A combination of a comment added to this post, and calls to boost the promotion of this petition has led me to think this blogroll might be good plan - it equally might not, but nothing ventured nothing gained - please spread the word and get as many home education blogs on this roll as possible, both to show that we are keeping on keeping on, and that we will continue to defend our rights.
Please scroll down for the blogroll :)

Wednesday, 12 May 2010

"I'm over here! Leave me alone!"

Whatever your personal politics, I think almost all home educators will have breathed a sigh of relief yesterday, that at least our freedom to home educate, in a way that suits our children best, looks safe under the new government.
Talk now seems to be turning to what would be the best course of action to take with this new government. Personally, I don't intend to take any. I intend to spend some time living, loving and learning, working, resting and playing, reclaiming as many of those many hours of freedom that were stolen from our lives last year as possible.
I know there are those who will/do disagree with me on this, who think that now is the time to make ourselves, and our cause, known to our MPs, to remind them why they should not try to introduce anything like this again, but  I don't think it is either wise, or necessary, to bring renewed attention to ourselves. I think keeping vigilant is important, I think we would be foolish not to, but I also think that shouting "I'm over here! Leave me alone!" is a pretty contradictory message to be calling out!
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7 comments:

  1. OrganisedPauper12 May 2010 at 10:28

    I agree. Now is not the time to lobby MPs. Now is the time to get our lives back for a while. Keeping watchful is a good idea though.

    We know from experience that government is very good at sneaking little things in here and there into legislation that actually and deliberately have a massive impact on home education. How the ECM legislation was worded was one. A while back we almost lost deregistration on demand because of how a statutory instrument relating to pupil registration regulations was worded. Unfortunately we can never, ever take our eyes off the ball.

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  2. Anonymous12 May 2010 at 10:41

    I totally agree.. leave well alone but keep our eyes on the ball!
    I can't see any benefit in hassling them; they have enough to think about so let's get on with learning, living and enjoying the freedom that we have at this time!

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  3. Tech12 May 2010 at 11:45

    Oh yes!

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  4. Adele12 May 2010 at 12:02

    I completely agree. Thank you very much for posting this. :)

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  5. Jan12 May 2010 at 13:20

    Actually I was thinking about writing to him anyway. Because I was noticing yesterday as we were reading about the 19th century, that the chartists caused a lot of trouble because at a time of economic depression, what they really wanted was electoral reform. It seems to be a pattern that repeats, so I just thought I might point it out...

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  6. Ruth12 May 2010 at 13:50

    I agree too. We need to reclaim our lives and get on with living.

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  7. Sue Pamp13 May 2010 at 01:03

    I agree that we need to keep our eye on the ball. I think that those of us who are 'known' in this two tier system we have should now focus our energies on our LA personnel and remind them that what they wanted and are now trying to implement did not get through! Bury LA in particular have an 'approval' system in place, they want parents to fill in forms and basically apply for approval. Birmingham LA want to know "how many hours you will spend per day teaching your child, and what courses you will teach them." Um, hello, we are neither required to follow a time table nor are we required to teach anything on the National Curriculum.

    So that is where our energies need to be focused, and not with our MPs. I think that in this case, if we are the squeaky wheel with our MPs, that will mean that we are going to get a legislation that will shut us up, i.e take HE completely away from us!

    So let us focus on the LAs now and remind them of the law, when they contact us and ask us illegal things like to 'show our work' (Gosh that's like being back in school for Maths class - show your work or you will get marked down!), or 'talk about our education provision for the next 12 months' we are not required to do that, but they will and do ask it of parents who either choose to meet them or get bullied into meeting with them.

    We are at the moment low on the list of priorities for the Government. Lord Lucas said 'in a couple of years some legislation may need to be introduced to get rid of the threats' well, that's easy, get the EHE guidelines of 2007 put into law! That means that the LA cannot monitor EHE children, à la section 2.6 their duty is to identify children on a school roll who are not receiving a suitable education, and section 2.7 this does not apply to EHE children and therefore the LA is not to be monitoring home educated children (sorry I've changed the wording on that but you get my point!)

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