Back to Lord Lucas

I was fairly dismayed when I went back to read my response to Lord Lucas’s blog to Hazel. I saw the title of his newest post: “How to asses Home Education”. I was slightly flabbergasted to say the least.

My response:

“But why does there need to be an assessment to begin with? If we are responsible, by law, for our children’s education, then why do we need to be assessed?

EO does not represent all home educators.”

 

His response:

“Elizabeth: Well ‘assess’ may be the wrong word, but it’s clear that the LA has a responsibility under the education acts let alone the Human Rights act to make sure that children are being educated – not that they’ve been very good at it. As for EO, yes, understood: but then you have to find some other mechanism of agreeing – within government’s timeframes – proposals for how the interface between government and home educators should work: government is not capable of resolving disputes between home educators, and if all you do is produce a host of different ideas then government will find them easy to neglect.”

 

My newest response:

“Lord Lucas,

In response to your response.

It does not actually say in the Educational Act that the LEA has ‘to make sure that children are being educated.’ It only says in 437(1) that “If it APPEARS to a local education authority that a child of compulsory school age in their area is not receiving suitable education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise, they shall …” Nowhere does it actually say they had to check or had the right to inspect us.

The Human Rights Act only says we have the right to an education; it does not give the State the authority to make sure one is carried out. The Human Rights Act specifically assigns all responsibility to the parents, and that the State should RESPECT our rights.

ARTICLE 2 RIGHT TO EDUCATION
No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.

So basically-I do not need the EO to speak for me-I just need our government to respect and obey the law. Just as we are doing.”

I’m beginning to think it is going to be much harder to get this point over to the public if we need to work this hard to convince someone who is supposed to be on our side. What we are doing is covered by both British and European law, which both clearly say that as the parents we have full and total legal responsibility to decide what type of education our children receive.