Readers will perhaps be aware by now that I am more in favour of the monitoring of home education than some home educators and former home educators. I also have an idea that there are types of abuse which might be easier to carry out against children who are not attending school. Even I gasped though, when I read the following on the website of the South West Safeguarding and Child Protection Group (is it me, or does this have a faintly sinister ring about?)
Anyway, the South West Safeguarding and Child Protection Group have identified a number of dangers to children, which they discuss here:
http://www.online-procedures.co.uk/swcpp/contents/guidance-child-protection/elective-home-education/
One observes that Elective Home Education is listed as a child protection concern, coming immediately before Exploitation and Trafficking of Children, Female Genital Mutilation and Forced Marriage. This is very irritating. Don’t take my word for it; read it for yourselves. Some of the concerns that they cite around home education are frankly ludicrous. Take this one, for example:
Children who are home educated may be taught by other adults. Not all parents will exercise their responsibility to ensure that employment checks, including CRB checks have been carried out.
There is huge industry in providing tutoring for schoolchildren, aimed at getting them up to scratch for entrance examinations, GCSEs and A levels. Home educating parents are probably a good deal less likely to be using services such as these anyway, but if the concern is that tutors without CRB checks are gaining access to children, then they should start with the main bulk of such teaching, which is, as I say, undertaken with schoolchildren. A complete red herring.
If I lived in Devon or Somerset, I would be inclined to be a little annoyed at this sort of nonsense. On a slightly more pedantic note, I would be angry that a publicly funded body of this sort were using ‘safeguarding’ as a gerund verb. This is unforgivable and deserves the strictest censure.
Simon, are you trying to incite a riot? lol, Anyone would think you want home educators to be crusading again!
ReplyDelete'Simon, are you trying to incite a riot?'
ReplyDeleteNo, not all. There is a world of difference between believing, as I do, that home education can fall short from an educational point of view and thinking, as these idiots do, that it should be lumped together with female circumcision and the trafficking of children as sex slaves!
Ah, I see, you are right on this point, of course.I think I finally grasp how you view home education.
Deletebut there have linked it together Webb because there belive there can get away with it that is the problem until LA/s are held to account to us the custmer in a real way nothign will change.LA officers tell lies and half truths
ReplyDeleteIt was widely reported that Angela Gordon believed that her home educated child was posessed by an evil spirit, Khyra died as a result.
ReplyDeleteThe belief in djinn and other evil spirits is a wide cultural phenomenon that is gaining in popularity in African and Asian/Muslim communities in this country. There are adverts in local newspapers all over the country where 'healers' offer their services to 'remove evil spells'. FGM and forced marriage is a long held cultural tradition in those same communities.
Muslim Home Education groups are already and long established, Islamic and African families known to LEAs.
Since the Khyra Isaq case, it's obvious that authorities believe that FGM and forced marriage being involved in a home ed abuse case are a matter of 'when' not a matter of 'if'. They're covering their backs. Angela Gordon was their justification.
The problem is that people aren't nice or honest, they're quite brutal in some of their beliefs and they'll go a long way to hide FGM or a forced arranged marriage. What goes on in rural Pakistan or Angola can easily be hidden under a 'long holiday' excuse.
ReplyDeleteSad but true.
Of course, no LA wants to be accused of racism.