The Prime Minister's Office has just replied to the home education petition here:
"Thank you for your e-petition.
One of the key principles underpinning The Children’s Plan published by the Department for Children, Schools and Families is that the government does not bring up children – parents do. The review of home education does not threaten a parent’s right to educate their child at home.
However, there is always a balance to be struck between respecting the rights of parents, and ensuring that local authorities (LAs) and other agencies have the right systems in place to intervene where it is necessary for them to do so. LAs tell us that they have particular concerns about being able to fulfil their responsibilities in the case of home educated children. We must find out what is behind those concerns and make sure that the arrangements are fit for purpose.
The welfare and protection of all children, both those who attend school and those who are educated at home, are of paramount concern. The independent review of home education is part of our ongoing commitment to strengthen the safeguarding arrangements for all children, whatever their background or circumstances."
Rather than simply being something that underpins The Children's Plan, the principle that parents, and not the government, bring up children is something I would prefer to see underpinning our culture as a whole - and particularly the practice of all professionals who have to do with children's services.
I am increasingly uncomfortable talking about the "rights" of parents, when it is so easy to wilfully misinterpret or disregard what we actually mean by this. We should be upholding the freedom to raise and educate our children in the manner in which we see fit, in accordance with the legislation that exists to protect individuals from actual harm. UPDATE: DK has just written about this at length here; it's beautifully articulate so please do read it.
LAs have "particular concerns" about all sorts of things, but that doesn't mean that those LAs are always acting in the best interests of their communities or that those concerns should be given equal weight simply by virtue of being expressed. Indeed, there are frequently highlighted circumstances in which LAs have taken it upon themselves to blame anything or anyone other than their own conduct and incompetence in cases where the basic safety of vulnerable children has been utterly disregarded, with appalling outcomes.
In addition, regardless of the underpinning principle of The Children's Plan, LAs frequently take it upon themselves to unnecessarily parent children in place of their actual parents. Any kind of back-covering or overstretching of powers needs to be stamped out immediately and not indulged or encouraged - over the past week or so we have seen the folly of MPs using the existence of "arrangements" as justification for their actions, to the detriment of all else, rather than questioning whether or not those actions were morally defensible.
We all agree that the welfare and protection of all children is vitally important. But attempting to eliminate all possible risk is not and should never be "paramount". Achieving a workable solution should not be to the detriment of the privacy and freedom of all children and their families, which is why we have attempted to explain over and over again why the existing legislation and guidance, if understood and implemented correctly, is more than sufficient to strike an appropriate balance.
Rather than only ever asking ourselves whether or not our actions will achieve the desired consequences, we also need to undertake cost and benefit analyses and question whether or not our actions will actually cause more actual harm than good. Of course, if government actually understood this logic, we might not be in the mess are currently in, which is why this response comes as precisely no surprise.
