Friday, July 03, 2009

"The number .. known to children’s social care in some LAs is disproportionately high relative to the size of their home educating population."

We're a bit too ill here for detailed blogging, and the various campaigns, groups and action plans against Badman are moving so fast that it's difficult to keep up when you're a bit below par, but even I couldn't help feasting my eyes on THIS sterling work, particularly in the context of my previous post:

Abuse in Elective Home Education (EHE)

- which summarises that the abuse rate in the home educating community is less than half - that's less than half - the national rate for all children. No wonder Mr Badman chose his words so carefully (see title above) in his report [opens pdf]: this shows that the argument for a need for extra official safeguarding of home educating children is absolutely bogus.

Still, we now live in an elected dictatorship, according to someone's MP with whom they went to talk about this, so any protests along the inconvenient lines of things like truth will probably be ineffective (according to him). This I can believe. I am planning to visit my MP with some other local HErs, but am not particularly optimistic about the outcome. We'll be asking her to sign one of the Early Day Motions on the issue and to raise our objections with the DCSF relevant ministers, but it seems from its replies that the DCSF is sticking to its guns, unsurprisingly, and blithely ignoring the crucial points people are tirelessly making to them. As an elected dictatorship would.

However they are, we assume, being replaced by the Conservatives within the next 10 months or so and their position is encouraging. Home educators, contrary to popular belief, tend to be traditional Labour voters, but Badman and Balls have put paid to that now. Come to think of it that's a bit of a blow for Labour, if there really are 80,000 home educating children and each one of those has a few caring - and voting - adult friends and relations.

There has been some talk on the lists about the majority of home educating families who are usually politically inactive. It's suspected that many of them don't know anything about the Badman report [opens pdf], despite talk of it on local groups and forums. But if our local area is anything to go by, awareness is definitely growing and people are shocked and frightened about the planned changes because of the negative impact they'll have on their children's lives. They're asking: where can we look online to find out what's happening? I've been giving directions to Carlotta's blog: she provides a great running commentary, amongst many other things.

Personally I want to keep concentrating on analysis and research as much as possible. I've got a list of material to cover here, when I've finished nursing sick children, recovering myself and meeting a 'proper job' deadline - and I do intend to make mention of Badman in that.

10 Comments:

Blogger Maire said...

Hope you are all feeling better soon. Look forward to reading your work on the long list.

12:25 pm, July 03, 2009  
Blogger Gill said...

Thanks very much Maire, masterful letter-writer! Hopefully I'll be back to it very soon. Right now it's a challenge to just answer the comments on my previous post, something that's been on my list of things to do all week.

I've just spotted this by the way, which I love.

3:39 pm, July 03, 2009  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Gill,

Sorry that so many little people are ill. Hope you're all bouncing about shortly.

Diane
http://www.threedegreesoffreedom.blogspot.com

5:53 pm, July 03, 2009  
Blogger Unknown said...

The links in the P section look mixed up and i didn't find the Peterborough one;however, during contact with "someone" the other day, they happened to mention something about Pboro abuse and in at least 1 of those 2 families, it referred to a mum with depression where she wasn't coping well with a baby and so a youngish boy did go back to school to give her a break.

6:57 pm, July 03, 2009  
Blogger lotusbirther said...

Get Well Soon Gill and Family!

2:00 pm, July 04, 2009  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Gill,

Hope you're up and well soon.

Merry: I agree about the links look mixed up, it looks as though the links in the "FOI Request" column have shifted up one. Look under Oxfordshire (immediately above P'borough) for the right link. The "FOI Request 2" column is correct.

The Review statement quoted by Gill is incorrect on three counts:

Firstly since the population size is unknown (i.e. exactly how many are home educating) it's impossible to make statements on proportion.

Secondly, the proprotion known will be artificially high because, for example, children who have statements of SEN will be known for no other reason that that.

Finally, as the population size decreases, the comment becomes increasingly meaningless. 50% could be 1 person in 2, or 500 people in 1000. The review makes no comment on population size, so we cannot be confident that the population sizes are not small.

3:28 pm, July 04, 2009  
Blogger moley said...

Non said:

"Merry: I agree about the links look mixed up, it looks as though the links in the "FOI Request" column have shifted up one. Look under Oxfordshire (immediately above P'borough) for the right link. The "FOI Request 2" column is correct."

Oops! Well spotted. I've fixed it now.

Lynn

4:05 pm, July 04, 2009  
Blogger Mieke said...

(((Gill))), wishing you all well and thank you for yet another great and very informative post. Great job of (I think) Lynn on those stats, very illuminating!
With all the excellent work (research, letters, blogs, etc) being produced by the EHE community we are certainly showing that we are not 'hidden', but alive and kicking!

10:47 am, July 05, 2009  
Blogger Gill said...

Thanks for your good wishes everyone. I think most of us are just about recovered now.

6:54 am, July 07, 2009  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good to hear that, Gill.

Love,
Diane

4:58 pm, July 07, 2009  

Post a Comment

<< Home