If you currently home educate and live in Surrey …
Surrey County Council’s Education, Learning and Development Committee Working Group on Elective Home Education is planning a focus group for home educators to be held in October. I will be collecting issues and posting updates on the general Surrey Yahoo Group. If you don’t have a Yahoo account or don’t want to join I will post the details here too but the wider the participation in any online discussions the better.
Meanwhile if you know of an LA which is an example of good practice please leave a comment.
Jan Said on July 27th, 2010 at 9:17 pm quote
Kirklees LA are excellent imo. Every year or two they send out letters to HEers they know about, with contact info, saying they can visit if wished, or can send report, or ignore if everything’s OK.
We were unknown for 6 years, till dd2 hurt her ankle and went to A&E, and they traced us. The lady asked to come and see us and I’d heard nothing bad about her, so said yes.
We mostly talked about Badman and how the money available was so small they wouldn’t in reality be able to do much more than they were doing already.
She sees her role as supportive and was interested to know what books and curriculum we like so she can give advice to those who may be struggling. She doesn’t have much in the way of financial resources but likes to be able to connect people who may be able to help each other.
The children were present, and involved in the conversation but she didn’t “question” them at all.
I gave her a report of what we had been doing - we are quite structured here but she does seem to ‘get’ HE and families I know who are much more autonomous than we are have had similarly positive experiences.
Emma Said on July 27th, 2010 at 9:43 pm quote
We’ve been working with Somerset County Council for the last 2 years. We’re just a group of 35 families that come together a couple of days a week. Somerset EHE team do understand that ideas for support need to come from the community. They have never offered support with hidden agendas, but we have been very straight with them from the outset. We received a £10.000 grant for resources and they let us determine the terms of the contract. They also understand the diverse approaches to educating too. We’ve achieved a huge amount in a very short space of time.