Education Otherwise

Origins

In 1972 Royston Lambert, head of Dartington Hall School asked Dick Kitto, who had been working there since 1955, to set up a project in conjunction with Northcliffe School to provide education for a group of non-academic students who would have to take another year in school due to the pending raising of the school leaving age. Kitto established a free school or democratic school model for the running of the project and was impressed by the qualities of the students even though they had effectively unschooled themselves within the school system, where they were perceived as trouble makers.

Kitto's school caught the attention of Stan Windass, who had been working for a children's rights centre in London, through which he had become aware of several families who were educating their own children. Windass had just taken the lease of Lower Shaw Farm and wanted to establish it as a centre to explore ideas for an alternative society. Windass asked Kitto to become the warden at Lower Shaw Farm after the Northcliffe School project ended.

Kitto was familiar with ideas about unschooled education through reading John Holt and Joy Baker's Children in Chancery along with his experiences at the Northcliffe School project. He and Windass were able to contact several families who were educating otherwise and arranged an informal network, and occasional meetings, between them throughout 1975 and 1976.

During 1976 Granada television made a programme about the group which resulted in around 200 enquiries and expanded the membership to over 50. The informal nature of the group could not handle such a level of interest and so, at a meeting in September 1976 which included five deschooling families, a more formal structure for the group was established with stated aims and a regular newsletter. In 1977 Kitto presented a BBC TV Open Door programme about the ideas behind the organisation. This resulted in over 2000 enquiries and increased the membership to around 250.

The original logo (based on a UK traffic sign) was intended to represent a child breaking-out of the confines of school, and pointing towards a different way. It was submitted to a Printer with the request that, before printing, the 'foot' be made to look more as though it was kicking the triangle open; the originator of the drawing had always remained unhappy with that foot! & at a later opportunity the logo was amended slightly to make it less like what the originator saw as a "goose-step"!

Conflict and development

With the steady growth in numbers of members, around 1500 in 1986 (tenth anniversary) rising to 2,278 in 1992, it was recognised that a trend away from the original ethos of EO was developing. There was much debate about its structure. The April/May 1993 newsletter (Issue 91) featured an EO Restructuring Supplement presenting various options for "the way forward". By the mid-1990s it was being recognised that people were joining EO due to a "crisis" and wanted to get their child out of the school system, rather than coming to it with an interest in exploring alternative education provision. There was disaffection with the way the organisation was run via national gatherings which were seen as alienating the majority of members. The debate broadly split into those that wanted to follow a structured style of education with a "managed" organisation and those who valued an informal approach and rejecting the status of charitable trust and company limited by guarantee. A short lived faction, Education Otherwise Unlimited, laid out the conflicting areas with the organisation's structure in a table:

The original "ethos" grew out of the attitudes and aspirations of the original members. It was not laid down from the start. Kitto saw EO in broad human rights terms:

As far as I'm concerned, E.O. does not have a particular kind of education to which it is committed. It is committed to the right of families to do what they want to do. It is a humans (sic) rights organisation. I don't feel we must do this, or we must do that. It is up to the members. To me it is not a specific thing where children have to run wild in the country, or have to pay visits to Winchester Cathedral, or anything else. There is this huge variation. Some people join EO in order to give their children a good classical education which they cannot get at school. I have a fundamental belief in the freedom of choice. We must all be allowed to make our own mistakes. We don't want to be dictated to by a curriculum from central government.

Parent's Charter

In 1991 the government introduced a Parent's Charter (subtitled: You and Your Child's Education) which promised parents reports about their children and their schools. In 1994 a revised version of the Parent's Charter (subtitled: Our Children's Education) was issued. Page 9 included the sentence - "You have a duty to make sure that your child goes to school until he or she is 16." EO members were concerned that this misinformation should be corrected as it was being delivered to every household.

They appointed solicitor Peter Liell who sent "Letters Before Action" notices to the Department for Education and to the Welsh Office. A reply by Eric Forth (9 July 1994) for the DfE claimed that the Parent's Charter could not be taken as a definitive guide to the law - the Charter "cannot take in every exception or reflect all points of detail". The department stated that there were no plans to issue a corrigendum. The Welsh Office response was a confirmation that the Charter for Parents in Wales had been revised and would reflect the fact that not all children were educated in schools.

The matter was raised by Don Foster in a Parliamentary Question which was responded to by Robin Squire stating that John Patten, the Secretary of State for Education, saw no need to issue a correction or to make a statement about the mistake.

As English and Welsh education law are identical there were no grounds for the variation in the responses of the two bodies. The solicitor notified the DfE that he had been instructed to prepare an application for leave to apply for Judicial review of the decision as stated in Forth's letter. This threat caused an immediate response from the department that they "would want to find a different - in your eyes more satisfactory - wording for any further editions". The solicitor responded seeking confirmation, by 31 August 1994, that a future edition would include reference to the fact that children do not have to go to school. Forth once again responded accepting the need for a revised text: "I am, however, happy to confirm, in the light of your client's concerns, our intention that any future edition of the Parent's Charter in England will include a reference, be it explicit or implicit, to a parent's lawful right to ensure that his child is suitably educated otherwise than at school."

It was felt that this was as far as EO could go with the matter and the application for judicial review was withdrawn. The whole process had cost EO almost £4000 but had generated a lot of publicity and raised awareness of the issue as many members had raised their concerns with their own MP.

Current status

Education Otherwise Association Limited (By Guarantee)

Charitable trust Registration number 292029

Incorporated 28 May 1985

HEAS launched 1995.

A 1998 camp beside the sea would grow into HESFES.

Registered charity 2 May 1996.

By 2007 Education Otherwise had grown to over 4000 member families.