Begging Now: PLEASE STOP IT.

What can one say? We thought we were nearing the end of coping with this frightful meddling. At the very least, a large number of home educators have responded to the consultation on home education in 2007 which resulted in the relatively sensible Elective Home Education Guidelines. We answered Badman's questions at the beginning of this year. We have written to our MPs about the uselessness, wastefulness and the unconstitutional nature of Badman's recommendations and commented upon the clause in the draft legislative programme about increasing the monitoring of home educators. We've sent in our submissions to the Select Committee Inquiry. OK, we still have to fill in our consultation responses on the Badman recommendations, due in October 19th, but let's face it, many of us were thinking that at least we could see the light at the end of this absurdly dark tunnel, if not in terms of certainty about a successful outcome, at least in terms of freeing us from the endless scourge of form-filling and letter-writing, argument and explanation.

We shouldn't have to waste our time dealing with such serpentine interference in our everyday lives and yet now we hear, courtesy of EO, that there is to be another consultation that will doubtless impact upon home educators, one way or another, this time on the subject of the definition of full-time education.

When will they start to get it? When will the DCSF realise that the more they meddle with education, the more they mess it up? Back off. You don't help. Leave us alone to concentrate on educating our children, rather than trying to educate a bunch of people who were so poorly educated themselves that they don't realise that others will get on far better without their cack-handed, ignorant interference in the minutiae of our lives.