This week, the government published its Integrated Communities Strategy. The concept of social cohesion is nothing new – Professor Ted Cantle produced a similarly detailed report in 2001. In 2016, Dame Louise Casey, the then government integration tsar, produced a further Review into the state of social integration. You may be forgiven for thinking … [Read more...]

In order to highlight the unprecedented number of attacks on home education in the press over the last few weeks, most of the articles in this week's Update relate to the issue.   The parents of a child actress who played Matilda in the musical are in dispute with Westminster council over her home schooling. Edward Hardy and Eileen Tracy have … [Read more...]

Home education has dominated the education press for the last couple of weeks. That in itself is unusual, as home educators are not normally the focus of much attention. But the maelstrom swirling around parents who just want to be left alone to educate their children as they wish is of epic proportions. It’s indicative of the raging war in … [Read more...]

The safeguarding bandwagon in relation to home education rolled on throughout the Christmas break. Wales announced  consultation on compulsory registration – the significance of which was missed by the national media. Eleanor Schooling, Ofsted’s National Director of Social Care, published an article on more effective safeguarding for home … [Read more...]

The 2007 Children’s Plan could not have made it clearer: parents bring up children, not governments. That didn’t stop the government of the day commissioning Graham Badman to investigate home education, with a particular emphasis on safeguarding; the introduction of compulsory registration; home monitoring inspections, and the definition of … [Read more...]

Earlier this month, Sean Hartford, Ofsted’s national education director, spoke to the Lords’ committee on citizenship and civic engagement about the teaching of British values. According to him, a small minority of schools are doing badly in promoting said values. Earlier this week, Ofsted released its report into non-association independent … [Read more...]

A poll of Conservative councillors conducted by ComRes earlier this year shows a significant gap between grass roots opinion and the actions of central government when it comes to matters of personal morality. It amounts to a call to government to stop indoctrinating children and concentrate on the business of educating them. Nearly 9 in every … [Read more...]

In October last year, in a blog titled We are the state: we are the parents I wrote about Graham Badman’s 2009 Review of Elective Home Education in England, the recommendations of which were soundly defeated in Parliament. It was almost immediately followed by the Ofsted report Children Missing from Education – a titled premised on the assumptions … [Read more...]