By admin
Call me suspicious, but I am of the view that home educators in England are once again being ‘played’ by politicians and their pets.
On Kelly’s latest blog post, Children missing education and the burden of proof, Graham Stuart MP comments:
I’m hoping new guidance from central government to local authorities might be sufficient to tackle this issue without any change in primary legislation. I’d be interested to know what others think.
Now that sounds scarily like the need for new guidance has already been decided in principle without reference to those who will be affected, and it isn’t much of a stretch to conclude that person or persons unknown may already have been tasked with drafting it. Meanwhile, some of us who have been there before and got a variety of T shirts to prove it, have already made our own mental shortlist of the usual suspects, some of whom have created mayhem in the past by making overblown claims as to their alleged experience and competence.
Kelly, writing from across the Pond, appears to give the prospect some credibility:
I am interested in how this works in the U.K. In Ontario, the process was that the home ed groups (there were only two big provincial ones) met with Ministry officials to talk about what would and wouldn’t work in guidance–what the law allowed or didn’t allow the Ministry to demand, and what were reasonable things for home educators to cooperate with. Then Ministry officials came back with a document that they negotiated and refined together a bit further. In the end, the homeschoolers felt reasonably happy with the policy memorandum they got, which, as I have said, isn’t perfect, in my opinion, but is certainly an improvement on what they had before.
This has previously been hotly debated in home education circles, of course, and the reaction to EO’s ridiculous rent seeking prospectus and proposal for a home education council (presumably run by them for a not very small fee) summed up the antipathy felt by many experienced home educators towards a discredited ‘patsy’ organisation and its lacklustre lackeys. In short, it is an enormous can of very wiggly worms.
Elaine goes on to make the following point, which has yet to sink in in political and civil servant circles, it seems:
Lets put it in a nutshell, parents are responsible for feeding their children,
LA’s/NHS have no duty or power to demand menus
Parents are responsible for keeping their children healthy
LA’s/NHS have no duty or power to demand health reports/assessments
etc etc etc
Parents are responsible for their children’s education
End of story!
When Scotland did the guidance ‘dance’, it was by accident rather than judgment (but that’s a story for another time) and it was a painful process which left the home education community jaded. It took several years and some serious ‘Just Say No’-ing from Schoolhouse and a critical mass of home educators, along with the opposition parties combined, to get the first draconian draft thrown out in its entirety. Meanwhile, EO had been diligently tweaking a few sentences here and there, helping to give credibility to an entirely unacceptable ‘guidance’ document for reasons best known to themselves (but we can all hazard an educated guess or two). Other opportunists were falling over themselves to enjoy cosy little chats under Chatham House rules (a premise which was rejected by Schoolhouse throughout the process) so that we might be forgiven for thinking that open discussion of home education issues were of critical importance to national security!
Ultimately, an acceptable document was produced, informed by joint research conducted by the Scottish Consumer Council and Schoolhouse, and independent specialist legal advice which was in keeping with the primary legislation it was designed to interpret. With a few notable and sensible exceptions (Falkirk, come on down!), the Scottish LAs did not like it and still don’t, but the law is the law and the Scottish education minister has just reaffirmed that, under his watch, the guidance is here to stay as it is and LAs had better get over it (I paraphrase).
Back on Kelly’s blog, Pendlewitch astutely observes:
That’s all well and good, but we all know how secretive certain little huddles like to be over here in England. I have heard a rumour that one individual has been tasked with rewriting the guidance, and if that is true then I know an awful lot of HEers are going to be VERY angry. We have had consultation on guidance a couple of times already. AHEd have articles up about the guidance, and of course we have Scotland as an example which for some very bizarre reason never gets mentioned by those *in power*. I wonder why that is?
The reason, dear Pendlewitch, will be that pesky three letter acronym: SNP. The Westminster lot like to pretend the Scottish Government doesn’t exist, probably because education secretary Mike Russell could knock spots off any politician south of the border and could easily have hung Badman out to dry. Balls wouldn’t have fared any better when up against a superior intellect with a firm grasp of the issues surrounding elective home education (and that is not a partisan comment, simply a matter of fact).
As home educators have been at pains to point out (and Elaine has tried her level best to keep it simple!) there is nothing wrong with the existing primary legislation, which makes it clear where the responsibility for the provision of compulsory education lies: with the parent. There may, however, be a case for making LAs responsible for providing an appropriate school education for each individual child if parents choose delegate their responsibility (as is already the case in Scotland). All this bleating about children’s rights means absolutely nothing if there is no effective redress when children are failed by the state.
Home educators in England need to watch their backs as the biggest threat is not necessarily coming from LAs, who are merely sabre rattling for change as they know they do not have the statutory powers they claim in respect of ‘monitoring’, i.e. controlling, elective home education. Beware Greeks bearing gifts and all that, and most especially watch out for those who claim to be ‘helping’.
We need to keep reminding the rent seekers that home educators’ heads don’t button up the back and that we will adopt a Just Say No approach to those who have a vested financial and/or other interest in writing guidance/guidelines to suit their own self serving agenda. We know who you are and we’re watching you!
Someone suggested reposting here this Jimmy Reid quote from September 1971:
“It’s like a murderer who wants to murder us, we’ve found out, we’ve defended ourselves against the murder and people say ‘please negotiate with the murderer, you might stop him from piercing your heart, but he can cut off your legs and arms… and there’s a sensible compromise’. And when you’re lying bleeding they will tell you in a year or two, wi’ you minus the legs, why aren’t you
standing on your own two feet?”
This link provides the background: http://scottishreview.net/chikcollins26.shtml
Jimmy Reid is said to have been the inspiration for Lennon’s Working Class Hero, and we could sure as hell do with a Home Ed Hero or two to expose the collaborators’ agenda. (My money is on a Neil T Irdial combo!)
The general assumption that something bad is going to result is a reasonable one; if these people were working for the good of all without exception, on new guidelines that clearly delineate between LA responsibilities and families, putting an end to all of this, then they would trumpet it all over the place. The fact that this is being done in secret, means that someone is making compromises on behalf of people who they do not represent. They know this will cause a firestorm of outrage, and so they are going to present it as a fait accompli. Secret negotiations are always done because someone is going to be disadvantaged at the end of it.
If anyone is going to be picked off, it will start with the Autonomous Learners. In the thinking of the people who are minded to compromise, that group, the ‘least palatable’, and their rights is a least loss bargaining chip to negotiate with. I know a family that has been Autonomous for two generations. To think that their way of life should just suddenly be ruled out is offensive to me; I would no more negotiate away their liberty than I would the liberty of my own relatives.
It unethical to disadvantage another group as a stepping stone to improving everyone’e position. Wether or not its temporary is irrelevant. The way you determine this is to place yourself in the camp of the people who are going to be stepped upon as the stepping stone, and then ask yourself, “Would I accept the sacrifice of my children and our way of life, by force?”. Most parents would instantly retort ‘No.’. That means it is wrong for anyone to force others to do what you yourself would not do. This is simple to work out, easy to understand and unambiguous. You cannot sacrifice other people’s rights for your benefit. Ever.
I think the UK is in a very good place as far as HE is concerned from the parent’s point of view. All the ‘problems’ with HE are on the side of Local Authorities and government, whose illegitimate and unjustified desire to tamper with HE families is the sole thing that is wrong with it at present. If the LA’s were told that they have no responsibility for HE, then their problems would be over. That is the only thing that needs to be done IMHO ring-fence the responsibility of LAs, and restrict them to schools and schooled children.
I agree completely with Dave H; the real problem is brainwashing, and the ignorance of other people in ‘society’, who reflexively believe that the state knows best, and that what it does and its power, like a force of nature, is inevitable. This is why its so important to educate the public about HE, so that bad thinking about it can be wiped out. This is the only way the culture change you mentioned in First Post is going to happen; after that culture change takes place the removal of legislation can follow. This education will not happen by telepathy, osmosis or any means other than a steered public awareness campaign.
As for Cameron being on the receiving end of citizens who will no longer meekly put up with what the government says, I would love to believe that there are many people like that. Sadly, there are a legion of brainwashed people who are addicted to the idea of the state; socialists, the irrational etc etc, who willingly engage with the state and enshrine their power through that engagement. That weak mindedness and the near total absence of a coherent philosophy that fuels it is a big danger. These people (unlike the Americans) refuse to group together under any sort of umbrella organisation for their own benefit; everyone it seems, in the USA, understands the power of getting into a group to solve problems and lobby to protect their rights:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=raw+milk+association
there is a group for everyone, and they get the benefits of that association. Astonishingly, socialists who believe absolutely in the institution of labor unions, balk at the idea of grouping together for other purposes. Of course, there was a group for Home Educators in the UK, but they are now a part of the problem are they not?
Finally, guidelines are not law. Whatever these people are cooking up in secret, it will not have the force of law. If you know the law, or have a lawyer, nothing will change for you.
It’s interesting that the general assumption is that someone producing new guidance is automatically going to result in something bad (although a history of home ed politics gives that assumption some weight). Neil has acknowledged that home educators are capable of writing guidance that is entirely in our favour (although I suspect that government process requires them to let LAs consult on it – so we can listen to their objections and carry on with what we want, power to the people!)
The issue as I see it is that any change from what we have now may leave some home educators in a worse position even if the overall lot has been improved. As a group we tried through the whole Badman process to stand as a group and refuse to be divided into smaller units and picked off one by one.
So the question to ask is whether it’s acceptable, as a stepping stone to improving everyone’s position, to temporarily disadvantage any particular group of home educators, on the basis that without that stepping stone, it’s impossible to get to a better place for all. (Note that this assumes that there is a better place for all, it is possible that we’re already there).
I still go back to my original comment, that the real problem with the attitude of society, where it has been brainwashed into believing that ‘nanny knows best’, and if that can be addressed, much of the rest of the problem will just disappear or become relatively trivial to solve. At least Cameron has that bit right with his talk of giving people more personal responsibility, but he’s going to be on the receiving end of all those citizens who now understand that they don’t have to meekly put up with what the government says.
Neil
> To say that none of this is legitimate, while I would agree with you,
> your absolutist libertarianism is a useless expression of ideological
> purity when confronted with what to do about draining the swamp we are
> in.
>
Blogdial
> Obviously we disagree. The difference between me and you is that your
> way of approaching this problem is to create more of the problem,
> which ends up with people being forced to obey the results. Its rather
> like borrowing more money to get out of debt. And other people’s money
> at that.
>
It’s nothing like that at all. It refuses to collude with the gradualist attrition and pushes the other way instead towards the kind of change I imagine you would also wish for. Nothing I do leaves you any worse off, or our common oppressors any more strengthened or encouraged.
> There is nothing absolutist about protecting yourself or your rights;
> arguing against taking a firm stand in this deeply fundamental matter
> is like arguing that its absolutist to refuse to be burgled
It’s pointless to refuse to be burgled if you are in no position to prevent it, it is mere posturing. How does one prevent oneself from being burgled? I also do not argue against taking a firm stand, I do advocate taking a firm uncompromising stand. My stand is to refuse to legitimise any further erosion of existing liberty and to seek to restore, or obtain for the first time maybe, depending on your take on history, full self ownership of ones life. I have also been accused of being ‘purist’ and risking worse attrition than an appeasing approach might obtain, but I consider this a mistake, quite apart from being immoral, since it is precisely by small incremental losses that liberty is lost, and this is an important modus operandi of power to remove it in this way.
; by your
> thinking, everything bad and violent that can happen to you can be
> argued for, as long as it is done in the open and everyone ‘has their
> say’. I’m afraid other people having a say about whether or not I
> should be robbed is unacceptable to me.
>
What in anything I have said makes you think it is acceptable to me either?
I’ve already tried to correct the impression you took from my first reply that I was advocating getting involved with this or for that matter any other gvt initiative, yet you still seem to be assuming that this is the case? I consistently advocate boycotting gvt consultations and elections for eg. Perhaps you mean that home educators should not combine in free association to find ways to curb the despotism of their local authorities, while being careful not to make anyone elses situation any worse thereby? The children of families where I live have grown in more freedom from the interference of others outside the family than most people on earth, never mind just the UK. This was made possible by a self selecting group from all known HEers obtaining a legal decent and honest policy from the LEA that uniquely in the country accepted our favourable interpretation of the law, and agreed not to have any monitoring or inspection regime whatsoever, nor any contact should it not be freely chosen, something we could not have prevented if they had insisted. If what we did somehow managed to strengthen the illegitimate institution of the LEA, I’d love to know how, because their HE friendliness did nothing for them with their colleagues in other LEAs, nor with gvt. Meanwhile whole childhoods passed entirely free of the shadow of state compulsion schooling. It is possible to act in this world with integrity and without harming others, especially if you remain open to hearing from them at all times.
> By all means, you are at liberty to speak to whomever you like, draw
> up whatever guidelines you like, and then justify yourself and your
> actions at great length; your behavior, opinions and the results of
> your interactions are not binding upon me,
Of course not, nor could they compromise your stance with those powers if they do nothing to strengthen those powers or undermine existing liberties. If you choose to live by going further than current law permits, then moving matters closer, not further away from what you want, while as I said, not assisting those powers, but rather thwarting their further development, can do nothing to queer your pitch.
But you also acknowledge in the above sentence your own powerlessness, not merely to prevent me from doing something stupid that potentially harms you, but clearly you are no less powerless to prevent state theft, or incarceration of you for resisting their theft for eg.
> or anyone else that does
> not care for being sold as property so that a clique can feel that
> they are worthwhile or profit through the act of orchestrating other
> people’s lives.
>
That’s what I’ve just been challenging is it not? If I wanted to be in the position of being taken on one side by gvt for a little tete a tete, and lets see what we can make work, then I could have been under that table years ago, anyone could, but they either know better than to ask me, or I’m too obscure to be that noticed, I care not which.
> You cannot have it both ways; you cannot on the one hand, agree that
> what these people are doing is illegitimate and then on the other hand
> argue for incrementalism and ‘going along to get along’, helping the
> very people who you agree have no place doing what they are doing –
> that doesn’t make sense.
>
I don’t know what else does then, perhaps you could explain it to me? What is your alternative to incrementalism?
But its not ‘going along to get along’, except in the sense that if you pay no taxes, obey no laws then you enjoy even less liberty at her majesties pleasure. While I admire those willing to do that, I would never presume to judge those that do not.
> Once again, I do not expect to ever convince you of anything. I am at
> ease with the idea that there are people whose philosophies are
> diametrically opposed to mine, as long as they (and their violent
> proxies) stay away from my door. When I am confronted with illogical
> thinking, fence straddling and nonsense however, I have something to
> concise to say about
> it. You are free to reject it.
>
I wish I understood it better frankly since I understand you are a libertarian and those are also my sympathies, but not my hard and fast totally worked out ideology which has an answer to everything for me. I don’t have it all worked out, and tend to be suspicious of those that do. I’m quite prepared to believe I am thinking illogically, sitting on a fence and talking nonsense, but you are sadly doing nothing to help me see that, and haven’t answered any of my questions such as enlightening me as to what your way forward to a better world is?
“Balls wouldn’t have fared any better when up against a superior intellect with a firm grasp of the issues surrounding elective home education (and that is not a partisan comment, simply a matter of fact).”
Indeed and Gove doesn’t get it either what with suggesting that we should all be forced to study Dryden and Pope.
Reading Pope is rather fab imo, but there is so much to know we simply can’t dare to dictate what anyone should learn. We need to spread the responsibility and rely on each other to know different stuff. Gove doesn’t get this any more than Balls did.
To say that none of this is legitimate, while I would agree with you, your absolutist libertarianism is a useless expression of ideological purity when confronted with what to do about draining the swamp we are in.
Obviously we disagree. The difference between me and you is that your way of approaching this problem is to create more of the problem, which ends up with people being forced to obey the results. Its rather like borrowing more money to get out of debt. And other people’s money at that.
There is nothing absolutist about protecting yourself or your rights; arguing against taking a firm stand in this deeply fundamental matter is like arguing that its absolutist to refuse to be burgled; by your thinking, everything bad and violent that can happen to you can be argued for, as long as it is done in the open and everyone ‘has their say’. I’m afraid other people having a say about whether or not I should be robbed is unacceptable to me.
By all means, you are at liberty to speak to whomever you like, draw up whatever guidelines you like, and then justify yourself and your actions at great length; your behavior, opinions and the results of your interactions are not binding upon me, or anyone else that does not care for being sold as property so that a clique can feel that they are worthwhile or profit through the act of orchestrating other people’s lives.
You cannot have it both ways; you cannot on the one hand, agree that what these people are doing is illegitimate and then on the other hand argue for incrementalism and ‘going along to get along’, helping the very people who you agree have no place doing what they are doing – that doesn’t make sense.
Once again, I do not expect to ever convince you of anything. I am at ease with the idea that there are people whose philosophies are diametrically opposed to mine, as long as they (and their violent proxies) stay away from my door. When I am confronted with illogical thinking, fence straddling and nonsense however, I have something to concise to say about it. You are free to reject it.
@liveotherwise The reference was to children in the care of the state, whether enforced or delegated by the parent.
Irdial wrote:
“We should not have to keep repeating this over and over. All the people behind this sinister and vile garbage can read English. They are numerate. They have all the statistics, testimony and facts to hand, neatly collated and delivered to them over the last four years. They can no longer claim that they are ignorant of what Home Education is.
This means that there is a reason other than Home Education behind their wish to access your children, since HE cannot possibly be the cause as it is completely beneficial. What is the REAL reason they are so insistent on getting access to people’s children?
This is the question that needs to be asked over and over again, until these people back off once and for all, either out of shame (unlikely) or exasperation.”
I completely agree with you here, but omitted to respond to this in my last reply. I think we should have taken the initiative in this deceptive and unreal hiatus in the war against us to write our own guidance, but that doesn’t preclude doing as you suggest here, which I would agree is even more important ultimately.
Economic and sexual exploitation by a self serving global elite are the reasons for the pretence of child protection, the trojan horse of ‘children’s rights’, and we need to say that too, and refuse it as the dishonest and evil rationalisation that it is for our continued exploitation, the intended erosions of our liberty, and our very status as parents. I’m sorry I wasn’t clearer about not advocating participation in cynically rigged gvt processes. I suspect that is not enough to get me off though, but I still maintain that a process which seeks to prevent law which preserves essential liberty to some imperfect degree, from further erosion, is vital, and that that process of doing so itself will, and visibly is amongst us, clarify and lead to that higher aspiration. I too want to see the day when the state gets out of education altogether, but I don’t expect to in my lifetime. If I could see tangible evidence of an inexorable move towards that goal though, I might die happy. Hell, if I could see as much as a flicker of interest in the condem’s intended nationalisation of the what remains of private education through the phony school choice initiatives imported from America that Charlotte Iserbyt busts in ‘The Deliberate Dumbing doewn of America’, that would be a start!
Irdial The situation we are in is one of law which has existed ostensibly in its present form since 1944, and guidance for LAs produced in 2007, replacing earlier ones. To say that none of this is legitimate, while I would agree with you, your absolutist libertarianism is a useless expression of ideological purity when confronted with what to do about draining the swamp we are in. While certainly compromised, the law we have at least preserves that fundamental liberty to raise our own children by our own lights, and that in an imperfect world is something. It is therefore worth defending before moving on to bid for something better. There is nothing wrong with a gradualist approach to change, in fact I don’t believe that any other process of change is likely to be anything other than a tyranny – just ask the fabians, and look how far gradualism has got them! To make statements such as yours is to invite either bloody revolution, or more likely total inertia to do anything at all. Even the idea that we might create virtuous spirals instead of vicious ones is beyond most people’s aspirations, or perception of the possible. But you appear to be labouring under the misapprehension that I was talking about participating in a gvt consultation on gvt guidelines, I was not.
To invite an entire affected group in society to contribute to a consensual process which has the integrity to synthesise apparently conflicting views, and is grounded in solid principles of no one having the right to give away any existing liberty, the only legitimate changes to bid for being those that are wanted by common consent, and do not violate existing liberties of others, is a wholly defensible process and eminently practical and achievable. First you hold the territory you already possess, you can never concede it, then you advance to take more until you have all the territory, that territory being your own life, and no one elses, but in that process everyone gains their own lives back.
Our enemies know how to achieve change, and recognise that it takes generations. Until we also learn this we will achieve nothing of any lasting worth. If it has not been fought for, understood and valued by those fighting for it, who will defend it? We have always been dominated by a mercenary intellectual elite in the service of power. If the revolution is not 100% owned by the people, it cannot endure, and will be corrupted. Personal change happens slowly, incrementally. One new insight is made possible by the last, and so forth. Until a society has experienced one new beneficial change it won’t be ready to aspire to the next, or capable of achieving the natural consensus that the last change clarifies as to what that change must be. No one can apply a perfect ideology and answer all questions of human organisation. Our futures need to be discovered by us.
Home educators are perfectly capable of writing a guidance for LAs that leaves them no room for getting anything out of existing law they are not entitled to, and they are barely entitled to anything at all. It would not be a useless document because LAs would ignore it, because we could use it defensibly against them when defying their despotisms as we have done with earlier guidances where these have been useful.
What I am talking about doing has nothing to do with the idea of ‘the best we can hope for in the current climate’ and other dodgy self fulfilling prophesies, which is the type of process these types of huddles have produced in the recent past, nor is it the gvt perversion of the idea of a *con sult* as a species of *insult*. It would not make merely token acknowledgement of reasonable opinion before ignoring it. If an idea was defensible by principles of not giving away existing liberties or taking away those of others then it would be synthesised into the document in a dialectical process in which seemingly irreconcilably opposing views are honoured in a new way for both of them that is the antithesis of compromise. it is possible to do this I know, because I’ve already done it once. Not perfectly I don’t for a moment suppose, but then what is?
We have hung on to the fundamental liberty to determine the education of our children (ie, be the primary influence over their learning about their world) for at least a generation of gvt aspiration to remove that. So we are and have succeeded thus far in slowing if not halting a degenerative process. However, we are being exposed to a gradualist war of attrition in which the day when we succumb to some fresh incremental erosion of liberty arrives. What I am in the business of doing is recognising the nature of this historic process we are in, articulating it for all to see clearly, in the hope that we can then better resist its progress against us, and even employ its methodology to move in the opposite direction. Its methodology is grounded in a true understanding of how solid enduring change can be brought about, and probably the only way in which it can. That truth is being used against us and has been successfully for generations. We need to understand this, and take our own possession of that process, first to hold a line, then to move in our direction.
First bring a degenerative process to a halt, then reverse it, or you have a better way?
“All this bleating about children’s rights means absolutely nothing if there is no effective redress when children are failed by the state.”
If this is a reference to education I see very few children who can be failed by the state – as it’s the parent’s right and obligation to ensure suitable education, then if the school isn’t up to the task the child should be withdrawn.
It is the ceaseless creeping of the state into the homes of people who are going about their business.
We do not need guidance. At the beginning, we talk to other home educators who are of inestimable help.
LAs get guidance and completely and utterly disregard it so, at best, it is a futile occupation.
Oh dear me, not again.
Lets put it in a nutshell, parents are responsible for feeding their children,
LA’s/NHS have no duty or power to demand menus
Parents are responsible for keeping their children healthy
LA’s/NHS have no duty or power to demand health reports/assessments
etc etc etc
Parents are responsible for their children’s education
End of story!
I am afraid that this really is the end of the story, and Elaine is 1000% correct.
No one has the right to tell you what to do in this regard. Period.
And the lines that follow below, IMHO, are completely and utterly WRONG:
The ONLY legitimate way to write proposed guidance is out in the open, where any and all those likely to be affected by it may have their say and their legitimate concerns and wishes taken properly into account.
This is NONSENSE.
The manner in which the document is produced cannot confer legitimacy to this bad idea. Let me try and make it simple.
Would guidelines saying that you had to put your children in a government creche, or force feed your child GMO food or do anything that is offensive to you be legitimate, simply because they were produced in the open?
Would those same guidelines be legitimate simply because you ‘had your say’ and your concerns and wishes ‘taken into account’?
In case you have forgotten, that is exactly what the consultations were ostensibly about; listening, taking into account, open processes and participation of ‘stakeholders’ (as if strangers have a quotal stake in your children the very idea is offensive to all decent people) and of course, the end result of those consultations was the overwhelming majority opinion was simply ignored.
None of these processes is legitimate, because the very idea that the state has any say in Home Education is wrong in the first place.
If you call for openness in a process designed to abuse you, you are opening yourself up to abuse, and you will have only yourself to blame when it happens.
Carswell, Soley, Deech, Morgan, Lucas and all of these people from government have no business laying down guidelines of any kind in matters that are strictly private and of the family. Their behavior is indefensible and any other position than absolute refusal is untenable.
And for the record, all these people are all on the same side, some playing good cop, others playing bad cop. Those of us with a single working brain cell see straight through them.
Of course there will be those who say, “well, they are going to do it anyway, and its better that we are a part of the process”. That sort of talk makes me sick to my stomach.
We should not be going through all this again. What these people are doing, in the very act of asking this, is yet more psychological abuse; they need to simply go away and solve the problems that they are responsible for, and leave this subject forever.
They are not responsible for Home Educators. They need to accept this and more on.
We should not have to keep repeating this over and over. All the people behind this sinister and vile garbage can read English. They are numerate. They have all the statistics, testimony and facts to hand, neatly collated and delivered to them over the last four years. They can no longer claim that they are ignorant of what Home Education is.
This means that there is a reason other than Home Education behind their wish to access your children, since HE cannot possibly be the cause as it is completely beneficial. What is the REAL reason they are so insistent on getting access to people’s children?
This is the question that needs to be asked over and over again, until these people back off once and for all, either out of shame (unlikely) or exasperation.
Whoever it is really, REALLY needs to stand up and tell us who they are and exactly what’s going on.
Right now I’m involved with our LA developing a new EHE policy but I report back to local home educators after every meeting, pass on briefing documents etc. and feed back their questions and comments to the council working group. It’s absolutely possible to do this kind of work openly, in fact I would say that it is utterly VITAL to do it openly.
p.s. if you live in Surrey (or rather a bit of it under SCC) and this is news to you please let me know, we’ve got a Yahoo Group set up for info sharing and discussion.
I wrote this before I read this blog, so this isn’t specifically a reply to it, except that it is:
It has come to my notice that a couple of known HEers who I won’t name for
the moment, in order for them to account for themselves if they so wish,
are busy writing new guidance for LEAs in collusion with or at the behest
of Graham Stuart. One of these individuals I am also told is known to be
in favour of compulsory registration.
I have just this to say to them, and would appreciate this being cross
posted to as much of the community as possible and in the hope of actually
reaching those concerned:
You are not government, you have no mandate to do this from anyone.
This freedom is not yours to mess with behind closed doors and in little
huddles. The ONLY legitimate way to write proposed guidance is out in the
open, where any and all those likely to be affected by it may have their
say and their legitimate concerns and wishes taken properly into account.
If this is merely a first working draft to be put out to proper
consultation by the HE community, then why is Graham Stuart involved at
this stage and no other HEers?
You must surely know by now that any attempt to bid for a finished guidance
document produced in secret is doomed to be condemned by the wrath of those
it seeks to colonise, just as the last ill considered and radically
unacceptable document EO produced was
Can we not find better ways than this please? Or is the intention to
divide and rule us all?
Neil T (who once edited such a document, having done everything possible to
reach the most HEers possible, over 70 of whom made contributions to the
end result that were taken properly into account. I am sure we could
improve on those early days of the internet if we tried)
Oh Dave I do wish there were smilies on the blog so I could give you a hefty round of applause.
Love the blog post I can see charity shops becoming inundated with abandoned gloves.
Agreed. Education legislation is fine as it is. The bigger picture, specifically ecare (encompassing ECM and GIRFEC) is the one that needs to be tackled for which ‘early intervention’ is the latest soundbite cover story.
It’s not the *education* legislation that needs changing, it’s the welfare side of things. It’s currently all geared to the fact that unless children are in regular contact with recognised professionals, they’re deemed to be at risk. HE merely gets the fall-out because for most children, the regular contact with professionals occurs at school. We need a complete culture change, back to trusting in parents and the community and the removal of legislation that stops this from happening.
The only thing I’d do with HE-specific guidance or legislation is to specifically highlight that lack of such contact is not a problem unless other evidence also exists and even then, it’s addressing the sympton, not the cause.