The campaign against my blood pressure continues
Today with Is the Government right to be concerned about home-schooling? in the Independent. Will they ever stop using the US term do you think?
So, they wheeled out anti-HE rent-a-comment Tony Mooney … ah I can’t even be bothered to dignify his self-interested BS with detailed comment!
What really gets my blood boiling is that Vijay Patel, policy adviser for government glove puppet the NSPCC has come out with this:
“Some people use home education to hide. Look at the Victoria Climbié case. No one asked where she was at school. We have no view about home education, but we do know that to find out about abuse someone has to know about the child.”
Yes, let’s look at the Victoria Climbié case shall we? Was she withdrawn from school to be electively home educated? No. Remind me, what was it the public inquiry into her death said? Oh here we are NSPCC ‘delayed action’ over Climbie - NSPCC family centre described as a “shambles” and a project in crisis. Staff delayed allocating a social worker for a week because they were preoccupied with organising a party. Crucial details on NSPCC files changed to cover their tracks.
Not only is Vijay Patel beneath contempt for trying to link Victoria Climbié to home education, he’s also a Grade A PRAT. He’s just reminded everyone that the NSPCC can’t be trusted to help children it knows about.
The article also drags in the Eunice Spry case, and no, it being about “welfare failure not home schooling” isn’t just a claim made by Ann Newstead, it’s a fact. Even the chairman of the Gloucestershire Safeguarding Children Board, Jo Grills admitted that “these children were seen by many different professionals”. If they’re right and “one or two other such cases are in the pipeline” may we assume that, as in the Spry case, the children in question were known to child welfare agencies for years and their suffering missed or ignored? Will the home education element once again be a total red herring, a handy scapegoat to save the government from further embarrassment?