HEdline
Campaigning for home education rights in Brighton & Hove
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Home Education Review
Posted by hedline
at 10:45 AM on January 25, 2009
|
The government has announced a review of home
education in England. Here is the link to their press release:
This comes hard on the heels of a full consultation
on home
education guidelines in 2007and a further consultation in 2008 on the duty
to identify children
missing education. Despite hundreds of home educators and HE groups
responding to both these consultations, the government seems determined to
listen to a few voices who are still demanding that local authorities be given
extra powers to monitor, inspect and assess home educating
families.
The review is being conducted by Graham Badman of
Kent County Council. He is expected to make his recommendations in May. We
have heard from a Labour MP that there will then be another
full 12 week consultation on any changes Mr Badman recommends.
The current review has begun by two questionnaires
being issued. One is for the public and you can find it at:
The other is for local authorities and it is
at:
The one for local authorities asks many more
questions, many of which assume that local authorities already have much more
intrusive powers than they actually do in law. HEdline (our local HE campaign
group) will be writing to Brighton & Hove City Council to ask for a copy of
their response).
What you can do
1. Answer the public
questionnaire. It is an online questionnaire only. If you register on the
DCSF consultation website, you can save your answers on the form, and come back
to it later, if you don't have time to answer all the questions in one go.
Don't forget to copy your answers into a separate document, so you've got your
own copy of it after you've sent it.
Many of the questions are based on an underlying
assumption that home education automatically puts children at risk.
Nevertheless, this seems to be our only official chance to influence the course
of the review. Even if you don't accept some of the questions and can't answer
yes or no, you can still send in your views using the comments boxes. The
deadline is 20th February - only 4 weeks away.
2. Ask your friends and family to respond to the
questionnaire. Children can fill it in if they want to.
3. If you are on Facebook, join the group Stop the UK Government Stigmatising Home
Educators! where home educators are getting together to share ideas
and information about how to resist this new attach on our
freedoms.
4. Write to your MP, protesting at the way we are
being repeatedly asked to justify our legal choices about our children's
education, the short timescale for responses to the questionnaire, and the way
an exclusively online survey excludes many people who are directly affected and
should have a say. There are sample letters at the Facebook group.
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