Having looked them over, this certainly hasn't done the job of a good Carrot and made me any less aware of the Big Stick - far from it, it has instead thrown it into sharper focus as it clearly shows how little thought has really gone into what Home Educators really need or want, and how little they plan to exhert themselves, mentally or financially, in finding out and providing it.
Read on for my opinions of each 'bite' of the Carrot;
- LA forums for HE families
Verdict - redundant
- Plans to extend flexi-schooling
However, the track record of this government suggests they are more likely to 'support' families in this by taking away the autonomy of the head in this matter and making it unlawful for a school not to comply with any flexi-school request. Not only would this set up the back of any head teacher, but it would immediately call for the issuing of statutory guidelines on how a school should go about accomodating flexi-schoolchildren in order for heads to carry out their new responsibility 'properly', which will lead neatly into a need for a 'Flexi - curriculm' for all schools to follow, probably involving strong recommendations for number of hours a child should study on the premises, subjects that should be taken by the child and an inclination for the schoolwork to be viewed as more important than the home education sanctioning inroads being made into HE time by the school. This route will undoubtedly leave most parents in a situation where it is more difficult, not less, to find the flexi arrangement they want for their child as annoyed and browbeaten heads who don't really want their child insist that flexi-schooling can only be done according to the government guidelines and never mind that you need something different.
Verdict - likely to be disasterous.
- Use of school libraries to be made available
So, why would I want to use the library in the local school? It's hardly likely to contain anything I can't get from the public library, more likely it will contain a lot less, and it's unlikely it's opening times or borrowing rules will be more convenient either. Textbooks, in my experience, are usually in the 'reference' section and I would be more likely to purchase those than borrow them even if I had the option to. And if I lived in an area without a public library building, there is a good chance that area would also not have a school (or at least, not one likely to be big enough to have much of a library) - though it may well be serviced by a mobile public library. So, why exactly would this plan to open up school libraries be a benefit?
Verdict - redundant
- Support to families with children with SEN.
Now, there are those out there who home educate SEN children who never had a problem with the support provided in school and deregistered for other reasons, or who never sent their child to school or whose needs have changed since. These families might well find they want to access some support if they could. Even without raising the concerns of whether any such support would be on a 'supplied when asked for' basis or if it would be more of a 'we are going to give you support whether you want it or not' system, this 'SEN support' is an unhelpful promise since it is so vague, failing to give any clue as to what the DCSF may mean by it. 'Support' can mean anything from handing you a bullet-point leaflet to providing grants and use of facilities, from forcing you to accept a particular therapy on pain of losing other support or other benefits or your child itself to rewriting existing laws and guidelines that have previously overlooked the home educating community to take account of the fact that said laws and guidelines affect them too. Nor does this proposal give any indication of who would provide the support and where amongst other things. SEN support would not necessarily have to come via the LA, nor would it necessarily have to be local for instance. So which is it? Without knowing what 'support' entails, it's impossible to know if it will be either a step in the right direction, useless, or a scourge on society.
Verdict - naive and vague
So, what I am getting from this is that the DCSF want to relieve me of my parental autonomy in return for a small handful of empty promises that either offer services I cannot get better elsewhere or that are likely to make life just that bit worse if I ever do find myself in a position where the areas they affect affect me too.
Not much of a Carrot, is it? Rather more of a Poisonous Weed.
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