Léo Gaumont’s History of Post-Secondary Advocacy
Léo Gaumont has been involved in education for over forty years. He has worked tirelessly to facilitate the admission of home educated students into institutions of higher learning across Canada for many years. He has been involved in researching post-secondary admission policy for many years and continues to actively promote alternative admission criteria and practices for home educated students. This work started in 1996 when he experienced difficulties with the admission of his non-accredited, home educated daughter.
After conducting an initial superficial survey of post secondary attitudes towards the home educated in 1997, he determined that there was a need for a more in-depth survey and corresponding encouragement to develop home education admission policies. Although the original idea was to conduct the survey within the Province of Alberta, Dallas Miller of HSLDA Canada convinced Léo that this work was of national significance. As a consequence, Léo traveled across Canada (at his own expense), visiting post-secondary institutions, surveying their alternate admission criteria and helping to develop unaccredited home education admission policy. While doing so, he had the privilege of addressing several home education organizations along the way. The survey took two years to conduct and was presented in 2001.
Click here for the Canadian National Post-Secondary Survey Results
This study led to an invitation to address the Association of Registrars of Universities and Colleges of Canada (ARUCC) in 2002 on the topic of home education admissions. As a consequence, Léo had more opportunity to advise institutions regarding their home education policies.
Click here for the ARUCC Presentation
Léo then conducted an extensive survey of every post-secondary institution in the Province of Alberta with the objective of facilitating the admission of unaccredited home educated students by connecting students and institutions through Education Unlimited‘s post-secondary web site link.
Click here for the Alberta Post-Secondary Survey Results
Léo continues to advocate positive changes to post-secondary admission practices to include alternative admission policies for non-accredited home educated students. He has assisted post-secondary institutions in Alberta and across Canada in developing criteria and policy to better accommodate the unaccredited.
Unfortunately, all this work is presently being undermined and discredited as more and more home education providers capitalize on the delivery of state-sanctioned high school programming. (Yes, some of our own homeschool boards are reinforcing the hurdles by recommending a high school diploma route). This consequently validates the post-secondary standardized admission practices that assume only accredited students apply for admission, which in turn, justifies the use of accredited programs that ultimately benefits providers much more than students. It should be noted that in the Province of Alberta, increased levels of funding are associated with increased delivery of state programming. Under the guise of ease and necessity and often with a claim to Christian faith, these providers encourage students to “return to Egypt,” where the benefits are in the interests of the Christian and secular boards, the post-secondary institutions and the statist government.
Helpful New Materials for Parents and Admissions Personnel
Recently Léo Gaumont has produced a couple of items that home educating parents and admissions personnel at post-secondary institutions will find to be very helpful. The one for parents is called Addressing Home Educating Parents’ Post-Secondary Concerns. The one for admissions personnel is called Summary of Post-Secondary Admissions Practices When Dealing With Unaccredited Home Educated Students. The purpose of both of these items is to facilitate the post-secondary admission of unaccredited home educated students.