Friday, March 30, 2007

For Another Hot Potato

...go see the BBC's article on EO's campaign to expose the dubious local authority practice of encouraging parents of persistent truants to home educate.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't see why this is so bad. Isn't it worse when they pretend shool is compulsorty and the parents end in jail?

Carlotta said...

I don't think it is a bad practice necessarily, but the way it is being used means that it is likely that parents who in some way or other cannot HE are being more or less compelled to take it on. For example, we hear that this has happened to families with children with SENs that have not been catered for in the school environment. When the parents also have problems, this is then is used by the likes of Tony Mooney et al to suggest that many HE families are not up to the task of HEing.

But we also hear that Ann Newstead was quoted completely out of context and is very cross about the way this argument has been presented.

thenewstead6 said...

Yes I was! EO have indeed been working on this issue, but we are not shouting "scam". As you say, Carlotta, there is a lot more to this story than meets the eye. One highly relevant point though is that one of the schools are handing these out to traveller families; and as we know, Ivatt's report into traveller education is we believe one of the driving forces behind the government's look at changes/consultation. Such a practice, that shows little or no respect for the needs of the child, nor of the family, can't be right. It seems an easy way for a school to avoid taking responsibility for failing to meet a child's needs.