Fundamental British and “The Other” Values—An Analytical Reflection on Implications for Home Education

Harriet Pattison

doi:10.1177/1940844720908573

Harriet Pattison

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https://doi.org/10.1177/1940844720908573

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This paper reflects on the question of whether, and how, Fundamental British Values (FBVs) may affect the practice of home education in the UK. Fundamental British Values were introduced into the national curriculum in 2014, for state administered schools and preschools which have since been required to demonstrate that FBVs are embedded in the practice of the setting. Home educators, on the other hand, are not obliged to follow the national curriculum meaning that the effect of FBVs on such alternative education is not obvious. However, this paper draws attention to the wider environment of home education by considering FBVs as the product of three particular spheres of contemporary discourse as they interrelate and influence each other. These are the affordances of identity in a postinternational era, expressions of Foucauldian governmentality in terms of self-surveillance and management, and the developmental paradigm. Fundamental British Values, alongside the concept of parenting and the materialization of a particular social morality, are considered as the inescapably emergent products of the un/reason created by the overlapping of these discourses. Their convergence, in turn, creates a weight of logic from which FBVs exert influence over the practice and judgment of alternative forms of education.

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Talk of shared values that would serve as both the mark and obligation of the British citizen began in the aftermath of the London bombings of 2005
In the wake of reported plots that Islamists were taking over state schools in Birmingham, another prime minister, this time Conservative David Cameron, referred to much the same set of ideals as being Fundamental British Values (FBVs) (Cameron, 2014)
This paper considers the potential impact of FBV on understandings of, and attitudes toward, home education and reflects on how and why FBV may affect the practice of home education

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Talk of shared values that would serve as both the mark and obligation of the British citizen began in the aftermath of the London bombings of 2005 (generally known as the 7/7 attacks). It is generally and widely accepted that schools have a right, if not a duty, to impart certain values to the young and this acceptance finds practical articulation through the National Curriculum and in particular through personal, social, health, and economic education.

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