|
Memorandum submitted by Tom King
This submission focuses on the inconsistent manner in
which Graham Badman's Review of Elective Home Education in
The particular lines of evidence addressed in this submission are:
- The Review's failure to give weight to existing research whose findings run contrary to its conclusions, on home educated students' academic achievement - The Review's failure to give weight to research findings concerning the relationship between level of regulation and home-educated students' academic aptitude and achievements - The
Review's failure to refer to - The Review's willingness to base significant recommendations on questionable data
1. Badman Review v. existing research on home educated children's academic achievements
1.1 The Review's recommendations 1 and 7 are based in part upon concerns that home educating parents are not providing a suitable and efficient education, as set out in the 1996 Education Act. Both Ray (1997) and Rudner (1999) found that that home-educated children show exceptionally high achievement levels compared to their peers in mainstream education across a broad spectrum of subject areas. Mr Badman is not convinced by these and similar studies, because "the results may be attributable to parental characteristics". In fact, Ray's study indicated that the level to which parents were educated had much less of an effect for home-educated children than for children in mainstream education. 1.2 Mr Badman is also not convinced by existing research because of "small [or] ... biased samples". Ray's research was based on data collected from 5,402 students from 1,657 families. Rudner's involved 20,760 children from 11,930 families. In Rudner's study, parents chose to participate before they knew their children's test scores to address the risk of selective reporting.
Sources: http://www.hslda.org/docs/study/comp2001/HomeSchoolAchievement.pdf (accessed 09/2009), Derived from Brian D. Ray, Strengths of Their Own - Home Schoolers Across America: Academic Achievement, Family Characteristics, and Longitudinal Traits, 1997
Lawrence M. Rudner, Scholastic Achievement and Demographic Characteristics of Home School Students in 1998, EPAA Vol 7 No. 8 (March 1999) http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n8/ (accessed 09/2009)
2. Badman Review v. existing research on relationship between level of regulation and academic achievement and aptitude of home educated children
2 2.1 The Review's recommendations are suffused with the assumption that increasing regulation will increase the standard of education available to home-educated children. This is not borne out by existing research. 2.2 Ray
(1997) found that the degree of governmental regulation had no significant
effect on the academic performance of home-educated children. Furthermore, Ray and Eagleson (2008) found
similarly that the level of regulation had no effect on readiness of
home-educated children for university, as measured by the SAT test results
within the
Sources: Brian D. Ray, Bruce K Eagleson, State Regulation of Homeschooling and Homeschoolers' SAT Scores, academicleadership.org, Vol 6 Issue 3, Aug 2008 http://www.academicleadership.org/emprical_research/State_Regulation_of_Homeschooling_and_Homeschoolers_SAT_Scores.shtml (accessed 09/2009)
http://www.hslda.org/docs/study/comp2001/HomeSchoolAchievement.pdf (accessed 09/2009), Derived from Brian D. Ray, Strengths of Their Own - Home Schoolers Across America: Academic Achievement, Family Characteristics, and Longitudinal Traits, 1997
3. Review's
failure to refer to
3 3.1 In
February 2009, the 3.2 The
Badman Review's recommendations would commit local authorities to much higher
public spending when (a) evidence from
Source: http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/informationreleases/budget/2009/pdfs/b09-llr-ero.pdf (accessed 09/2009)
4. Review's willingness to base significant recommendations on questionable data
4 4.1 The Review states that "the number of children known to children's social care in some local authorities is disproportionately high relative to the size of their home educating population" and that "those engaged in the support and monitoring of home education should be alert to the potential additional risk to children". Furthermore, Mr Badman claimed publicly on 12th June 2009 that "Children educated at home are twice as likely to be on social services registers for being at risk of abuse as the rest of the population." These assertions have since been discredited by statistics gathered by Action for Home Education members in FOI requests to local authorities, which indicate that the recorded abuse rates are in fact less than a quarter than that in the wider population. 4.2 In a letter to Directors of Children's Services in all local authorities in England, Mr Badman states that "evidence...led me to make the 28 recommendations in my Review," but later adds that he would like to "strengthen [the] statistical evidence in advance of the Select Committee hearing so that it is more extensive and statistically robust." He also admits that a small sample "provided persuasive evidence for change" and expresses a desire to "provide more statistically rigorous information to the Select Committee." 4.3 Mr Badman has been inconsistent with in his use of data. He has dismissed research whose findings run contrary to his conclusions on the basis of (among other things) "small [or] ... biased samples" while basing his own recommendations on data from a small sample with insufficient statistical rigour.
September 2009
Sources: (all accessed September 2009)
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rbrk5-GEdrUdcmfi670Mihg&gid=2
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/publications/documents/laeelectivehomeeducation/
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/13248/response/34259/attach/3/Document.pdf
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/local_authority_evidence
|