Tapping into the Council

Bikeability Begins

It isn't often that we ask the local council for anything, other than to be left alone a la rights for homeschooling families. This last week, however, we worked with some very nice people at the county who helped us to provide cycling proficiency classes for twelve local homeschoolers.

The Tutor with her Watchful Eye

Since most kids in England are put through cycling proficiency at their schools, it's sometimes hard to pin down the same opportunity for the home-ed community. When my eldest wanted to do it, she had to carpool with a neighbour to Banbury, a town about 16 miles away. This time, we made arrangements for it to happen right on our doorstep.

Raring to go!

Monday was a bleary, dreary morning -- the first day of schools' Easter holiday period, but we were up and out the door for a (generous) 10:30 am start, meeting at the car park to the local Bowls club. Bike checks. Helmet checks.  How's them brakes? A bit of obstacle course, and then over the next few days, the kids were even sent to tackle THE BIG HILL.

Navigating real roads.

By Friday, they were all duly passed for their right turns, their left turns, their stops and signals, their road sense and judgment.  Yes, even Rocky passed on all these skills, and now I have only one more child to make safe on the roads before my job can be considered done.

Happy Trails.

That's not for another few years yet.

Thanks to all the local homeschooling families who took part, and to another home-ed mum who took the lead on the afternoon group of 6. The process was all very painless in the end, and I'm happier to let my kids pop to the shops on their bikes, knowing that they will be visible and communicative to the other vehicles around them.

(Now if we could just get the same support for exam centres and fees for our secondary students, we'd be quids in!)

A most awesome satire on the government's intervention in HE

Someone posted a link recently to this blog which satires the position of the Local Authority when it comes to their approach to home educators in England.

If you're not au fait with what Local Authority means (as some in the US, for example, won't be), they're the county-level bureaucrats who are mainly in charge of truants and other children who are missing from education, but who, for some reason, think home educators fall under this category (although the law patently says that they don't) and try to hunt down every HE child in their jurisdiction for purposes, they say, of "safeguarding".

It's another word for "monitoring", but that word's a no-no since it's been proved over and over that it's not in their remit.

I encourage you to go to the link and read the whole article, but here's a snippet:

The notion of EHE policy being based on bias towards school, erroneous conflation of education and welfare, and a complete misunderstanding of home education, is unconvincing in relation to the law.  The very existence of relevant laws implies that the local authority should work within them, not simply follow the random choices of their ultra vires policy writers.  It is probably insufficient for the local authority simply to begin with complete ignorance and, well, continue in that vein. 

Recent Blog Entry Teases out UK Home-Ed Law and Misunderstandings in the Media

Home Education in England has come under the Government's scrutiny in the last couple of years, mainly because of some high profile cases of child abuse which the media still tries to link to home education.

The facts of this are misremembered, skewed, and often entirely wrong.  Our most notable case was of a child who was withdrawn from school under Home Education laws, but who had been known by the social services and whose siblings were flagged as being malnourished at school, and yet the authorities didn't act in time to save her life.

Home Education was never the culprit, though the newspapers often like to say that it was a contributing factor.

A home-educating dad has taken a stand about this and written a very thorough, reasoned response to an article about this published in the Times Education Supplement last autumn.  Pour yourself a cup of coffee and have a look at it.

http://northshropshe.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/khyra-ishaq-abused-twice/