Home education government review

[maverick]

I hope you've read this:
www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jun/05/home-schooling-education-crack-down

and these. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7838783.stm

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/7818509.stm

Have blogged a summary of the report and some thoughts here (just in case you don't fancy wading through the 84 page version!)

notatschool.today.com/2009/06/11/the-government-commissioned-review-of-home-education-out-today/

I'm reeling from reading this review.

It looks as though it will be much harder to deregister - children's names will be kept on school registers for 20 days after deregistration, to try and resolve issues leading to withdrawal from school.

Speaking as a parent who withdrew from school, we did everything we could to resolve the issues before sending the letter. Parents who withdraw from school usually do so because of some crisis which delay will only make worse. Another 20 days would not have helped at all - it will just give the LA leeway to say "no", and I am sure this is why they are introducing this.

I think the part about the right to speak to the child alone is shocking. The first visit we had, the LA officer kept on and on asking if DD wanted to go back to school. Now she is a confident, strong little thing, but back then she was much more hesitant. Had she been on her own without me for support, she would have said yes just to say the right thing. I suspect that most children who have just come from school, afraid of saying the wrong thing to a scary, unkown authority figure, would be the same.

Plus, somebody I don't know from adam has the right to come into my house and interrogate my child without me?! What have we come to in this country? Make no mistake, this won't stop at home educators. This will be preschoolers too in the not-too-distant future, I guarantee it.

Finally, have you read the statement at the end about how lenient we are as a nation compared to other countries? The main argument being that home education has been banned in Germany since the 1930s. Germany? 1930s? Hitler and fascism? Is this really the way the government thinks we need to go?

Words fail me entirely.

TBH honest Riven this has been in the offing for some tme. I've been advising the HEers I know to engage with the process asap precisely because something was going to happen whatever anyone said, and that to try to steer the debate their way would be better. If there's going to be change you may as well try to limit it, or more positively get something out of it. That's how politics works of course.
I could see that there was no way the government would leave things as they were - just not a chance.
Unfortunately, a lot, but not all, of HEers , refused to engage in a discussion about change at all. The constant refrain was that nothing should change. That argument was never going to win over this government.
Some of us ( I'm not a HEer but am an adamant supporter) did get involved. And I made a lot of suggestions ( see below) but I was very much a lone voice.
The debate was very polarised.
Governement, heavy hitting children's organisations, social services all saying there has to be strident change. HEers on the otherside, refusing to acknowledge there has to be any. A few of us in the middle trying to broker something workable.

Sadly, here we are.

EO doesn't seem to have been very visible at all during this whole thing, though that might just be my experience. It must be very difficult to organise such a disparate group of people as HEers though.

Callisto - I'm sure that's right. Though most HE groups and fora were aware.
I'm very sad, I feel it was a missed opportunity for both sides.

It doesn't appear that EO can do much right for some people though. From reading other forums it seems they are either considered to be consorting with the enemy or doing nothing when they should be.

Litchick - it does seem as though everything was a forgone conclusion and the govt wanted it all their way and that's the way it was going to be and will be put through regardless. Whatever has been done seems to have been for appearances sake.

It will be like trying to herd a load of cats

(I heard that a few years ago, can't remember where though).

I don't like the sound of this at all.

DD(6) is semi-HE atm and will be fully HE from the end of this school term. I'm really bothered by the idea that the LA will be able to basically 'refuse' and also by this stuff about concerns over whether parents are 'suitable' to HE. IMO 'suitable' is far too subjective a term and can be twisted to mean all sorts. I do not trust LA officials to make what are essentially character judgements like that.

DP and I are unconventional in dress/appearance, like a drink (sometimes in the day ), swear too much, move house/area a lot, cart DD all over the place to do all sorts of exciting and probably 'unsuitable' things with all sorts of exciting and 'unsuitable' people, let her fall asleep in dog beds, forget to wash her hair as much as we should, get up late when we are all feeling lazy...

But DD is loved and secure, she has many friends of many ages, she can communicate well with all sorts of people, she is pretty much on a par 'academically' with same age children who go to school despite having NEVER had any formal teaching, we never forget the important stuff like feeding her 3x a day... We may avoid contact with 'professionals' but she is hardly isolated, enough people see her and know her and love her and would not hesitate to step in if they felt she was in any way at risk.

I hope we are 'suitable' in the opinion of the suited and booted LA bod they send to see us. Do I get to pass judgement on his/her 'suitability' to judge our family and educational methods, and knowledge of HE?

I was one of the people who met Graham Badman with EO.
You can believe me or believe me not, we have engaged heavily with this review.

We knew that Badman would meet with home educators, presented to him by their approving LAs, so we got him along to meet with home educators, especially autonomous home educators, he talked to home ed parents, children and young people. My daughter for instance, spent quite a lot of time talking to him about being home educated when you have sever SEN and about her experiences and why having home visits enforced on children, especially those with severe SEN and who have been traumatised by school is a really bad idea.

EO showed him examples of good practice, we took advice with a well known HE Barrister who came with us to every meeting with Badman and essentially said, that the LAs already have the powers to do something if their is a problem. Incidentally, this was also the view of Daniel Monk when he recently ran a workshop for the Midlands Regional LAs Home Ed Liaison officers, which I attend on behalf of EO.
I have a copy of his recent publication on this subject as well.

EO said that Home Educators should have a voice at Government level-and you have my word on this, we also said, so should all of the other home ed communities such as those who are members of AHED and the other home ed organisations and members of the Christian/Muslim/GRT home ed communities.

I have been there when EO met Baroness Morgan, (I also lobbied her on another occasion about the DCSF not properly consulting with home educators) I have been a member of a number of Parents Panel meetings by the DCFS and bought up home ed when ever I could.
Other members of EO have been meeting with the DCFS for some time.

We have been working with Lord Lucas who has a particular interest in Education outside of school.

Many home educators did not like EO being this engaged with the process, and that is their choice. They are entitled to their opinion.
Other organisations have been doing loads of other things, I know including AHED and HEAS.

But I truly don't know what else EO could have done to be more engaged with this process.

However today is a new day and the fight isn't over yet.

Just my opinion.

I'm sure that EO are doing tons of behind the scenes valuable stuff like this (and the only way for HE to become acceptable is to tell people about it), but I haven't heard about them in the media at all. Is this a case of EO not being media savvy or the media ignoring EO? (genuine question - I have no real knowlege of EO).

EO is just a bunch of home educating parents. They have been engaged with the press, as much as is possible I think, given we all have children to home educate etc.

I think it is possibly an element of both, I know for instance that ARCH has problems getting the press interested in anything when it is important and when something could be done-yet when it is all a done deal, the press go mad for info.

EO does have a media spokesperson who is not a professional, just a home ed mom to four) who was doing TV interviews all day yesterday, I know she left home about 5am and got back about 9pm.

The feeling I get from this review is that, after reviewing several times and not getting the answer they wanted, they deliberately set this one up with a "child protection" agenda, because it's so hard to convince anyone that it could ever be a bad thing to put in measures intended to protect children.

The review was to decide whether HE was being used to cover exploitation, and whether new policy was needed.

His report says - no evidence of exploitation was found, but we need to bring in new rules anyway to make sure it couldn't possibly happen in future.

So, whatever the findings about exploitation, the answer was always going to be the same!

My feeling as well, AMIS. The whole thing was/is a charade to change things to the way they wanted all along.

I'd also like to give a heartfelt thank you to Julienoshoes and others like her who are giving their valuable time and effort to challenging this.

Definitely echo thanks to julienoshoes et al, but we could all be challenging this - responding to the consultation, writing to MPs, giving backing to HE campaigns and support groups etc.

Apparently around 1500 home educators replied to the review questions back in January, and there's probably a few more than that around! If we believe in a foregone conclusion, then They have definitely won, rather than only 99.9% won!

You are right Riven
I agree with you entirely