inspection of homes where home education is (or is not) taking place. At a time when a new government is putting quangoes to the sword,  or, worse still, sending them to Coventry, it is understandable that it should seek to appropriate yet more powers and generate the work that might save a few of their own jobs.

But they are unlikely to get their wish. This is partly because of the near-universal hostility to the idea of inspection amongst the bona fide home-schooling community (e.g. HEAS).  Perhaps more importantly, the timing is all wrong. The Labour government, during three terms in office, might have sought to apply the same level of bureaucratic control to home schooling as it has done to other aspects of education, but it did not do so in the end.

The Con-Lib coalition has a a very different philosophy. At a time when the government is seeking to reduce cost, bureaucracy and the “nanny state”, it is highly unlikely to tamper with the delicate balance of freedoms, controls and responsibilities which is currently applied to the home education sector. In that context, Ofsted’s report will be pereceived as an empty gesture.

Our experience at OHS is that local authorities vary enormously in their treatment of home learners.  Some do not even have the mechanisms to find out from the schools involved that a particular pupil has been withdrawn. It would be a good idea to put effective systems in place, right across the country, to  ensure that schools do  always share this information. Home-educating families can then be positively supported rather than suspiciously monitored and inspected. But there is a world of difference between the provision of resources, tutors and perhaps even funding and the kind of unwelcome control that Ofsted offers.

(Dr) Nicholas Smith,

Principal, Oxford Home Schooling

Human Genome

Oxford Home Schooling is pleased to announce that we now have an exciting new course for IGCSE Human Biology. This follows the recent release of our new course for IGCSE English Literature.

The new course is designed to match the Edexcel 4HB0 specification for examinations in June 2011, June 2012, or later years.

Candidates are required to sit two written examinations. There is no coursework although some familiarity with experimental procedure is required. The specification is designed as ideal preparation forA-level Biology or Human Biology study.

The OOL course is divided into five modules that follow the structure of the Edexcel specification:

Module 1: Cell Processes

Module 2: Human Physiology A

Module 3: Human Physiology B

Module 4: Reproduction and Heredity

Module 5: Microorganisms, Disease and Environment

The Edexcel requirements are a little more “academic” than the equivalent GCSE but our course aims to make the study of Human Biology engaging and practical for students of all abilities.

Human Biology IGCSE may be studied on its own, alongside other Science IGCSEs or as part of a full range of IGCSE studies.

GCSE or IGCSE?

For the home-educated and distance learners in general, 2010 was the last year in which it was possible to stake a “standard” GCSE in Human Biology or Human Physiology and Health. From 2011, GCSE students are required to undertake a controlled assessment which is not practicable unless you are in a supervised classroom. So IGCSE is the only viable choice in this and and a number of other subjects. But there are plenty of IGCSE exam centres up and down the country so it is relatively straightforward to enter the exams, especially with no coursework involved.

IGCSE qualifications are accepted as at least the equivalent of GCSEs in all sixth form colleges, FE colleges, universities and other HE institutions.

IGCSE test centres world-wide

If you are looking to study for IGCSE exams outside the UK, you do not need to visit the UK to sit your exams.  You can find your nearest international exam centre by visiting Edexcel International.

If you are interested in studying this or other IGCSE programmes with Oxford Home Schooling, please contact one of our Student Advisers today.

H.H. Armstead, 'Literature'

Oxford Home Schooling is pleased to announce that we now have an exciting new course for IGCSE English Literature.

The new course is designed to match the Edexcel 4ET0 specification for examinations in June 2011, June 2012, or later years.

Candidates are required to sit two written examinations, one on prose and drama and one on poetry. There is no coursework.  The specification is designed as ideal preparation for A-level English Literature study.

The selected texts for detailed study are Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.  For the poetry paper, Edexcel has produced an anthology of sixteen poems including a number of popular favourites like Kipling’s ‘If’, Blake’s ‘Tyger’ and Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’, and a range of international poets including Alice Walker and Gabriel Okara.  The OHS course covers all sixteen poems in considerable detail.

As well as the three modules on the two set texts and the poetry, there are also two introductory modules, one on literary analysis and one on essay technique. The Edexcel requirements are a little more “academic” than the equivalent GCSE, but our course aims to make the study of English Literature lively and engaging for students of all abilities.

English Literature IGCSE forms an ideal complement to study of the main English IGCSE course or as part of a full range of IGCSE studies.

GCSE or IGCSE?

For the home-educated and distance learners in general, 2011 is the last year in which it is possible to stake a “standard” GCSE in English Literature. From 2012, GCSE students are required to undertake a controlled assessment which is not practicable unless you are in a supervised classroom. So IGCSE is the only viable choice in this and and a number of other subjects.  But there are plenty of IGCSE exam centres up and down the country so it is relatively straightforward to enter the exams, especially with no coursework involved.

IGCSE qualifications are accepted as at least the equivalent of GCSEs in all sixth form colleges, FE colleges, universities and other HE institutions.

If you are looking to study IGCSE English Literature outside the UK, there is no need to visit the UK to sit your exams.  With exam centres world-wide, Edexcel IGCSE is the obvious choice for international candidates.  Visit Edexcel International to find your nearest exam centre.

If you are interested in studying this or other IGCSE programmes with Oxford Home Schooling, please contact one of our Student Advisers today.

The report is midsleading in a  number of ways.  Only 16 have told the Cambridge board (CIE) that they will be offering the exams but Cambridge is not the only board offering IGCSE. Edexcel has designed a set of IGCSE specfications which are intended to be better suited to the needs of UK state schools.  It is also rather too early to tell how many schools will offer IGCSE this autumn as there is no requirement to notify a board in advance and many are still making plans.

But the Guardian does not make the obvious point. State schools are in no position to offer IGCSE programmes because those programmes are not funded. Only when IGCSE courses are funded at the same level as GCSE courses will we see a large scale shift away from GCSE and towards IGCSE. The government has not yet told us whether (or when) IGCSE programmes will be funded. Until that happens, IGCSE will remain the preserve of the private sector. But the very fact that so many private schools intend to offer IGCSE this year is clear evidence that IGCSEs are seen as a better and more demanding preparation for A-levels and university courses.

Martin Ward, deputy general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, has said that the low figure shows state school teachers have “clearly decided that there is no virtue in their pupils taking IGCSEs”. This is complete nonsense and he knows it. There are some schools where the teachers are aware of the IGCSE option who have decided that it would be too tough for most of their pupils and that it represents a risk to their GCSE rankings, but most have not considered IGCSE at all because of the absence of funding.  A party divide has opened up on this issue and it is clear that the ASCL is toeing the Labour Party line.

But there are much wider issues at stake here. Should we compel state schools to deliver a National Curriculum which is carefully controlled by the government? Or should we trust exam boards and universities to set the exams that students, schools and universities want? IGCSEs are currently unregulated but there is no doubt that they are harder than GCSEs. If they become state-regulated, will exam boards start competing (as they have done with GCSE) to make them ever easier in order  to attract a higher proportion of state schools? It may be some time before all these issues are satisfactorily settled.

Dr Nicholas Smith,

Principal, Oxford Home Schooling

I was contacted by ITV News who planned to run a report in the main evening news.  To their credit, they asked me to put forward a student or family which was a good example of home schooling. The student needed to be about 11 or 12 and close to London and they wanted to send a camera round in the next half hour. We identified four possible families whom, we believed, would represent the happy face of home schooling and tried to contact them. Two were away, perhaps on holiday, and two said, quite reasonably, that it was much too short notice. In the end, we ran out of time, and were unable to recommend anyone suitable. ITN promised to look elsewhere but they were working, as ever, to a tight deadline, and, as it turned out, they ran the report on national television without any such “balancing” film.

Instead, there was footage of Christopher Spry, a “child abuse survivor”, suggesting that there should be tighter controls. I don’t think the watching audience would have gained a fair sense of the other side of the argument. Nor is there any sign that home schooling was a significant issue in either the Spry or Ishak cases.

The objective seems to be to put pressure on the government yet again to implement the recommendations of the Badman Report. Tim Loughton, the Children’s Minister, was given a brief chance to respond and said “the child did not die as a result of home schooling”.

That is indeed the key point and it is to be hoped that the new government sticks to its guns and resists the misguided pressure to apply heavy-handed controls and safeguards to home learners and their families. Children in desperate situations, like Ishak, require effective intervention and there is no doubt that mistakes were made. But the local authorities already had sufficient powers to make that intervention and it is a story of human error not lax regulation.

Most home-educated children exist at the opposite end of the social spectrum from the unfortunate Khyra Ishak. They pursue their studies within hugely supportive and resourceful families who have positively elected to provide an education within the home. Such children are often remarkably successful, both in terms of qualifications and their overall personal development.

It is not an easy option for the families concerned and it would be a great shame if any were deterred from choosing this option by the threat of “inspection” and the problem of having to justify complex educational choices.  Let’s keep the balance of control and freedom as it is right now.

Dr Nicholas Smith,

Principal, Oxford Home Schooling

All schools with Edexcel-registered test centres can now offer Edexcel IGCSE exams

Until recently, the only available exam centres were at private or independent schools, as the IGCSE qualification was not offered in state schools. However, the change in Government policy to allow schools in the state-maintained sector to offer IGCSEs from September means that this has now also changed.  Following clarification from Edexcel, the exam board that we use for IGCSEs, Oxford Home Schooling is pleased to confirm that any school which is a registered Edexcel exam centre, and is also happy to accept external candidates, can now offer this exam to students without the centre being involved in additional expense or paperwork. Edexcel has provided us with the following statement:

“Private Candidates can be entered for IGCSEs through any registered Edexcel Centre in the normal way, provided that the Centre concerned is prepared to accept Private Candidates.”

Wider choice for Private Candidates

This is excellent news for our students, as over the years, Oxford Home Schooling has developed a very extensive list of schools and colleges that are happy to accept our students as external candidates.  We are justly proud of the excellent and co-o0perative relationships we maintain with schools that provide test centre facilities to our students.

OOL’s unique exam service ready to assist its IGCSE students to register for exams

We see our examination service as a unique selling point that is not offered by any of our competitors. It gives our students a huge amount of valuable help and support at no extra cost. As a result, school exam officers recognize that our students are expertly and well supported and that, in contrast to Private Candidates from many other organisations, they do not generate a layer of extra work at a busy time. This can be of real value during the often stressful and time-consuming task of booking exams.

Jenny Booth

Exams Officer

‘Distance learning: good on costs, not so good for social cohesion’

The sub-heading is also an inaccurate summary of the article that follows:

‘The danger of distance learning is that it may make second-class citizens of students who choose it’

On the contrary, Woolf’s article celebrates much that is good in the history of open learning, notably the contribution of London University’s external degrees. As one who taught on one of these distance learning programmes (via Wolsey Hall, one of its long-lasting agents), I can vouch for their importance in helping learners, in a wide variety of personal situations, rise the social and academic ladder.

Nelson Mandela was one such student in an earlier era but by the 1980s, the London degrees were very much in decline, at least in the UK. The reason was simple – the programmes were not funded in the same way as the Open University.  The latter’s operation was hugely subsidised by the state while London’s far-flung students were generally in receipt of no financial support at all and generally having to pay the full market rate for whatever teaching and textual support they could find.  As far as HE distance learning was concerned, the Open University was granted a virtual monopoly and they have done a great job with that opportunity.

Social isolation is a relative term and these days distance learning is a much less isolated affair if only because technology enables easy and speedy contact between students who are geographically separated.  Distance learners are encouraged by organisations like Oxford Home Schooling and Oxford Open Learning to integrate themselves into the wider community of learners and to share their learning experiences. There are chatrooms and blogs and virtual learning environments where friendships can be made and common interests shared.

Of course, the opportunities could be better still. We hope that the government will embrace the ethos of distance learning, and not just at a Higher Education level.  At modest cost to the state, huge improvements could be made in the infratructure and affordability of distance learning and lead to a revival of the idea of lifelong learning.

Distance learning can help to make first class students of us all.

Private Candidates

External or Private Candidates are particularly vulnerable on results day as they are usually “on their own”, without the back-up of an exam officer and a set of teachers who know them well and can offer advice.  Also, exam officers are frantically busy with their own students at this time and may not be happy to explain things to someone who is not one of their own students.

If you are a Private Candidate, then unlike pupils in school, you will not already know your coursework mark and it will not be identified separately on your “Candidate Statement of Provisional Results”, otherwise known as your results slip. All you will see on results day is the overall grade that you have been awarded. This can be frustrating and confusing, particularly if you have not done as well as you expected. It is easy to become annoyed and frustrated, but there are things that you can do to gather more information.

What can you do?

Always look at the results slip carefully, since for Private Candidates, a common cause of a lower than expected grade is an administrative error at the exam board which means that your coursework mark may not have been included in your grade. If you see the hash symbol “#” next to the grade it means that part of your mark is missing. This is usually the coursework and (as long as you did your coursework and submitted it correctly) this can easily be rectified. You just need to calmly show your exam officer your results slip and explain that there is a problem indicated. If you are an Oxford Open Learning student, then your Student Adviser will also provide reassurance and help.

If there is not a hash symbol then unfortunately the chances are that you really did not do as well as you expected. In this case you need to stay calm and consider your options in consultation with other people, especially your tutor and/or Student Adviser. Please remain polite and always remember that it is not the exam officer’s fault, even though you may want to take your immediate frustration out on someone.

For most students everything goes well and results day is a great relief.  If it doesn’t then stay calm, there are people to turn to even though your exam officer may be very busy.

Good luck!

Jenny Booth

Exams Officer

Oxford Open Learning

At the moment, funding via the Local Authority (LA) is only available in exceptional circumstances, for instance that the child has special educational needs.  The Dept of Education has  confirmed that this situation has not altered:

“The current financial responsibility for home educated children has not changed, namely, that parents who choose to electively home educate their children assume financial responsibility for their education. ”

As the number of home-educated children has grown rapidly over the last five years, the previous government (after the Badman Review) put forward plans to monitor home-schooled children and there is no doubt that the present government also feels compelled to ensure that there is adequate control over this growing sector. A commitment to funding would demonstrate a greater acceptance of the validity of home education and a desire to facilitate improvements in the educational experience of the home-schooled.  In time, it would stimulate the development of more effective published resources, more varied and systematic teaching resources, technological advances, etc.

The new government has already shown a  commitment to academies and ‘free’ schools, enabling parents to group together to set up a new instituation, with the promise of funding to come.  The home-schooled may not have a central meeting place or regular classrooms but they are an educational grouping which is analogous to a school and just as much in need of institutional support. So funding should be available for them too.

Education Otherwise is one organisation which represents the interests of the home-schooled via the Freedom for Children to Grow Campaign for Home Education, and we are happy to join with them in lobbying for the effective funding in future for the home schooling of children, particularly between the ages of 11 and 16 when it is vital that effective teaching programmes are put in place.

As well as putting our views to Michael Gove, the Minster for Education, it may be worth making a case to Nick Gibb, the Minster of State for Schools, whom the Dept of Education has confirmed has responsibility for home schooling.