Steve Wood wrote, under the subject line of <<Re: [canals-list] Re: Re: Re: Re: proposed new posting rule >>:
"there may be a down side regular inspections to make sure you are not breaking the law you will have to prove that your children are being educated spot inspections" Actually, there is no law - not at present anyway - regarding having to 'prove' children are being educated (though the current central government is working hard on it as they appear to have a pathological dislike of people not being controlled/brainwashed by them, and/or indoctrinated into their views on what comprises efficient education/propagandising, from ever earlier ages.) The Education Act, as amended, only states that: (sic) 'parents are responsible for ensuring that their children are educated according to their age, ability and aptitude'. In theory, this means that the local education authorities should only ever investigate when there is proper evidence that this is not happening, albeit most LEA will use various and frequently nefarious, schemes to bypass this Act and involve police, doctors, social workers and family courts (for those who have never come across them, family courts are non-reportable, held in secret, and the usual representations on behalf of the 'accused', as would be available to all of us in open court - such as barristers, etc. - are banned and normal rules of evidence suspended so that an opinion of what 'might' happen 'if X happened in a month with the letter 'r' in it, is treated with the same weight as a photograph of a child's badly bruised body) in order to remove parental control from parents, where it naturally resides, to social services. As we 'home educated' our son from the age of 12 until he was 16, and as somebody who was deeply involved in the HE movement in the mid 90's and early 00's, I came across all of the above - and more - from time to time. My son, by the way, is soon to go up to uni, being fully funded by the company he works for and also paid by them, to continue his studies and Modern Apprenticeship in Electrical and Electronic Engineering; most of his school contemporaries appear to be unemployed, and/or unemployable, after completing their government approved schooling. The 'powers that be' usually throw child victims of abuse such as Victoria Climbé, into the pot in their defence, but Victoria was never home educated at any time (just not attending the school where she was registered as a pupil in her later months) and *all* of the responsible authorities, i.e. her teachers, social workers, doctors, police and LEA, were aware of the abuse but did nothing to prevent her death. How vilifying HE families (none of whom have ever been proven in UK courts to be abusing the children in their care - albeit this is not to say that, out of roughly 25-30,000 children currently being Home Educated in the UK, some form of hidden abuse is *not* occurring) and not concentrating on improving the numbers - and effectiveness - of those presently responsible for the prevention of child abuse, will improve protection for vulnerable children remains to be seen. I have read that, in the 30's, 40's and 50's, there used to be Inspectors employed by local authorities to check that children on nb were being educated; the subsequent Education Acts overtook these regulations and I also suspect, from my reading of contemporary accounts, that the inspections were probably more to do with making certain that the rules concerning nb families' living accommodation were not being broken through overcrowding. I certainly recollect once reading that, when the immediate location of an Inspector was known to the boating community, children on nb passing through were frequently 'farmed out' to other families, with spare space, in order that the 'maximum occupation' rules, as laid down by the responsible parish authority (under authority of parliament) and the employing company, were not seen to be broken. I appreciate this is an aside from the main discussion (which, of itself, looks to be a *long* way away from the original subject anyway) but I feel the need to clarify the point. For more information on the present state of affairs I am more than certain that a quick Googling of 'Home Education' will bring forth a plethora of relevant websites - and also provide for a minimum of a good week's internet research into how it works legally ... and how it actually works in practice .. lol! Should anybody want to discuss Home Educating of their children in any detail then please feel free to drop me an email. Sending it 'off-list', to the address I'm using here, is probably best if it is at all personal - and all confidences will naturally remain so. I'll certainly be around full-time until January 5th (because of various hospital appointments) and then likely to be unavailable until sometime after the 14th - if all goes well, and to plan (which I, for one, certainly hope it will do ..LOL..) Trevor [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
