My response to the the Wales Consultation on Home Education

I am copying it below. The wording of each question has been omitted, but can be inferred from the answers. The last question, Q8, simply asks for any further comments, which I offer.

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Registering and monitoring home-based education --- Wales 2012 consultation

I am a Home-Educating parent. I live in England.

Q1. Disagree, because I do not think a register should be kept, nor do I think that it should be a requirement for local authorities to register a parent who elects to home educate one or more of their children.

Q2. Disagree, because I do not think that parents should be required to register prior to or during home-educating one or more of their children.

Q3. Disagree, because I do not think the local authority should be required to be assessing the parents' suitability to home-educate one or more of their children.

Q4. Disagree, because I do not think a local authority should be required to undertake a face to face meeting with a parent who is home-educating one or more of their children.

Q5. Disagree, because I do not think a local authority should be required to hold meetings with a parent who is home-educating one or more of their children.

Q6. Disagree, because I do not think a local authority should be required to keep such a register of parents who are home educating one or more of their children. 

Q7. Disagree, because I do not think a local authority should be required to give or withhold permission to a parent to home-educate one or more of their children.

Q8.

This consultation appears to be written from the perspective of adults who have no direct experience of home-educating one or more of their children.

The consultation shows no evidence of any prior study of the experience of national and local authorities in other countries around the world. 

The consultation does not show evidence of care taken to work out the costings for these proposals.

The consultation does not ask for the views of home-educated children or schooled children.

The consultation ignores the parent's responsibility in law to ensure that the education and care of their children is suitable. It is not the local authority's responsibility. See ... [I missed it out, but then added a chunk of the relevant Act in a follow up email, though I'm sure they know it by heart now!]

The consultation assumes that the creation of a register, the withholding or allowing of permission to home educate, the face to face meetings and the annual monitoring meetings will achieve ends which are not clearly set out. 

The costs, in all senses, to achieve such a registering process have not been clearly set out.

There is no reading list showing evidence of a thoughtful, intelligent and compassionate approach to this matter. 

I suggest that all involved in this consultation read more widely, reflect on the circumstances which might cause them as individuals to choose home education for one or more of their children and take more account of the many dedicated adults who have given many years of their time to home-educating one or more of their children.

Good luck with all the reading!

[My full name]

22/11/2012

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I hope my suggestions at Q8 are helpful to the officials charged with reading and analysing the replies, and act as a spur to some thoughtful reflections.

I can't say that I have yet had any new thoughts about home education as a result of this consultation process. Let's try:

I was surprised at how quickly I was able to write replies. Last time I did a similar reply it took me a lot more typing and retyping.

I was a bit annoyed with myself for leaving it until the last minute, perhaps this was because there was no replies counter showing the running total of replies sent in. This might have encouraged me to get involved earlier on.

I felt gratitude to the efforts of everyone who wrote and acted at the time of the Badman Review. I was aware that this was my turn to help out with a different geographical area.

I am aware that I think a future labour government in Westminster is likely and so further attempts to introduce licensing and monitoring are also likely. Being part of a 'counting of heads' at this point is a reminder to me of the process of coming together which is needed each time a suggestion is made which many people wish to challenge. I saw that Twitter is more of a force than during Badman. Otherwise, yahoo groups and blogs are effective communication networks just as at that time. I didn't use facebook much this time, but others may have.

Wales Consultation on Home Education

You know what to do: read the document, find a way which suits you to write the replies, then email the response back to WELLBEINGshare@wales.gsi.gov.uk before the consultation ends tomorrow, Friday 23rd November. I don't know whether the capitals matter in that unusual email address.

Good luck with putting together some pithy and easy to understand replies.

Dr Ali Al-Ekri's story - parts 3 and 4

The Bahrain Mirror is in Arabic, but translates pretty clearly into English.

Part 3  The 17th February 2011

and

Part 4 The 18th and 19th February 2011

Since the first 2 posts I wrote are not showing up automatically via 'link within' below this post, here they are:

Part 1 Biography and 14th February 2011

and

Part 2 15th to 17th February 2011

Dizzy day

This must have been a side effect of the cold which is going around. It is odd to walk so slowly, not twisting my head, not lifting it up either. I move like a robot, my feet doing the turning.

It is such a pleasure to feel better enough to be able to take the empty milk bottle outside and empty the compost bin. Once I am up I am ok, but moving from sitting to vertical is not so good.

Good old daytime tv, it is soothing when all I can do is rest and listen to the voices. Nothing like channel hopping with my eyes shut! How did people manage in the old days with no remote?

This reminds me of when I had SPD and had to think instead of acting. I couldn't waste any footsteps across the kitchen or sitting room. It really was a sitting room! I had to spend most of my time there and was so attentive and kind to T, who was just 2 1/2.

Now it is time to go and rest again with several carefully picked tasks to do while I am there.

Sunday afternoon ramble

I started with the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Blog.

Moved on to The Writers' Studio of New York. What an amazing reading list! Can you imagine how much reading there is to get through each and every week? How can anyone afford to buy so many books? Would they be in the library? Or even all on Kindle?

Back to the poet Ingrid De Kok. This poem (The archbishop chairs the first session) is one of a set of 10 concerning the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's work in South Africa. They are all in her collection called Terrestial Things.

Then I stopped a while at poet Ko Un. I am struck by the concept of writing one poem for each person he has met in his life.

Homework, my head hurts, tired

I have to get this vocab into my poor head. It is now or never. In one ear, out the other.

I have stapled together some tiny books. In the first one I have drawn some little people with speech bubbles. Under each scenario I have quite a few lines so I can copy the speech bubbles again and again.

One is 'ana wa abi wa binti' = me and my father and my daughter, not that I have one in real life, but I do in my studies! Once we get on to numbers I may have 7 or 27!

Another plan is to do some matching slips of paper, with different coloured pens to help me. For each word there will be 3 slips: the Arabic, the transliteration and the English. I will mix them all up on the table and pair/trio them together again. Where are my coloured pens??

My other homework has been to look closely at Twitter photos and slowly, oh so slowly, sound out a few words. I am sure I spotted 'Tehran'.

How does T cope with so much new information all day long?

Our firework night

Every year we do fireworks in the back garden. Every year it doesn't go to plan. The slight chaos is the main point of it. My mother in law's brown bin makes a great table for all the bits and pieces, so that is our base.

We gasped at the very small fireworks, which we'd been expecting to go whoosh up to the clouds.

Then we squealed at the actual rockets which did go very high. We play a game of stand very still and listen to where the debris lands. That bit is unpredictable. They are very small bits and tend to land in the leaves still on the trees. The others have good hearing so get the most out of this ritual.

Each time a firework was lit we moved back a bit instinctively. My mother in law was watching from her window, but then came out to join us, all bundled up to stay warm.

We finally managed to light the sparklers, messing around with many matches took far longer than the sparkler waving itself. It was fun! We made different patterns in the air, I drew the arabic 'b' and the 'y' complete with dots.

Since the grass was damp I suggested we throw our finished sparklers as far as possible, our olympic javelin event. The grass was our bucket of water. It is ok, there was plenty of space.

Starting to see Arabic everywhere, even when I am looking at a perfectly common English word!

I had to laugh at myself when I read a blog post with the title 'Mohammed Bin Naif Named Saudi Interior Minister' and momentarily assumed that the 'Named' was another part of his name, ie Nameed or similar. I could even make a go of writing that with the correct linked letters.

Half term is over and my next class is tomorrow afternoon. I need lots of practice at hearing the difference between the 2 'h' sounds we have been introduced to. I hope to get there with plenty of time to browse through Blackwell's and find a dictionary.

Even more helpful than a dictionary would be very simple children's books like the Bif and Chip ones, with short sentences and lots of detailed pictures to enjoy. I could read them out to the cat.

A Dream Book

I hadn't heard of this type of Dream Book before. I love the idea of thinking up so many different ones and giving each one some space.