Dedication

This thesis is dedicated to my children Genevieve & Verity,

to my mother Rita and to my partner Jonathan.

Thanks

For making this thesis possible I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor David Galloway. Also, Professor Peter Tymms and all his staff at Durham's CEM Centre and Professor Carol Aubrey. My thanks go to all the necessary and very many families who assisted with and supported, this research.

Notes on the text

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Contents

		Page
Abstract
Title Page		0
Dedication and thanks. A note on the text. Copyright.		1
Contents		2
Chapter 1	Introduction	9
1.1	Structure of the Thesis	9
1.2	Legality of home-education	9
1.3	Definitions of home-education	13
1.4	The law concerning home education	21
1.5	Prevalence of home educators	24
1.6	Local education authority perspectives	26
1.7	Summary	30
1.8	Contribution of this thesis to the field	30
	Introduction Endnotes	32
Chapter 2	Literature Review 1: A review of home-education research	33
2.1	Questionnaire Data on Home-educating Families	33
2.1.1	North American Questionnaire Surveys of Homeschoolers	33
2.1.2	British Questionnaire Surveys of Home-educators	38
2.2	Interviews with Home-educating Families	41
2.3	Summary of the US and UK research on home-educators	50
	Literature Review I Endnotes	50
Chapter 3	Literature Review II: Children's educational and psycho-social development	52
3.1	Children aged 4-5 years	52
3.1.1	The First Year at School	52
3.1.2	Baseline Research at the University of Durham	53
3.1.3	School Starting Age	57
3.1.4	Parents and Baseline Assessment	58
3.1.5	Value-added	60
3.1.6	Social Class Effects	63
3.1.7	Summary of Section 3.1	65
3.2	Literacy and Children	67
3.2.1	Literacy in Education	67
	- Definitions of Literacy	67
	- National Literacy Project (NLP)	73
3.2.2	Home-educated Children and Literacy	74
	- Home-educated Children Learning to Read	76
	- Home-educated Children and their Late Reading	78
	- Literacy Assessments and Home-educated Children	80
	- Overseas Studies Relating to Home-educated Children's Literacy	82
3.2.3	Summary of Section 3.2	85
3.3	Children and Mathematics Education	86
3.3.1	Numeracy in Education	86
	- Definitions of Numeracy	86
	- National Numeracy Strategy (NNS)	88
3.3.2	Numeracy in the Home-education Context	89
	- Home-educated children and numeracy	89
	- Numeracy assessments and home-educated children	91
3.3.3	Summary of Section 3.3	92
3.4	Children's Social and Psychological Adjustment	94
3.4.1	Home-educated Children's Psychosocial Development	95
3.4.2	Children's Social Skills	96
3.4.3	Passivity/Aggression in Children	100
3.4.4	Behaviour Difficulties in Children	102
	- School attendance and absenteeism	102
	- Behavioural Difficulties and academic performance	105
	- Part-time schooling	106
	- School Refusal	107
	- Children with Special Educational Needs (SEN)	108
	- Behavioural Difficulties in Children	108
3.5	Overview of the Literature Review	109
3.6	Questions arising from the Literature Review	111
	- Questions relating to the early years	111
	- Literacy and Numeracy	112
	- Social and Psychological Implications	112
	- The Learning Process	113
	- The Value of Taxonomies	113
	- Questions Relating to the Research Implications	115
	Literature Review II Endnotes	115
Chapter 4	Methodology	118
4.1	Introduction	118
4.2	Overall Research Design	118
4.3	Methodology Overview	120
4.4	Access to Home-Educators	121
4.4.1	Ethics	124
4.5	Methodology adopted for the Initial Questionnaire	124
4.5.1	Choice of Methodology (Chapter 5)	124
	- Decision to use a questionnaire	124
	- Argument against using a questionnaire	125
4.5.2	Design of the Questionnaire (Chapter 5)	128
	- Construction of the early versions	128
	- Subsequent amendments	130
4.5.3	Sample Selection (Chapter 5)	132
4.5.4	Initial Questionnaire Procedure (Chapter 5)	137
	- Procedure Outline	137
	- Analysis of the Questionnaires	140
	- Feedback and Analysis of Non Respondents	143
4.6	Methodology used for the Baseline Assessment	145
4.6.1	Choice of Methodology (Chapter 6) -	145
	- Selection of the PIPS Baseline Assessment (Start and End of Reception)	145
	- Assessment Programme Design	146
	- Materials used for the PIPS Baseline Assessment	147
4.6.2	Sample Selection (Chapter 6)	148
4.6.3	Procedure for Administering the PIPS Baseline Assessment	149
4.7	Instruments for the Literacy & Mathematics Assessments	152
4.7.1	Choice of Instruments (Chapter 7 & Chapter 8)	152
	- Decision to use the PIPS Year 2 Assessment and National Literacy Project Assessments for Years 1, 3 and 5	152
	- Design of PIPS Year 2 Assessments and National Literacy Project Assessments for Years 1, 3 and 5	154
4.7.2	Materials Used (Chapter 7 & Chapter 8)	154
4.7.3	Sample Selection (Chapter 7 & Chapter 8)	155
4.7.4	Procedure for the Literacy & Mathematics Assessments	157
4.8	Instruments for Collating the Social and Psychological Data	159
4.8.1	Selection and Design of Instruments (Chapter 9)	159
	- Selection of the Children's Assertive Behaviour Scale (CABS)	162
	- Selection of the Revised Rutter Scale (RRS)	163
	- Selection of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)	163
	- Design of the Children's Assertiveness Behaviour Scale (CABS)	165
	- Design of the Revised Rutter Scale (RRS)	167
	- Design of the Goodman Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)	173
	- Comparison between Goodman SDQ and RRS items	174
4.8.2	Sample Selection (Chapter 9)	174
4.8.3	Procedure for Collating the Social and Psychological Data	176
4.9	Overview of the Methodology	177
	Methodology Endnotes	178
Chapter 5	Questionnaire Survey Data (Abstract)	182
5	Questionnaire Survey Results Overview	182
5.1	General Biographic Details	183
5.2	Parents' Details	185
5.3	The Place of Religion Amongst the Families	188
5.4	What Home-educating Meant To Families and What Had Motivated Them To Home-educate	189
5.5	Parenting Styles Described by parents	190
5.6	Parental Views and the Practicalities of Home Learning	191
5.7	Resources Used in Home-education	194
5.8	Home-educated Children and Reading	197
5.9	The Place of Assessment in Home-education	198
5.10	Communication with the Local Education Authority	198
5.11	Socialisation and Meeting up with Other Home-educators	199
5.12	Home-educators and School	201
5.13	Advantages and Disadvantages of Home-education and School	202
5.14	Overview of Results Section	206
	Questionnaire Endnotes	207
Chapter 6	Performance Indicators in Primary Schools Baseline Assessment (Abstract)	209
6	PIPS Baseline Assessment Results: Overview	209
6.1	Results in Brief	210
6.2	Raw Scores	211
6.3	Value-Added	216
6.4	Correlations	219
6.4.1	Difference in Performance: Children from Religious and Non Religious Families	219
6.4.2	Difference in Performance: Children from Professional and Non Professional Families	221
6.4.3	Difference in Performance: With Television, Without Television	222
6.4.4	Difference in Performance: Boys and Girls	223
6.5	Assessment Commentaries	223
6.5.1	Qualitative Data Emerging from the Assessments	223
6.5.2	What's in a word (or in a picture)?	224
6.5.3	Story Time	226
6.5.4	Rhyming Confusion: Rhyming Fun	229
6.5.5	Reading	231
6.5.6	Arithmetic	234
6.5.7	Idiosyncrasies	235
6.5.8	A Poor Value-added Score	237
6.5.9	Creating Context	238
6.5.10	Giving Time and Space	239
6.5.11	What the Parents Knew	240
6.5.12	General Comments	241
6.6	Summary	242
	Baseline Endnotes	243
Chapter 7	Literacy: Performance Indicators in Primary Schools year 2 (PIPS 2) and National Literacy Project Assessments (NLP) years 1, 3, 5 (Abstract)	244
7	Literacy Results Section: Overview	244
7.1	NLP Assessment Quantitative Data	245
7.1.1	Specific task results from the NLP 'Patterns in Language' assessments	249
7.1.2	Comparison of Means between Year Groups	254
7.1.3	Gender differences (NLP)	255
7.2	Quantitative Data from PIPS Year 2 Assessments	255
7.2.1	Cross-Test Literacy Comparison	260
7.2.2	Gender differences (PIPS Year 2)	261
7.2.3	Results as Grades Awarded	262
7.2.4	Value-added Scores	263
7.3	Summary of the literacy quantitative data	264
7.4	NLP Years 1, 3 & 5, and PIPS Year 2 Commentaries	265
7.4.1	Freedom to Enjoy the Assessments without Pressure	266
7.4.2	Some Parents were Surprised at their Children's Abilities	270
7.4.3	Dilemmas over Receiving Assessment Grades	273
7.4.4	Making Sense of the Assessments	275
7.4.5	The problems with using School Style assessment in the home	285
7.4.6	Were the Children Capable of Metacognitive thought?	290
7.4.7	Individual Approaches for Individual Children	290
7.4.8	School? No Thank You	290
7.5	Summary	292
	Literacy Endnotes	295
Chapter 8	Mathematics: PIPS Year 2 (Abstract)	297
8.1	General Mathematics Results	297
8.1.1	Gender Differences	301
8.1.2	Value-added	302
8.2	Commentaries: PIPS Year 2 Assessments	303
8.3	Summary	308
	Mathematics Endnotes	309
Chapter 9	Social and Psychological Data (Abstract)	311
9	Social and Psychological Data Results: Overview	311
9.1	CABS Results	312
9.1.1	Confidence Interval	315
9.1.2	Scores by Sub-category	315
9.1.3	Participants' Comments	317
9.1.4	Summary (CABS)	322
9.2	Revised Rutter Scale (RRS) Results	323
9.2.1	Revised Rutter Parent Scale for School-Age Children	323
9.2.2	Participant's Comments	329
9.2.3	Summary (RRS)	332
9.3	Strengths & Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) Results	333
9.3.1	SDQ Overview	333
9.3.2	Comparison between the RRS and the SDQ	336
9.3.3	Further analysis of the SDQ	338
9.3.4	Summary (SDQ)	341
	Social and Psychological Data Endnotes	342
Chapter 10	Discussion	344
10	Discussion: Overview	344
10.1	Questionnaire Data	344
10.1.1	How the data compared with previous research	344
10.1.2	Field-notes	351
	- Categorisation of Home-educators	352
	- Level One - A Homogenous Group	352
	- Level Two - Group Differences	353
	- Level three - Inter-family Differences	354
	- Level four - Intra-family Differences	355
	- Summary of points noted in the field-notes	357
	- Alienation from the Wider Community	357
	- Searching for Something	358
	- Working to the School Year	359
	- Change Over Time	360
	- The joy of Home-education	363
10.2	Baseline Assessment	364
10.2.1	Baseline Assessment in the Home-Education Context	364
10.2.2	First Compulsory Education Year in the Home-Education Context	369
10.2.3	Predictive Value of Assessments with Home-Educated Children	373
10.2.4	Value-added in the Context of Home-Education	374
10.2.5	Affluence	374
10.2.6	School Starting Age and Parental Involvement, in the Context of the Home-Educated Children's Results	375
10.3	Literacy	377
10.4	Numeracy	383
10.5	Social and Psychological Skills	392
10.5.1	Home-Educated Children's Social Skills	392
10.5.2	Home-Educated Children's Behaviour	396
10.6	Methodological Issues	399
	Discussion Endnotes	400
Chapter 11	Conclusion	401
	Further Research	414
	Conclusion Endnotes	416
Appendices	Appendices	417
	Chapter 4	418
	Chapter 5	445
	Chapter 6	454
	Chapter 7	457
	Chapter 9	465
	Bibliography	466
List of Illustrations		489