Following the continued failure of schools, furores over exams, mismanagement at every level, complete inadequacy of the system to educate individual children according to their age, ability and aptitude, and suicides due to bullying, we spoke to expert and home educating parent Sarah who said, "The figures show time and time again that home educated children outperform schooled children across the board, and have better outcomes socially and in terms of welfare. Parents are absolutely right to be taking their children out of these institutions in increasing numbers."
And yet, you can guarantee that every article on home education will have a comment from an 'expert', espousing the importance of monitoring us, or registering us, or saying what silly little things we are to be concerned that they're trying to forcibly remove our children's freedoms.
'Experts'. I find it difficult nowadays to even say the word without the implied inverted commas. It comes out as a sort of cough. Because whichever politician or academic a newspaper drags up to be their quoted 'expert', you can absolutely guarantee that their knowledge and experience of home education will be a big fat gaping hole of a zero. They know exactly *nothing* about it, but are quoted for the sake of journalistic balance. (Oh, except it's not balanced, as if it were we'd see quotes like the imaginary one above - All. The. Time.) They might as well write an article on the outcry over the prices dairy farmers are getting for milk, and get an expert in wax crayon technology to comment.
But it's not just the go-to 'experts' for articles/cat litter tray liner. It's the council 'experts' who write their policies. Despite them having no duty in law to monitor home education, they still concoct their policies to monitor. And monitor. And monitor some more. Despite the Children Missing Education legislation specifically not applying to home educated children, these public servants catch us up in it again. And again. And again. And despite home education being equal in law to school, and not being a welfare issue, these same expert policy writers get it wrong over and over again. They don't even know the law. Or would have us believe that, anyway.
So it should really be no surprise that a good chunk of a government Education Select Committee, together specifically to discuss home education, don't know the law either. You'd think a quick read of the relevant legislation before they popped in for the morning wouldn't have been too much to ask. But they mustn't need to. They're 'experts'.
Leave parenting to parents. Leave home educating to home educators. We are the experts.
(Point #867 under 'Why I don't want these people interfering in my children's lives')
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