Indeed I have voted for them in ignorance for years, assuming that they were indeed liberal.

Still that was my misunderstanding. It takes an erosion of our liberty for some of us to understand what liberal really means.

This home education sure teaches us parents a great deal.

Schools are answerable to the tax payer as they receive funds and parents and it is parents who have ultimate legal responsibility. It is for this reason that schools are inspected.

The general concensus of opinion, after the circulation of this letter, is that home educators, their supporters and families, are about as likely to vote Lib Dem as hell freezing over. Certainly I would dissuade anyone I know from voting for them.

It’s a shame as some individual Lib Dem MPs have been found to be supportive and have fully grasped the issues, but it seems the party as a whole is not a friend of home education.

For MPs and other interested parties AHEd (Action for Home Education) has prepared a briefing paper regarding home education, the review, issues and the law as it stands.

http://ahed.pbworks.com/BriefingPaperHEReview

Dear xx

Thank you for your recent letter and attendance at my various surgeries.

You raise a number of questions and I answer below

1) As I have made extremely clear, my primary concern has nothing whatsoever to do with child abuse. I simply think that there needs to be a sensible system of oversight to ensure that all children-those that are being educated in school and those that are being educated at home-have a reasonable quality of education.

2) Discussing what I mean by ‘light touch’, what I mean by this is that any oversight should be as un-intrusive as possible, and should focus simply on ensuring that there is a basic minimum standard of education which is being delivered-rather than seeking to intervene and meddle and impose the government’s own basic educational model by the back door.

3) I certainly think that there needs to be suitable training and guidance for local authority staff so that they strike the right balance between the various objectives which I set out above. There also needs to be proper funding to support those young people who are being home educated when they need other support for example with examinations.

4) I do not think I was conflating/confusing the issue of absence or truanting with EHE. But it is quite possible for there to be different motivations behind parents desire to home educate and decent system of oversight needs to recognise this and ensure that HE is a positive decision and is not simply a negative decision about existing local schools.

5) You ask whether I believe there should be a system of oversight even if there was only one or a small number of children ever found to be suffering from not having a suitable education. Frankly I do not thinking any of us know precisely what quality of home education is that is being received, therefore I do not think that there should be a system of oversight which is capable of taking into account the needs of all children. As I have mentioned on a number of occasions before, we still inspect schools even although there is no evidence that many schools are providing a poor education. However, inspection is usually proportionate to any evidence that there is about legitimate concerns-and this should be clearly the case with home education as well.

6) As far as statistics used on home educated are concerned, if you believe that the existing statistics used by Badman Review are inaccurate or misleading then I would strongly suggest that you write to the Chair of the Department of Children Schools and Families select committee, bringing attention to the statistics that you believe are correct. The chairman of the committee is Barry Sheerman, MP, and you can write to him at the House of Commons, London SW1A0AA

With best wishes

Yours sincerely,
David Laws MP

Lib Dem Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families

Given your interest in Home Education and your efforts to reduce risk of chilren not being provided with an adequate education the followign links might be useful:

http://www.infed.org/biblio/home-education.htm

http://childrenarepeople.blogspot.com/2009/04/comparative-thoughts-about-school-and.html

http://www.home-education.org.uk/research/review.htm

Given the interest you are taking in Home Education the following links might be useful to you.

http://childrenarepeople.blogspot.com/2009/04/comparative-thoughts-about-school-and.html

http://sometimesitspeaceful.blogspot.com/2009/06/review-report.html

http://pjrothermel.com/phd/Home.htm
Research on HE

http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/more-from-guardian.html

http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/view-of-schooling-parent.html

http://childrenarepeople.blogspot.com/2009/05/thoughts-about-state-surveillance-of.html

http://www.infed.org/biblio/home-education.htm

Actually, the only test either of mine (15 and 10) has ever taken was the amateur radio license exam.

Ziggy

Tests are fine for a purpose e.g. driving test, Uni exams to show comptence, A levels possibly to show you have the knowledge to move to your next chosen stage in life, tests to check competency of plumbers, doctors etc

The relentless tests which are supposed to check standards in schools are not testing the teachers skill they are testing the ability of the kids to pass tests. They are of no other use.

We have no tests to check the standards of parents teaching kids to walk or talk, specialists only look at these if something is wrong. Learning is natural, testing can interfere with it and so should be kept to a minimum. Testing should be justified. It need only be done if there is a concern that might be helped by the knowledge gained from assessment e.g. testing eyesight if reading is a problem or if there is a need for the person to prove knowledge e.g. driving test etc.

If those who use schools think testing is crucial then fine, but many of those who HE think that much testing is pointless and damaging.

Ziggy our world is rich with learning opportunities, people love to learn unless they are forced to (then they begin to hate it). Testing is only necessary to aid learning if a coercive system of educaiton is used. In a non-coercive system of learning testing is only needed to show competence to employers etc as described above. In a non-coercive system the learning happens naturaly without the need for measurement to propel it. In fact any attempt at measurement, particularly standardised measurement, would fail to provide a picture of the true depth and breath of the learning.

Ziggy you should meet some HE families to see how it works, it’s very different from school. That’s why lovely as the word Homeschooling sounds we prefer to call it Home Education. Though I personally long for a day when we remember that we learn like we breathe and there is no need to call education anything, it is simply what free people choose to spend their lives doing, it’s an integral part of being human.

This is shocking stuff to experts in education who cannot imagine that people will learn without imposed teaching.