Musical gig.......and THE Consultation · Wednesday July 25, 2007 by Ann
The girls have gone off to Manchester, where Lucy and the band she sings with have a gig tonight.
This is the second time the band has played at this place and she is really looking forward to it. The band is made up of three home educated and formally home educated lads, who Lucy joined just a few months ago. They are very talented musically and each play a number of instruments and they write their own songs. I am feeling a little funny as this is the first time I have ever missed an occasion where Lucy has been performing. Unfortunately this time the date has coincided with me having to work-still with her sister and friends there, Lucy will enjoy herself anyway.
This morning I have been looking at the Government’s consultation on home education guidelines. I know that many other home education blogs have been talking about this, but thought it was worth mentioning here, for everyone to make up their mind as to whether they want to make a personal response.
The Government have consulted on home education before-in 2005, but on that occasion would only allow responses from organisations and so there were many responses from LEA’s asking for more regulation of home education and pro home education responses from just three or four organisations.
This time however individuals and organisations can respond. Considering there are thought to be up to 40,000 home educators in this country the number of people responding so far totals only 370-and this probably includes all 150 or so local Authorities!!
More details on what to say, how to respond and example responses are to be found on Freedom for Children to Grow
The response to a FOI request from a veteran home educator to the DFES about correspondence on the subject of home education clearly show what the Government had in mind for us -this comment is representative of the content;
“I am working on a consultation, which will propose introducing compulsory registration and monitoring for home education (as well as clearer standards which home educators will have to meet)”.
The full results of the FOI requests are available to read on the AHEd wiki pages and are IMHO scary reading!
So the Government clearly intended that we should be registered, monitored and made to attain the standards they dictate.
For some reason they have held back from doing so at this time-BUT THAT MAY CHANGE, depending on the responses they get-and LA’S ARE DEMANDING THAT CHANGE!
If standards are bought in-how will we be made to fit?
Whilst one can only guess at what they mean by standards, I can imagine that my youngest child not starting to read until the age of 13, would not meet them!
What consideration of her very severe dyslexia, which the school had totally failed to recognise or the fact that she left school after just under 5 years of their standards and was completely unable to read or spell a single word, would be taken is not known and I don’t want to chance it.
Through autonomous home education that child’s education has run ahead, whilst waiting for reading and spelling to catch up-which it has done, now aged 14 she can do both well. She is bright, confident, well educated, happy and a completely different person from the scared child who had no self belief and who thought herself stupid and ugly and worthless. That is what LA standards did for Lucy.
With this kind of Government/LA interference would the outcomes we have achieved have been the same? I fear that many LA Inspectors are trained and experienced in schooling models and would not/do not understand autonomous home based education, practised by many families that we know personally. This type of education will simply not lend itself to any type of imposed monitoring and measurements of progress and standards.
I also noticed that one of the suggested regulations somewhere revealed with the FOI requests was ‘that children must be given opportunity to socialise with his or her peer group’. Now I know of families, with children who have special needs-some with an Asperger type diagnosis and some with health related conditions like CFS, for whom big meetings or other situations where they have the opportunity to socialise with peers would not suit their child.-and I think they need to ask, do you wish for some outside body to dictate when and where and how often your child be made to socialise?
I also am really concerned as to how my children would have reacted if they had been made to see an outside professional who was there to assess their progress, particularly in the early days when they first were deregistered from school and we were struggling to help them regain their self belief and self confidence.
Please think again if you have decided that these consultations do not affect you. They are not just for people who have chosen to HE they are also for people like my family, who were forced into this-even though it has now become a lifestyle choice. Every home educating family is doing this because for one reason or another the ‘standards’ set in the schooling systems do not fit with our families, for whatever reason!
If you do nothing else please fill in the box at the end and say this!
Please be clear, this present consultation on guidelines may only be the first step-the Government, in response to the LA insistence may yet say that this consultation led them to believe there IS a case for closer monitoring/regulation etc.
Many responses from the LA’s are in already-and we have evidence that the woman who is collating them is reading every single one as they come in- and we wonder how much she is influenced by them as she seems to have no real experience of home education or family life herself.
It is now up to everyone of us to respond-the consultation ends on 31st July.
Your children can respond-they are stakeholders and so can supportive family members-my mom has responded!
Don’t be put off by the form, fill in what you can but you can just tick the ‘not sure’ response if necessary but here is a additional comments box at the end and this is where you get a chance to say, why home education free from regulation and monitoring is vital for you and your family.
There are suggested responses for you to look at-but your personal words and stories-BY THE HUNDREDS-is what will make the difference here. We MUST counter and out number the response coming in from the LA’s-or we may have seemed to have won one battle but we will loose the war.
Numbered together we can make a difference -but we must each respond to make it effective.
