Government monitoring of home education provision: some points.

The government's own, existing EHE Guidelines for Local Authorities clearly state:

2.7 Local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis.

None. No annual visits. No annual reports. No biannual visits or reports or meetings elsewhere or otherwise jumping through hoops to get permission from anyone else to home educate our own children.

If you can get your head around the unarguable reality of that legal position, you can perhaps start to understand something about how important it is, and why it's vital for home educators to work hard to maintain it. Or at least, do nothing to erode it.

It's the position that stops the inevitable bureaucratic turn of the screw. If you don't know what I mean by that, then Adam Curtis's The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom, aired on the BBC in 2007, the same year as those guidelines were published (DVD here) is the best explanation I can think of citing.

Some home educators think we should all be monitored by the state. Read that again if you like. Believe it, because it's true. Some of the reasons I've heard for this are as follows:

• "If it saves one child.."
  
  But monitoring of elective home education won't save any children at all. Eunice Spry was monitored, every single year. Home visits and everything. But because routine monitoring is not, by definition, a response to specific concerns, it becomes just that. Routine. Blasé. Easy to fool.
  
  There is already a good enough Child Protection system in this country, which applies to all children: home educated and schooled. Yes, I think it's a mistake to focus this on schooled children, but would I sacrifice the freedom of home education to fix that? Of course not! I'd switch the focus of it back to the community instead, duh.


• "The reputation and therefore the value of good home education is sullied by those people who aren't doing it properly. We need to sort the wheat from the chaff so that our children stand a chance of getting into some of the better universities.."
  
  Here is my answer to that. It's a very dangerous position to take, because once you've opened yourself up to monitoring, it won't stop. That screw just keeps on tightening until your own provision is monitored out of existence along with all the others. Your child has a proven academic record of excellence? Some officials would think this meant she was being hothoused and socially deprived. You live in a good neighbourhood? Some officials would think this meant your children were 'denied the opportunity of getting to know and understand other children from different backgrounds.' There's always someone who will disagree with what you're doing and seek to stop it, whoever you are. Whatever you're doing. So don't give them the power. Don't fall into that trap.


• It doesn't do any harm and it's good to get some feedback to know whether I'm on the right track..
  
  I answered this a couple of years ago: suffice to say, speaking as someone who's done about 17 years of different kinds of home educating now (yes, I was a hot-houser once upon a time!) I now know that it does do harm and - to be blunt - if you feel the need for official sanction of your home education provision... well. You perhaps need to rethink a few things! Anyway, officials are always available to be consulted on an as-and-when basis for people who want to do that. It's not a right I'd take away from them.

So I'd really appreciate it if they didn't try to take my rights away from me.

Once again:

2.7 Local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis.

A 'family' of home educators in Wigan has tendered for and secured the job of monitoring home education provision in Wigan, which is the reason for this post, and my current feeling of despair.