Education and Skills Select Committee

The goings-on in the Education and Skills Select Committee, as chaired by Barry Sheerman, (thanks Dottyspots), can be found here.

It seems that the Committee could be the way to go, since it is clear that educating every single local authority over and over again in order to get them to straighten out their Home Education guidance and practice is a Sisyphean task. Better perhaps to aim to get nationwide guidance sorted, so that we don't continue to be bundled into police cars by truancy sweeps, don't feel compelled to keep our children indoors all day, don't find our requests to de-register our children from school impeded, don't feel continuously anxious when we offer an alternative form of education to our children, and don't have to put up with threats of School Attendance Orders when we perfectly legally refuse to let local authority officials into our homes.

Some more understanding about the needs of Home Educators on the part of Committee members could potentially reduce some of these problems and could also help mitigate any negative and biased outcomes from the forthcoming DfES consultation on light touch changes to the monitoring of Home Education. There are moves afoot for the evidence of home educators to be heard in this arena.