Home Educators: we're part of your community!

The government wants to give local council officers the right to enter our home and question children alone, just because we home educate.

There is no evidence that home educated children are more at risk than children educated at school.

The new proposals are disproportionate and unnecessary. They infringe our, and our children's, rights.

Please sign the petition at

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/EHEreview/

If you have friends, neighbours, colleagues or customers who educate their children outside the school system, please send a card to your MP to reassure them that

home educated children are not hidden- they are part of your community

[by home educators in Brighton. Please see our other blogposts with the label 'home education' for more information]

Home Education after the recent Badman Report

Hi all

I just wanted to let people know about the changes to Home Education after the Graham Badman Report came out this week and how it compromises the rights of all children in the UK.
Ed Ball wants to go ahead and implement changes immediately... this means we have got very little time to stand up against this.
I have put together the website to be user friendly and specially aimed at anyone that has missed the report or thinks that because their child is not home educated this does not effect them, it actually has serious implications for all children in the UK and their right to privacy and their life decisions.

This is the link to the website: Home Education after the Badman Report.


The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Article 16: Children have the right to privacy. The law should protect them from attacks against their way of life, their good name, their families and their homes.

Graham Badman report on Elective Home Education.

Reccommendation 7: that designated Local Authority officers should have the right to access the home and to speak with the child alone without parents present and without their consent...

There has been a lot of bad press lately about home educated children being at risk of abuse, but as there is no evidence or any cases of this Graham Badman has had to state this in his report, however he still went on to change the law as if this was the case.

The NSPCC apologised publically recently about associating abuse with home education, you can find a link to this on the webpage.

Please try and consider Graham Badman's proposals and the wider implications and the loss of rights due to this report, if you feel strongly enough then please do write to your MP's, fill in the survey, write to Ed Ball or reply to the consultation. (links can be found on the website.)

Thank you for taking the time to read this and please do forward this information, so many bills are passed these days without people being aware of the changes in their rights.

Peace and Love
Christine, Jonathan and Cherry.

Welfare Reform and Home Education

Campaigners in London have been exposing and protesting against the government's shameful pushing through of their 'welfare reform bill'- otherwise known as their welfare ABOLITION bill. please see www.lcap.org.uk for more info (london coalition against poverty).

The government has been wanting to push through these changes for a long time, and is using the excuse of the economic crises as a cover. The bill will adversely affect those in the most vulnerable groups, and those on benefit eg. single parents on income support, are being scapegoated for cash grabbing, all the while that the government is bailing out the greedy bankers and politicians are claiming tax payers money for moat-cleaning!

The bill will mean eg. single mothers on income support will be forced back to work when their child is still very young.

I’ve been wondering what this bill will mean to those of us home educating/planning to.

Thankfully this issue has not gone unnoticed, and the home ed charity ‘Education Otherwise’ (www.education-otherwise.org) have been looking into this issue also and are lobbying parliament etc. Please see the website below for more info on what this bill will mean for home education in the future: http://www.freedomforchildrentogrow.org/welfarereform.htm

It is really important that we all inform ourselves and keep up-to-date on issues relating to the freedom and autonomy of educating our children, otherwise legislation will be against us before we know it. Even if we have chosen to send our children to school or do not have kids at all, we still must recognize that this is a CHOICE, and Home Ed is legal (despite what some may think), and respect other parents’ decisions to provide independent education for their kids outside out the mainstream system. Obviously the 'choice' to home educate is made more difficult for those with less money, less support, less time etc. But everyone who wants to home educate should be facilitated to do so, and it is discriminatory not to support this. However, the implementation of the Welfare Reform Bill will do exactly that- not only discriminate against the less privileged in this society, but force upon them a system of education that they do not agree with, and will make it even more difficult for them to home educate their kids.

We must also dispel the common myth that Home Educating means keeping your kids at home with no friends for company! There are many Home Ed community groups, so kids have continuous 'class' mates, and an amazingly varied and rich education. It can be really empowering and an educational experience for the parents too, by being involved in their children's 'curriculum'. Children can also opt to take GCSEs, A-Levels, and progress to University if they wish. There are many support groups out there, and even a Home Ed Camp once a year in the UK, to get together and have fun with other like-minded people from all across the UK (see http://www.home-education.org.uk/ and (http://www.hesfes.co.uk/).

And finally.... a brief thought for those who accuse single parents on income support of being daytime-telly-watching money grabbers: if those of us on income support all home educate, just imagine all the money we are saving the government on school fees! Surely then, it is THEM who should be paying US for home educating? Home Educators would like a 30grand salary too cheers!