'The parenting police' - you hit out at home education plans

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• Home Schooling Monitoring

  6/25/2009 3:08:12 PM
  by Marty Cia

  I think its a disgrace that to have a child now and want to raise them by your own values, morality and educational standards as a way of building a closer bond undermines the responsibility of the parent and turns our free thinking children into tomorrows drones. How can we as a country just say 'yes' to every persecution of our basic human rights? POLICED STATE ALERT!

• Home Education

  6/25/2009 8:08:13 PM
  by Sarita

  Was Martin Frey aware that after a 6 month review, Graham Badman found no evidence that linked home education to child abuse? Has he read the news lately? It seems to me that there is more and more evidence of abuse happening behind the very locked and impenetrable school gates than exists behind people's front doors who have their children's best interests at heart. I would like to know what 'terrible things that go unseen' evidence he has to support his claim. Whilst I do concede that there might be abuse among a tiny minority of home educated families (the same as schooled children families), I certainly do not think that we should be tarnishing everyone with the same brush! My child is seen by many, many people on a daily basis. Home education is more about education in the community, talking to people, gathering experiences. Very few people saw her when she was at school! It's time to have a serious debate about what constitutes an education rather than listening to mud-slinging from people who offer no evidence for their bigotted views.

• Badman

  6/25/2009 8:23:15 PM
  by Roger Machin

  Paul Francis/Patrick Geary Please will you ask Graham Badman to read these articles on home ed and the posts that have followed. They are far better informed about home education than anything he has ever written. Then could you ask him to respond to them in an article to be published online so we can discuss it. He requested views from home educators during his bogus 'review' and proceeded to ignore them completely. Let's see how he gets on with a debate here. I guarantee you will have hundreds of posts: this man has struck horror into the hearts of tens of thousands of people who care about family life and real educational choice. Oh, and if you do ask, which would be great, both for the debate and your paper, perhaps you'd let us know. Thanks.

• Home Educating Monitoring

  6/25/2009 8:37:32 PM
  by Jacqui

  I would like to point out that Home Educated children do NOT live in a bubble. They attend all manner of groups and social settings, and to think that just because a child is Home Educated that if there was abuse it would be missed is erroneous. I would even go so far as to suggest that Home Educated kids are more socially involved than most school kids. I also understand that most abuse happens to preschoolers...Badman's report fails to address this.. just further increasing suspicion that he was not at all independent and impartial when it came to making his recommendations. Jacqui.

• police state alert

  6/25/2009 9:44:47 PM
  by vick

  V for Vendetta(interesting film by warner bros), could it be a prophecy?

• The Parenting Police

  6/25/2009 9:47:47 PM
  by Jackie

  You're next, guys! Sit back and watch them invade our homes and take away our civil liberties, but be warned .. what's next? Faith schools? Independent Scools? Children who *rather suspiciously* don't attend breakfast and after school clubs. They are coming to take YOUR children, not just mine.

• Badman Report Confused Issues

  6/25/2009 10:37:36 PM
  by Bob

  I think the report has confused two separate issues namely the welfare and the education of children. If a child is at risk from their parents then it should be a social services issue. But because in some instance the parents choose to home-educate it moves from social services to the home-education team. So what you see are the home-education teams in the local councils spending the vast majority of their time as psudeo social workers. This leaves the minority of their time to concentrate on providing supporting to the overwhelming majority of home educators who are doing a great job. What the Badman report should have done was release the local authority HE people from these social services duties and pass the work back to the social services teams. Instead he fudged the issue and created a situation where the parents will mistrust the LEA HE team as they have to be social workers rather than supporting the parents. What a disaster Graham Badman has created by rushing the review and not thinking the outcomes through.

• Parenting Police

  6/26/2009 12:04:11 AM
  by Dad

  If your kids end up home educated, then the parenting probably wasn't that good in the first place and should be "policed." Some of us pay too much tax as it is to keep lazy benefit claimants doing nothing without allowing rubbish parents to farm more unemployable, school and work-shy kids.

• The Parenting Police

  6/26/2009 2:48:54 AM
  by jakiparsons

  It is a difficult path to start down if you intend to inspect parents provisions for their children. Does that mean you intend to be there for breakfast, after all, it is the most important meal of the day. De we fine parents whose choice of breakfast cereal does not match ours? What about our 5 portions of fruit and vegetable per day. Do they have to be eaten individually or you can you do it all in one go in a smoothise. Parental choice is being eroded and now it appears the state in now in charge of all ofus. There are already laws in place for Police, Social Workers etc to act if child abuse is suspected. Better understanding of existing laws would be more appropriate than creating more legislation. It is a scary thought that the state is looking to control the actions of it's citizens from birth. Regards Jaki

• Welfare

  6/26/2009 12:47:50 PM
  by Dave

  If we are unfortunate enough to see these proposals implemented, it will be interesting to see what the effect on Social services is. The service is already under-resourced, and is failing to protect those known to be at risk. Adding another 20,000-80,000 (depending on whose figures you believe), many of whom will have parents hostile to the whole process and who are actually very low risk, may well cause the system to fail completely unless there's a massive investment by the government. As a taxpayer, I object to wasting money on this, the millions that will need to be spent to set up and run the programme could be far better spent elsewhere and save more children who are at far more risk. How many children are disadvantaged by a failing school? How many genuinely at-risk children could be helped if social services only had the staff? Regardless of your opinion on home education, it is a minority, evidence suggests that it is a low-risk minority and that the government are, once again, wasting money fixing a problem that doesn't exist. Worse, they'll probably destroy a system that on the whole, produces good results, just as they've done in other fields.

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