PROPOSAL

That CPE should raise funds to establish a three year research project into home based education to consider the issues arising from the feasibility study, with particular emphasis on the relation of home based education to the social inclusion of home educated young people and home educated children with special educational needs.

The full research proposal can be found in the document “The Centre for Personalised Education – Research Proposal and Business Plan” for further information contact Mike F-W here

In summary the proposal is that CPE should focus this research around key questions arising from the feasibility study:

1. Who are home educators?

Building on previous research, there is a need to know more about the growing group of educators. They often do not fit the profile of those actively engaged in supporting and developing their children's education and the incidence of non-stereotypical groups across broad educational, socio-economic and philosophical boundaries has much to teach us about the control, management and delivery of educational provision. Research into how those normally perceived as education consumers or even as education refusers can become instead education providers is an area in need of exploration.

2. How does the alternative provision and philosophy of home-based education impact on conventional educational assumptions?

Some home educators are beginning to work in co-operative groups and the development of these needs to be recorded in case studies with general principles being identified and analysed. The elements of the systems should be studied in depth - what is democratic? What is a catalogue curriculum? How does the environment of each system interact with its ethos and outcomes? Is there an effect of locating 'education' within a particular environment and model? The feasibility study has already highlighted the existence of a wide range of educational styles and philosophies being developed amongst the home education community quite apart from any organized or co-operative ventures. What models are being developed and what insights do they offer to educational thinking and to the widening of access to educational human rights?

Ultimately, it will need to be asked - does home education suggest an alternative learning system from which many more children's rights would benefit or does it suggest a range of educational models which themselves form an invitational and open ended educational catalogue for specific groups or needs?

3. What is the role and range of individual and community resources being accessed?

The very title 'home-education' often evokes an image of an isolated family studying around a kitchen table with the aid of some outdated textbooks. In an information rich society, the learning going on in homes is often varied and interactive. Moreover, home is often only a base from which families utilize a whole range of community facilities, exploiting learning potential in a range of arenas. The research will examine more closely the feasibility findings that home-based educators are able to pursue innovative models of social inclusion, which in turn point to new learning systems and a wider range of rights provision.

4. In what ways are current support strategies meeting or failing to meet needs?

5. What do home educators want in terms of support, information, networking and organisations?

These questions will be taken together within the research, bearing in mind the following:

There exist a range of support organisations and plenty of materials in books, videos and on the Internet, providing content for education. Despite all of this support take up is relatively low and support needs are identified as highly important in the feasibility study.

A thorough understanding of the various concepts of 'support' needs to be arrived at. There need to be careful checks and balances to ensure that no particular scheme or method of delivering support becomes seem as mandatory by default, thus excluding segments of the community The aim of the research is to develop a range of support models to counter social exclusion across all sectors of the community, including those with special needs in learning. Without such support models access to the human rights of individual, suitable education are, in practice, hard to exercise and responses to these questions seek to redress this.

6. How do the perceptions of educational success that exist within the home education community differ from those of mainstream educational practice?

7. What questions do home-educators face in relation to welfare issues and are these questions valid?

These two questions will be taken together. What is meant by success? There are definite strands of thinking within the Home Education community, which need to be respected and considered within their own paradigms. 'Success' to a formally educating structured family would have a totally different meaning to 'success' in an autonomously educating family and any attempt to blur these meanings into a homogenous package will engender resistance and alienation within the target group. Instead rigorous and differentiated definitions are needed. The benchmark of education 'achieving what it sets out to achieve' as set out in case law, would be an important consideration. Similarly, 'educational welfare' and 'socialisation' need to be carefully defined, setting paradigms from within the home education community alongside mainstream understandings of social inclusion.

When we look at the success and welfare of home educated children what are we looking for? Do we mean exceeding government performance targets? Do we mean needing less social intervention as adults than peers of their social class? Do we mean lower rates of teenage pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse? Do we mean that the children themselves are more positive about their experience of education than schooled peers, irrespective of outcomes?

These questions open up the whole arena of social skills and the demarcation lines between welfare and education. With a rise in numbers of excluded children who are home educated because of pressure to leave the system, does this present two tiers of home educators with markedly different outcomes? The right to individual education according to a family philosophy can only become realistic in an environment in which there are broad and diverse measures of success and welfare so these questions are pivotal to education rights issues.

8. How are issues of success, welfare, socialization and social inclusion impacted by the provision or lack of support?

The research findings of questions 6 & 7 above will be related to the gaps in support provision and to suggestions for new forms of support to enhance the social inclusion and social well being of this community (questions 4 & 5 above) The aim will be to develop models of support that match the models of success and its perceptions to enhance the social well being of families across the home education community.

9. Who is education for?

10. Does society benefit from home education?

These questions will be taken together. There is emerging evidence that home-educated children are not prone to drugs, heavy drinking, petty crime, or vandalism. Other indications suggest that they tend to be emotionally intelligent and socially mature, and do well if they go to university. They are rarely unemployed. These issues demand closer analysis. This should allow for a range of answers, including qualitative, quantitative and theoretical approaches to the questions. These questions also demand that spin off in terms of social benefits are not put before human rights issues, but rather follow on from having the humans rights fully and diversely respected.

11. What are the main influences working for and against home education?

This question of influences working against home based education and contributing to social exclusion, is just beginning to be asked. Early indications include the strength of vested interests in the current system; a current vogue for centralised control and uniformity within the educational mainstream and psychological attitudes to education and child rearing. It is crucial that there is a recognition that these negative influences may constitute incursions into basic human rights and that a greater understanding of educational alternatives and increased access to information on alternatives should come from many sources, including mainstream educational providers, if human rights are to be upheld.

On the other hand there are a growing number of factors that are making these negative influences less sustainable, and which may be influencing the rise in home-based education, particularly new access to information, new parenting theories, new styles of work and flexible family life All of these influences will be researched and their contribution to enhancing human rights considered.

Throughout the research there will be particular emphasis on the relation of home based education to the social inclusion and fundamental human rights of home educated young people and homed educated children, including those with special educational needs. In addition the project will liase with other relevant research projects. This will include, for example, co-ordinating a network of related professionals to share information, good practice and joint initiatives and to avoid duplication of research. The research is action oriented and participative and aims to be outward looking, providing access to information and choice both for home educators and for enquirers and raising the profile of home education across the community at large.