Education, Education, Education

J.K. Rowling came to live with us today. She moved in her dusty Hogwarts furniture to the bedrooms of Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, silently. Even before I'd had breakfast.

When I realised by 10am that the house is still, no-one's stirring, and everyone's quiet, in bed, turning pages, one part of me was itching to march straight in there, kick J.K. Rowling's backside and bring my children back to the busyness of a Monday morning.

Today I want to visit astronauts at the National Space Centre in Leicester. Or go to Cambridge and see Darwin. Or we could fight with Greeks at the British Museum. Or smile at the poised Christina of Denmark in the National Gallery, and wave to dusty Faraday at the Royal Institution. We could go anywhere, see anyone.

And I suggest all those options when I coax everyone down for breakfast at eleven, ending with pleeeaase! annyywherrreee! from the pleading position, which is flat out on the floor. And the answer I receive is ssshhhh total silence.


Now one big part of me feels like J.K. Rowling already outwitted me. I am staggering from that preemptive strike. She has achieved a feat unrivalled.

Hours and hours, in this house, of sssshhhhh total silence.

Broken only by the sound of turning pages.

For that accomplishment, the woman deserves my respect.

I guess a key point to this observation is not that Shark, Squirrel and Tiger draped themselves in rooms today for six hours reading what Harry did, while I shuffle off to do the laundry, it is that, if only I can let them alone, these kids are ably equipped to find their own way, discover their own interests, and with any books of their choice, simply educate themselves.

Each of my kids has been a late reader, preferring for the last few years to dig up the lawn, bathe unicorns, and paint cardboard. Squirrel did not bother to pick up a book until last year. And only then with bribes, threats, treats, rewards. But did anything I do really influence this outcome? Nope. Has late reading stopped them today? Not a bit.

But this interest? You can be sure they'll follow it now, regardless of what I do, say, or how much chocolate is on offer. And if I get on the wrong side of that interest, then woe betide me, because aren't kids as ferocious about guarding cherished intentions, just as a starved out Rottweiler guards that stolen juicy marrow bone?

The other point I can draw from this observation - how kids stay with something no matter how desperately they need the toilet - is that the Cambridge Primary Review is yet settling the dust around from where it hit the desk last week. The Review that recommends less formal styles of drill and kill testing, and more time for exploration and play in the early years.

And what an ill informed, ignorant decision government made to reject that report.

Maybe this government sees the first problem. That Tinkertop aged five cannot sit still for an hour to receive her delivery of the state curriculum. She's wriggling ants in the pants!

Then the state answer is not to create a system where Tinkertop can run about, like her body needs, or to encourage her with more flexibility, more freedom to explore her own way, find a path with creativity and play. No. They say, Parents, feel bad that you cannot teach your child to sit still! We have the solution! We'll teach Tinkertop how to sit still aged FOUR. So you, inadequate parent, can be made to feel bad about your parenting, and be forced to depend on the state just a little bit more. And the government can bag those kids into the system all the sooner.

But what happens next? When Tinkertop won't sit still aged four? Bet you can start school at age three. Maybe aged two. Nappies no problem.

The government rejection of the Cambridge Review; their Balls and Badman fiasco designed to monitor and evaluate parents; the new 'consultation' to get your child into more and more daycare - none of it's surprising.

For the government to accept the Cambridge Review meant acknowledging that they have failed in the very area in which they established their core agenda: education.

Education, it seems, is no longer about learning how to learn; it's not about critical thinking, creativity, independence, autonomy. Education - and children - are now simply another excuse for agendas of authoritarianism, centralisation and surveillance.

Give me a choice of Balls or Rowling, and there's no competition. Today, Rowling helped Shark, Squirrel and Tiger create their learning for themselves, become inspired, follow their own paths, be creative, live joyously. And I had to stay indoors and do the sodding laundry. Curses and blessings upon her.

If you've read this far, you can wonder whether I am a bad and lazy parent for failing to march Shark, Squirrel and Tiger down the road dressed in black and white to receive their daily dose of state curriculum.

Or you could wonder whether Tinkertop should be sat in uniform aged four, perched on her nappies, because she's not ready for that change either. Or whether she would be better placed running around the park with a cornflake box wedged on her head, dressed in a fairy outfit and wearing purple wellington boots with home made googly eyes stuck on the toes. Maybe that is the best route for Tinkertop to reach age nine, and settle down for six hours when J.K. Rowling comes to move furniture inside her head.

Dig returns from South America

All I can say is, regarding your tactical planning, strategic development, and vision 2020, it is not a particularly far-sighted approach on your return to show me photographs of you snorkeling in the Caribbean with a bikini clad babe 38-24-36, and then expect to have your washing dry for when you leave again on Wednesday.

I told you this would happen. And it did.

I got lost in Ashridge Woods. Looking for deer. Despite having spent £2.95 on the map of woodland footpaths.

After five minutes walking in that direction holding that map in my trembling sweating hands, I can tell you we are DOOMED.

The map is totally wrong. None of the paths we are walking along exist on the map. The paths on the map do not exist. That sales assistant took a crayon and scribbled wild lines over a piece of paper then handed it to me and charged me £2.95. She should have added to that casual hand wave and cheery Turn left out the visitor centre GO FOREVER LOST INTO THE BLAIR WITCH WOODS OF DOOM, SUCKER!

I am keeping from the innocent gritlets the knowledge that five minutes into this deer stalking business that I am marooned and may never survive. You should hear what happens in the car when I have forgotten the GPS. The endless cry LOSTMUMMYLOSTLOSTWEARELOST has led me more than once to stop that car and fall to my knees by the roadside in despair.

And Squirrel is skipping along and says she really hopes we see deer! DEER! Tiger says this is the most exciting adventure to have happened ever! Shark says she has never seen a deer before and this will be amazing and beautiful. I say nothing. Tring could be a fourteen mile walk that way. I mean, look at this. Can any sensible person find their way through this?


After another ten minutes, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are all gamboling along gaily and I have only the awful regret hanging dense over me that I did not bring chalk and draw arrows on tree bark because that is the only way now I am ever to know the route back out of this wildness.

And then we see a sign! And for a moment all hope is revived!


Until I see it makes no sense at all. And now here I am, stumbling headlong into a lost black hole of bleak despair where only the shivering beech trees are muttering my name in derision. My heart is filled with wild dread. This is the unknown, the incomprehensible, the nightmare.

In panic I pass the camera over to Shark and brightly say, as if we are all having such fun deep in the woods, I say as we walk, photograph the lovely woods, Shark!

Because there is only hope left. If she photographs our left-right path through this uncharted territory, then I can skim back through the images and navigate with trees to safety before the werewolves find us.

And after half a mile she scampers back with delight and I look at it all in horror!






Hopeless! Hopeless! All is LOST!

So I say with complete confidence, which is the only time you can be sure I am a dead woman walking under the swaying sword of Damocles, I say brightly to Shark that of course I know which way I am going now, because you can trust mama on this: I have a map and I am taking everyone to see DEER.

And strike me dead, but five minutes later we see DEER! Large, lumbering hoofy creatures, a dozen or more, black and brown and dappled beige, springing and jumping in front of us. And the gritlets all but fall to the ground with the glory, seeing woodland fallow deer rise and fall with great beautiful leaps across the path, through the trees, then turn, herd again, stop, stare at us, then turn away, as if their tracks whisper follow us. And I am in awe and despair all at the same time, because now, deep in Ashridge woods, I have not a clue how to get out. The only certainty as the clock ticks on is that the zombies who live in the woods will creep out at dusk to tear out my living beating heart. And we still will have a six mile walk back to the car.

But now we have seen deer! Great snorting barking gruffling creatures! And stags! With antlers! After watching them, edging closer, creeping through the beechfall to listen to the throaty rumbling cries of the stags as those wild creatures lumber further on through the trees, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger will now assume the adventure is done, and we can return to the car. Like mama knows where it is.

If the cry goes up, My feet hurt, I am done for. And then Mummy? Where are we going? When that question comes, I shall reply, We are going in a big circle back this way! And the little grits will happily scamper along the path around me, looking for more deer, confident in mama's stride and purpose when I am sweating bucketloads of fear and laughing with the insouciance of it all! Of course I know where I am going!

After walking blindly in one purposeful direction, then eternity walking left, then straight down this path because there is no other, then here we come to a road! I assault a man on a bicycle, all but pinning him to the ground, because if we now turn left-instead-of-right, or right-instead-of-left, then add fifteen miles and an ambulance to this adventure.

We make the last mile along the hard roadside. Suddenly, at a bend, I recognise the curve, and the field edging the woodland. Thirty minutes later, we make the car, and this is it, sanctuary in the darkness, and the little grits know nothing of the lost bewilderment and confusion, but are squealing with delight, and happy, because today, they have seen DEER.

Ed Balls, you have cause to be worried

No wonder folks round here are scared. I've tracked down the organised resistance movement. At great personal risk, I have photographed their secret rendezvous in the wild and fierce jungle plains of England.


See that lake? Filled with submarines. They can be called up at a moment's notice on the whim of this lot. I tell you, compared to this outfit, your local revolutionary guerrilla group are amateurs. Drugged up with Tixylix and lemon sherbets, this crew are lethal.


Here they are, huddled into little groups. Don't believe they're being organised to play team games about pinning the pollen on the stigma. No. That's what they want you to think. Actually, they are masterminding the undermining of the entire educational system, right here in the heart of England.


Here they are again! Brazen! They just want you to believe they're a bunch of home educated kids gearing up for a race pretending to be mice chased by owls. But do not believe it. All that running around making squeak squeak noises is merely a cover for their super organised clandestine operations.


See that map? Do not think for one minute this is an orienteering exercise so these kids can learn North from South and where are the markers. These people are planning a covert military strike. And that little kid in the fawn dufflecoat? Mr Big.

Don't say you weren't warned. Do not approach under any circumstances. Those snotty tissues can take out a man's eye at fifty metres.

But Mr Balls, if you think this crew is mean, let me tell you, you should see their mothers.

That's not real life

Some folks, like the woman I spoke to recently, say home educated kids surely can't learn real stuff of life, like how to socialise with people, unless they're in school. Because only in school do you find all ages.

Some home educators say that nowhere else in life are you made to work all day alongside people the same age as you. An experience interrupted only to get beaten up in the playground by Kevin of 4G, kicked out of the computer room for setting the tables on fire again.

Can you imagine accepting as an adult what you have to accept as a child?

I'm sorry Miss Smith, but you are now aged 30, so you can only work with the 30 year olds in Room 8. And please do not complain about Kevin again. I can assure you the incident with the hammer is being dealt with by personnel.

Give me the freedom to choose, and I'll choose to dump my kids straight in with the daily option that provides all ages, thanks; we meet old Doreen at the Co-op, and Fliss, age six month, who visited us last week.

But if I'm in debate with someone about that dreaded s-word - socialisation - they might look at some point like they've caught me out. They say AHA! But what about all the faiths and cultures eh? You clearly can't have those in your cocoon of a middle class cushion!

Then they have that smug look that suggests now they got me. Confess it, you measly-weedly Grit. You keep the kids at home to indoctrinate them with your cosy world view which, if you haven't already guessed, is narrow, bigoted and ignorant.

Yesterday we travelled to London with a group of home educating families to visit Irene White. Irene's aged 92. She told us her story about what it felt like to be growing up in Germany in the 1920s and 30s. She arrived a Jewish refugee in England via Palestine just before war broke out.

After we'd found out about Irene's life, Jewish heritage, family life in England, and eaten a kosher lunch with extra portions of latkes, we were invited to the local synagogue, where the Rabbi talked about Jewish beliefs, celebrations and history.


That visit to the synagogue joins others we have made. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have toured a Sikh Gurdwara with a young man of happy eyes and welcoming smile; they've visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Northampton, led by an old man whose skin faded into the colour of every ancient stone; we've visited the Buddhist temple at Milton Keynes to be feted by warm smiles, hot tea and kind faces. We've visited with other people everytime; other home educators, other children, other citizens.

But I got to thinking after my recent argument, not that she was right, or even she deserved that black eye, but how you rarely see Shark, Squirrel and Tiger on this blog in the company of others.

That's probably because we are all made hyper sensitive in this world to the chastisements and rights of others. And of course, we are all now slaves to the fear of Mr Spooky from the corner. I'm sure he's hanging round the back of this internet connection right now waiting to pounce on my innocent child's face.

Well, you may start seeing other bodies. Like backs of necks, bits of limbs, tops of heads, halfsides, eartops and foottails. Unless those other home ed parents hunt me down and kill me. So far they've just shrugged, and said, Why are you bothering to ask? Click away.

I think maybe it's time to push back a bit on that little piece of arsewisdom - that home educated children cannot socialise.

Lady, call it a mission to socialise you.

Ignorance is Strength

Dear Guardian

Please can I be a staff writer on your newspaper? I have been reading your newspaper recently and am very impressed by the quality of the journalism.

You could employ me for your education coverage, since I believe that is of a particularly high standard.

I am a very good candidate.

I can use wrods, and some punctuation. I am very jolly, and I am sure everyone will be delighted with my enthusiasm. On the education desk, I will trouble no-one with independent thinking and I can adhere easily to Party lines as required. If the Ministry of Truth provides a daily press release for me, I'm sure I could copy it out quickly. My ability to rekey a given text accurately is excellent.

But I know writing about education in a newspaper needs more than wrods.

I might need maths. If the Ministry of Truth provides statistics and percentage thingys in their press releases, I'm sure I can cope. My keyboard would have those numbers just like normal, wouldn't it? That would make the copying easier. I would never question numbers provided, so don't worry about that. I know that two plus two equals five if the Party should say so. And I do not normally boast, but I feel it is appropriate in my letter of application to say that as a result of over ten years of compulsory education at school I am now the proud possessor of O level maths, grade D.

You might have guessed by now that I know a thing or two about politics. I understand that for the job of education writer, I must be on good terms with the Party, otherwise I won't receive any press releases.

You can be reassured here. I think I might be secretly in love with Ed Balls, because of all that manly urge to control people. Thanks to my secret devotion* I will be a completely unquestioning devoted drudge. I know the stability of the Party depends on me. I would pass that type of unquestioning loyalty onto you. I think you might feel yourself very fortunate with that type of dedication.

Of course, I understand we Party types have to appear balanced if we work for a newspaper. We have ordinary readers to mislead.

Would it be alright if I copy out the press release one day about home educators denying their children a proper education, then the next day I could copy out some other wrods, to give the impression I am not really in the educational pocket of the Party? I could do that 'conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty' stuff.

Just to warn you, you might need to supply me with a copy editor to go over what I wrote just in case wrods creep in, like home educating types are stinky hippies. (I had better come clean. It has happened before. But I think I got away with it.)

Finally, I know the difference between truth and falsehood is not important when generating money. And the newspapers must sell, right? You can be assured I will have an eye to your financial position at all times. It is a cruel fact that sex sells newspapers, yet we have to be topical. Do not worry. I have loads of ideas. Like how home educators are secretly selling their children on twitter.

You can probably tell I am hot property, so there may be some bidding war for me. I feel obliged to let you know that I am also applying for the periodicals, Budgie Maintenance for Amateurs, Play Ideas for your Fish, and Crafting with Lolly Sticks.

I will wait by the phone. Tell Jessica she's my heroine.


*PS. Please don't tell anyone about the love interest. Some people might not share my passion for Ed's pudgy bits.

We have the right to choose

Today is the day home educators storm Parliament!


Look at that! Government by the home educated! That would be a coup, eh?

You'll be alright. We won't be able to agree on anything.

Actually, that bit is not surprising. We home educators are so very diverse. Some use worksheets and some home educators just passed out because that word came near their eyeballs.

Some home educators use their local school for resources, support and ideas. And some home educators would like a Hadron Collider so they could suck the local primary into a gone forever black hole.

When it comes to providing an education, all kids have such different experiences and interests, and families have such different philosophies.

But what home educators have in common is a belief that choice in education must stay with the parent and child, and not be taken by the state.

Home educators choose to take responsibility for a child's education everyday. We roll up our sleeves and dirty our elbows. And what many agree on, is that an everyday home education experience won't be helped by the imposition of someone else's curriculum, control, or by their supervision.

When you send your little Tinkertop to school, you trust a teacher, a classroom, a headteacher, a school philosophy, a pre-set curriculum, and national assessments to provide the bulk of that education.

If you're a professional parent, you may try to fill in any gaps between that school and homework, with interesting and creative activities that your child wants to do.

Then home educators are no different from you. They are usually resourceful at finding stuff to do; they work alongside their child, support interests, find workshops, join groups, make playdates, and shiftily approach other parents for birthday parties, joint tennis lessons, or evening French clubs.

But to know what home educators are upset about, you only have to think about the summer six-week holiday.

Think whether in July you would like an inspector from the Local Authority to have the right to enter your home and check whether you have a suitable schedule of summer educational activities chosen from their prearranged curriculum. And, by the way, before your little Tinkertop returns to school in September, the Local Authority might pop back and test her to see if your educational plan worked. They probably won't make you feel any better by saying they're making sure she's safe too, and checking you're not beating her up, because everyone knows that you might.

Then you can see what the fuss is about today.

Home educators think they are doing pretty well, thank you. Mostly against the grain, but independent, resourceful, capable, determined. Just like most parents, dedicated to creating an educational environment for their children, but mostly based on stuff their child likes to do.

To protect that educational freedom; to protect that right to choose; to support the rights we believe children have, home educators today gather in a mass lobby of Parliament. The BBC reports it here.


If you've read this far, know that parents who home educate are just like you. I choose a lifestyle, just like you. I love my children, just like you. I choose to raise them in the way that I see fit. Just like you.

Simon King, only you can help me now

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are miniature wildlife experts.

They haven't inherited that genetic disposition of wildlifery from their mother. I distinctly recall, at age 12, running screaming from the front room after watching on television a lion rip the backside off an antelope. My own mother, who probably slurped another mouthful of tea at that very same time, just hollered through to the kitchen where I was so wildly confused by all the slaughter, That's Nature! You cannot stop nature!

My mother's words ring in my head even now, everytime I see a wildlife programme. In fact let me delete that sentence. I cannot even bear to be in the same room as a wildlife programme.

I know the British public is supposed to find Attenborough like porn, only better. But me, I cannot see past the slowly narrated gore, ripped apart antelope, and shots of circling vultures. And it doesn't have to be the Serengeti, either. That episode in Springwatch when the baby owl ate a sibling? That fragment was the only bit I caught and now I am in counselling.

But Shark, Squirrel and Tiger watch those programmes in awe. They have this wildlife gene. They sniff out an Attenborough from half a mile away. And as for Simon. Simon. SimonSimonSimonSimonSimon. Do you know Simon Says is not a game you play round here? No, it is the word of a god, and when someone says Simon Says, a hush falls over this house and little gritlet eyes widen in anticipation, because someone is about to repeat the wisdom of the Lord of All Wildlifery.

So I should have known better than to casually mention a couple of weeks ago that we could go to Ashridge woods for deer watching, for their walk-and-talk with an expert.

Oh foolish mother! The gritlets are delirious with joy! Life has purpose and meaning! Maybe even SIMON will be there!

Which explains why I spend today frantically exchanging emails with the walks-and-talks department of Ashridge, begging them to allow us to join the deer watching walk next weekend. Which is FULLY BOOKED.

By the third email I am alternatively pleading, weeping, and threatening self immolation. I have the matches ready. In exasperation, the lady at Ashridge suggests next year I book in March, and this year I lead a walk myself with a self-guided map.

What? Without an expert who knows what they are doing and where they are going? And is air-sea rescue cheap? Then there is all that lost expert knowledge! I know cak all about deer, less why they smack each other about the face with antlers. And what if I can't find the deer? I know they might be standing right next to me, but look what happened when I tried to find the car.

All is lost. I must show my face to Shark, Squirrel and Tiger and deliver news that the deer walk will be conducted by the ignorant and lost Grit falling into ditches, unable to identify one end of a deer from another. Their crushed faces of disappointment will rip out my heart.

I am on my knees. There is only one man on this earth who can help me now.

SIMON! SIMON! Please send a sign that I can be delivered from this disaster! Please give me guidance and tell me what to do!

But in all that is holy, please don't tell them about your calender.

Hats off to organs

The temperature will heat up in the home education world this week.

It could be thanks to Parliament and a select committee chewing over that review.

Or it could be more buzz on Badman and those statistics which mislead to deceive.

Perhaps it will be a shitload of bad news and anti-home ed propaganda, telling you how Grit and all her kind are goat slaughtering loonies whose children are at risk from not receiving a state education and must therefore be deprived, neglected, randomly poked with fish, and should be removed from poor parental care.

The sum total will be that Grit is more dedicated than ever to sounding like a drunk hanging around shop doorways shouting to passers by that home education is a perfectly normal, reasonable, and sane course of action, should you choose not to march your little kid off to a state testing centre Mon-Fri. With homework. At age four.

Like today. I take my little grits to see organs in a field.

Here's one.

I've got plenty more pictures like that. There were a lot of organs.

And all manner of Victorian music equipment.

Chin up, Squirrel. Only another 47 organs to go.

But then someone offers Shark the chance to have a grind on their organ.

And things start looking up. Because the delightful lady organ owner tells us stories which make organs sound completely fascinating and interesting. Now we all want a go.

All that grinding is hard work, so we have a bit more respect about these amazing hand built boxes, and their place in street culture. Seriously, Wikipedia doesn't do justice.

And we meet some extraordinarily knowledgeable people, who are engineers, artists and musicians rolled into one.

Receiving a lesson on sound waves, managing airflow and the applications of compressed air is probably on the National Curriculum somewhere. Here it is for us.

Some children will receive this lesson in a classroom. Probably the same classroom as thirty other kids, and the one Kirk is banned from, thanks to the hammer incident last week. They'll be tested on it soon. In a worksheet.

Our lesson was in a field in the sunshine from an expert. The same gentleman who, from pictures, observation of stained glass windows, principles of design, and discussions with researchers in medieval music, built a model of a twelfth century musical instrument.

I guess music history is somewhere in the National Curriculum too. Or perhaps the government decided this is not a subject primary school children need to know about.

Lucky us.

Life is this French stick

A day of astonishing achievement here at The Pile.

I drive to the local town market because I am very chi chi and I buy stylish artisan products. Anyway, I have had a big fight with everyone at home, and Dig is packing for South America, so I may as well go out.

To console myself, and prove I am morally right to insist the children label a map of Brazil, I buy this.




What is it? you whimper. But it is a lovely crisp French baguette, of course! Freshly baked today! I think from a variety of angles you can appreciate the full local-made artisan beauty of it. I feel, in a metaphor of life, it may represent futility and purpose.

Now you know what I am up against, living in Smalltown, facing another week of home education while Dig is elsewhere wearing his lumberjack shirt. It is an uphill struggle.

I bet you feel better about your life now.

Ed Balls plays mind games with Squirrels

Look, Grit wants to post a picture of Squirrel, up a tree.


That is the best Squirrel I have ever seen up a tree. But I can't just post that.

Because the situation I am going to describe is a bit like mama Grit catching that cute Squirrel in a bag and saying to the wriggling Squirrel, Hey Squirrel! What is the answer to 6x7? Squirrel, being highly intelligent, might brightly say 42! Then hope she can escape and scamper off to play.

But mama Grit can't have heard. She repeats, Hey Squirrel! What is the answer to 6x7? Squirrel might be puzzled. She shouts 42!

Mummy Grit, who must have liquid for brains, says again, Hey Squirrel! What is the answer to 6x7?

You can fantasize about what happens next, like Squirrel takes out her assault rifle, or explodes in a blazing glory of angst, or just becomes plain rude and insulting. You might even say Mummy Grit asked for that response, because it is clear, is it not, that mummy Grit is now an evil sod playing mind games?

This pretty much describes a situation for the huge population of citizens up and down this country whom Ed Balls is trying to hold in a sack.

Perhaps, like mummy Grit, Ed has liquid for brains or perhaps he thinks he must be gifted in the art of educational maintenance and feels this special quality must be shared with the nation.

Because Ed Balls and the DCSF announce they are now cooperatively working with all parents involved in all forms of education, so much in fact, that they are to commission another review, this time into what constitutes an efficient and suitable education.

The BBC reports that this relates only to home educated children. But surely that is wrong? Here is the law. The words efficient and suitable apply equally to home educators and to all schools, if you choose to send your child there.

This is the law for England and Wales, as stated in The Education Act, 1996, Section 7. And if you are a parent, this law is for you:

The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable
a) to his age, ability, and aptitude, and
b) to any special educational needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.

But this government is pretty desperate about something. Look at all the stuff poured out the back end of the DCSF over the past few years! How many consultations, reviews, more reviews and justacouplemorereviews must we all wade through before he's done!

And most answers to all the reviews pumped out the DCSF over the last few years, particularly into home education, have concluded:

YUP! THE ANSWER'S 42. HOME EDUCATION WORKS FOR SOME KIDS. NOPE. YOU DON'T NEED TO STOP IT.

Ed may have hearing difficulties, so I put that in shouty letters. but I don't think it will make any difference.

If Ed is trying to pin down home educators, he'll affect all parents. The words efficient and suitable are in the law which binds us all.

The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable
a) to his age, ability, and aptitude, and
b) to any special educational needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.

Perhaps I can help Ed now, just like the puzzled Squirrel, who thinks mummy Grit might have gone a bit funny in the head with all that liquid.

Efficient
Wasn't this a curious word to use? Doesn't efficient mean to get a result in the most cost-effective way possible, expending the least amount of time and effort. Doesn't that make you feel good, all you school choosing people? Knowing your child is educated with the least amount of time and energy!

I think in legal cases when some poor sod of a home educator has been dragged before the beak, it's already been defined as something like 'that it achieves what it set out to achieve'. Those smart home educators will let me know.

At this point, I'll let you into a secret, but don't tell the Old Bill. We already ignore the law here. We don't bother with 'efficient'. In fact, we expend mountains of time, effort and energy pursuing our educational lifestyle. And spontaneous. Like, see the Aztecs at the British Museum? We'll have to go. I might desire the effect to be a working knowledge of the Aztecs. But if Tiger takes up on the tiny mosaics used on those death masks and comes away with a renewed interest in mosaic making, then I'm afraid my education was very inefficient, wasn't it? But it might have been suitable.

Suitable
In home education terms, suitable is what I say it is. We have no obligation to follow the National Curriculum, we have no requirement to exclude particular subjects from our learning, and we have no requirement to include particular subjects.

So because I decide what is suitable, and not some ex-Etonian in Westminster, our definition of suitability probably differs from schools in quite a few ways.

Like, marine biology and oceanography. Shark is interested in those topics, and they're hers, until she changes her mind or wakes up one morning to find she has turned into a dugong.

Then geology. We like rockwatching. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger take to those English fields with enthusiastic people who know what rocks to watch and not just mummy Grit who loses her glasses and falls into ditches.

Sport! All the gritlets have at some time another completed courses in ice skating, trampoline, horsedoing, sailing, kayaking. They're not on our local primary list. Someone in government might say they're not suitable. So we'd have to ignore the law there too.

And then there's sex education.

I'll admit that Tiger once emerged at the top of the stairs waving a packet of tampons in her hand and shouting in a voice that sounded like And can I paint a picture of a horse with these? No I bloody well cannot! and then flung them down the stairs at Shark. That moment was probably not her need to discover the delights of the menstrual cycle, Ed, more the outrage of a six year old who couldn't find her new paint set.

So you see, the primary curriculum and Grit's curriculum are totally different. Mine is suitable for the people we live with and the interests we express. And that's how we define suitable.

But we have a situation here where lots of people have given the government these answers. And they just keep asking the questions.

I feel a bit like Squirrel, and I just cannot figure out the motives of that person who keeps asking What is the answer to 6x7?

If Ed is trying to pin down home education, he's embarking on a route to pin everyone down. If he's doing this, he wants you all to do something.

Does he want you all to home educate? But clearly not in a way which some home educators do, i.e. autonomously.

Does he want you all to take your local authority to court, because they failed to deliver an efficient or suitable education for your child?

Does he want you all to be legally obliged to 'deliver' various state approved aspects of education in your home? Homework must form a big part of your lives, you parents out there. Will it form bigger?

Imagine the government defined or amended the words efficient, suitable and, let's go for the triple whammy, full time.

What would you be happy to have these words mean, and what would be the impact on you?

The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable
a) to his age, ability, and aptitude, and
b) to any special educational needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.

After that, I need pictures of an ordinary day

January to October, 2009

Grit has a secret stat counter. It's the one she installed after the mainframe exploded in Texas. She knows people stray here, possibly by accident. And they may not know much about home education.

Jo in York could be here to satisfy a pigeon fetish (which can be done here).

But Grit thought, in that tender way of hers, Jo needed an easy reference guide to our political home ed world instead.

1. Start here. Shake a double 6! Withdraw your kids from school!
Thanks to the media, the local primary playground sounds like Afghanistan.

Peer into this muddymedia world and you'll find little seven-year old Tinkertop is taught how to swear, spit, drink vodka, mix crack and shoot the rising-5s.

Some people choose home education. They may want to withdraw their little pig-tailed Tinkertop from this apparent battle ground. Others home educate because they are sick to the heart of constant exam prep from birth.

There are, of course, a sad minority, like Grit, who home educate because to make school in the mornings we'd have to get out of bed, and we can't be arsed.

In these days, the government wants to know what we're doing, who we're doing it with, and if can they fine it or use it to smack us on a database. They probably want to stop the stroppy rebellious and independent attitudes that come with home education, too.

So in January the government tried doing a Number 2.

2. Step back! You all MUST KNOW that home education is a cover for ABUSE.
The government slam out juicy stories to the press and the prurient public who murmur there's no smoke without fire and if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear.

Some journalists later conflate home education and child abuse, home education and forced marriage, home education and devil worship, home education and sexual exploitation, home education and drug abuse, home education and fundamentalism, home education and eating weasels with the fur on.

The government rubs their hands in glee! Soon the general public will say there's no smoke without fire and if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear.

And how many informers there will be! Lots of people who probably do not have much power over their own lives try to pretend they really do have power by seeking to exert a little bit of power over other members of the public, by way of withholding teaspoons and cheese. And probably reporting the hippie next door!

In fact, Grit has noticed that walking down the High Street has recently drawn suspicious stares and surreptitious glances from these types of people. Perhaps that is just because of my gold lame platform cowboy boots, but you never know.

3. January: Graham, would you like to write a review?
Graham Badman is a completely independent person who is utterly impartial and totally unbiased when it comes to reporting on matters of home education. The government say, Bring him in to this game!

As an independent, unbiased person of impeccable credentials, Graham has been a school teacher, school headteacher, school inspector and chief education officer, in charge of mostly schools. Totally independent and fair minded, with no vested interest whatsoever in promoting of a particular type of education, he is also a Governor of Christ Church University and a Governor and Trustee of three Kent academies. Completely independent of the DCSF, in January 2008 he was awarded a CBE in the New Year's Honours List for services to education and local government. As I said, totally independent. Totally fair when it comes to non-school provision. The right man for the job. If I had a baby, he could kiss it.

Graham was invited to write a review of home education for publication this year.

4. June: Stop everything for Graham's review of Elective Home Education.
Now we all say Graham Badman's review like it's his work alone. This is astonishing, isn't it? Where's the panel of committee members? Gone?

Grit has worked on the publication of a committee report in her distant past and it was a nightmare. Every committee member pulled in three different ways from anyone else. The chairperson went bonkers. The report had to be presented as a multiple voiced work. None of this diversity can be seen in Badman's work. Maybe the committee was there merely to spread something that looks like consensus; we haven't heard a dicky out of them since. Only Elizabeth Green of the government's DCSF receives a big smackeroo on page iv. Hmm.

Graham's 'recommendations' for home educators include allowing a local official to enter the home and assess the child. Without their parents.

Um, this is supposed to be a review into educational provision.

Not surprisingly, step number 6...

6. All summerlong: Home educators make a nuisance of themselves.
Some home educators are good at this. They run off with all the counters.

Look at all those Freedom of Information requests. Lots. Including requests for details of the statistical evidence on which Mr Badman bases the assertion, '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.'

Home educators also do a bit of mockery. Stop sniggering.

7. The DCSF say Right, that's it! We're not playing!
Honestly, you need a super sharp steel pair of secateurs to start snipsnipsnipping through the emails buzzed back and forth about the FOI requests turned down.

Those requests for the release of documents and background statistics that helped compose the report were turned down mostly on the grounds that Graham Badman is in danger of becoming mentally unstable. Home educators might tip him over the edge.

8. The volcanic pressure builds ... a select committee is appointed.
A select committee is appointed when scrutiny is needed. Initially, things look up when a select committee is announced, because they might accept the dodgy and disreputable basis of the Badman review, and the fact that the majority of respondents suggested no change was needed to the presently wide and wonderful world of home ed.

By this time, Grit is learning more about parliamentary procedure than she is about the 6x table. But every cloud has a silver lining. What strikes me now is the huge resource on the web to access your government and parliament. My only recommendation is to roll your sleeves up, get in there, and assert your rights.

9. Wednesday. The witnesses to the select committee are announced.
On behalf of the common all garden home educating parent, two men are speaking to the select committee next Monday.

If you go to a kid's home ed social meet, you'd expect fathers to outnumber mothers wouldn't you? Why do you think Grit goes? She is just swamped by hunky-men-eye-candy. They only wear false boobs to confuse everyone, obviously.

One of the men speaking is Simon Webb. On that, I just can't see the funny side.

10. To be continued...
On Tuesday 13 October, a mass lobby of Parliament is taking place; lots of home educators will turn up. Who knows what will happen when you have a barrel load of bolshy types together?

One thing is sure, these past few months have seen a lot of involvement from many home educators and many people, some of whom choose school, or flexi-school, but who fundamentally sympathise and support the right of parents to bring up their own kids as they see fit.

It's exhausting, isn't it Jo, keeping up with this lot?

Perhaps it's time to wander off, and find your sexy pigeon elsewhere.

Everyday brings new challenge

A few weeks ago Dig casually wanders through the kitchen on his way to Bangalore and he says to Squirrel, Hey cute little kid, what is 6x7?

Squirrel narrows her eyes, peers down her nose, then tosses her head and shrugs off something like D'you think I care?

Dig, whose experience in these matters stopped when he emerged blinking into the sunlight from a public boarding school some forty years ago, stops breathing or moving.

I'm guessing, what with the need for the defibrillator again, that Squirrel's response has not quite reflected the studious attitude he'd hoped he would see from a trainee gentlewoman. He probably would like to see her embroidering 6x7 onto a sampler, but Dig, I gently remind him, you married Grit, that beat-up idle working class hippie on the lookout for a good time and this, one of your spontaneous daughters, is the result. Get used to it.

But he can't. Later, he quietly collars Squirrel and quizzes her on all the other times tables, possibly including the 2x ones, but I'm admitting to nothing.

After about five minutes of this fruitless line of questioning, Squirrel slides off to stuff Arseface up a tree and Dig turns to me like I might have something to do with this maths education. I deny that completely. I say he has a physics A level, therefore he is Einstein's separated family. It's his job.

In fact, you are looking at a woman that at age 8 had a length of chalk thrown at her head by Mrs Smitty because she did not understand the 1x table. 1x anything? It just makes no sense! No sense! How you can you times anything by one when it's only one? One of something is what it is! I'm already on the brink of existential angst, just thinking about it, so traumatic is the thing that is the 1x table.

Dig, who says that little girls in today's world should know a thing or two about 6x7 says that Something Must Happen.

Which explains why today we take delivery of a package of CGP Maths books.

Taking delivery of that package not only shows how completely opposite are Grit and Dig when it comes to most things in life, that package immediately plunges me into home ed schizophrenia.

One half of me is mortified.

The horrified inadequate battered half of me throws myself on the ground, rends my clothes, tears out my hair and generally disgorges a lot of bottled up selfhatredbitterfrustration over 6x7, maths in general, and Mrs Smitty in particular.

When I have done with this side of things, the other, rational, resourceful, clear-thinking Super ego part of me will stand over the snivelling frog Id and wag a finger in the air.

Because of course being crap at maths myself is no reason not to show a positive attitude to it for the little grits. Although I hated this subject at school and have the chalk dents to prove it, remember that home ed means a learning adventure for us all, so we can all expect to follow the remarkable cooperative journey that is 6x7.

Well, Dig is out the country soon, lecturing everyone on how more commas are used than ever, so I doubt the CGP books will be studied for some months yet.

And Grit will thrash around between her Id and Super ego for some weeks to come, and probably, alongside Squirrel, come up with an answer somewhere in between.

And I hope it's 42.

I only stuck out my neck for the block

Now I feel nervous, admitting that a photographer hired by the Sunday Times Magazine tracked us down today in the middle of a leek field.

Perhaps I could say that when I agreed, in an offhand manner, to supply a comment or two I didn't quite appreciate the consequence. Anyway, I supplied a comment or two. And I have no idea when the article about women who blog will arrive at your newsagent, so don't ask. I have no idea what the other women will say either; in fact I don't know who they are. But I simply encourage you to read it. It will be worth it, I promise you.

For my part, I confess.

Yes! I blog because I am a needy, dispossessed remnant of a human being, with deflated self esteem, an absent husband, a chaotic lifestyle and triplets attached to my limbs like bracket fungi holding up a decaying tree!

Writing a blog on home education, triplets and family life all forms a part of my amazingly depraved life. And as you know, home education is code for goat slaughter, ritual abuse, and poking each other with fish.

Then the Sunday Times picture desk wanted photographs, possibly to prove it. Oh. Now why don't you hand me a revolver and let me shoot myself in both feet?

Because I am damned if I do, and damned if I don't. I am damned if I put my near-feral kids in front of that professional lens, and I am damned if I don't. Someone, somewhere, will already be reaching to press send on that hatemail.

Home education has not been an easy choice. Some days it feels easier to climb backwards, blindfold, up a sheer cliff face from the dark abyss called mental trauma than it is to stay fifteen minutes in this house with screaming triplets, let alone admit and I home educate. Yet startlingly, we still believe we made the best choice.

But it's true to say that on this not-at-school-today journey, more than once have I thought I'll run away and never come back. To make myself feel better, I have told myself that when I recover in years to come, I will travel back to this house and peep through the windows to the front room, just to see how Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have all succeeded with their home education in my absence. And some days that has been a reasonable plan.

But if that photograph in a magazine says, here's a blog of happy, unconventionally educated kids, then doesn't that do something good for the image of education away from the classroom?

By way of compromise, in depth self-analysis, Dig turning ashen and exclaiming What have you agreed to? WHAT? and the usual thirty seconds of my life spent thinking through the consequence, I said, Yes! Photograph the children. No! Don't photograph me. Anyway, as everyone who sees me routinely knows, I am a stunning sixfoot tallness of drop-dead gorgeous, size eight, and I sashay to the kiddy French lessons dressed in Dior and diamante.

The photographer eventually found us. In the leeks. As he took out his camera gear, Shark immediately sat down with her oceanography book like a farm worker striking for the right to intellectual labour. Tiger and Squirrel ran off because the excitement of staying still for more than two seconds proved too much for their legs to bear. After what felt like several hundred clickysnappyclickclickwhirr we went to sweetcorn. And onions. And did much the same sitting down and running about.

Due to the running about, Grit felt compelled at one point to behave completely out of character, stand behind the very patient photographer and make great operatic drama out of scratching her bottom. This made the children laugh, and I'm sure prevents them looking like illegal migrant workers lost in a corn field. But if the picture editor doesn't choose a laughing shot, you'll know I'm not scratching my arse.

Otherwise, Grit contributed very little to the day's photography in a field. She just generally complained about everything and fell into sounding like a drunk, rambling wildly with staring eyes, grizzled beard, windswept hair and a flood of incoherence, some of which involved finger pointing to the sky, the volcanoes, the torn apart earth and the outrages inflicted on my very human body and bones by the dark arts and night forces of Ed Balls and Graham Badman.

But when all is said and done, the day truly belongs to Shark, Squirrel and Tiger and the very professional photographer who steadfastly maintained his charm and affability and never once looked like he would run away or shout out in panic.


And before you wonder, then of course I did not bother asking Shark, Squirrel or Tiger whether they would like to be involved in this exposure and media experiment.

I simply told them that if they did not make home education look like the most wonderful, liberating, worthwhile family adventure full of happiness and satisfaction, that it surely is, then when we got home I would tie them to the radiator and flagellate them with strips of wet cod.

Dinner guest

Everyone needs someone like The Hat in their lives.

The Hat always arrives at a party; she is the party.

Aged 60, blonde, beautiful, swathed in painted mixes of tawny velvets, sparkling silks, embroidered canvas, she comes to dinner tonight, with us, and makes us special.

She dances into our house, bringing from her swinging catch-all handbag made of multicolours, exotic gifts for the children garnered from Kuwait, Iran, Japan. And with her comes all rich and complex wonders of the world - philosophy, literature, art, and culture, brought to us. And then she will cha cha cha in our kitchen.

She unfolds everything in her that is warm and wonderful, transforms our meal of left overs and last week's vegetables with a rich exotic sauce, brings warm raspberries and fresh clotted cream ice-cream. Our kitchen warms with her generous heart, kind words, and all of her humanity.

If she suffers loneliness or insecurities, it never shows. The Hat shows us only what is possible; all happiness, possibility, all embrace.

The Hat arrives. Here is the Hat. Cha cha cha.

Triplets. Or, crowd mayhem.

I saw a TV programme ages ago about triplet girls. They were twenty-something and took delight in fooling a wide range of people, including a photographer, about who they really were.

One triplet would be Janine, and then a sister, Not-Janine, took her place. The photographer never knew she was a different person, because he never noticed, despite pointing a metre long zoom lens straight at her face.

Then Not-Janine took the place of The-Other-Not-Janine until it all became totally confusing for everyone involved, especially the shaking photographer, and the triplet girls thought it was all a fantastic laugh.

Until one of the triplets broke that magic accord. In the beat of a heart, she did or said something that crossed a silent, unknowable line; like the secret line you draw between a sibling and yourself and you know it is there and no-one else knows it is there. But it is. And before you can blink, everything falls silent because you know the boundary is crossed. The TV screen with those triplet sisters fell into stonysilence.

So much stonysilence in fact, that you could feel the cameraman stop breathing with the tension from that dead and leaden air while those mirror image triplet sisters stared unblinking at each other in a way which said, and meant: You are now going to die.

Those triplet sisters were aged in their middle twenties.

My triplet daughters are aged in their middle nines, and they tend to lack the inhibition that develops from the teenage years.

So when one sister strays across a forbidden sister line, let's hope they are not holding anything in their hands. If they are, you will think Tesco is being quite reasonable not to sell teaspoons to the under 25s.

Why I am posting this is for many reasons, but let's say it is because we spent today in London at the Royal Institution for their Family Fun Day.

With triplets, you just never know whether it will be fun or not. One moment here they are, all best friends, all together, having the same fun in total agreement and laughing in mutual accord. Then something happens. Like today.

I couldn't honestly tell you exactly what caused that triple combination of mayhem, death and annihilation. Perhaps it was ignited by a misplaced comment, a look, a turn of a body, a gesture, a glance, a frustration, a jealousy, a resentment. But that igniting spark transfers quicker than light and sound to the brain and body of a triplet sister and then you, foolish, inconsequential parent-type being, will be left flapping and opening and shutting your mouth like a goldfish trapped in a cardboard box.

When one face of my darling daughters stares, mute to the others, her face is talking and it says something like Now I am going to kill you. And, sure enough, that pattern is blasted all across those three mirror faces like fractured wallpaper, and probably on mine, too.

Someone who lives outside this strange triplet dynamic will very easily blame home education, because that is a good reason why everything goes wrong. So an onlooker from the crowd might see, tsk, and think, Aha! We all know why this is! Children lacking socialisation!

But if we are lucky, we can nip it in the bud, drag each sister off to a different room and pretend nothing triplet-type happened. If we are unlucky, within the time it takes you to clap your hands, we are dealing with a flaming explosion of protest. It is totally unstoppable and possibly accompanied by self immolation. Dignity is not on the agenda. Let's just say that any one of those flaming balls of exploding outrage will have a destiny made complete if every living atom is taken down to Hades.

So if you meet the triplet sisters, be prepared. It could swing either way. You will be charmed, or alarmed. Wear body armour, discreetly, just in case.

And we can always blame everything on the photographer.

It's time to know that Grit is a Luddite

ecommerce. Everyone is using ecommerce! Dig tells me that is what it is called. ecommerce. I am so zeitgeist. I must add it to my linguistic repertoire and then people will think I know what I am talking about.

ecommerce ecommerce ecommerce

What it means in reality is that I am peering at the monitor screen and from that online shop today I want that book and those lovelycolouredrolls of adorablesoft felt.

Ssh. Don't tell anyone, but I have wanted to possess them for weeks, since the day we went over here. Secretly and silently I have dribbled over these screens of felt and imagined their lovely tender fibres soapyrolling under my fingertips.

You are right. Home educated kids are just an excuse. I am a totally unsocialised self-absorbed weirdo on the fringes of society whose only goal in life is to make her own handbag.

So I am peering at the screen and I decide this is the moment.

Oh yes it is. I have to manage this budget carefully, and I just paid the bill for our summer adventures and now the drawing-in days of autumn are here. In the coming months we will be kicked out, chastened from those fields at the late afternoon darkening times at 4pm. We must retreat to our mud and straw hut and to our cosy family hours round the hearth with our home educating craft projects, like weaving granola, sewing with our own hair, growing our own underwear and making felt handbags.

It takes me a good hour to go through the screens of heavenly delight, choosing all the lovely colours. I have to ignore the way Shark has locked herself in the bathroom to have a big scream and how Tiger has fallen down the stairs, tripped over by a four foot long homemade narrowboat. Dig is here. He can attend to those minor problems because I am engaging in ecommerce.

When I have finally chosen - and what a hard choice it has been! - but when I finally choose, then the reality hits me. I must actually complete the shopping online. This, apparently, is what ecommerce means.

Really at this point I would like to throw myself on the floor and claim I am dying in the hope that Dig will take pity and do it for me, but I know I must learn to do this newfangledtechnology. Anyway, he is still trying to prise Shark out of a bathroom.

First I must cross over the Paypal screen of death.

Now I am not entirely lost! I did have a Paypal account! I even paid for something once and it worked! Or at least I think it did: no-one came round to strap explosives under my car or shove dogshit through the letterbox. But then someone started to send me death threats, like your account is now late, or dead, or suspended; you have failed the great Paypal exam; we will dismember your pathetic non-ecommerce-managing body and stick your head on a pole as a warning to all non-ecommerce-managing body types. Well of course I wondered if the death threats from Paypal were really a cunning ruse: Mr Big, who is running an Colombian drugs cartel, sends those messages to me personally, and he wants to lay his hands on my £6.99.

Either way, I could no longer bear the dramatic tension of Paypal; waiting to be targetted by outofpocket death squads or be scammed for my £6.99 life savings which I have taken to shovelling under the mattress in consequence. I stopped using Paypal.

So I choose to bypass the Paypal and settle for the lovelydribblyfelt with credit card! I have one of those, because I am a fully working trusted human being! Really, believe me! I can take a responsible role in ecommerce!

Only I am outraged by my own stupidity because I cannot find the bloody credit card, and there is no way I'm putting in my regular bank card to any screen anywhere because Mr Big is out there, waiting to steal my £6.99. He is merely biding his time.

But I must find the credit card. Otherwise the bank will stick my head on a pole. It takes an hour and I only have to smash apart half the office to locate that credit card which is hiding in terror under a five foot pile of papers, the top of which says Quick Start Guide to Installing your ecommerce Software.

When I finally hold that credit card safe in my hands, I enter all the details, ever so carefully, like a real girl. I accord every keystroke the great significance and importance of that final exam at university, because I want to get everything right. And then I reach the expiry date. Expired? EXPIRED! How did that happen? How did September turn into October? Did anyone tell me? Where is the new card in this office of unopened envelopes? Where is an atom of dust flying around the stratosphere? Why don't we all look for that?

Now there is only one solution. Send pathetic pleading emails offering to pay by cheque.

And this shows you how good ecommerce is. Because so far I have spent two hours negotiating those ecommerce screens, getting nowhere, and I am not kidding, because in seconds of pressing send I receive an email back saying No problem! Send a cheque!

And I am so thankful about such friendly and prompt service from a real human person I am sorely tempted to go back to those lovelyscreens of dribblymakingfelt, and say Here's my bank account. Take it all.

The diversity that is home education

In this blog, you'll find a normal family. We fall out, make up, scream on the stairs, laugh together, talk about life, hide a rubber rat on the path to spook the postman, save the last chocolate slice for someone else, feed the birds, climb over the sofa, tell each other off, fight over who won Snap, eat take-aways, make cake, and shout Put that down before you have someone's eye out.

We are totally normal.

And we don't send our kids to school.

Earlier this year, Graham Badman was put up to write a review of the type of education offered by people who don't send their kids to school.

Badman could have said What can we learn from you? After all, many of the 'new initiatives' and 'developments' that we see emerge in schools, are totally normal in the daily lives of kids who don't attend schools.

Out of school, kids have time to concentrate on craft, to apply their creativity, do work experience, play, carry out science experiments, work through personal and family relationships, learn languages, meet socially, read, take music, cook, go out, shop, visit art galleries, museums, public lectures, take part in society, smell the flowers, play sport, learn from specialists.

All on that list is, at some time or another, taken up and championed by the school system, like it's some great new revelation they just gathered from two years of research.

Yet for kids out of school, these activities are normal. This is our daily life.

It seemed to a lot of people who don't send their kids to school in the normal way, that Badman, Balls and the DCSF were not so much interested in this huge variety of talented, different children we have in this country, nor what actually goes on in the huge, varied world of everything except school, but perhaps they were more interested in ensuring that certain types of education were promoted, and the unschooling, the autonomous style, eliminated. To some, that process of engineering the type of education you want is not education, it's social control.

Alongside the Badman review, came a load of news about how home educators are a suspicious lot. We may be hiding our children, abusing them. Many people who don't send their kids to conventional schools, felt that was some vilification. It gave the communities we work in, and rely upon, a sudden ground to suspect us, to see us walking down the street on a Monday morning, and wonder.

So it's no wonder that people who don't send their children to school, organise themselves to present their lives.

In the Grit household, we don't educate autonomously, we don't run a school at home. We create our own curriculums, we have half an eye to the National Curriculum, we go to the park. We mess it up. We get lost in woods. We meet a monk with a pet moth. We find a Viking in a field. We find our own way. We make it work.

And we support the huge variety of education that takes place in this country, and are so very glad of that diversity, and we want to protect it. Because it offers, truly, every child the opportunity to express themselves.

And we hope you'll support us. Because one day, you might want not to send your kids to school.