Tuesday, May 08, 2007

THE Consultation

Ha, got it, despite being in electricity-free zone! At first glance, the news of the recently re-framed consultation appears to represent a certain triumph but closer reading is required, for which I do not have a spare mo!

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From Department for Education and Skills

On 8th May the Department for Education and Skills published a consultation on guidelines for local authorities on elective home education. The publication of this consultation follows discussions with several groups representing home educators and with local authorities. Following these discussions it has been decided not to propose any changes to monitoring arrangements or legislation so this consultation is solely on the issuing of guidelines.

The guidelines set out our view on the best approach to balancing the rights of parents and the obligations of local authorities. The consultation will run until 31st July, and the document can be found here or you can reply by email to homeeducation.consultation@dfes.gsi.gov.uk.

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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

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Ruth said...

I am *hoping* it represents some back peddling from them but we will see. I noticed on the last link on the consultation page it talks about impact assessments and under its is mention of this:-
"new legislation which would require all home educating parents to register with their local authority and giving local authorities the power to monitor home educators." as a possibility. There also seems to be a very unfair predudice to a certain group of HE which I find disturbing myself.

emma said...

Eek, ruth. Will be reading that carefully.

Anonymous said...

They are just wording it differently. Be very careful.

"In our informal discussions with local authorities and groups representing home educators, the principle of guidelines has been broadly welcomed."

Has it? What groups?

Where are the actual guidelines? It links to a page with all the consultations?

emma said...

"Details needed to be checked. One of the accompanying documents said registering children educated at home would be made compulsory, but the department had assured her this was an earlier draft, published in error."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6636569.stm

Looks like massive back pedalling to me :-)

the guidelines are in the word documents. It takes a while to find the actual meat among all the officalese blather, but the guidelines could have been written by EO. they recognise the laws we have. They tell the LAs to back off. To allow for different styles of HE, that we don't ahve to follow the national curriculum or have fixed hours or be learning only at home or any of the garbage that home educators fear from LAs.

The only problem I foresee is the ASTONISHING anti Romany/Gyspy/Traveller prejudice [complete word blindness about spelling that today]- not what I would have expected to see at all in a document produced by NU-labour types.

As long as all interested parties write in and say "DO NOT CHANGE A WORD" then this seems like a very positive outcome to me.

Anonymous said...

I read it now and also noticed the prejudice against travellers. It might be wise to have that tweaked. Otherwise it seems good.

Carlotta said...

On another v. cursory glance through the proposed guidelines, (still camping and therefore just catching quick glimpses), I agree that something should be done about the anti-traveller bias and that it should also be noted that it is stated somewhere that there is no plan to enforce these guidelines from the top. It rather looks as if this is going to be left up to HEors at local level.

My feeling is that it is definitely worth HEors putting up responses to this consult, as we can be pretty sure that the LAs will be doing so and that these responses will not be favorable if the likes of Glos LAs recent representations to the DfES are anything to go by.

We must make sure that the voice of HEors is heard and heard loudly!

AEUK said...

Yes...I think we have done well to get this far...now is the time to really sock it to them with a huge response!