just another morning here

Since the publication of Mr Badman’s proposals for home education guidelines back in June, I have been watching with interest to see which of them, if any, would actually become legislation.

As a former home educator, I still identify strongly with the home education community and as such I feel compelled to add my letter to those already written. I am also a trained teacher, employed at the moment as a cover supervisor in a special school, with my own children choosing to attend school themselves. For this reason I believe I have a superbly balanced viewpoint from which to base my opinions, unlike the biased reports you have previously received.

Without exception, the home educating families that I know, are loving, supportive people, who have given up their own time and money to do what they think is best for their children. They bend over backwards to ensure that every opportunity they can access is given to their children, and are totally child-centric in their approaches to education, be they autonomous or structured. The children themselves are free from regulation, happy, creative, interested, and always learning – because they have the time and space to do so.

Without exception, state schools that I know are places bound by structure and red tape. Teachers are unhappy because of the amount of paperwork they have to complete, which takes away from the time they can actually spend with the children – someone told me this again only yesterday. Teachers themselves yearn for the freedom that home educators have.
The children themselves often aren’t happy, engaged, or in fact provided with a suitable, efficient education – despite the sterling efforts of most teachers – because this is simply impossible given the huge class sizes, statutory curriculum, and regulations that teachers are working within.

To be honest, if you were only asking for voluntary registration in order to safeguard children, perhaps you would have met with a different response. However, to ask for yearly plans and interviews with children alone was simply too much – and it cuts across the very essence of home education.

To suggest spending so much time and money on monitoring something that simply doesn’t need it, is ludicrous, ESPECIALLY given the sorry state of your schools. You can’t justify monitoring like this for home educators unless you bring it in for all families, regardless of educational provision – and there would be outrage if you suggested it, and rightly so, for these proposals are outrageous. You would also find, I’m sure, if you did apply these proposals to all families, that the educational provision which is failing the most is that provided by the state itself. As such, where do *you* think the money should be spent?

Please, do the honourable thing and reject these proposals as soon as possible. They are expensive, unworkable, and unnecessary.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 17th, 2009 at 6:32 and is filed under home education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.