An apology for not thinking things through enough :(

[mummybiz]

I want to apologise to those who got pretty upset with me for my thread about funding for home education- in particular Mammasez and Julienoshoes. I think I was suffering from having a foot in both camps having been a teacher recently and also still having a child at the primary school I withdrew two of my children from. I went to said childs leaving assembly today - she is in Year Six and off to High School and as I listened to the assembly and looked around I realised what a freedom I have now with my home ed children and I can see now that it isn't possible to have funding without strings and in truth not possible to find strings which some can accept without jeopardising the freedoms of the many.
I want to assure you that I am no lone crusader - I wouldn't have gone ahead and campaigned on anyones behalf without a huge amount of support. I suppose I would describe myself more as a lonely home edder- very new to the arena and wanting to make links and seek safety in numbers - I was looking at things from the wrong perspective .

[ommmward]

Don't worry :)

Remember that lots of us were politically active in the bad ol' days when Ed Balls was minister for education, and we came within a whisker of massive changes to the law, which would have given the State much much much more power over how we educate and raise our children. So we've all thought through the pros and cons of State funding and stuff, and our arguments are pretty brisk by now - it probably feels like a ton of bricks to be on the receiving end. Keep hanging around - we are pretty friendly really :o

[julienoshoes]

I think the link to the article, I posted explains how this is not an uncommon thought for people new to home education. Most people reconsider when they think about what these freedoms mean, as you have done now.

And to be fair it wasn't a good day for me when you posted. I'd just heard about the latest bullying and underhand tactics of one LA local to me (but not the one where I live), against a particular family. It's almost beyond belief what they have done now

Although not every LA behaves this badly-there are definately a number that do-including saying that it is unreasonable not to have home visits/show work......because they have so many other local families who apparently love meeting with them. I can't tell you how many times I have heard that said.

So you can imagine that I am not about to give a single inch on this one.

As ommward says, we came sickeningly close to loosing our freedoms and we are still here because we made a choice to make a stand (long enough for the last Government to run out of time!)

There is room for all types of home education. However you choose to home educate, with home visits or without, school at home or autonomous, we'd defend your right to do so.
But I think we've demonstrated our strength of feeling about doing something that will result in a loss of someone else's freedom to choose.

[JazminKennedy]

Don't beat youself up about it! I've been on your boat before, i would love some funding as i am homeschooling a 6 year old who is doing GCSE level maths, eng and science!! A little bit of money towards a tutor would be bliss! Or even towards a cleaner! But nothing in this world is free and i do not trust the govt one single bit!

I've been blessed with all my LEA inspections, in fact i was hoping to have another one before i pop, when i will be taking a break from formal teaching. Yep, i am weired, i even loved all my ofsted inspections in school as well!

[CheerMum]

I have to say that I found some of the responses to the original post to be slightly OTT. I completely understand that if people have personally have rough experiences with LA's or schools, that their viewpoint will reflect this. However, I do feel very sorry for mummybiz who, i feel, has been jumped upon by certain members, to the extent that she feels the need to apologise!

We all have our individual feelings about the involvement of outside people in our decisions to home educate. But I do feel that Mummybiz was merely sounding out if there was any support for what she was thinking, and what she got was a reasounding beating from certain MNers.