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About AHEd

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About AHEd

 

AHEd is an action group with a focus on the defence and advancement of home education rights and liberties and of fair and equal treatment for all home educators.

 

AHEd has no party political affiliation, no ideological commitment beyond the right to home educate, no religious affiliation or doctrinal prejudice and regards the right to home educate as crossing all class and cultural boundaries. We welcome anyone who is prepared to uphold our aims and statement of purpose.

Membership is free to those who agree to support its aims. All members have a vote and can take part in the work of AHEd.

 

Home Education

 

By "home education" and related phrases, we mean the choice to provide for the education of a child, for whom you have parental responsibility, otherwise than at school in accordance with section seven of the Education Act 1996 (England and Wales,)and your own philosophy and beliefs.

 

Who are We?

 

AHEd has arisen from a network of committed home educating parents whose experience spans more than 25 years and in response to the increasingly urgent calls from many different groups and individual home educators, for an action group to complement the work of current home education support groups. AHEd is an affiliate of the Scottish home education association, Schoolhouse, who support families in Scotland.

 

Aims

 

The Aims:

 

 

  • Affirm that parents are responsible for the upbringing and education of their children and that this can be fulfilled outside the school system.
  • Raise awareness of Home Education rights and freedoms and encourage independent, elective home-based learning outside the school system.
  • Respond to current and proposed policies, legislation and consultations that potentially affect the rights and freedoms of families who choose home education.
  • Promote the right to fair and equal treatment of families choosing to engage in independent, elective home based learning with their children.
  • Provide information in support of these aims and promote a positive image of independent, elective home-based learning outside the school system.

 

Our Mission

 

The purpose of AHEd is to bring together all those home educators who wish to be able to speak and act as an organised alliance for the continued freedom of elective home education. Our beliefs and aspirations are broad and basic. We hope they will commend themselves to you and you will join us in our shared endeavour to:

 

 

  • Celebrate and publicise the benefits of elective home education,
  • Act to retain the historic independence of elective home education from the ambitions of the state to monitor and control all education

 

Statement of Purpose

 

We are an action group, set up to defend and further improve the conditions of freedom from unwanted and unhelpful interference that has been possible up to now.

 

We intend to:

 

 

  • Make representations to government and institutions that we feel might be needed.
  • Create a knowledge base and resource for all in their struggles to obtain legal, decent and honest treatment from their Local Authorities
  • Uphold the traditional freedoms of elective home education and obtain better policies and laws from government
  • Oppose bad laws and policies
  • Seek to obtain consistent and proper behaviour and policies from all Local Authorities

 

What We Offer

 

Home educators have unique and privileged access to fundamental truths about the human condition and how we best learn, denied to others inside the system. This is our insight.

 

Home educators can reveal those truths to the rest of society. As an organised alliance of elective home educators and elective home education supporters AHEd will work to ensure these truths do not become extinguished. This is our precious gift.

 

AHEd aims to uphold and improve our historic freedoms to live by our own lights, without unwanted and officious interference. This is our special contribution to the richness of society.

 

We hope you will join us.

 

Press Release Launching AHEd

 

MEDIA INFORMATION FROM ACTION FOR HOME EDUCATION

January 2007

 

NEW HOME EDUCATION ACTION GROUP GOES AHEd

 

Action for Home Education (AHEd) (1), an internet-based rights group for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, launches today in Derby with a pledge to act to protect the rights of parents and children who wish to enjoy home-based education without undue state interference, which they claim has reached an intolerable high and is set to worsen.

 

AHEd has arisen from a network of committed home educating parents whose experience spans more than 25 years and in response to the increasingly urgent calls from many different groups and individual home educators, for an action group to complement the work of current home education support groups. AHEd is an affiliate of the Scottish home education association, Schoolhouse, who support families in Scotland (2), and a member of the Centre for Personalised Education Trust (3), whose trustees include the highly respected academic researcher on home-based education, Dr Roland Meighan, and whose member organisations are all committed to supporting personalised education

 

Commenting on the urgent need for an organisation to tackle the challenges facing home educating families, co-founder and chair of AHEd, Barbara Stark, who has home educated her own children since 1980, said:

 

"For years home educators have tolerated unfair treatment and ultra vires practices by Local Authorities whose understanding of home-based education is, with few exceptions, minimal or non existent. We are tired of being subjected to unreasonable suspicion and unfair scrutiny when we are doing the very best for our children. We believe there are moves afoot by government to restrict traditional freedoms to educate children outside the school system and we are determined to do our utmost to prevent this."

 

According to New Labour mantra, every child matters, yet it blatantly attempts to prescribe the same diet of schooling to every child regardless of his or her individual needs and wishes.

 

AHEd asserts that EACH CHILD MATTERS, individually.

 

Each child matters individually to parents and it is parents who have the duty to make important educational decisions. But AHEd members are deeply concerned that current proposals by government threaten to remove parental responsibility and substitute the state as the arbiter of what is best for children - from what goes into lunch boxes to what is put into minds; from the portions of vegetables eaten per day to the content of every lesson at every stage for every child. As an alliance of concerned home educating families who put our children's needs first, we intend to make our voice heard by government."

 

Home educating parent and co-founding member of AHEd, Mrs Clare Wood, added: "We must not allow the dark side of the state to create this unreasonable intrusion into private and family lives. There is a real danger that we will lose our choices on the basis that government no longer trusts parents to act in the best interest of their children. The time has come for us to stand up and defend our rights. We know from experience that our children thrive on an education that is tailored to their individual needs. Current and future generations must be allowed to continue to benefit from real choice in education because despite government rhetoric - EACH child matters."

 

EACH CHILD MATTERS and in order to provide properly for their individual needs, the freedom to choose the how, where and what of our childrenÕs education is essential.

 

ENDS

 

Notes to Editors:

 

1

2. S

3. 

 

Link:

Join AHEd

 

or contact ahed@ahed.org.uk

 

 

 

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