Lyraedu
are you on FaceBook?
there is a FB page for home educating mumsnetters send me a pm with details of your FB profile, and f you want to join, I'll accept you there.
I've send a few threads recently, where none HE people make judgements and comments that are not at all helpful to families who are home educating or interested in doing so.
Imagine the outrage if I were to go onto the schooling boards and make judgements about parents who send their children to school every day.
I don't because sincerely believe a system where a parent is the person trusted with the children's best interests at heart, unless their is evidence to the contrary is the best we can hope for.
It might be interesting for you to read what an MP who has taken the time to read councils policies on home education, has to say on the subject.
Graham Stuart is Chair of the Education select Commitee. he had this to say about one LAs stance on HE, when speaking on the subject in the House of Commons:
"The Lancashire local authority, in one of the most egregious examples, states:
?Lancashire Officers will take the lead on this because they have the responsibility to ensure the safety of all children as well as to monitor the quality of education received by children educated at home.?
That is a nice one, neatly conflating the issues of safety and home education. No one has yet arrived at my house during the summer holidays just to check up on the safety of my children, who are, after all, spending months at home with me. Who knows what my wife and I might get up to, or what the younger or older sister might do? Who knows what visiting relatives might do? What we need are visitors from the local authority, just to make sure. I do not want people such as the director of children?s services in my local authority to lose a moment?s sleep because they feel that they are not pursuing every possibility of intervention to cover their own backsides and telling me how I should run things in my own home. That is precisely what the local authority suggests should be done in the case of home-educating parents, who deserve its intervention no more than the rest of us. The document continues:
?Thus, when a practitioner or professional becomes aware that a child is being educated at home, they should use local information sharing arrangements to help the Lancashire Authority to fulfil both its duty to be confident??
so it has a duty to be confident now?
?of the well-being of the child and its duty to assure the quality of the education provided.?
That, too, is not true.
As far as I can tell from one evening spent looking at their websites, council after council is entirely misrepresenting the legal position, and I hope that the Minister will put that right."
I'm happy to report that Lancashire is one of the few LAs to now have made their policies legally correct!
Schools are judged by Ofsted, to make sure they are giving value for the tax payers money and to report back to parents.
I didn't use tax payers money to educate my children, once i had freed them from the awful place school was for them-and didn't need anyone else to tell me how well my children were progressing, I could see that for myself!