Surrey Petitions Press Release
This, or something similar, is being sent out to the media in Surrey.
Surrey MPs petitioned on Home Education
All eleven Surrey MPs will receive a parliamentary petition (see below) this week from their constituents opposing the controversial Badman Report into elective home education. The petition also calls for the withdrawal of a new legislative measure based upon it. In early December over 300 MPs from around the country will submit the same petition to parliament. This will be by far the largest number of constituencies in history to present a single parliamentary petition.
The new legislation recommends a compulsory registration scheme that will cost an estimated £10.3m to £59.6m to implement. Home educating parents would, in effect, have to apply annually for a licence to teach their own children. One element causing great concern to parents is that the proposed legislation gives local education authorities the right to interview children alone without their parents being present. These and other regulations are being proposed despite all available evidence showing that home educated children are at less risk of abuse or inadequate education than the general population. As Lord Lucas of Crudwell & Dingwall pointed out in the House of Lords this week
“There is no evidence that this part of the Bill is needed; in fact, the reverse is very much the truth. We have just had the chief inspector saying that one-third of state schooling is unsatisfactory, while the true figures on home education say that maybe 1 per cent of home education is unsatisfactory. The phrase involving beams, motes and eyes comes to mind.”
The Badman report and its recommendations were the subject of an investigation by the House of Commons Children, Schools and Families Select Committee which has yet to publish its report. However the written evidence submitted to it was overwhelmingly critical, highlighting incorrect and misleading statistics, selective and distorted use of quotes and unjustified discounting of legitimate research and expert opinion
“In my 30 odd years of professional life in education I have rarely encountered a process, the entirety of which was so slap dash, panic driven, and nakedly and naively populist.” Prof. James C Conroy
The results of a recent consultation on ‘registration’, monitoring and inspection which received over 5,000 responses are also unpublished, even though ministers assured home educators that it would be taken into account. Government ignoring of evidence which conflicts with its plans is not new, but rarely has it been so blatant.
This is not a matter of concern only for home educators as Schedule 1 takes away from ALL parents the fundamental right to decide how their children should be educated and places it in the hands of local government officials. Any parent wishing to home educate would be required annually to ask the LA for permission, allow council officers into their homes, let their children be interviewed alone and submit and adhere to detailed ‘education plans’ which the LA would have to approve. Clause 26 of the Bill conveniently gives this or any future government the power to issue guidance to local authorities about what they may demand of parents as part of this new regime. Home educators are naturally concerned that this constitutes a move to introduce the National Curriculum and full state control by the back door.
In addition to the obvious human rights issues involved, the proposed new legislation will mean that many children will live in constant fear of the subjective judgment of a complete stranger who will have the power to send them back to school against their own and their parents’ wishes. Some of these children have previously experienced profound problems in school, such as bullying, and may now face the constant fear of having to return.
Anyone wishing to support home educators in their opposition to this bill can still sign an online petition on the #10 site.
The wording of the petition:
To the House of Commons.
The Petition of persons resident in the parliamentary constituency.
Declares that they are concerned about the recommendations of the Badman Report, which suggests closer monitoring of home educators, including a compulsory annual registration scheme and right of access to people’s homes for local authority officials; further declares that the petitioners believe the recommendations are based on a review that was extremely rushed, failed to give due consideration to the evidence, failed to ensure that the data it collected were sufficiently robust, and failed to take proper account of the existing legislative framework.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families either not to bring forward, or to withdraw, proposed legislative measures providing for tighter registration and monitoring of children educated at home in the absence of a thorough independent inquiry into the condition and future of elective home education in England; but instead to take the steps necessary to ensure that the existing Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities are properly implemented, learning from current best practice, in all local authorities in England.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.