Have you written to your mp yet? If not, you can use this site, Write to them, it will tell you who your MP is and give you a nice little form to do it. There are template letters on the facebook group, though I would always suggest, as write to them do, that you adjust it for yourself. It does then keep track of which MPs are being mailed, and it’s a rather small number of mails they receive each year, so I think it does make a difference mailing them. They don’t get that much contact, so what contact they do get I suspect they will take notice of. (I’ve obviously no idea how many ppl contact their MPs direct via letter or email but I shouldn’t imagine it’s hugely higher than the number via that website – it gives some idea of what is going on.)
I’ve written to my MP, Chris McCafferty, and received a response saying she is writing to the Minister for me. I’ve also written to Michael Gove, Shadow DCSF and received an extremely prompt response saying “I sympathise with your position and we’re looking to see what we can do
to support parents’ rights”. Coo, so for once I’m feeling Conservative. I’ve written to the LibDems Education spokesperson, but they don’t appear to feel that a prompt response is necessary 🙁
I’m making a little list of which MPs we’ve contacted and how they’ve responded, please feel free to add notes in the comments so that I can keep track. There’s a thread on the facebook group as well.
I’m pondering another letter this morning, criticising the LA half of the review. You can read it here and it is worth a perusal. I was interested by Q4
Would you be willing to take part in the next phase of the research in February/March (including in-depth interviews with key personnel in your organisation)?
as I don’t recall a similar option being offered to home educators?
I was also somewhat bemused by some of the other questions. For example, under the data and tracking section:
Q9 How many children are currently home educated in your local authority of primary age (Registered with LA)
Q10 How many children are currently home educated in your local authority of primary age (Non-registered with LA)
Doesn’t Q10 ask – how many children don’t you know about? Or is it just me? I particularly like that it then goes on to ask if these numbers are accurate or estimates! Who wrote this questionnaire – did they think it through at all???
Q27 is a doozy.
Do you think that you will be better able to track children in your area in the near future? e.g. planned changes to your own systems, ContactPoint, other system improvements?
ContactPoint, as I have remarked before on several occasions, IRL, if not here, will instantly out all home educated/ missing in education children. It has a field for educational establishment/ status, and if there is no school in it, guess what, you’re outed. It intrigues me that all this reviewing is going on so near to the ContactPoint launch (which has of course been and gone several times already. I’m not sure how close they are to launching now, and I’m rather out of the loop). Playing devil’s advocate, but surely they would be best off focussing on ContactPoint, which was originally designed to highlight the type of hidden families they are worrying about now, as well as tracking children with unusual patterns of service usage. Not that it’s going to work, parents can just take children to AE out of area and give a false name, and the records won’t match up, so there will be nothing to track. Databases are only as good as the input, garbage in, garbage out.
I don’t have a massive problem with the concept of ContactPoint, which probably makes me highly unusual in our home ed community. I do think that we could do with better tools (not that I’m convinced ContactPoint in its current incarnation will be one of those tools) to protect the Victoria Climbies of this world, but more than that, we could just do with social services departments that are up to the job, with enough well trained workers who understand the law that they are supposed to enforce. There will always be ppl who abuse children, and some of them will not be caught until it is too late – think about that guy in Austria who built the house in his cellar. How was anyone going to head him off in time? But focussing on and harassing a minority group for no apparent reason (there is no data that we know supporting the idea that home educated children are more at risk from abuse) won’t get anyone anywhere.
I don’t think a counter review is the way to go though. We shouldn’t be trying to take them on on their own ground, we aren’t going to win there. We need to create our own ground, and I think we should be doing that by countering the insinuations and false rumours, by publicising the good research that has been done already, by encouraging, taking part in and maybe even funding our own research into home education in all its forms. We need to encourage the Paula Rothermels and Alan Thomas’ of this world, and we could do with our very own John Holt or John Taylor Gatto. Any volunteers?
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