Schooling arrests pupil progress
Letter printed in the Times Educational Supplement 16th October 1998
THE review of my research presented at this year's British Psychological Society Education Conference missed out some essential information (TES, September25). I used the Performance Indicators in Primary Schools' baseline assessment on the home-educated infants. While these children made slower progress than their school counterparts, they were more advanced than their peers from the start, and most were still ahead of school educated children at the end of the year.
This information indicated that a nationally-recognized assessment was used. It also implied that while the children progressed at a slower rate during their fourth year, their head-start and finish may have been the result of learning gradually from birth in an informal setting. This finding has implications for current ideas surrounding the age at which children enter formal education.
©P. Rothermel 1999