Flexi schooling
I've been reading about the phenomenon of flexi-schooling. I'm not so sure about it myself. I can see how it works in a rural area where falling rolls mean many children are having to commute long distances and homeschooling part of the week can cut down the travel time. However, in inner city schools it is surely a whole different ball game. The Guardian had an article yesterday on flexi schooling which covered the point of view of parents from one East London school who are taking part in a pilot whereby they homeschool their kids part of the week. All of them, predictably, seemed to be lawyers or publishers.
The school is in Hackney in a very socially diverse, socially deprived area. There are a high number of children with challenging behaviour and special needs and from families with multiple social problems.
It may be all very well to allow some middle class parents to take their kids to museums and make sushi with their parents on their homeschooling days, but what impact does this have on the children who are in the school every day? Wouldn't it be more useful for parents to share their knowledge with the whole school eg by coming in and doing sessions with the kids? Moreover, if the flexi-school policy is open to these parents, should it not also be open to all parents and how do you police that if parents have different educational levels, for instance? One of the big issues in education is how much parental involvement in education advantages some children. Would this not widen that gap, creating a group apart within the same school?
Would teachers have to ensure the standards of homeschooling offered in every setting fit with the national curriculum? What about if the parents want to change their homeschooling days because their work pattern changes? How will the school manage that? Moreover, for some children, school offers the only real structure they have in their lives.
On the other hand, so the argument goes, we are all working more flexibly and due to growing social inequality there is a real problem in inner cities of middle class flight from the comprehensive system or from inner cities as soon as they have children.
However, surely the whole point of comprehensive education is that it is, in fact, comprehensive and open to all. If you start allowing small cliques to pick and choose what they want from the system [a bit of social diversity, but not enough to 'harm' their child's chances of getting into a top university], surely it is no longer what it says on the tin? I wonder too how the stay-at-school children will take to a bunch of their schoolmates not being there part of the week. Is it not like they are operating in some little bubble within the school?
Of course, middle class parents have always sought to circumvent the comprehensive system in the past, for instance, by paying heavily for private tutoring to get their child ahead, but this is something much more intrusive. I can see the advantages for the group of children who get to pick and choose their education system if they are lucky enough to have well-educated parents who can teach them, but I can't quite see how it works for the majority.
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