Part 5: Gloriavale Homeschooling – Hero or Hazard?

Opinion piece: Liz Gregory.

(Thoughts, opinions and views expressed here belong to Liz Gregory and may or may not represent the views of the Gloriavale Leavers’ Support Trust, former or current members of Gloriavale.).

Part 5: Gloriavale School – Is Homeschooling a Hero or a Hazard?

In a previous life I was a school teacher, and I was privileged to teach at a wonderful school – and so I’m a fan of schools. They are filled with very hard-working and dedicated staff, who desire to stretch your children’s brains, who dedicate themselves to helping your children learn, nurture them emotionally and who instill in them a healthy sense of self. Schools offer interactions with all kinds of people, teaching kindness and tolerance. They are also safe spaces where children who suffer neglect and abuse can find a safe haven for several hours of the day. Schools can be well-resourced, and offer a plethora of activities for your children. There is nothing better than attending an end of year prizegiving to see how much schools value education, and extra-curricula activities (singing, sports, debating, technology, swimming etc). Hubby and I often attend the local end of year primary and high school prizegivings to watch some of the Gloriavale leavers’ children walk across the stage – and my heart just sings inside. They never got praised for their successes in Gloriavale.

On the other hand, the NZ public seem to see home schooling as some dangerous and weird activity only crazies would dare to consider. Well think again!! Imagine being a parent who actually enjoyed their children enough to want to spend all day with them providing amazing opportunities for education and well-rounded development. I have interacted with many home school kids over the years who have done extremely well. Many are socially well adjusted, and have less difficulty engaging with adults in polite and interesting conversations than those who interface daily with children their own age.

I’ve found that home schooling parents are usually a dedicated bunch who love to invest in their children. They are actively engaged, always planning, thinking, executing learning opportunities. They are involved and connected, in all kinds of groups. They have access to vehicles and resources and are never short of trying to integrate the academic studies with real life activities. They focus on producing kind, well-rounded individuals who might just change the world one day! They often produce such interesting children, who certainly don’t look like clones – each person heading into careers that suit their abilities and interests. Opportunities abound – when you have resources and dedicate your time to your children’s schooling. (Disclosure time: We are currently summer camping with a large home school family and they’re awesome kids!!).

So I’m not writing this as a defense for or against home schooling per se, I’m just saying home schooling doesn’t have to be linked to weirdness and it’s a valid option for those parents who want to.

Who gets Home School exemptions?

There are only a few rules to follow with home schooling. These include that you educate your children as regularly as, and as well as a state school. You get quite a lot of freedom with the curriculum and the way you educate. But you of course you do need to convince the education department that you aren’t a psychopath… (I’m also not so naive as to believe there aren’t unhealthy and isolating pockets of homeschoolers lurking around).

When and Why did Home Schooling start in Gloriavale?

Home schooling started in Gloriavale in 2022 as a temporary solution when the school was suffering a catastrophic lack of teachers and it looked like they would need to close. There were around 200 kids in the school at the time. Half remained in the school and the rest were put on home schooling or Te Kura (Correspondence School). At the time it met a need, and we were pro some current members’ families migrating to home schooling, but were against it if there were concerns around child safety and suitability. (Some applications were denied due to their background and unsuitability).

Meanwhile the the Ministry of Education worked closely with the school to help them improve and the Gloriavale leaders’ intention was always that ultimately all the children would move back to the school and home schooling would come to an end.

Home Schooling benefits

When weighing up the options, home schooling was clearly a better alternative to the Gloriavale school.

Home schooling means you spend more time with your children. This is crucial for the development of safe relationships and attachment. Cults create ruptures in attachment, and home schooling allowed some connection to be restored and healing to occur within family units. Imagine having a need and actually having a parent who could attend to that need…

I know many parents who left Gloriavale after Covid lockdowns, and they said it was the first time they had really engaged with their children and spent a stretch of time with them. So Covid gave them an opportunity to have meals with them in their own rooms and they learnt to function together as a family. That might surprise some of you – but honestly, quality family life in Gloriavale over decades had been reasonably non-existent. (The mums were expected to be back to work within two weeks of giving birth and their children were being looked after in pre-schools and then by young ladies in the community). Those who still live in Gloriavale may disagree with me and loudly proclaim the community has always been centred around the children. Yes indeed they have. But the fact is, the place was initially centred around child labour. Not child development. (Gloriavale has been described by some leavers as a “labour camp”.)

However, since the introduction of home schooling, parents in Gloriavale have been learning about their children, their gifts and struggles, their burdens and joys. Parents have felt able to take more ownership and responsibility for their children – something that had been stolen from them inside the machinery of Gloriavale.

One former member said that home schooling had helped the mums and “their hearts had turned toward their children” and they were building relationships with them, and were caring for their needs. She noted that one of the big things that led her out of Gloriavale was because her heart turned toward her children and they needed something better and something more.

Should people in residential cults be allowed to home school?

Ahhhhh, that’s another story. Home schooling isn’t the problem. The cult is!

In the context of a cult, one needs to ask how much freedom is really there for parents to totally take control of their children’s education and upbringing?

Initially, in Gloriavale’s controlling way of operating, families had to go and ask someone more powerful than them for permission to spend the home schooling money on a curriculum they wanted to use. (It kind of seemed – according to things I heard – that “all things were equal, but some were more equal than others” Get the drift?). More recently we have heard that the mums are now in charge of their home-schooling money and don’t need permission to spend it. How generous!! I think they must be enjoying the process of researching what resources they want, and hunting for them on Marketplace etc. I know some mums are even popping out to local home-schooling symposiums and groups etc. This is good!

But what about the fact that cults are ideological factories and if you are the child of a really loyal member, then it’s likely your education is going to be just as squashed and limited as your parents was. You will hold immoveable positions about the value of education, the ability for females to form and hold an opinion, and you’ll just keep spiritually abusing them – destabilizing their sense of self – which has catastrophic consequences for their development in the short and long term.

And if the leaders still hold sway and power over you, then you won’t be afforded the freedom to allow some books and information into the community.

An example is Servant Leader Peter Righteous’ email to the residents of Gloriavale about the kinds of books that are acceptable in Gloriavale. (read about it here). The background to this email is that a home schooling mum borrowed books from the library of an outside home schooling mum – but when scruitinised by Peter, the books didn’t meet Gloriavale’s standards. He wrote…

“In the last couple of weeks I’ve been asked to comment on books that have come into the community, or may be coming in, mainly in the realm of homeschooling resources. I was disappointed to find books celebrating Christmas on our shelves, and others that were simply worldly,”

It was a lengthy email, where he described homeschooling as a “minefield” because a lot of people were looking for suitable content for their children but might not be aware of the “dangers lurking behind the curtain”. He said he preferred writers who taught “total submission and obedience to the gospel” and binned a book “infected with feminist propaganda“. He said joke books were generally censored and series with fictional heroes such as Biggles were to be avoided, saying,

“If you have a hero who always conveniently and surprisingly finds the solution to his problems without God, what are you teaching your children? If they live in a realm of fantasy, they will not be exercising faith,” he said.

“I do allow the odd book (like Ripley’s Believe It Or Not) because the world can come across as bizarre and ugly, which it is.”

Naughty person who brought these books into the community and thought they would be allowed to make decisions for their family…!

Lack of autonomy and decision-making capacity in cults isn’t the only problematic area.

Cults are also abuse factories, and so home schooling inside that kind of environment isn’t exactly safe – especially when it’s a live-in community. I don’t think we need to mention that over 20 males have been through various courts in the past 4 years for physical and sexual offending. That’s a lot. And those males had easy access to children, in a space where supervisory neglect was the norm.

Can you really home school inside Gloriavale’s hostels?

As well as being an “unsafe” environment, the Gloriavale hostels aren’t exactly practical set up for study and education.

In 2023, the girls who left Gloriavale won a court case stating that they were not volunteers but exploited employees. They were working in commercial kitchens, on rosters, with no choice but to turn up. And no pay.

After they lost the court ruling, Gloriavale determined they still would not be paying these girls.

Sooooooo…. They thought it was would be an amazing solution to put washing machines and cooking equipment on each of the hostel floors to make it look like “family quarters” and then tell MBIE that the girls were just working for their families.

Yes those cramped little spaces where 100 people live in small rooms off the main lounge on each hostel floor. The kitchen facilities were not designed with this in mind, so they had to add fridges, ovens and even some BBQ’s out on the verandahs to ensure there were enough cooking spaces.

This move was an example of how an organisation under threat, wants to look like they are making changes to tick a “legal box”, while not really changing the state of the girl’s work. All it did was change the location!! It was just Gloriavale’s way of trying to wriggle out of having to pay the girls. “We’ll just move the relocate from the kitchens down to the hostels… and call it family chores.”

Anyway, I’m just trying to set a scene that these hostels are busy and bustling places. There are children galore. There is cooking and laundry, and comings and goings. And apparently mums are supposed to home school their children here.

WHERE??! In one or two (or maybe three at a push) 5x5m bedrooms – with their three other children who need home schooling, their eldest 2 on Te Kura (correspondence School) and their 3 pre-schoolers (due to the closure of most of their pre-schools). Imagine the eldest unmarried daughter coming and going with the washing, or perhaps she’s helping with the schooling (remembering she likely left at 15 or 16 too). I’m tired just thinking about the chaos. Mum is possibly pregnant as well (or has just had a baby).

I know the families are trying to carve out spaces in other parts of the community to make it more conducive to learning. I recall one mum telling me she went and sought permission to create a small safe playpen area for her pre-schoolers on the downstair verandah (and was granted it) only to be grilled and humiliated by another leader for being too independent and not “community-minded”. The issue is this community was not built for any kind of independent family living, and there are people there who still believe that is a sinful and selfish way to live…

Is this REALLY suitable for home schooling? I quite frankly think it’s impossible.

So I started to wonder, would the Ministry of Education grant an exemption to a non-Gloriavale mum who had 7 children, and lived in a caravan and an awning, didn’t have her drivers licence, or access to her own vehicle, and didn’t have control of her own finances? Would they grant an exemption to someone who didn’t really value education, or receive an adequate one themselves? Would they allow someone who was holding fast to beliefs that have assisted with creating one of the most abusive and neglectful organisations NZ has seen? Probably not. I hope not.

We believe it’s time for the home schooling suitability criteria to include environmental factors. (Perhaps the Gloriavale issue can be the impetus for that).

ERO Reviews

It’s not a surprise the school failed the past two ERO reviews. The surprise was that they passed any in the past 30 years… After the court rulings, ERO have kept a closer eye on the beleaguered school.

And that included reviewed the home-schooling provision in the community. Twice in three years. Three weeks ago, ERO completed their second reviews and I heard feedback from inside Gloriavale that the assessors seemed happy and satisfied. They seemed to be ticking off the requirements. They were friendly and had some open conversations….

So no one, including me, was prepared for the recent news….

Click here to read blog #6 to find out what the results were and what the reaction has been from the community.