Another thing Badman got WRONG
- to add to the very long list.
He assumes that home educators have the spare, free time to spend hours with their local authorities, sitting on panels (in addition to campaigning against the likes of him) and having meetings.
My local authority, having read the Badman report [opens pdf], now assumes the same thing.
What am I supposed to do with my children? How am I supposed to educate them while I'm sitting in meetings in local authority offices? Who is supposed to look after them? (In the event, it's usually the older children - now adults - who do this for me, but this takes from their free/work/study time also. Most home educators don't usually have adult other children on hand for the childcare and education of their younger ones while they sit in meetings with the local authority. How are they supposed to manage?)
Local authority officials, DCSF officials, MPs and, oh yes - Graham Badman - all get paid money for sitting in meetings discussing home education, for writing reports, for evaluating and advising and compiling. And they can't do it without our help because they evidently don't understand the first thing about how real learning works, which is proven time and time again within the school system. They have the gall to sit there talking about how the AWPU (£5000 per year?) should be drawn down by local authorities in respect of home educated children to pay for the new recommendations, and how home educators should 'come out of the shadows' and start to influence the new developments.
Well personally I'm not in the shadows, mate. I never was. I'm just busy.
Home educating.
Helping my beloved children to make a happy success of their lives because - I don't mean to cause offence, but - your school system can't do that for them.
So 'now the spotlight has been shone on us' (gee thanks) I'm to dump my children on their older siblings (again) and go and comply with Badman's behest by influencing things at my local authority. For free.
I'll do it - I've been doing it for years. I never used to mind, before there was talk of people being in the shadows and the AWPU being given to LAs and bypassing the real educators and the real learning.
But, like my children, it's the coercion that I mind. I think that probably applies to every human being on the planet.
He assumes that home educators have the spare, free time to spend hours with their local authorities, sitting on panels (in addition to campaigning against the likes of him) and having meetings.
My local authority, having read the Badman report [opens pdf], now assumes the same thing.
What am I supposed to do with my children? How am I supposed to educate them while I'm sitting in meetings in local authority offices? Who is supposed to look after them? (In the event, it's usually the older children - now adults - who do this for me, but this takes from their free/work/study time also. Most home educators don't usually have adult other children on hand for the childcare and education of their younger ones while they sit in meetings with the local authority. How are they supposed to manage?)
Local authority officials, DCSF officials, MPs and, oh yes - Graham Badman - all get paid money for sitting in meetings discussing home education, for writing reports, for evaluating and advising and compiling. And they can't do it without our help because they evidently don't understand the first thing about how real learning works, which is proven time and time again within the school system. They have the gall to sit there talking about how the AWPU (£5000 per year?) should be drawn down by local authorities in respect of home educated children to pay for the new recommendations, and how home educators should 'come out of the shadows' and start to influence the new developments.
Well personally I'm not in the shadows, mate. I never was. I'm just busy.
Home educating.
Helping my beloved children to make a happy success of their lives because - I don't mean to cause offence, but - your school system can't do that for them.
So 'now the spotlight has been shone on us' (gee thanks) I'm to dump my children on their older siblings (again) and go and comply with Badman's behest by influencing things at my local authority. For free.
I'll do it - I've been doing it for years. I never used to mind, before there was talk of people being in the shadows and the AWPU being given to LAs and bypassing the real educators and the real learning.
But, like my children, it's the coercion that I mind. I think that probably applies to every human being on the planet.
posted by Gill at 7:21 am
9 Comments:
Agreed. I've already wasted time (and so far it HAS been wasted) meeting with my LA (having granny and granddad handy for childminding duties) but it's a bloody cheek for them to ASSUME that I will continue to do so.
Our lot have already shown VERY clearly that they don't give a rat's arse about providing a service, saying they'll do things and then just NOT doing even one. We exist to provide an easy salary for part-time work to see them to retirement as well as the opportunity for them to indulge in some power tripping and bullying.
Anyway, if "mind your own damned business" and "you work for us not the other way around" are to be taken off the agenda I really have nothing to say to them any more.
Hello Firebird - we seem to keep appearing in the same places today!
I'd missed the suggestion that the £5000 go into monitoring us rather than actually, you know, anything useful. It really is a farce.
I'm grabbing a couple of minutes in the home ed day here: two things of note.
What was the real context of the Harrison and Harrison court case?
And the NEET data is bizarre. Surely those of us with teens would either have them in work, uni, college or STILL EHE. How could an EHE child be NEET? Is this daft Connexions not recognising EHE after the age of 16? They got very worried that my son might not go to college. As my dd has decided to do OU rather than college will she be NEET next year?
What happens if you bring all your children along to all of the meetings that you're supposed to go to?
Would that help bring a bit of reality to the theoretical world of the LA's?
It's another slap against ordinary people, isn't it?
We should put it straight. We do not have the time or the money to pop around educating people who are supposed to work for us. Lots of us undergo thousands of hours of extra work defending our children's right to privacy. What a bloody cheek.
One thing. This will all be on Hansard so we can sue the buggars for defamation.
Outraged of Swindon
In effect they're coercing us into a subversive curriculum, aren't they? It's typical for them to think that all this bullying will actually get us to comply with their brainless schemes, where in actual fact I see myself and my family becoming more and more politically aware and active - and most definitely not in a govt supportive way!
In the book "The Einstein Factor" it is described how the school system actively kills off certain functions of the brain, because it is so limited and does not encourage thinking outside the box, lateral thinking.
Someone like Badman, who is more or less the personification of the school system, simply is physically incapable of comprehending something like home education, let alone autonomous home education. The bits in his brain needed to understand that have long been dead.
i dont blog but i home educate
my children we have read these reports and my 5yr old has been told by my 7 year old that the `Badman` is coming to get them - I can see his CV - in 2009 i replaced the boogyman!
Maybe you could get a fellow home educator to mind your children while you help out for free and then you could do the same for her while she talks to them....oh no wait ;)
Ah but Ofsted can't now do anything about reciprical arrangements between friends. Can't claim tax relief for the childcare either but hey...
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