Sunday, November 22, 2009

Impact Assessment

The Impact Assessment for the Children, Schools and Families bill may be found here. Relevant section on Home Education from page 82.

Gill says nearly everything that needs to be said, but just to confirm one point: No, the DCSF's proposals do not conform to Hampton principles (see table on page 92) because the proposals dictate (see page 87) that during the first year of registration, ALL home educated children will receive 2 four hour meetings with LA officer, (the four hours includes planning, travel time etc), and that 50% of children in the first year will receive an additional 2 four hour sessions. Further, all children receive 1 eight hour visit at the end of the year and 50% will receive an additional 1 eight hour visit. Further, that the newly identified children are the ones who are most likely to require additional monitoring.

Hampton principles require that inspections where risks are low should be reduced, and only increased where necessary. So NO, the proposals are ridiculously disproportionate. All the uninspected teens we know have excelled in colleges and universities. Visiting them would have not helped one iota and is a complete waste of time, and likely to be extremely damaging. Despite supposedly consulting with us, it is still the case that the DCSF has NO IDEA ABOUT WHAT IT IS TALKING ABOUT, and MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO GO AROUND BASING AT BEST USELESS and at worst, DAMAGING AND EXPENSIVE POLICY ON THE BASIS OF COMPLETE IGNORANCE.

Stuart Bonar explains the strange sequence of events, whilst others are explaining the outrage and are gathering signatures from the wider public.

UPDATE: Kelly has more in the Impact Assessment here.

7 comments:

Fiona T said...

'LAs tell us
that home educators who avoid interaction with the local authority tend to be providing inferior education.'
!!!!!!!!!!! Aaaaarrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhh

(Adolf Hitler said the same about the Jews and their lives, why avoid registration if you've nothing to hide.)

Lies lies lies lies lies.

Would the general population be happy about a 901million cost estimate??I think they might be more than happy to maintain the status quo than see their taxes used in this pointless way. Oh! Sorry I forgot, we can just print as much as we like.........

Anonymous said...

I'd love to know how LAs know that these home educators are providing inferior education when, by their own admission, they have no contact with them.

If they are so good at assessing the education provision of people they have no "interaction" with, why on earth do we all need to be inspected and monitored at all?

Carlotta said...

Lol...anon. Yes...they should just bang an SAO on us, no evidence required. That seems to be about right for almost all the supposed facts in this Impact Assessment.

Anonymous said...

It's so malicious and stupid I am finding it difficult to get my head around.
I mean three visits in ONE year two at 4 hrs and one at a ludicrous 8 hrs!! How many LA staff are they expecting to have and just what kind of person would want a job like that?

Anonymous said...

of course it is malicious they hate us! we just have to win!

Anonymous said...

Schools have a 2-3 day inspection every three years. Interesting how this compares with what they are proposing for us.

Fiona T said...

he he Anon that is a very good point. Sadly well reasoned arguments don't seem to worth anything in all this. I am just astounded that they could write a whole ' Impact assesment' purely based on the 'opinion'of a few LAs.Wheres the rigorous research done by the excellent Dr Paula Rothermel and others?But there I am again trying to ask a reasonable question. They really don't care about reason.