At the moment - because it's school holidays so no home eding - I have returned (very temporary) to my freelance consultancy in the City of London. Each morning, from my house (Essex) I drive 20 minutes to the rail station to park my car (Hertfordshire). At no point
- do I pass a border control
- am I asked for my passport
- do I have to change my money from Essex pounds sterling to Herts pound sterling
- do I have to purchase a Essex/Herts language/phrase book so that I can understand Herts people
I then board a train. My train journey starts in Herts, crosses into Essex, back into Herts, and then into the London Borough of Enfield, followed by the London Borough of Haringey before I finally reach my destination in the London Borough of the City of London.
No passport. No border control. No change of money. No local phrase book required. All seamless and (normally!) without problems.
Five local education authorities...
If i was to move and put my son into a school in any one of these LAs, because of the way LAs individually interpret the Education Act and the SEN CoP, I might as well go to the moon and speak klingon! An Act of Parliament and Code of Practice: both of which are supposedly NATIONAL. Same law, same CoP. Yet each LA does exactly what they like and pay mere lip-service to national laws & code.
In RL, I've been told "if you think Essex is bad, on no account move into Herts". Really? So I can move 10 minutes down the road into the next village whilst still using the same Tescos, the same local shops, the same train line and even the same bus route. But if I do, my son's education will be even more screwed then it is now! And if Herts really is worse than Essex, god help their SEN children. No one else will!
Do train companies interpret 'elf and safety and transport laws according to the county it is operating in?
Isn't life grand...