I have no interest in holding up a mirror to the effectiveness or otherwise of the school system. We do not define ourselves by an institution in which we have no part.
We are fortunate to live in a part of the country that is as yet unaffected by your proposals, but we are not naive enough to believe that this will protect us long term from the ever increasing creep for information. You have become a government which does not trust its electorate, you are making us into a country that does not trust its citizens. You are attempting to make society believe that family life is dangerous, and children must be protected from it. In this case, your focus is EHE, and I wonder which minority group you will stigmatise next?
With this review, you are proposing that parents will lose their freedom to choose the form of their children’s education. The law as it stands gives us that right, and you now propose that we justify, explain, register and be monitored and regulated forexercising that right.
I know many families who like us, have never used the school system. I have seen many children who have come to home education as the result of failures of the system to protect them from bullying, to meet their educational needs, to be flexible enough to support their gifts. There are as many different reasons to home educate as their are home educators. There are as many different methods of doing it as there are home educators. But there is one common theme – the parents who have decided to embrace the responsibility for ensuring that their children receive a suitable education, tailored to their own needs, aptitudes and abilities. Children by their nature are in a constant state of change – to ask for yearly plans fails to acknowledge this, and demands a one-size-fits-all approach which is completely at odds with the whole ethos of home education.
If I were the parent of a child at school, I would feel very aggrieved that you are proposing spending a vast amount of resources – money which presumably will need to be diverted from the education budget – into monitoring something that doesn’t need it.Home education is not a risk factor for anything.
I would urge you to reject the proposals in the review.
Moving at the speed of life 
Jax said
Great letter Joyce, have added it to the round up.
Welcome home btw.
HelenHaricot said
well said!
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