Busy Busy

We are off to meet the SCI people on Monday, so busily preparing for that.

We've all just put in our responses to the consultation that ends on Monday. The numbers are well into the three thousands now, which is bloody fantastic! If you haven't responded yet, please do, ask your children, family, friends, neighbours, butcher, baker and candlestick maker to fill one in. It only takes a minute to JUST SAY NO!

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations/index.cfm?action=consultationDetails&consultationId=1643&external=no&menu=1

If you are in any doubt about the importance of this stuggle, have a read of this from Mr Balls. It makes for disturbing reading.

A snippet for your *delectation*.

"But the Education and Skills Bill is a bill of responsibilities as well as a bill of rights.Because if young people fail to take up these opportunities, there will be a system of enforcement - very much a last resort - but necessary to strike the right balance between new rights and new responsibilities.Because when we say everyone will participate, that is what we mean."

NASWE

Way back in May a fellow home educator and I were at a conference about informal education. During the lunch break we got chatting to a delegate who had attended the NASWE conference earlier that month. She told us how, at conference, Badman had presented his report to the delegates. (It was later denied that the report had been presented.) Interestingly though, one of the things that she told us was that Badman was going to suggest,was that the home educated child be interviewed on their own. My friend and I both laughed at the madness of such a suggestion, and the lady hurriedly told us she may have misheard. Clearly though her hearing was excellent.

The NASWE says this about Badman's speech:

Graham Badman CBE MA – Graham spoke about Elective Home Education and he expressed his concerns about the estimated 80-100,000 children in England who are currently not in any Educational setting. You might be surprised to learn that there are only 8,000 children officially registered with local authorities as being ‘home educated.’

If Badman didn't have an idea of a figure on Monday at the SCI hearing, how did he have one in May for the NASWE delegates?


NASWE made a submission to the original consultation but they refuse to release it to home educators, as does the DCSF.

But we can get an idea of it's contents here.

Now these are the people who will, no doubt, be doing the dirty work our Graham has planned. Interviewing our children alone, probably making the initial decision as to whether or not a parent gets their Home Education Licence, and indeed if they are allowed to renew one year on.

The NASWE website is rather interesting if you have the stomach to click through to some it's articles.

This one, for instance. The article is basically a battle plan for EWOs based on the battle plans of one Sun Tzu. Could this explain Badder's fixation with Oriental history? He expects Home Educated children to have knowledge of Oriental history [scroll to Q38], perhaps he means through experience of EWOs.


ETA: AHEd have a copy of the NASWE response to the guidelines consultation here and suggest that:

"Any guidelines that govt issue are quite likely to be (mis)informed by the information provided by NASWE (among others)."

What's a SAHM then?

Why dear reader, a Subversive At Home Mum of course.

According to this article, the government sees women who put their families and communities first as... subversives.

Funnily enough I'm not surprised by this, after all this is the same government who likes to file responses from families, who are fighting to protect their way of life from the state boot as *a campaign*.

Subversive, campaigning, stay at home mothers.

Well here's a *campaign* message from one such subversive:



Hell hath no fury like a mother scorned, you would do well to remember that.

Just say NO to the DCSF.

Can You Explain?

Ok, so it's a very long time since I studied politics, and perhaps my grey cells have become a little withered with time, but would someone please explain to me how this scenario works:

*Democratic* Government decides that it wants to give the governed a say in how legislation is made, so it decides to hold consultations in which it asks for the opinions of the people. Now there are guidelines (opens PDF)which are supposed to be followed when consulting, have a look at number 1:

"Formal consultation should take place at a stage when there is scope to influence the policy outcome."

Ok, so, bearing this in mind, please can someone explain to me why the government department DCSF - known to us as the department of continued and sustained failure -has issued this when there are still 10 days left before a consultation into these matters finishes?

Apparently they are saying that the registration aspect will come into effect September 2011.

Democracy or dictatorship? You decide.

select committee inquiry into HE announces witnesses

Three things:

This blog post

"I wonder if, as a result of the supposed “harassment and vilification” Mr Badman is suffering from us home educators, he is planning to leave permanently the country where he was born and raised, to become a refugee, taking his family with him, to escape the persecution of a Government that chooses to see something that is his legal duty as an “anomaly” to be got rid of? No, I didn’t think so, but many home educators are doing just that. Because they have been harassed and vilified, you see, and persecuted and libelled against, by the Government and media of their home country."

This blog post

"The list of witnesses contains no established researchers or authors on home education, for example, Paula Rothermerl, Roland Meighan, The Fortune Woods, or Alan Thomas? We understand that some of these people have also asked to appear as witnesses."

and this video

Great British Democracy in action - doesn't it make you proud?

Home Made vs Mass Produced

We've been making the most of our abundant hedgerows over the last couple of days. Yesterday we took some fellow home educating friends with us, we all had a great time plucking the various berries. Whilst we were gathering sloes, a dog walker stopped to chat asking if I was planning on making some sloe gin. We had a bit of a chat about the methods and different recipes, and as she carried on her walk she said:

"Well I tried it once, but I don't think it was worth all the effort."

We've had gales here today, but when it had calmed down a little we all went out and spent a good hour and a half walking, talking, and stopping to pick berries. We saw a rainbow which prompted one of the girls to tell us about a conversation she had been having with a friend in an online forum about rainbows and how they are actually circular. I had no idea about that, but that's what life here is like - my children teach me an incredible amount. Anyway, that's by the by.

I decided to try making Pontac with some of the elderberries we'd collected yesterday, it looked so rich and delicious in the recipe photo that I just had to give it a try. It's quite a time consuming recipe, and I always knew that it would yield relatively little for the effort, but I thought it was worth trying, even if just once. I was very disappointed when I bottled the finished product and discovered that I had just over half the estimated 350ml that the recipe said it would yield. It's supposed to be best if left to mature for 7 years, but I decided that I would add a small amount to the spaghetti sauce I was making for tea. Oh my goodness! The children noticed a difference to the flavour and commented on how delicious it was. So I guess it was worth the effort and no doubt I will be making it again, but will make sure that next time I double or maybe quadruple the quantity.

As I was pulling today's haul of elderberries off their umbrellas, I got to thinking about what a labour intensive job this was, and about the comment from the dog walker.

Not many people seem to have the patience for making things from scratch any more. We find it easier to nip to the shops and buy things ready made. Yet take a drive and look at the signs outside pubs all shouting *Home Made Food Here* or one we saw on holiday which said *Good Home Made Food Here* as though someone might advertise bad! Watch a few adverts on the telly with Jamie Oliver extolling the virtues of cooking your own food with fresh ingredients. Read in the papers about the drive for more locally produced goods and the over use of that horrible buzz phrase *buy local think global*.

Home made is trendy - look at the success of sites like Etsy, and the many crafting blogs, books and magazines that are about now.

Home made shows that you've put some effort in. Your home made gift shows that you put your heart into making it, that you willingly gave of your time to create something especially for the receiver. That it was made and given with love.

And yet... the *home* in Home Education makes people suspect something not so good, something lacking in effort, something second rate. Why is that? The old saying *home is where the heart is* still rings true, doesn't it? So what has happened to make home suspect when coupled with education? I think it's about time we made more of the *home*. We like being at home, yes, we go out, we enjoy visiting other people and seeing other places, but we are not ashamed to say that we spend plenty of time at home. There is so much to be learned from the simple things in life, so much pleasure to be had, so much experience to be gained. Why do we rush out to be entertained, to buy experiences, why are we so quick to shun expanding a bit of effort?

Enoch Arnold Bennett says:

"Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life."

To me, home education is *taking up the challenge of life*. It is living fully, taking responsibility not shrugging it off. It's worth the effort, even when that effort seems awfully hard work for little return, you can guarantee that the rainbow moments are just around the next corner.

Home Ed Protest Song

We had a ball taking part in this - thanks so much to Allan and Imogen for all their hard work putting it all together!