Tag: Stealing your freedom
I have been accused of neglect.
Again. Oh no, it’s not the first time. No, it’s not me personally. It’s worse than that in a way. It’s yet another invidious slight against the home education community. This time at the hands of the TES (times educational supplement) who have as their cover story the article Collateral Damage. Neglect and abuse under…
Won't you think of the children?
There’s a journalist on twitter this afternoon rehashing old ground and proposing that home ed families should submit to monthly visits to ensure that their children are safe and not being abused. Leaving aside the issue of how a quick visit once a month could possibly work, or where the money would be found to…
Politics – Wish List – Electoral Reform
Proportional Representation I must admit I am not convinced by proportional representation, amongst other things I cannot quite see how it could be achieved without breaking the link between MPs and the localities they represent. At the moment, we vote for people, not parties. However, both Labour (Blaenau Gwent, Erith and Thamesmead) and the Conservatives…
I thought I'd seen it all.
This week the submissions to the select committee inquiry have been made public. Many ppl have blogged their shock about some of the contents, or their pleasure in reading some of the reasoned arguments against the Badman review. Ppl have also wondered why the whole thing hasn’t just been thrown out – but I don’t…
The difference between community and state.
“It takes a village to raise a child.” – An African proverb, brought into every day western language by Hillary Clinton. I’ve never read her book (despite it sitting on a bookcase in old house for some years!) so I don’t know what she meant by it, but I know what I think it means.…
What's in a word?
School v education. Homeschool v home education. Different images aren’t they? To me anyway, although mainstream media and politicians in this country for some reason do not seem to see this. Setting aside the implied discourtesy in using a term not in use by the ppl concerned, is this because they don’t want to accept…
People like us.
A very short while ago I rejoined an email group that I was last a member of over 10 years ago. It’s the list that I met Tim on (awww…) and hence Big is known to them as listbabe 🙂 After a suitable pause, I brought up the topic of home education there, hoping that…
Consultation response.
The consultation is available for responses online. My response follows. I was submission 2042, my understanding is that the usual type of number responding to these things is around 300. Wouldn’t it be great if we could get ten times that number? Please, pass it on to your friends, your relatives, your home ed groups…
Dear Mr Ed Balls and the DCSF- No thank you
Inspired by Helen’s letter to Ed Balls from her blog. Dear Mr Balls I will not give up this fight. These are my children, not yours, not the state’s. I will choose with them what they learn, and we will not follow any curriculum determined by remote politicians in Westminster, even though we may appear…
It's hard to know where to start
with the flood of press releases today. We’ve had the government’s full response to the Graham Badman review. We’ve had the announcement of a forthcoming review into the definition of suitable education for home educated children. We’ve seen Graham Badman’s latest attempt at proving that home educated children are more at risk than those in…