Hm, as I’ve said in his comments, I’m not sure I understand the question. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Who is Lord Lucas, and why should we care what he wants to know?
Well, Lord Lucas has already spoken on behalf of home education, as I blogged a little while ago. I suspect that most, if not all, of his briefing and experience come from EO, and therefore his view of where we are going could be more in line with the EO report as produced by the group of five.
Unfortunately, this may well mean that he doesn’t really understand the current position on home education, and why the majority of the home education community feel that it’s absolutely fine and requires no further changes.
The current position is quite straightforward really.
The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable—
(a)to his age, ability and aptitude, and
(b)to any special educational needs he may have,
either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.
So it’s the parent’s responsibility. It’s the parent’s responsibility to choose a school and send a child to it, or to decide on that otherwise option, which varies probably rather more than the types of school on offer.
And what does the LA have to do with this? Not a lot. They can make informal enquiries of a family to see whether an education is on offer, and if they are not satisfied, then they can go through a procedure, which parents can challenge, to require a child to be sent to school. Most parents manage to satisfy LAs with reports, or meetings, which do not have to be in the home and do not have to include the children.
And if they have welfare concerns?
That’s a separate issue. It’s dealt with by social workers, trained in child protection, and they have different rights of access to the child. In extreme circumstances the police can be involved.
Home educated children are subject to the same systems as any other child in the country when it comes to welfare concerns. That’s how it should be.
Back to that assessment question. How come parents who home educate aren’t subject to the same kind of assessment that teachers and schools go through? It’s quite simple really. Schools are discharging a responsibility to parents, and are accountable to parents who deserve feedback about what schools are doing. If your child attends a private school you’ll get even more accountability and feedback as you are paying them up front, state schools sometimes forget who pays the bills – all taxpayers.
So parents certainly don’t need to be assessed in the way schools are. I think it’s reasonable that LAs make informal enquiries, it’s a good balance to just check that parents are aware of their responsibilities. But that’s as far as it goes. We don’t need assessment, and we won’t stand still for assessment, especially when it’s conducted by ppl who don’t know anything more about education than that which they learned in school. Because let’s face it, we didn’t learn about home education in school, did we?
If you feel like popping over and educating Lord Lucas, please do so. But please also remember that he is nominally on our side, and it’s not really his fault that so far he doesn’t seem to get it.
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