Lovely day celebrating home education with bubbles and sand at the Diana Memorial Playground.
Lovely weather and fun playing with old friends and meeting new ones. 
Girls particularly love the pirate ship and the little swinging boats. E of course made a new friend and T loved the bubbles.
The columnist of the year is Caitlin Moran, who was home educated. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article7073541.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6834367.ece
Part of problem here is a wide cultural gap between the school culture and informal learning culture common in home educating families and communities.
Whilst LA officers went to school, taught in schools and predominantly have experience of group based state education – SATs, National Curriculum etc home eduction is NOT school.
It uses very different methods because it is one to one, highly personalised. It is conversation based and independent learning is the norm. Many (maybe most) people without experience of alternative education are unable to assess it, and often are unable to recognise it in progress.
Not only that but sometimes LA officers deem education unsatisfactory because they have an artificial set time for education in mind – and home ed happens every moment of a child’s day – as they play, talk and explore their world. Other times it is deemed unsatisfactory because a family chooses to submit a written report rather than accept visits which can be highly stressful and particularly damaging for children with special needs or who have had bad experiences in school.
Sending teachers and school inspectors to assess home education is like getting the Pope to assess a Muslim, Jewish or CofE’s families religious views and practices.
There are many different approaches to education – many of which are not used in state schools so experience of school based education is hardly a qualification to assess home education.
No surprises in DCSF’s report on the responses to the home education consultation. The report of the consultation largely dismisses the reponses of home educators to the consultation. Response after response is dismissed on the grounds that home educators would say that wouldn’t they.
What DCSF fail to grasp is the home educators and home educated children are the stakeholders and the experts here. We are the experts in education outside school, in the welfare of own children and the children in our community. We are the people who live this life and know how the proposed changes will impact on our children and community.
We are also people with an interest in education, often with a broad knowledge of different educational philosophies and practices.
The few areas where responses have been taken into consideration have just replaced one rock with another hard place. So rather than criminalise parents for not registering, or doing what they say at every turn LA will punish them and their children by forcing them into school. Hardly a better outcome for children removed from school because school cannot meet their educational and welfare needs, or because of bullying. Where is the child’s welfare in this?
Home educators will in turn say – well the DCSF would say that wouldn’t they. They wouldn’t want their actual stakeholders to get in the way of decisions they have already made. However articulate and logical an argument may be it is incredibly difficult to persuade somone with a widespread preconceived cultural idea – in this case that school = education that they don’t understand or know enough about something to pass judgement on it. In other words those with a pro-school prejudice are hardly independent when it comes to making decisions about a way of life that calls their own educational choices into question.
Brighton and Hove Home Educators have drafted and open letter to The Guardian and The Times, intended for publication on January 11th 2010, which is the date of the second reading of the Children, Schools and Families Bill in the House of Commons.
Please read and sign the letter at http://bhhe.wordpress.com/diversity/.
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to uphold that parents have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of their child, to not undermine parents legitimately fulfilling their fundamental duties, and to assume that the best interests of their child is the basic concern of parents unless there is specific evidence to the contrary
In particular, the government should ensure :-
• No right of access to the family home without evidence of a crime
• No right to interview a child alone without evidence of risk of serious harm
• No CRB checks or registration for parents to look after their own children, or to informally look after those of their friends, family etc
• No licensing / registration / assessment / monitoring of methods by which parents fulfil their duties without evidence that they are failing to do so, and with specific recognition that education “otherwise†than at school is a perfectly legal option to fulfil their duty regarding education
• No undermining of parents as being in the best position to determine how to meet their child’s needs, according to their age, ability, aptitude, and any special needs they may have
• Greater focus on applying existing resources and procedures to cases of children known to be at risk, rather than dilution of these resources by routinely monitoring whole sections of the community
• Compliance with the fundamental presumption of innocence unless there is specific evidence to the contrary
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Home-ed-families/ – Sign this petition
You do need to be British citizen to sign, but you do not need to be of voting age – children can sign too as long as they have their own email address. REMEMBER TO CLICK ON THE LINK IN THE CONFIRMATION EMAIL YOU WILL RECEIVE FROM NUMBER 10, OR YOUR SIGNATURE WILL NOT BE ADDED
A new study released today by the Canadian Centre for Home Education reveals
that home-educated adults excel in all measured areas of adult life.
The study surveyed adults whose parents responded to a 1994 study on home
education. Ranging in age from 15 to 34, they answered questions on a
variety of topics with comparable data from Statistics Canada. The results
were astounding.
When measured against the Canadian average, home-educated adults were more
socially engaged and almost twice as likely to have voted in a federal
election. Average income was higher with more sources of investment income
and self employment, and no cases of government support as the primary
source of income. They were happier in their work and their lives in
general. When reflecting on the value of being home educated, most felt that
it was an advantage in their adult life.
“In terms of income, education, entrepreneurial endeavours, involvement in
their community, and all the other characteristics measured, home-educated
adults not only excel, but also make meaningful contributions to their
communities. They are the type of neighbours we all want,” says president
Paul Faris.
The study Fifteen Years Later: Home-Educated Canadian Adults is available in
full form and as a synopsis at www.hslda.ca/cche.
Those of us watching the Badman Review and the Government steps to register, monitor and control education outside school have been aware for a long time of the poor quality of the review and how it was obviously conducted to give Ed Balls the answere he wanted, rather than an independent review.
The Select Committee has now published the submissions to the inquiry into the review. The most interesting submissions include:
Ofsted wants parents CRB checked to look after their own children!
Badman seems to consider parents who home educate to be mentally ill!
And emminent Professor James C Conroy, member of Graham Badman’s Expert Reference Group concludes that “In my 30 odd years of professional life in education I have rarely encountered a process, the entirety of which was so slap dash, panic driven, and nakedly and naively populist.”
http://every-child-matters.blogspot.com/2009/11/our-case-against-change.html reviews the submissions
Had an exciting and hopeful day at the Houses of Parliament. A big group of families – picnicing, playing, demonstrating and seeing their MPs.
We need to keep up the fight to make sure that every familiy has the right to choose the education that works best for their children. The recommendations would mean that parents would no longer have responbsibility for their children, that the state would be primarily responsible for them!
For the many children removed from school because of special needs, bullying or educational problems there would be NO PROTECTION from the very Local Authorites who have already been shown to be unable to provide a suitable education or protect them whilst at school.
LAs would be able to interview children alone, prevent families from home educating for any reason they like, without any appeal.
LAs already have all the powers they need.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/acmenormans/
Home educators in Europe are fighting for the right to choose to home educate and in some cases are having their children snatched away JUST because they home educate.
The worst offenders are Germany (acting on legistlation introduced by Hilter) and Sweden, which is in the process of banning home education.
Four children of a family that fled Germany to avoid further fines for homeschooling have been snatched from their home in France by police and accused of “being alone,”
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=112106
The desperate situation of a 7-year-old homeschooled child who was nabbed by Swedish police from an airliner as his family was departing on a move to India
