Write to your Prospective Parliamentary Candidates

Ian Appleby has composed an excellent letter to send to prospective parliamentary candidates in your area.

Dear $candidate

I am a home educating parent in Hebden Bridge. Whilst I am not exactly a single issue voter, the ability to ensure my children’s wellbeing and learning in the way best suited to their age, aptitude and ability is obviously of great importance to me, and will be a major factor in how I decide to vote. Can I ask where you stand on home education?
In particular, what is your opinion of the Badman Review, and Clause 26 and Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill now awaiting further scrutiny in the House of Lords? Do you in fact believe that new legislation in one form or another is necessary? If so, what form do you think that should take, and what are your grounds for believing so?
There is a thriving home education community in the Calder Valley, and I know many people will be interested in your reply. I intend to ask the same question to all the candidates, and I would like to make all the responses public on my blog: http://ianappleby.net/blog
I look forward to hearing from you.


Read more here.

How much does every child matter?

In collaboration with Elaine Kirk.


The DCSF claim to care so much about the rights of home educated children that they are prepared to spend millions in an attempt to prevent them from coming to harm; on a programme of visiting, interviewing them alone to make sure their voice is heard (of course not if they say they don’t want any of this, then their parents must be manipulating them) and ensuring that their education is state approved.  So children must matter a lot to this government, yes?

However there are some anomalies.

Some you may breathe a sigh of relief about these, the government have left some element of society free for its citizens to use their judgement and make up their own mind.

Take childcare:

'You do not have to register with us in the following cases.

1	If you care for children who are aged eight and over.
2	If you provide care where a child does not stay with you for more than two hours a day, even if your childcare service is open for longer than two hours.
3	If you only care for a child or children aged under eight who you are related to. A relative means a grandparent, aunt, uncle, brother or sister of a child (or half-brother or sister) or someone you are related to through marriage or civil partnership.
4	If you care for children aged under eight on domestic premises as a childminder without receiving any payment or reward for your services. Domestic premises can be your own home or someone else’s home.
5	If you are a foster carer for the children.
6	If you provide care for children in their own home. This includes caring for children of up to two sets of parents completely or mainly in one or both sets of parents’ homes. However, you need to register as a childminder if you look after the children of three sets of parents in any or all of the parents’ homes.

And there are many more instances of lack of a need to register to look after OTHER PEOPLE’S children.

So parents feeling the need to go back to work will be able to pick an unregistered childminder and the child may well be making their own way between the school and the childminder’s home.  

In fact there is no onus on working parents of 8+ to use childcare at all, so many children could be spending hours in their own homes or out and about with no supervision at all.

And where I live nearly all secondary school children walk three miles there and back to one or other of the two secondary schools.  Now thank goodness that parents are still allowed to let their children do this, apart from the fresh air and exercise they experience self sufficiency, independence and social time as they mostly but not always travel in groups  They must be exposed to many unchecked adults though.  

And you can be responsible for the care of the children of two families with no registration at all, yet once children reach compulsory education age the government want to insist that PARENTS have to be registered to be with their own children between the times 9am and 3pm!

But even schools are not yet as tightly wrapped up in safeguarding regulation as you might think.

[B]  The VBS: when schools and FE colleges don’t need to CRB-check

[11]  DCSF’s regular weekly email to all Local Authorities in England dated 17 December 2009 included a reminder, co-ordinated between DCSF, Ofsted, the TDA and the CRB, about when schools and FE colleges don’t need to do CRB checks (which also in part refers to the new Scheme), at: www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/news-and-communications/la-weekly-email/laemail17december2009/#ms1143 .

This message makes clear that:

• there is no requirement for CRB checks on pre-2002 recruits
• there is no requirement for repeat CRB checks on a school or FE college’s own existing staff
• schools and FE colleges don’t have to see CRB checks on trainee teachers
• there is no reason now to do 'interim' CRB checks on pre-2002 recruits (or re-check post-2002 recruits), pending the introduction of the VBS. Schools and FE colleges should wait until the Government recommends those staff become ISA-registered, as part of the managed roll out of the scheme, from 2011 onwards.
Similarly, schools and FE colleges should not require CRB checks on volunteers, such as those from business who come to help with work-related learning, unless they are new, and their volunteering is regular and involves contact with children; or in the case of existing volunteers, if the school or FE college has cause for concern.

But maybe these are just anomalies and as the government care so much about children they must make sure that they are very safe in their own schools yes?  Ok a bit of sarcasm slipped through there, we all know about bullying by staff and children and the mismanagement or outright neglect of children with special needs.  In fact this endemic mismanagement and misunderstanding of children with special needs is precisely how we began our joyous and rewarding journey into the home educating lifestyle.  But a group of children that I had not considered before has recently been brought to my notice.  Children with diabetes; how are their needs met in school?

I have found the following document enlightening and so might you, here is a quote!

"Ella was four when she was diagnosed and at an otherwise excellent primary school. However we were told that school would not get involved with blood tests or injections and on one occasion Ella became so hypoglycaemic that she started to fall unconscious and her head fell onto the desk. The teacher wouldn’t do anything to help Ella, as she was not willing to use Ella’s blood test monitor. If one of my friends had not been in the classroom by sheer chance and taken it upon herself to work out how to test Ella, I dread to think what would have happened.
Even after this happened and with Ella suffering from frequent debilitating hypos, school would not get involved so I had to go into school every lunchtime to check on Ella and inject her if necessary. I also never went more than fifteen minutes drive from the school at any time Ella was in their care in case I was needed"

So if government don’t always need crb/registration/oversight of strangers looking after children and if they allow diabetic children to be at severe risk in state schools, why do they suggest that the monitoring and licensing of many perfectly well functioning families is essential and worthwhile?  Graham Badman even used the fallacy if it saves just one child in front of the Children Schools and Families Bill Committee to explain their insistence.  But what of these diabetic children for whom they actually are responsible, what is their thinking in letting these situations continue?  Surely the money should go first to prevent the awful neglect and endangering of diabetic children in schools and others like them. 

Are they honest when they claim that controlling home educators for the sake of the child is essential, or could they have some other agenda? 

What do you think?

Letters to Lords and Ladies

We have in the last two days sent 58 emails and 124 letters to the Lords.


Here is the template letter:


The Lord xxxxxx

House of Lords

London

SW1A  0PW

Dear Lord xxxxxx

We are writing to ask you to oppose Sections 26 and 27 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill.  We are a home educating family and this Bill replaces our right to educate ‘otherwise’ with a licensing scheme and in so doing so removes our right to privacy and the presumption of innocence.

The case for opposing these clauses of the Bill is as follows:

1.   The review on which these Sections are based was poorly conducted and as a consequence the (Badman) Report is, in our opinion, the most flawed evidential review of recent times.  Fair and reasonable legislation cannot emerge from such poor quality work. 

There are numerous examples of the shortcomings of the Report, for example, the Church of England complained of their evidence being selectively quoted and home educators using the Freedom of Information Act revealed such fundamental flaws in the statistics used in the Report that the author had to conduct a survey of Local Authorities AFTER the Report had been published when called to appear before the CSF Select Committee.  This further data has also been debunked by home educators. 

2.   The policy delivers very poor value for money as there is no problem to be solved and its recommendations will divert scarce resources from child protection services.

Research by home educators using the Freedom of Information Act has found that abuse in home educating families is very low compared to the rest of the population.  Most abuse happens before the child is of compulsory education age, therefore, this intrusion into the lives of home educators is neither warranted by the degree of abuse nor will it address the real problem.  Social Services are overstretched and in many areas cannot recruit enough staff.  This will divert money away from such services and will harm more children than it could ever help by removing their sense of security in their own home.  There are already measures and laws in place to protect and investigate where there is a suspicion that children are at risk of harm or that insufficient education is taking place.  The Department of Children Schools and Families estimate that this will cost between £10 and £21 million, however, this is likely to be a serious underestimate as the number of home educating families is not known.

3.   If enacted the policy will seriously damage the education of home educated children.

In order to learn effectively some children need the security and confidence boost that only home education can provide.  It is inevitable that to some extent monitoring will change the emphasis from the child’s educational needs to satisfying the local authority officer and this cannot be in the child’s best interests.  Our own child was very averse to anything that looked like school work on being de-registered, yet by choosing her own learning and aided and resourced by us she is reading at exactly the same age as her schooled siblings with none of the trauma or feeling of being inadequate that they suffered.  Many children who are on the autistic spectrum will be very disturbed by a stranger forcing (and that is what it will happen as the majority of people who responded to the consultation were extremely opposed to the recommendations for registration and monitoring) their way into their home and possibly demanding to see them without a parent present.  Many children on and off the spectrum do not like being forced to talk to strangers (especially if they have the power to issue a School Attendance Order) and to insist that they do so without the reassurance and sometimes memory aid that parents can provide will, paradoxically, be abusive.  As already mentioned, if actual abuse is suspected then legal measures already exist to investigate.

4.   The concept of education contained in the Bill is archaic and unworkable. 

It is the experience of parents who home educate that local authority officers often do not really understand the philosophies and approaches used by home educators.  Schedule 1 of the Bill itself shows a remarkable lack of understanding, for instance, autonomous educators cannot by definition provide the yearly plan which it demands.  When you follow the child’s interests as autonomous educators you do not know what your child will be learning from one day to another, so to plan a year in advance is meaningless.  Although it may be difficult to believe, such informal learning has been shown to be astonishingly effective by the work of Alan Thomas of the Institute of Education.

5.   The Bill is a disproportionate response to a perceived problem, which the best available evidence suggests does not exist.

Graham Badman, who conducted the Review, was not able to produce any convincing evidence that the home educating population is any more at risk of abuse than any other section of the population.  In fact, his Review provoked home educators to collate the data for themselves which demonstrated conclusively that home educated children are at significantly LESS risk of abuse.  The measures in the Bill are draconian and have a ‘tilting at windmills’ quality rather addressing a real problem.

6.   It damages the relationship between the local authority and home educating parents and makes the relationship one of distrust and hostility.

Whilst many home educators may be polite towards local authority officers entering their home, they will be outraged and incensed at what is effectively forced entry and a gross invasion of privacy.  This is no basis on which to build the good relationship the government so often stresses that it wants with home educators. 

Indeed, the Review process has already harmed home educator’s relationships with local authorities.  Launching the Review with the claim – absolutely without evidence – that home education could be used as a cover for abuse, domestic servitude and forced marriage set the tone of this exercise and relationships between home educators and local authorities have been damaged and undermined with many home educators withdrawing from any discourse with their local authority.  Only if the clauses are not enacted is there any realistic chance that relationships between local authorities and home educating parents can be re-built.

7.   The Bill purports to implement a registration scheme, but is not as Schedule 1 means that non-registration is not a viable option.

Although registration is not formally compulsory under the Bill, non-registration is not a feasible course of action as local authorities are required by Schedule 1 to issue a School Attendance Order to any unregistered home educated child without any consideration of the quality of education being provided.  This in no way shows any concern for the well-being of the child, and shows that for home educated children ‘every child matters’ is empty rhetoric. 

8.   The Bill’s proposals are opposed by the majority of home educators.

4497 out of 4833 (93%) respondents to the consultation thought that the proposals did not strike the right balance.  3281 respondents out of 3776 (87%) disagreed with the proposals for registration and monitoring.

9.   Home educated children’s confidence and trust in the state and its institutions will be seriously undermined.

Children’s understanding of the State are shaped not by what it claims to be the case, but by its actions.  If the child experiences the power of the State as unreasonable and disproportionate in intruding into its life with no good reason and with no good arguments to support its actions, then the child will see the State as failing to protect its citizens.  Many home educated children are following the progress of the Review and its recommendations very closely, and it has provided an invaluable learning opportunity, for example, on the work of Parliament and how legislation is enacted, however, it is doing nothing to advance their belief in the fairness of the policymaking process.

If you have any queries about the Review or the Clauses 26 and 27 then please do not hesitate to contact us.  We are looking forward to hearing your views and hopefully confirmation that you will oppose these Clauses of the Bill.

I would also like to draw your attention to the following event hosted by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Home Education where various speakers will explain the problems with Sections 26 and 27 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill:

Lords Briefing Event on Home Education

Committee Room 16, House of Commons

Tuesday, 2^nd March, 6-7pm.  (The room will be available until 7.30pm.)

Yours Sincerely

Professor Bruce Stafford

Maire Stafford






We chose to lobby cross bencher Lords and Ladies and created this spreadsheet of them with email details where available and the proper form of address.  We made it easier for ourselves when there was no email address available by creating mail merge files.  This file contains the name of the Lord to go on the envelope and in the address on the letter in the first column and the name  to go after the Dear in the second column, and we used it to personalise the letter.  This file contains the labels for the envelopes.


We will soon update this spreadsheet which contains details of all the Lords and information on their interests, how likely they are to be helpful and which have been contacted by home educators.


Carlotta also has a letter she has sent to the Lords on her blog here.

Letter to Andy Reed, Problems with the Children, Schools and Families Bill

21^st February 2010

Dear Mr Reed, MP

We are writing to ask you to oppose Sections 26 and 27 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill at its Third Reading.  We appreciate that this would involve you voting against the Bill and that this would not be an easy decision for you to take.  However, the inclusion of Clauses 26 and 27 seriously undermine the benefits of the Bill.  The case for opposing these clauses of the Bill is as follows:

1.   The review on which these Sections are based was poorly conducted and as a consequence the (Badman) Report is, in our opinion, the most flawed evidential review of recent times.  Fair and reasonable legislation cannot emerge from such poor quality work. 

There are numerous examples of the shortcomings of the Report, for example, the Church of England complained of their evidence being selectively quoted and home educators using the Freedom of Information Act revealed such fundamental flaws in the statistics used in the Report that the author had to conduct a survey of Local Authorities AFTER the Report had been published when called to appear before the CSF Select Committee.  This further data has also been debunked by home educators. 

2.   The policy delivers very poor value for money as there is no problem to be solved and its recommendations will divert scarce resources from child protection services.

Research by home educators using the Freedom of Information Act has found that abuse in home educating families is very low compared to the rest of the population.  Most abuse happens before the child is of compulsory education age, therefore, this intrusion into the lives of home educators is neither warranted by the degree of abuse nor will it address the real problem.  Social Services are overstretched and in many areas cannot recruit enough staff.  This will divert money away from such services and will harm more children than it could ever help by removing their sense of security in their own home.  There are already measures and laws in place to protect and investigate where there is a suspicion that children are at risk of harm or that insufficient education is taking place.  The Department of Children Schools and Families estimate that this will cost between £10 to £21 million, however, this is likely to be a serious underestimate as the number of home educating families is not known.

3.   If enacted the policy will seriously damage the education of home educated children.

In order to learn effectively some children need the security and confidence boost that only home education can provide.  It is inevitable that to some extent monitoring will change the emphasis from the child’s educational needs to satisfying the local authority officer and this cannot be in the child’s best interests.  Our own child was very averse to anything that looked like school work on being de-registered, yet by choosing her own learning and aided and resourced by us she is reading at exactly the same age as her schooled siblings with none of the trauma or feeling of being inadequate that they suffered.  Many children who are on the autistic spectrum will be very disturbed by a stranger forcing (and that is what it will happen as the majority of people who responded to the consultation were extremely opposed to the recommendations for registration and monitoring) their way into their home and possibly demanding to see them without a parent present.  Many children on and off the spectrum do not like being forced to talk to strangers (especially if they have the power to issue a School Attendance Order) and to insist that they do so without the reassurance and sometimes memory aid that parents can provide will, paradoxically, be abusive.  As already mentioned, if actual abuse is suspected then legal measures already exist to investigate.

4.   The concept of education contained in the Bill is archaic and unworkable. 

It is the experience of parents who home educate that local authority officers often do not really understand the philosophies and approaches used by home educators.  Schedule 1 of the Bill itself shows a remarkable lack of understanding, for instance, autonomous educators cannot by definition provide the yearly plan which it demands.  When you follow the child’s interests as autonomous educators you do not know what your child will be learning from one day to another, so to plan a year in advance is meaningless.  Although it may be difficult to believe, such informal learning has been shown to be astonishingly effective by the work of Alan Thomas of the Institute of Education.

5.   The Bill is a disproportionate response to a perceived problem, which the best available evidence suggests does not exist.

Graham Badman, who conducted the Review, was not able to produce any convincing evidence that the home educating population is any more at risk of abuse than any other section of the population.  In fact, his Review provoked home educators to collate the data for themselves which demonstrated conclusively that home educated children are at significantly LESS risk of abuse.  The measures in the Bill are draconian and have a ‘tilting at windmills’ quality rather addressing a real problem.

6.   It damages the relationship between the local authority and home educating parents and makes the relationship one of distrust and hostility.

Whilst many home educators may be polite towards local authority officers entering their home, they will be outraged and incensed at what is effectively forced entry and a gross invasion of privacy.  This is no basis on which to build the good relationship the government so often stresses that it wants with home educators. 

Indeed, the Review process has already harmed home educator’s relationships with local authorities.  Launching the Review with the claim – absolutely without evidence – that home education could be used as a cover for abuse, domestic servitude and forced marriage set the tone of this exercise and relationships between home educators and local authorities have been damaged and undermined with many home educators withdrawing from any discourse with their local authority.  Only if the clauses are not enacted is there any realistic chance that relationships between local authorities and home educating parents can be re-built.

7.   The Bill purports to implement a registration scheme, but is not as Schedule 1 means that non-registration is not a viable option.

Although registration is not formally compulsory under the Bill, non-registration is not a feasible course of action as local authorities are required by Schedule 1 to issue a School Attendance Order to any unregistered home educated child without any consideration of the quality of education being provided.  This in no way shows any concern for the well-being of the child, and shows that for home educated children ‘every child matters’ is empty rhetoric. 

8.   The Bill’s proposals are opposed by the majority of home educators.

4497 out of 4833 (93%) respondents to the consultation thought that the proposals did not strike the right balance.  3281 respondents out of 3776 (87%) disagreed to the proposals for registration and monitoring.

9.   Home educated children’s confidence and trust in the state and its institutions will be seriously undermined.

Children’s understanding of the State are shaped not by what it claims to be the case, but by its actions.  If the child experiences the power of the State as unreasonable and disproportionate in intruding into its life with no good reason and with no good arguments to support its actions, then the child will see the State as failing to protect its citizens.  Many home educated children are following the progress of the Review and its recommendations very closely, and it has provided an invaluable learning opportunity, for example, on the work of Parliament and how legislation is enacted, however, it is doing nothing to advance their belief in the fairness of the policymaking process.

If you have any queries about the Review or the Clauses 26 and 27 then please do not hesitate to contact us.  We are looking forward to hearing your views and hopefully confirmation that you will oppose these Clauses of the Bill.

Yours Sincerely

Professor Bruce Stafford

Maire Stafford

What Next?

The third reading of CSF Bill in the Commons will be on 23rd Feb.  (Hansard on the committee stage.)

If the election is to be on 6^th May then it will be called on March 29^th and parliament will go into recess on April 12^th according to this article on Politics.co.uk.

But what about the Easter recess; they had 18 days last year and this year Easter Sunday falls on April 4^th.  Will they break up some time before this or on the Friday just before?  At the very least the Easter Break must surely take away another five working days from the time they have left, could it be more?

I have heard that the Lords have no time for a first reading of the bill until 9^th March (can’t remember where, one of the lists or another blog) so even if they start on the 10^th that gives it just over five weeks to progress though the first two readings followed by the committee stage, the report stage and the third reading.  Assuming here that the process is similar to that in the Commons.  Then there is consideration of the amendments and hopefully the Lords won’t be as ineffectual and as disabled by party bullying as the Commons has disgracefully been, so there will be some amendments.  Then Royal assent, no idea how long that takes.

Five weeks seems far too long to me so I do think we really all do need to write to the Lords, some people are making sterling efforts already and there is a list of Lords with some information about their interests here.  This can be amended so please add any information you find.

Then lobbying of MPs is in order, anyone who hasn't sent their MP this document might want to do it now and the AHED submission to the Scrutiny Committee is very clear.

There is talk also of the APPG for Home Education hosting an event for home educators to meet Lords and explain the problems with the bill, some speakers have been mentioned, I remember Imran and Betsy, their marvellous submission to the scrutiny committee is here. 

You can read all the submissions here.  

We still need to make more noise!

Timeline	Children Schools and Families Bill
Date	Event
23rd Feb	Third reading: Commons
10th March	Earliest date for first reading in Lords, second reading, committee stage, report stage and third reading to follow.
29th March	Election called
4th April	Easter Sunday: Possible recess
12th April	Parliament dissolved
6th May	General and Local Elections

Update:  There are now rumours that the Election may be brought forward to April 15th, which would mean that the time for moving the bill through the Lords would be reduced to less than two weeks with Parliament dissolved round about the 22nd March.

Memorandum submitted by AHEd: Children Schools and Families Bill.

AHEd calls for the withdrawal of sections 26 (Schedule One) and 27 of the
CSF Bill currently under scrutiny.

1. Civil Liberties:

The issues addressed in the Children Schools and Families Bill, sections 26
(Schedule One) and section 27 are serious issues of civil liberty. We urge
all MPs to oppose these sections of the bill The grossly disproportionate
proposals hold serious implications for the civil liberties of all parents,
children and families in this country. They have potentially fatal
implications for all parental responsibility for education as enshrined by
s7 of the 1996 Education Act and, furthermore, violate human rights
instruments:

1.1 Articles 8, Human Rights Act 1998

Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home
and his correspondence.

1.2 Protocol 1. ARTICLE 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights

No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any
functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the
State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and
teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical
convictions.

1.3 Article 16 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

1. No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with
his or her privacy, family, or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on
his or her honour and reputation.

2. The child has the right to the protection of the law against such
interference or attacks.

1.4 The proposals of sections 26 and 27 represent attempts to remove a
fundamental freedom and make it into the provisional gift of government.

1.5 By long tradition and common sense, it is parents and families who
safeguard children, as is their legal and moral duty. In general citizens
have benefited from an assumption of innocence and families are trusted to
care for their children without routine oversight by the state.

2. Regulation:

Rule by regulation represents arbitrary authority and interference that
should not be imposed upon the people.

2.1 Sections 26 and 27 allow for the making of regulations relating to the
registration and monitoring of home education provisions in England and
Wales. These sections ask parliament to agree to a skeleton provision for
the regulation and monitoring of a section of the electorate, the content of
which regulation parliament does not know.

2.2 Parliament is asked to grant power to vary regulation without rigorous
parliamentary scrutiny.

3. Registration:

Registration is permission, since it can be withheld; the recommendations
specifically intend it to be withheld where education proposals do not meet
with prior state approval.

3.1 The proposed registration scheme is about complying with a licensing
scheme in order to gain permission to carry out parental responsibilities.
Education is a parental responsibility. Families who choose to educate their
own children outside the state school system are not required to register
their decision with the local authority as they do not require LA services.
Local authorities are responsible to provide school places for those
children whose parents require a place for them - not to inform themselves
of the education provision of all children

4. Monitoring Education and Welfare:

The proposals are disproportionate and unnecessary. The current system
allows for parental choice and responsibility which is balanced with strong
local authority powers where there is an appearance of failure or risk. This
is proportionate and effective where properly enacted. In cases of dispute,
courts can decide if a suitable and efficient education is in place. These
terms have been defined in case law.

4.1 Some LAs do not believe the current system is strong enough. Mr Badman
told the scrutiny committee that LAs have been frustrated at not being able
to do the job they "think" they should do. The position is that current
legislation IS strong enough but it does NOT provide for the LAs to do the
job their preferences and prejudices cause them to THINK they should do.
Many LAs find it hard to accept that home education is a private issue not a
public issue - unless and until a parental failure to comply with their
duties occurs, which does not require routine monitoring, just as other
private family provision does not.

4.2 It is an attack against families to try to replace the current balance
with intrusive family interventions by attempting to generate a false
dichotomy between "rights" of parents and "rights" of children, saying that
the government must routinely intervene between the two to "balance" these
rights. This is an argument for state intervention, control and division of
the family.

4.3 In exhaustive and repeated consultations over the past five years all
results have favoured supporting existing freedoms unchanged and to ask
local authorities to abide by existing law. DCSF are now attempting to
detract from the overwhelming vote against their proposals, denying many
home educators a voice by labelling them "part of a campaign".

4.4 The underlying issue is that local authorities have failed to understand
their duties. LAs believe that they must ensure the welfare, education, and
"Every Child Matters" (ECM) outcomes of every child in their area; but do
not have the legal powers to do so. They do not have the power because they
do not have these duties. Parents are responsible to ensure the welfare and
education of their own children. ECM outcomes are a guide in the provision
of public services to children. Home Education is not a public service
provided to children.

4.5 Home educated children and their families are subject to the same laws
as every other family. These laws already provide for Local Authority
intervention where there is evidence of concerns for the education or
welfare of a child. Routine checking and monitoring of all home educating
parents and children would undermine fundamental civil liberties, contravene
the Human Rights Act and send the very divisive and dangerous message to
children, that their parents are not to be trusted and that strangers from
the LA over-ride parental authority.

4.6 Routine checking and monitoring of all home educating families would be
unnecessarily costly. This is particularly controversial at a time when
there are limited resources available for Children's Services, which should
be properly directed towards genuine need. Therefore, the government should
trust parents to do a good job and measures for intervention should be on
the basis of reasonable concern only as currently provided for.

4.7 After extensive consultation, the DCSF did produce guidelines to local
authorities on elective home education in 2007. The guidelines have not
satisfied home educators or local authorities because of inconsistencies
where the department has tried to support the assertion that local
authorities are responsible to ensure the educational provision and welfare
of all children in their area. The assertion angers parents, who are
responsible for their own children and should be left alone to do their job
with the confidence of their government. The assertion pressurises local
authority officials to carry out duties for which they do not have any
corresponding legal powers with the intention of carrying out intervention
in families to prescribe, legislate and inspect all educational provision
and ensure its compliance with state requirements regardless of logic, need,
benefit, or resource implications

4.8 Families should not be subjected to a system of routine surveillance to
ascertain their innocence, or to investigate ungrounded fears about families
who simply choose not to receive Local Authority services. Such a policy
would cause vastly more harm that it could ever hope to prevent.

5. Summary:

AHEd members call for the removal of sections 26 (Schedule One) and 27 from
the CSF Bill. Current law as it relates to elective home education already
provides for:

parental responsibility

freedom of conscience

the presumption of innocence

promotes the best interest of the child

requires education suitable for the child

provides for local authority action where there is an appearance of failure

gives access to due process in the case of dispute

Please see our Parents' Declaration:
<http://ahed.pbworks.com/ParentsDeclaration>
http://ahed.pbworks.com/ParentsDeclaration

AHEd statement

We declare that:

We refuse to cooperate with any recommendations made or any actions taken by
any government unless they support our existing freedoms.

Following a history of being sidelined, persecuted and harassed, having had
to resist years of repeated and vexatious consultations designed to
regulate, control or remove our parental options, we will not tolerate any
further persecution or erosion of our freedoms.

There can be no compromise or negotiation between totalitarian intentions
and our agency over our own lives.

We are opposed to registration.

We are opposed to monitoring.

We are opposed to government interventions in how we educate our children in
the home.

We are opposed to compulsory home visits.

We are opposed to compulsory interviews with our children.

We will not co-operate with the oppression of our children.

We demand a presumption of innocence

We want our representatives in parliament to say:

NO to the nationalisation of children

NO to the licensing of parents

NO to any new legislation restricting home education