Such shared education is often referred to as 'flexi-schooling'. The concept of
flexi-schooling was first argued for by Roland Meighan (1988) in his book 'Flexi-
schooling – Education for tomorrow, starting yesterday'. In this he describes it as
something which emerged from his discussions with educationalist John Holt and uses
the term 'to describe [the] notion of a part-time arrangement whereby school and family
sharing responsibility in an agreed contract and partnership.' Meighan’s philosophy was
part of the movement of 'deschooling' which emerged from the writings of Ivan Illich
(1973) and involved educational philosophers such as Husén (1979) and Hemming (1980). As such, his concept of flexi-schooling involves more that of the sharing of
education 'as is' between home and school and is rather an emergent philosophy of the
roles that parents, schools and learners could play in the wider process of education, and
a consideration of what that 'education' could or should involve. He advocates for the
increased involvement of parents in their children's education as much from a
philosophical stance as from a pedagogical one, arguing that the circumstances of
parents' exclusion from education are historical (dating from a time when many parents
were illiterate and education of children was therefore deemed to be the remit of trained
and educated teachers), and that this exclusion both needs and merits reconsideration.
He describes a vision of democratic education, the creation of a web of Education
Support Hubs, and of his own small alternative school. This is a wider concept of 'flexi-
schooling' which goes beyond that which is considered in this (small) study, and
consequently this study uses the term 'shared education' in preference. However, as
participants were recruited through the Flexi-schooling UK Facebook group and
because of the title of the researcher's book on the subject, ‘Autism and Flexi-
schooling’, the term ‘flexi-schooling’ is used as synonymous with ‘shared education’ on
occasion, especially when it occurs in other literature or is used by participants.
The term 'flexi-schooling' is also increasingly used in Australian studies to
indicate a range of more flexible learning experiences and has come to be used in
preference to the term 'alternative education' (Shay & Heck, 2015). Flexi-schooling in
this context describes models of education outside conventional schooling which aim to
enable young people who are at risk or disengaged to remain engaged in education (Te
Riele, 2007). The language used to describe young people in danger of disengagement
can carry negative connotations (Morgan, Pendergast, Brown, & Heck, 2014), with the
term flexi-schooling being preferred as not positing the young people as being the
One model of flexi-schooling in this context, that involving Schools of Isolated
and Distance Education (SIDE), is considered in this study. SIDE, originally called the
Western Australian Correspondence School, was established in the state of Western
Australia in 1918 as a way of addressing the educational needs of isolated children in
that state, using a correspondence course profile of delivery in line with that already
successfully established in other states of Australia, for example Victoria and New
South Wales (McDonald, 2010). Now renamed, it caters for an increasingly diverse
body of students and has gone 'beyond the original cohort of geographically isolated
students' (ibid., p. 2) to include 'secondary students, 'handicapped' students, those living
overseas and Indigenous children' (Eakins, 1964, in McDonald & Lopes, 2014, p. 3). It
has an overall aim of being a provision for students who have 'difficulty attending
school for whatever reason' (McDonald & Lopes, 2014, p. 3). Discussion of the cases
of two families sharing the education of their autistic child between home and the SIDE
provision is made in this study.
There is no research yet available about the perspectives of children who share
education between home and school. Indeed, even research into the perspective of
young people who are fully home-educated is limited, in particular that regarding the
perspectives of people with autism. Research undertaken in by Ray on adults in the
USA who were previously home educated is positive, indicating that they may
‘participate in local community service more frequently … vote and attend public
meetings more frequently than the general population, and go to and succeed at college
at an equal or higher rate than the general population’ (Ray, 2004, in Ray, 2015, p.2).
Additionally, Dolan (2017) suggests that students with autism who were home-educated
have lower college attrition rates than those who attended school, stressing ‘the
during college’ (p. 3). Dolan finds that the college students in her case study, each of
whom had been home-educated prior to college admittance, have strong systems of
family support already in place as they enter college, and that this support is perceived
by the students to contribute to their success at college.
However, whilst there is some research evidence that home-education can meet
the academic and support needs of students, some cultures are more wary about it. In
2003, the Federal Constitutional Court in Germany upheld an earlier Federal
Institutional Court ruling (Konrad and others vs Germany, 2003) that social integration
of children ‘could not be achieved in any other way than attending the closely
supervised and controlled system of state and private schools’ (Donnelly, 2016 p. 287).
The German state upheld its duty to ‘protect the children from their parents’ decision to
home-school because the children could not foresee the long-term consequences of such
a decision, since they were too young’ (Donnelly, 2016, p.292). In the UK, additional
legislation around home-education is being proposed. A Private Members’ Bill had its
first reading on 26th June 2017, with the purpose to amend the 1996 Education Act and
to ‘make provision for local authorities to monitor the educational, physical and
emotional development of children receiving elective home education’. This
amendment is being contested by home-education groups.
Only when adequate research becomes available which enables the voice of the
home-educated child, and of the adult reflecting on earlier experience as a home-
educated child, will it be possible to make informed assessment of the potential effects,
both positive and negative, of home-education. In the absence of any research into the
effects on the autistic child of an education shared between home and school, this study