Starting to put some of my comments made on media discussing registration of home educators here, this is for those who have swallowed The Badman Report whole.

Graham Badman's report was thoroughly debunked by far sharper minds than his including Graham Stuart in the select committee inquiry into the report.

 Q13 Mr. Stuart: In any case in which a child is known to be on a child protection plan, will it, by necessity, mean that that child is known to the local authorities?

Graham Badman: Yes.

 Q14 Mr. Stuart: So, if the numbers that were formally known about were approximately double your best estimate, it would take us back to almost precisely where we started, at the average of the population as a whole.

Graham Badman: I'm sorry, I don't understand the question.

 "Q15 Mr. Stuart: Well, if there are twice as many children in home education than are formally known about, which by definition includes all those for whom there is a child protection plan, it would suggest that, roughly speaking, you were back to 0.2% of the home-educated population having a child protection plan, which would put them in line with the national average.

Graham Badman: I think that it propels the figures the other way. It would actually make the proportion higher, because they are already included in the overall population and in the subset of the population, which would mean that the percentage will be fractionally higher. It works the other way."

Worrying that he was a maths teacher in a previous life.

"AFTER the report had been issued and roundly criticized by home educators, Badman conducted a third survey of LEAs to try to get a larger sample size.  Badman claimed that this third sample was representative, but Stafford argues that it in fact was biased toward urban areas.  Stafford here pulls out all the stops, for his concern is not so much about what all this means for home education but that government policy is being made on such flimsy grounds."

I could produce many many other links, the report was trying to produce policy based evidence and used quotes in a very misleading and dishonest way.

This is the submission by the church of england.

"24 Our submission was, naturally, designed to be read as a whole, but following the publication of Graham Badman's report, officers in the Education Division were disappointed with the impression left by the selective use of our submission.

25 We are concerned that the quotation from our submission used in the report appeared to have been selected to support the terms of reference of the review, which, whilst acknowledging that parents have a well-established right to educate their children at home and indicating that the Government had no plans to change that position, appeared overly concerned with the possibility of home educating being a cover for abuse, barriers to safeguarding responsibilities and possible changes to the regime of monitoring and support of LAs.

26 In fact, we specifically stated that in making prevention of abuse under the cover of home education the main reason for the Review has the effect of tarnishing the reputation of the many parents who choose to home education their children from the best of motives."

Even the police are not allowed to force a child to see them alone, social workers are only allowed to with evidence of harm.  To allow council workers with no training in either home education or child welfare to have the same power would be very dangerous and open to abuse. 

There is nothing in the law around home education that stops social services doing their job, a register would not help when social services already know that the child exists and have been warned about it and do not act on the information.

PLANS FOR MONITORING AND REGISTRATION OF HOME EDUCATORS SCRAPPED DUE TO EXTREMELY LOW INCIDENCE OF ABUSE.

And parliament promise no more vexatious consultations or reviews to interfere with the exemplary education being provided by home educators.

I have been lost for words these last few days with the Ofsted and Badman revelations, truly gobsmacked and discombobulated.

So I have been mulling it over while appreciating the work of other bloggers to express our outrage and rejection of the foolishness of our so called masters.

Then a facebook conversation with the lovely Mieke sparked a memory and I thought what do we really want.

Remember that imaginary headline, well here is another one!

When the doubts rise up, when the darkness closes in, when it all seems hopeless, keep this thought close to your heart, visualise the print, imagine the discussions on the lists, feel the joy.  Make it as real in your mind as you possible can.  Let it stop those impulses that suggest compromise, in order to salvage something, in their tracks, we have done nothing wrong, the above headline is the only justifiable and reasonable one.

Home Educators have the Association of Directors of Children's Services to thank for their misery

They are the  people who want to own home educating family’s lives, and probably every other family’s but they are keeping quiet about that for now.

These people would feel much better if we would just behave as pawns in their much more important lives and careers.

They are mistaken if they think that access to our homes and children would really help as it is their own incompetence that has caused them trouble, that and a consistent underfunding and lack of respect for real expertise.

Funnily enough ADCS agree with all the intrusions and assaults on our civil liberties suggested in the consultation, this is probably because they had a large hand in writing the questions.

The major players who have so far come to light seem to be

I want my knighthood and to impose my prejudices on you all Graham Badman

Cover my own back Peter Traves

Snotogram ‘two words’ Maggie Atkinson

but I am sure we have not uncovered all the dirt yet.

We could of course write to these people as part of our campaign to defend ourselves from their attacks.

This response has been compiled on behalf of ADCS by Becky Godar, ADCS Press and Policy Officer. Any queries regarding this response should be addressed in the first instance to Rob Belli, Administrative Officer, ADCS (e) robert.belli@adcs.org.uk.



I am not religious but some sayings from the religion I was brought up in come to mind.

And why do you take note of the grain of dust in your brother's eye, ... the splinter in your brother's eye, and not notice the beam which is in your own eye?

Let he who is without sin throw the first stone.

Well the stone has been well and truly thrown and it would seem that it has been thrown because of the splinter in their eye and the sins on their conscience.

I used to have some sympathy with social workers, it cannot be an easy job, it must often be harrowing for people with humanity and integrity. It cannot be easy to strike the right balance at all times and it must be terrible to be vilified in the press for making a mistake especially when it costs a child their life. The Association of Directors of Children’s Services do not seem to worry about little things like truth, integrity, humanity or justice though. In their campaign to divert negative attention away from the mistakes of their members it doesn’t seem to matter to them who they slur. Well maybe that is not quite true; they probably want access to the home and the child alone of every family in the country, but they know that campaigning for that would create an outcry. So as a misunderstood minority, often verbally abused by school going families for our implied criticism of their choices, suspected of all sorts of unsavoury ulterior motives for our choice we stand as the first barrier to the takeover of all families’ lives.

We cannot afford to give in, those terrible mistakes these people make could be imported into our lives if we do, and for no good purpose. We do not know what prejudice or error on their part might put our family at risk; please do not be complacent and assume it will not happen to you.

We must fight this in every possible way, and if we cannot persuade we must just say NO!

A Subhuman species

"What concerns me even more than our MPs ripping us off through their expenses (and goodness knows what other scams), is the way they seem to think that we ordinary people are some sort of subhuman species that need to be managed in much the same way as pets or zoo animals."

read the rest here