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• AHEd members and supporters are working together on responses to FAQs about possible statutory changes to home education legislation. At present, we are working towards a united response to the FAQs, so that if and when people are interviewed by the media or talk to politicians and civil servants, and want to mention AHEd, they know what AHEd stands for. This, of course, does not rule out presenting more personalised arguments to media, politicians etc,(which of course also would be worth rehearsing), but simply that we can then be clear when we speak for AHEd and when we speak for ourselves.

FAQs on the Subject of Possible Legislative Changes to the Statutory Framework for Home Education.

1. Do you think that all Home Educated Children should be registered with Local Authorities?

No. Any child who is not registered at a state school should not be required to be registered with the state local authority.

Local authorities are not responsible for the education of children who are electively home educated.

Where there is a requirement to register every child in a nation with the state authorities there you have a police state. Compulsory registration with the state is a high risk practice leaving children open to abuse, especially in countries such as England where the state authorities have shown incompetence with regard to the safe protection of the information on their national databases.

In Britain at the moment, we still have a democracy in which the state is accountable to the people. The people are not ordinarily or routinely accountable to the state, although the politicians currently in power are doing much to change that.

Compulsory registration would cause some families to attempt to disappear from the state radar, living very sheltered and restricted lives. This could lead to the children missing out on vital learning and social opportunities within the wider community as well as being out at risk of missing essential medical care.

2. Do you think Home Educated children should be monitored by LAs?

LAs are not responsible for the education of electively home educated children so they are not a legitimate body to police the function of those who are responsible. LAs are not the experts in home education. LAs do not need to routinely scan or monitor families for signs of wrong doing or failure in the education of their children. It is sufficient that parents are assumed innocent unless there is an appearance of failure and in all enquiries that LAs remember that it is the parent who is responsible to provide for the education of their child. Parents of children under school age are not monitored to see if they are being taught how to walk, talk, eat, play, dress etc.

3. Do you think there should be a set of standards that Home Educators should be required to meet?

AHED asserts that *Each Child Matters* and each child is unique. Each child requires individual provision. You cannot have an expectation for every child as they all have different abilities and needs.

The current law requires that a child's education is "efficient full-time education suitable-

This is a standard that schools as we know them cannot possibly attain, but home education is ideally equipped to fulfil this standard. It is a standard superior to any externally derived set of standards. Any attempt to change this is to dilute standards and move away from the needs of the child in order to pervert the needs of the child to the requirements of the state.

4.What about HE children whose parents are failing them educationally?

There are well set out procedures for the LA to follow where they believe this to be the case. However, academic research indicates that this is not likely while reports from the state education sector reveal high levels of failure to efficiently provide even basic education to the children who are subjected to their regimes. This is a national scandal.

5. What about HE children about whom there are welfare concerns?

There are well set out procedures for the authorities to follow where there are suspected welfare concerns. However, the cases of abuse that are commonly heard of are all of children who have been already well known to the welfare services. Children who are seen frequently in schools and known to the welfare services continue to be harmed and sometimes to die because of the failure of the system that should support them. Home educated children have not so far been included in this group and there is no reason to believe that home education is an indicator for welfare concerns.

6. What about HE children who are being brought up in a minority group and who are provided with a very narrow education which thereby means that their choices are restricted?

Are there such children? What is the definition of a "very narrow education"?

Although a certain number of home educated children may be brought up with a specific world view which differs from that which is taught in school, at the same time they often mix with a broader range of ages and social backgrounds, via churches, mosques or other faith groups, than those who spend every day in a group of children from the same postcode and who are born in the same year.

It is disingenuous to say that those indoctrinated in the ways of the state are NOT fed a specific world view. Many home educating parents are uncomfortable with school-promoted definitions of, for example, success or achievement, or they may feel that the lack of emphasis that is given in schools to the importance of vocation and motivation for happiness and problem solving is severely problematic.

Our society needs a reasonable and tolerable diversity in order that it may successfully deal with the challenges it faces. State educators should protect this diversity and welcome the possible criticisms and potentially successful solutions that different points of view can provide.

7.Can a parent really educate their child appropriately?

School is an anomoly. State compulsion schooling and the extension of compulsion in schooling to take over the majority of a child's life is an experiment of less than 200 years standing. The last 200 years have seen a steady decline in the standards of popular education and a proliferation of paper qualifications. Parents and communities have educated their children and young people since time began. School is not the default. Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin D Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison,John Stuart Mill, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Claude Monet, Blaise Pascal, Mark Twain, Agatha Christie, George Bernard Shaw, Hans Christian Anderson, Natasha Bedingfield and Venus Williams all seem to have managed pretty well on a home-based education.

8.What if a child has special educational needs?

Parents of children with special educational needs deserve all the support and help that society can offer to enable them to meet the needs of the child. They do not need to be disempowered and further disabled in the upbringing of children but should be offered choices and have the same rights to choose as all other parents.

9. Isn't home education an anomoly? Shouldn't it be brought in line with the rest of society?