Ofsted tentacles stretching towards home educators

The 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.