Home Ed Bill

Lord Soley has tried again with a bill to register home educators.

Actual debate here:
HE Bill debate

History and FAQs at this blog:

Progress here:
https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/homeeducationdutyoflocalauthorities.html

In the original he wanted registration made compulsory, monitoring by the LA of child's emotional, physical and educational development, allowing LAs access to homes and time alone with the child. Many angry home ed posts/emails/mp visits/blogs later he seems to have toned it down a bit...

http://lordsamendments.parliament.uk/?Session=2017-2019&Id=2000

especially thanks to Lord Lucas and whoever informed him. It now asks for assessment in form of a visit to child's home and an interview with the parent, registration with LA, thankfully no mention of a curriculum (unless lib dems get in perhaps), though all to be debated.

It still seems a good idea to write to MPs to ask for their stance and let them know yours.

The main purposes of the bill seem to be:
* To have a record of all home educators
* To have a way to find those who could end up in unregistered schools
* To protect children who may be at risk of abuse
* To find those children the school has failed and offer help if desired

Arguments against having visits to the home:
* Invasion of privacy, human rights act
* Children (particularly SEN) can be very anxious about having a stranger invade their safe place, let alone be put on the spot for testing and asked all kinds of questions that imply value for certain kinds of learning only.
* Judgement of parenting/education choices within very narrow ranges

Arguments against being made to follow a National Curriculum:
* Lack of opportunity for self directed learning (research, books and arguments for why this is great are here)
* Testing and the anxiety this creates
* Lack of awareness and allowances for an individual pace of development
* Increase in privatisation of education - may see increase in tutoring services if government require certain professionals to sign you off. This will increase inequality with poorer families not having a choice to home educate.

Personally I don't have a problem with being registered if my children are not subject to assessment within a certain kind of education but an alternative to register for statistical data would be a Census. Then more attention could be put on unregistered schools rather than the individuals in HE.

I find it quite insulting that we as parents are treated with so much distrust. Some people drew some great analogies, like being a pet owner means you should be inspected by the RSPCA or being an internet user makes you likely to be part of the dark net. To combat this have a look at some research done in the United States on state control and numbers of home educated children and abuse. The site also has papers on academic achievement and state control. You know if we actually want to talk evidence based policy.