PRESS RELEASE
MEDIA INFORMATION FROM ACTION FOR HOME EDUCATION: For immediate release, Friday 17th July 2009
For further information contact enquires@ahed.org.uk
AHEd Calls In The BRE and Slams Yet Another Unnecessary Consultation!
Action for Home Education (AHEd)1 has today appealed to the Better Regulation Executive2 to halt the public consultation "Home Education - Registration and Monitoring Proposals" for England3 saying it is an unnecessary and disproportionate public consultation. They say it is being carried out by a government who are determined to ask the same questions repeatedly until they get the answers they want ,while parents and children are worn down by the slow torture of multiple consultations threatening to impact their lives dramatically.
This consultation, hot on the heels of the much criticised Review of Home Education conducted by Graham Badman and reported4 on June 11th 2009, follows years in which families have been targeted by almost continuous, expensive public consultations out of all proportion to any perceived problems, and who now face yet another consultation going over the same old ground!
“We know that the government and some authorities find it difficult to understand freedom in education; that is bad enough,” said Barbara Stark, a home educating parent and current chair of AHEd, “but when they consult on proposals that would offend against both our existing law and our basic human rights at the very least, you really begin to question the level of competence to understand anything except a politically driven agenda aimed at destroying independence in order to gain control over every bit of learning in this country, including that which occurs in private family homes.”
AHEd members have put together a compelling argument asking the Executive to call the Department for Children, Schools and Families to task and put an end to the consultation2. They insist it has arisen from a Review which produced no evidence to show that it is either necessary or desirable or that it would attain the stated aims.
In addition the Department has failed to produce the necessary regulatory Impact Assessment, says AHEd, which would reveal the enormous waste of public funds that have already been incurred in conducting both the review and the consultation and that would be incurred were the proposals in the review to go ahead. Perhaps they daren't think about it?
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
(1) http://ahed.pbworks.com/
(2) http://ahed.pbworks.com/BetterRegulationExecutiveandBadmanProposals
(3) http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations/index.cfm?action=consultationDetails&consultationId=1643&external=no
(4) http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/ete/independentreviewofhomeeducation/irhomeeducation/
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