The Home Education Witch Hunt

Let’s call it what it is.

Submissions to the Select Committee who were looking into the Badman review have been released. Have a guess at what the first question Graham Badman asked Dr Paula Rothermel, the UK’s leading academic in home education research, I bet you wouldn’t get it in a million years, here it is:

His opening question was to ask me if home educating mothers suffered from Munchhausen’s by Proxy

(the whole submission is here)

I cannot even begin to process this. He thinks home educating parents… no, no, ignore that, he specifically says, mothers, he suspects women who home educate are mentally ill. Not sure what he thinks about fathers who home educate, but I suppose the implication is that they’re perfectly sane and it’s only us hysterical, presumably over-attached or attention seeking women who are crazy.

Their second meeting didn’t go any better because despite the research covering 1099 children, Badman had his own ideas:

At our second interview Mr Badman was dismissive of my work. He insisted that my study covered just 30 children. He indicated that someone had told him this and insisted that my conclusions and findings, therefore, were of little significance. Nothing I could say would sway him from this view. He had clearly not informed himself about my work by reading it.

My look at the original review is here.

A very interesting submission to the committee here, including the actions of Badman’s daughter, and the fact she works for a neither good nor bad county council held up as good practice. Plus the link to an educational management company called Nektus of which Badman, his wife, their daughter and her husband are all directors.

Well I have to go now, to get dressed and head up to the hospital to visit FiL or I would write more.