Meeting with a civil servant, home educated youths declare non-compliance with proposed ‘immoral’ legislation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-05 NOV 2009.

Email: press@heyc.org.uk
Phone: 07870 104 216

Representatives of the Home Educated Youth Council met with Penny Jones, Deputy Director at the DCSF to discuss proposed legislation to monitor home educators. The legislation will be read out as part of the Improving Schools And Safeguarding Bill in the Queen’s Speech, and will set forth proposals to give local authorities the power to enter the homes of electively home educating families, and to speak alone to home educated children without their consent.

HEYC considers the proposals immoral and discriminatory, but the DCSF have no plans to scrap any of the proposals at present, despite the widespread opposition to them, and doubts as to the veracity of the research upon which they are based. Therefore, at the end of the meeting, they laid down an ultimatum: non-compliance to the proposals if they ever become law.

As children themselves, HEYC is very concerned about the damage that could be done to children who feel they must agree to see an inspector alone or be sent into the school system, and are outraged that an inspector would have the right to interview a child alone even against their wishes, since this directly violates children’s rights. The representatives of HEYC feel that this situation could be very upsetting, especially for small children. At present, there are no limits to the amount of time an inspector could choose to spend with a child, or what questions they would be allowed to ask. “I don’t think such power should be given to authorities who have sometimes demonstrated a deplorable lack of understanding of home education philosophies and current law.” Says Chloe Watson, Chair of HEYC

During the meeting, the representatives of HEYC asked if there had been any assessment of possible harm to children that could come out of these proposals, especially for younger children, who may be frightened at being taken away from their parents by a stranger. Ms. Jones said that no such assessment had been taken, and that there were no plans to do so, despite warnings from the home educated community that the proposals could be detrimental to some children’s well being.

The rest of the proposals include right of access to the “the premises where education is conducted”, even when that is a family home, or the home of a private tutor. There would only be two weeks notice, and inspections could be carried out at any time, so home educating families would not be able to risk going on holiday for more than two weeks for fear of missing an inspection and being deemed inadequate, or worse, risk being suspected of taking their children abroad for nefarious reasons.

“We see the proposals as condoning an invasion of privacy and violation of rights. Since this could quite possibly be harmful to home educating parents and children, we think civil disobedience is a proportionate response.” Says Chloe

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