Home Educators Met The Prime Minister Yesterday

[FionaJNicholson]

Thought this might be of interest to some people here...

Home educators met with the Prime Minister yesterday, who said that the party was in favour of choice in education including home education and that there was no need to change legislation or guidelines.

I am a single issue voter, and will be voting conservative in the election, as I did last time. I think any home educator who lived through the stress of the Balls/Badman era in the last Labour government would find it hard to vote Labour again, to be honest.

Hmm, I don't think they need to change any specific Home Ed legislation because they have brought in so many restrictions in the introduction of (for example) Universal Credit that only the well off will be able to afford to do it anyway and the Conservatives have always been in favour of more options for the wealthy.

Were you home educating five or more years ago, OddBoots? If not, do have a read up of the Badman/Balls saga. Had Labour won the 2010 election, we would be now all be having to request permission to educate our own children, submit to routine social services checks (despite the fact that FoI requests showed that HE families are statistically much less likely than the general population to be abusive), and be forced to teach according to government imposed curricula rather than according to the needs of our individual children.

I really am hoping for another 5 years without a Labour government - it has been blissful not to have the stress of fighting their intrusive and anti-family policies for a few years.

If you have to teach a curriculum what's even the point of home ed??. :(

there is the reality though that when you actually read the national curriculum and strip it down of teacher speak and nonsense, for example my son's equivalent school year (he is seven), it boils down to a couple of blumming sentences of concepts and should be able to do's that you could cover in a few conversations. i would loathe the intrusion but if, god forbid, it did come it wouldn't mean moving mountains. it's hard to believe schools manage to make a full time year out of it.

so long as you could provide evidence in a way you saw fit eg. a video clip of your child explaining or demonstrating those concepts/skills rather than a ton of paperwork and written output it'd be fine.

i was a bit stunned to read how little they do have to cover actually.

The HoneyBadger

I totally agree, dd is looking to start school again in sept, not just any old school though

I have been concerned that she may not be ready in time, have covered everything in the nc so as not to be behind.

I needn't have worried at all because when I look closely at what is involved you could cover the whole lot in a year tops.

We will have just a tem and half notice if she manages to secure a place, this is easily enough to catch anything missed and do a good revision.

it's the evidence production that takes them time - 30kids one adult, no time to talk or actually know the kids, and children being expected to 'prove it' in writing that they're not of an age or development stage to produce independently even if they have understood let alone if they haven't learned it authentically because of the nature of 'schooling'.

it really is bugger all isn't it? like all this hoohah in the papers recently that kids should know their times tables before leaving primary school - err well in 7yrs of full time education that you're not even allowed to take a holiday from you'd have thought so yes lol given it's not rocket science and you learn it organically anyway just by encountering numbers and patterns in every day life if you're not turned off to the point of stupor and don't have major development or neural or whatever obstacles in the way.

That is as I expect from Conservatives. Greens are quite favourable?

Labour - all I can say is that I too remember Badman and how awful it all was. What are Labour saying? What's their current stance on HE

Had Labour won the 2010 election, we would be now all be having to request permission to educate our own children, submit to routine social services checks (despite the fact that FoI requests showed that HE families are statistically much less likely than the general population to be abusive), and be forced to teach according to government imposed curricula rather than according to the needs of our individual children.

Do you really think it would have come to that, Ommm?

There would definitely have been routine inspections, and a shift towards having to satisfy the LA that we were educating in a way they approve of (in order for us to retain our permission to HE). It was truly horrible, the whole thing. I could never vote Labour again - it was the most horrendous betrayal of liberal values, the whole thing.

it certainly makes me have to stop and think my politics.

given you reach a point where you don't trust any of them to be just in terms of economics, social justice, equality, social mobility or access to health or education etc you do start to wonder if maybe those who vote on single, 'this effects me' issues, might have a point.

i'd be very sad to end up on that road though and i still think i'd have to shoot myself if i ever voted tory.

and it is the tories who've pushed through forcefully with the enforcement of this idea that deciding to take your child to see their aging, near death grandparents, in term time or indeed to just take your child on an enriching trip away needs to be criminalised and fined.

it's all so.......... intrusive

Well, one thing you do is directly ask all the candidates in your constituency what they would vote if proposed legislation like the last Labour government almost put through (but ran out of time) was on the table again.

I'm never going to agree with a party politician about everything - it's a matter of deciding what the most important thing is to me, and voting accordingly. If I then get a politician representing some other part of my interests, then that's a bonus.

Whilst I agree with TheHoneyBadger and morethan that it should generally be fairly easy to 'catch up' with the NC if we HAD TO, that's not the case for many. What about all the parents who have eventually sought refuge in HE for their children with learning difficulties after ages battling school/LA etc for appropriate support and education? To then be required to deliver the NC which may be a very unrealistic target for their children? (that's at the thought, not at you Honey or Badger

Oops, I meant Honey or morethan

' it's hard to believe schools manage to make a full time year out of it.'

IKWYM...I just began HEing my 11yo and bought some NC coursebooks in the subjects he's into, just to kind of see what there was.

It's pathetic - there is so little they have to know, and it's taken us about 3 days to cover a quarter of the KS3 book. He reads some to me, we talk about any bits he doesn't quite get, and then he goes away and reads some more...sure, we don't have a practical about growing a broad bean or the giggly lesson about reproduction, or that homework where he has to draw the diagram of [insert process] himself and colour it in

but I know he has understood it. And that's what counts. I honestly cannot remember ANYTHING I learned in science, maths, history, geography, RE - not a sausage. I was in those lessons because I had to be, absorbed enough to reproduce some of it in the homework then instantly forgot it all. What a bloody waste of 7 years.

Oh and I don't have to do the whole herd control thing either (except for one toddler!) and ds1 being dyslexic, he never understood stuff that was explained in class anyway - and had to ask me again at home. So I'd have to do it anyway but with a lot more spinning out, not to mention timewasting on his part.

mindwatching the thing is though it probaby wasn't the NC they couldn't keep up with but the way it was delivered. the basic concepts and skills delivered the right way for that child in an environment that works for that child by a person who 'gets' that child is a very different thing.

if you really looked at how little they are expected to grasp you might be surprised.

besides which they only have to cover it and grasp it 'at their level'. look at schools after all - what kind of pass rates do they achieve even for children without additional needs?

the trouble is though that like most things it would become a class issue (as it is with dealing with schools) whereby well educated, predominantly middle class, parents would feel confident about how to get round it and blag a few paragraphs to cover their arses for example and others would lack the confidence and articulacy (re: blagging skills) to do so and would be intimidated out of home educating. just as it is in school with trying to access help for your children or challenge schools on their policies or treatment of your child.

"the trouble is though that like most things it would become a class issue (as it is with dealing with schools) whereby well educated, predominantly middle class, parents would feel confident about how to get round it and blag a few paragraphs to cover their arses for example and others would lack the confidence and articulacy (re: blagging skills) to do so and would be intimidated out of home educating. just as it is in school with trying to access help for your children or challenge schools on their policies or treatment of your child."

That happens now. Usually those being bullied and intimidated by the LAs, often back into schools, are those who lack confidence and the knowledge to deal with them.

i suppose what's needed is more voluntary advocacy and promotion of the service so people know about it but reality is where does the time come from? personally i'm a single parent with no support and have had to reorder my life to be self employed to home educate and haven't had any childcare since 2013 where time or energy would come from in my life i don't know.