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On Ed howIwanttokickyouinthe Balls
Aug. 3rd, 2010 04:12 pmI'm not sure why Ed Balls has it in for home education. Maybe he had a bad time at school and is bitter about it? Unsurprisingly, though, he's using the final report into the death of a child who, in their last year of life, was removed from school to bay for further regulation of home education.
Reading his article in today's Education Guardian (link here), and the defence of his bill ("The review I commissioned and the legislation I brought forward for a formal registration scheme – with rights to see children alone for local authority officers in rare situations when they can obtain no co-operation from parents") is weirdly at odds with what the bill actually said. Indeed, reading his defence one almost feels compelled to regard as stupid those parents who put their own privacy above the safety of a child's life ("[the bill] provoked vigorous criticism from some, who claimed I was infringing parental rights, criticism which I believe was wholly disproportionate to what we actually proposed.").
If the bill had been solely about child safety (with none of the ridiculousness about curriculum and lesson planning a year in advance) I would still have opposed it. I would have opposed it less, and instead of opposing it I would have asked why, given that the state is no longer trusting parents to raise their children, this registration scheme wasn't being rolled out to all parents? It would be quite simple to do, with a registration week once a year where parents could take their children to be examined, interviewed by a social worker, asked whether they thought their education provision was adequate. You could even grade the parents on how good a job they're doing, and if any fail to make the grade you could put them to be watched by social services.
I understand the presumption behind why this should only be required for home educated, the assumption that school teachers actually give one thought to the home life of the kids who are making their lives hell, but I ultimately doubt very much that that assumption holds. It is quite easy, in the current home education system, for families to slip through the cracks - to move house and not register with the new LEA, to never sign their kids up for school, etc.
Of course, in that dangerous time between being born and being school-aged, no-one's being monitored at all, except of course, that families are. Neighbours report on neighbours, families become known to the police, or concerned extended family members turn them in. Perhaps this isn't enough, though it seems foolish to assume that these aren't safeguards in the home educated family's case. But to assume automatically that parents who remove their children from school (or never send them in the first place) are automatically guilty of abuse and are incapable of looking after their children? That smells a lot to me of being presumed guilty until proven innocent.
I find it odd how, when the government tried to legislate against smacking, a huge uproar arose of how Britain was becoming a nanny state, how the government was interfering too much with parenting. And so, of course, to avoid damaging their popularity any further they caved in, because abuse isn't abuse if it doesn't leave a mark.
Reading his article in today's Education Guardian (link here), and the defence of his bill ("The review I commissioned and the legislation I brought forward for a formal registration scheme – with rights to see children alone for local authority officers in rare situations when they can obtain no co-operation from parents") is weirdly at odds with what the bill actually said. Indeed, reading his defence one almost feels compelled to regard as stupid those parents who put their own privacy above the safety of a child's life ("[the bill] provoked vigorous criticism from some, who claimed I was infringing parental rights, criticism which I believe was wholly disproportionate to what we actually proposed.").
If the bill had been solely about child safety (with none of the ridiculousness about curriculum and lesson planning a year in advance) I would still have opposed it. I would have opposed it less, and instead of opposing it I would have asked why, given that the state is no longer trusting parents to raise their children, this registration scheme wasn't being rolled out to all parents? It would be quite simple to do, with a registration week once a year where parents could take their children to be examined, interviewed by a social worker, asked whether they thought their education provision was adequate. You could even grade the parents on how good a job they're doing, and if any fail to make the grade you could put them to be watched by social services.
I understand the presumption behind why this should only be required for home educated, the assumption that school teachers actually give one thought to the home life of the kids who are making their lives hell, but I ultimately doubt very much that that assumption holds. It is quite easy, in the current home education system, for families to slip through the cracks - to move house and not register with the new LEA, to never sign their kids up for school, etc.
Of course, in that dangerous time between being born and being school-aged, no-one's being monitored at all, except of course, that families are. Neighbours report on neighbours, families become known to the police, or concerned extended family members turn them in. Perhaps this isn't enough, though it seems foolish to assume that these aren't safeguards in the home educated family's case. But to assume automatically that parents who remove their children from school (or never send them in the first place) are automatically guilty of abuse and are incapable of looking after their children? That smells a lot to me of being presumed guilty until proven innocent.
I find it odd how, when the government tried to legislate against smacking, a huge uproar arose of how Britain was becoming a nanny state, how the government was interfering too much with parenting. And so, of course, to avoid damaging their popularity any further they caved in, because abuse isn't abuse if it doesn't leave a mark.