It thought I’d put aside the human rights and destruction of the family points for this post and look at the bottom line from the political and budget POV. There are two categories, abuse and education and in both the questions are the same …

HE and the risk of abuse

1) Is there any evidence of a problem? Just how many cases have there been of people using home education to cover abuse? N.B. you are not allowed to include cases where authorities knew about the problem and simply FAILED to use existing laws.

2) Is the suggested solution proportional? If the answer to #1 is zero, as appears to be the case, obviously any new measures are not necessary PERIOD. If the answer to #1 greater than zero then we have to look at:

2.1) The damage that the suggested solution will do to children who are NOT being abused.
2.2) The cost to the tax payer.
2.3) In light of 2.1 and 2.2 is there a better solution which causes less collateral damage and isn’t as expensive?

HE and the risk of ‘poor educational standards’

1) Is there any evidence of a problem? Graham Badman dismissed out of hand all existing academic research into the effectiveness of home education presumably because he didn’t like the conclusions reached. In their place he presented biased personal opinions as fact. Not a good basis for recommending anything other than the commissioning of more research.

2) Is the suggested solution proportional? Without any evidence that there is a problem at all it’s really very hard to argue what is proportional but again the theoretical benefits have to be balanced against:

2.1) The damage that the suggested solution will do to children who are being caused to receive a suitable education.
2.2) The cost to the tax payer.
2.3) In light of 2.1 and 2.2 is there a better solution which causes less collateral damage and isn’t as expensive?

In both cases the lack of evidence of a problem, the unavoidable damage that Badman’s recommendations will do and the CONSIDERABLE cost to the tax payer (a big issue with the major parties having to admit that cuts are coming) mean that any sensible person would have to conclude that the answer to 2.3 is to leave things the way they are. Current statutes and regulations are fit for purpose as long as staff are adequately trained and in the case of social workers enough of them are employed.

Last Modified: Friday, July 3rd, 2009 @ 19:12

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 10:01 am and is filed under Firebird, Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.