Here we go ...

Well, I suppose it's just a facet of my impeccable timing.

The first time I decide to start a blog about our new, exciting, school-free lives just happens to coincide with the publication of the government's latest attack on home educators. So what should be a happy first post ("Here we are and isn't this all lovely?") is now an angry one.

Graham Badman's report seems a particularly nasty specimen. Draconian recommendations include universal compulsory registration, plus the right of local authority staff to enter homes and to interview children without their parents present.

http://www.freedomforchildrentogrow.org/8318-DCSF-HomeEdReviewBMK.PDF

This is being justified with reference to child welfare 'concerns'. Home educators are being comprehensively and unjustly painted by both this report and the media as potential abusers: the assumption seems to be that we are guilty till proven innocent. Imagine the uproar if they attempted a similar smear campaign with reference to any other minority group: say, homosexuals, BME communities, faith groups. ... I'd like to think we're a sensible enough nation for there to be uproar. But somehow there seems to be a big blindspot with regard to elective home education.

Just as bad are the recommendations relating to monitoring and ensuring provision of a 'suitable education'. Oh, now that's a can of worms - please would someone tell me what a 'suitable education' looks like? Heaven help us all if it has any similarity to the national curriculum. And there are some very ill-informed assumptions about autonomous approaches. Badman appears to believe that autonomously educating parents simply leave their children to their own devices. He cannot have bothered to read any of the literature about being present and interested, about strewing opportunities (for the child to accept or reject), about the very real and well-documented benefits of allowing children to read when they are ready rather than according to an external schedule.

It's not really surprising that the government are acting quickly on a report they commissioned and (I suspect) pretty much wrote prior to the 'consultation'. But the short-sighted model of this research only emphasizes the shortcomings of the way we educate people today. It looks like they're acting on a standard national curriculum model: find the easy solution (if it doesn't have a textbook, just Google it), isolate the scapegoat, build an additional layer of draconian bureaucracy, standardize, standardize, standardize, and never genuinely question your original assumption. Oh, I despair.

Jude x