Girl guidance?

As a lot of you know, the hush-hush department of home education has recruited two? people to write guidance on home education for the poor struggling local authorities who apparently cannot understand a little case law and a few sentences of law.

Think of the consternation in Whitehall. Think of the look on Penny Jones's face.

I think I'll think of Penny Jones a bit longer.

Penny Jones, ardent supporter of children's rights and what they say (as long as they kow-tow to government edicts, of course).

How dare home edders squat on Penny's turf? She's the one who will be cheerfully toiling away in the high-status cupboard she has earned from many years of government service. She's been done out of her job. What should she do now?

Since a lot of my friends are being made redundant... No, scratch that, since a lot of friends are being kicked out of their jobs without being made redundant and getting compensation for losing their jobs, I don't really care if this concludes Penny's no doubt stellar performance as chief bottle-washer to Sir Graham Badman (approaching journalist or government marketing minion be aware that Graham Badman has not actually been knighted except by mistake by his master Ed Balls) and she ends up in the washed-up end searching for another post.

I would just like to link again to the post which shows Penny Jones being trounced by a bunch of non-schoolchildren:https://heyc.org.uk/news/2009/11/aug-2009-heyc-dcsf-meeting-transcript

I look at it now and again to remind me that there might just be a God.

"JASPER GOLD: I’d just like to say, that, it may be a small number of cases, within home education, are maybe ending in abuse, or whatever you’re trying to suggest, but if you look at the number of cases in private, and independent, and state schools which end in abuse, it’s over twice as much.
GARETT ROSS: I have the statistics here.
JASPER GOLD: We have less things to worry about. We have less than half the national average for abuse. So by mixing up saying that we’ll need to register a curriculum, in the same report as saying something about right of access to the child’s home, is completely inappropriate. You’re mixing the educational aspects, which are not [inaudible] in any way by the governments [door slams] with the rights of the child and the protection of the child, when it’s actually not home education that’s responsible. Do you really think someone who had abused their child cares enough to take them out of school and educate them on their own?"

Brilliant logic. And no, an abuser probably wouldn't take a child out of school because any abuser would realise that that would draw attention to his (or in a tiny minority her) family situation.

You may as well put a neon-coated board up next to your front path with "THIS WAY TO THE ABUSER'S HOUSEHOLD" in flashing lights on it.

Anyway, if you're feeling a little blue about the whole guidance being written behind your back situation, then take a read or two of that magnificent day when Chloe Watson ably supported by the lovely boys and girls at Home Educating Youth Council left poor old Penny flat on the floor.

Come to think of it, we should've asked the HEYC to write some guidance for LAs? Wouldn't that be more in the spirit of home education. Let the children lead...