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Ofsted tentacles stretching towards home educators
Posted on June 29th, 2010 No commentsThe government’s Chief Inspector of Schools clearly has far too much time on her hands! Christine Gilbert, clearly feeling that the challenge of raising the standards of education in the nation’s schools is not enough to keep her occupied, has decided to focus her attention on home educating families and, in the process got it all wrong! According to Ofsted, a key finding of their report was that the current legislation around home education severely hampers local authorities in fulfilling their statutory duties to ensure that home educated children receive a suitable education. And yet, no such duty exists! In English law, ALL parents are obliged to ensure that their children receive a suitable education by sending them to school or otherwise. Steve Richards, NorthStarUK’s Educational Director stated, “It is profoundly disturbing that Ofsted, itself, does not know the law and prefers to attempt to pressurise the new government into reviving Badman and Ball’s discredited agenda for state regulation of family life.”
In the opinion of NorthStarUK, this sort of discriminatory behaviour has to stop – home education is as valid a life-style choice as school-based learning – this is what is enshrined in English law and it is about time that Christine Gilbert focused on upholding the law and the rights of parents rather than engaging in the publication of bullying misinformation.
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New broom sweeps clean in Coalition Department for Education
Posted on June 15th, 2010 No commentsThe Coalition Government’s new Department for Education has announced a series of radical changes which are likely to have a major impact on education in England and Wales. Not only does the Department have a new name but it has spent little time in announcing a raft of new proposals which are likely to provide schools with greater freedom – the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency is to be closed, a growing number of schools are to be offered the opportunity to become academies, the General Teaching Council is to be scrapped and today the Department announced that state schools were to be permitted to offer their students IGCSEs. Steve Richards, NSUK’s Educational Director stated, “We are delighted that state school pupils are to be offer the same opportunities as our students have enjoyed for many years in being able to study a rigorous qualification that has widespread international appeal. in an increasingly globalised society, this must surely be a good thing.”
In a further positive move today the government announced that the controversial Vetting and Barring Scheme – due to be introduced in July - has been put on hold. Instead Teresa May, the Home Secretary has said that there will be a review of the entire vetting and barring scheme, with a scaling back to “common-sense levels”. Many within the home education community will applaud this decision, along with the new government’s plans to scrap the ContactPoint children’s database.