HomeSchooler.org.uk

""Local-authority officers would have the right to enter a home where a child is being taught and quiz him in his parents’ absence. Permission to home-school could be denied if inspectors decided a child’s safety was in danger. In a handful of cases, that will be the right decision, but for the overwhelming majority of parents, this is bullying bureaucracy at its worst. Mr Balls clearly believes the nanny state knows best."

"An attack on home educators is an attack on all our Liberties. They must be defended from an all powerful state."

"Ed Balls has just called me up about my post from this morning , hopping mad. He instructed me to "take that post down now". I thought he was joking: has there been some change to the constitution where ministers now have power over the media? But he was deadly serious. "You should not call me a liar," said Balls. I told him that if he doesn't want to be called a liar, “he shouldn't tell lies”. His defence is that his point about debt is a Brownie, not a lie - okay, he didn't put it quite like that. But when he said "debt" he referred to the "ratio of national debt to gross domestic product" which is forecasted in the Budget to start falling in eight to nine years time. Now the Budget, of course, has a "horizon" running out in 2013/14: there are literally no plans beyond that. It is a lie to suggest otherwise."...more...

MP Mark Field champions parents who opt to take children out of mainstream education...

"While the freedom to home-school in America continues to expand, the opposite is true in Europe. Since 1982, 38 U.S. states have adopted home-school statutes or regulations that have removed restrictions on home-schoolers. This year, two more states, North Dakota and Idaho, made significant progress in recognizing the value of home-schooling.

North Dakota, which was one of the most regulated states, just amended its home-school law to make it possible for more parents to home-school freely. No longer will a home-schooling parent have to hold a baccalaureate degree, be a certified teacher or be monitored by a certified teacher if they have only a high school diploma in order to home-school. All home-schooling parents in North Dakota can provide the individualized education that best fits their children."...more...

"This clampdown on home education doesn't help children
Response: Others are in far greater need of rigorous scrutiny than those schooled at home, says Carolyne Willow

Friday, 26 June 2009
Fundamental changes to the law affecting the rights and the freedom of about 80,000 children may be sneaked into a bill going through parliament, after the review into home education by Graham Badman (Report to crack down on home schooling, 6 June).

You report the children's minister Delyth Morgan saying there have been "suggestions that in some very extreme, rare cases, home education could be used as a cover for abuse or neglect". Badman's report provides no evidence to support these allegations, although he asked local authorities to review all abuse and neglect cases since January 2003 where children have died or been seriously injured or harmed. Yet the Department for Children, Schools and Families plans to introduce a compulsory registration scheme, with every home-educated child being questioned about their education and welfare at least once a year.

As a home-educating parent, I will be committing a criminal offence if I don't register my children, who will have to exhibit proof of learning. This clampdown on home education comes amid a virtual consensus that the target and testing culture in schools has harmed children.

The article says, "new guidelines on minimum standards for educating children at home ... would clarify the circumstances under which a local authority can order a child back into school". Local authorities already have powers to intervene if they consider a child to be at risk of harm, or if their right to an education is being denied.

Why are over a hundred Bournemouth families teaching their children at home? BBC Dorset investigates the growing trend for home schooling among families here in the county - and discovers that they're hardly at home at all.
It could almost be a class trip. A dozen children are running around Moors Valley Country Park, burning off their excess energy after lessons. But this is a school trip with a difference - these children don’t go to school at all.
June Wilson-Billing is a mother of four children, who she educates at home. She started to think about home schooling after her eldest daughter India was refused a place at primary school. Rather than defer a year, or send her to a different school, she decided to teach her at home....more...

Conservative MP Mark Field sets out the concerns being raised in his Westminster Hall debate on home education. Skip related content

On January 19, the Department for Children, Schools and Families launched an independent review of home education by Graham Badman, former director of children and education services at Kent County Council.

Mr Badman has been charged with investigating the current system for supporting and monitoring home education and asked to look at 'how any concerns about the safety, welfare or education of children are dealt with'. This month Mr Badman will report his findings.

From the outset, the government has emphasised: 'There are no plans to change parents' well established rights to educate their children at home.'...more...

Jennie Bristow, is not a home-educator but gets the civil rights issue...

"Speaking personally, I find it hard to imagine a worse way of educating my children than trying to do it myself, at home. I don’t have the patience, inclination or energy for that kind of thing; and I also think state education, in principle, is brilliant....

...The more ground that is lost in the argument as to why state education is better for children than its alternatives, the more the state attempts to bully families and professionals into compulsory inclusion in its agenda. This is an expression of the state’s weakness rather than its ‘totalitarian’ intentions, but it is no less damaging for that. When the state resorts to bully tactics to make people toe the line, it destroys the basis for positive support.

As for parents: whatever our own views about home schooling, the principle of parental autonomy in relation to education is crucial for all of us, for the simple reason that it provides a clear demarcation between being able to do what we think is best for our children, and having to do what officials decree is best for them. For all the nonsense talked about choice in education, our only real choice as parents comes from the knowledge that if our children’s schooling becomes really bad, we can always pull them out of it."

"Within all the arguments about home-schooling it's rare to hear from a child who was home schooled. But on School Gate today 15-year-old Charley Mountney (whom you can see above) gives her view. It's a real eye-opener…"