The credit crunch and home education

Does anybody know if the impact of the credit crunch will affect home education? Is it more likely that the number of children being home educated will increase or decrease?

I picked up a few scraps of information from a semi-reliable source that services for kids with SEN will be cut back on if the government is forced to cut public spending. A shrinking tax base resulting from an economic downturn means public services will have to be cut back. There is already talk in the mainstream schooling community that education budgets will be slashed and SEN is likely to bear the brunt of it.

Has anybody got any figures identifying whether there has been a slowdown or reduction in the number of children being HE over the last year or so because of financial reasons?

The effects of a recession on HE could be an interesting economic study. Economists have studied the effects of recessions on consumer spending habits and popular culture for decades but studies on the effects of a recession on education appear to be scarce. This is the first recession where HE in the UK has been sufficiently popular to determine if trends take place. It is possible that HE becomes more popular in some parts of the country and for certain reasons whilst it becomes less popular in other parts of the country and for other reasons. Will HE for children with SEN rise because of cutbacks in schools, for example?

My son is interested in knowing how the recession will impact on the development and deployment of open source software. This happens to be the first recession when open source software is mainstream. Almost all software available during the early 1990s recession was commercial and piracy was rife due to high costs and struggling finances.

That is a very good question.



I remember all the posters from Federation Against Software Theft displayed at London Underground stations offering handsome rewards for reporting pirated software in your workplace.

I haven't been able to find much info on the internet about the situation in the UK but I have found a couple of American articles.

http://yedies.blogspot.com/2009/01/does ... olers.html

http://www.savemoneyhomeschooling.com/p ... spx?aid=25

In USA Today there is an article Recession could lengthen the twilight of dial-up that I found when searching. I'm wondering if many families in the UK are sticking with dial-up or even abandoning their internet subscription.