Select committee criticises plans to monitor home-education

The Select Committee Report is now available here. Pdf version here.

Balls's plans for home education should be scaled back, Sheerman says. Select committee criticises plans to monitor home-educating families as 'too aggressive'. Read it here.

Change urged for home-school plan - Parents who choose to home-school their child should not be forced to register with their local council, a cross-party group of MPs has said. More here...

More parents 'educating children at home' - Growing numbers of parents are shunning state schools to educate their children at home, according to MPs. Here.

The Big Question: Should the parents of home-schooled children be forced to register? - Why are we asking this now? A report by the House of Commons Select Committee covering education, published this morning, is highly critical of the Government's plan to tighten up on regulations governing home education. Read it here.

Badman review blasted by MPs' inquiry - A cross-party inquiry into Graham Badman's controversial review of home education has labelled the government's handling of the issue as an unfortunate episode. More here.

LOCAL NEWS

Home truths for city MP - Parents who choose to teach their children at home say meddling officials need to be taught a lesson. Read more...

Home schooling petition launched - PRO-HOME schooling campaigners have submitted a Parliamentary petition aiming to block legislation designed to give education bosses ‘stronger powers than the police’. Read more...

Parents fury at plan for lessons in home - Mother Jo Coulter, who educates her nine-year-old daughter Stella at home, said:

“I am absolutely horrified at the thought that in the name of child protection, thousands of children would be subjected to this degree of exposure to strangers within their own homes. We are automatically being treated as if we have done something wrong. It is deeply offensive that families like mine should be subjected to this degrading treatment. Why stop at home-educating families? Why not extend these measures throughout the land to cover all homes? After all, schoolchildren only spend around seven hours a day in school. Why are they spending all this money to police home education? There are already systems in place through social services to protect vulnerable children. They are knocking on the wrong door.”
Read more...

Despite all the opposition, some MPs criticise absence of home-school regulation: Parents who teach their children at home should be more closely monitored by local authorities, a group of MPs have said. Read more...

Please don't be surveyed by OFSTEd

Taken from here. ****Please feel free to cross post this message freely to all lists, blogs and social media - especially to local lists within the 15 designated counties.****

It is clear from recent exchanges with OFSTEd as well as their track record, that their recent attempt to try out a dry run of the kind of inspection regime of home educators, that they would like to take on as new work for themselves, would be to the detriment of home educators, and that there is nothing to be gained from assisting OFSTEd in their ambitions over us by supplying them with vital intelligence useful in creating this new role for themselves. As with the government, their interest is clearly predatory upon us, and the exercise assumes a change in the law mandating such inspections, which home educators are currently vigorously fighting to prevent.

Collaborating with this unwanted and illegitimate exercise in any way cannot be in home educator's best interests. It is therefore respectfully suggested to the local home education groups in the 15 designated LEAs, that they decline to meet with OFSTEd, or complete their questionnare, stating their reasons if they wish.

Neil Taylor Moore,
Barbara Stark
Julie Gilbert
Lizelle Denton
Kevin Denton
Louisa Herbs
Gill Kilner
Sarita Goacher
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Background Information:
Ofsted memorandum in response to the Badman consultation :
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmchilsch/memo/elehomed/me16502.htm

Letter to Christine Gilbert, Head of Ofsted, sent by the Badman Review Action Group
http://homeschooler.org.uk/document/letter-christine-gilbert-head-ofsted-badman-review-action-group-sent-21st-november-2009