In such cases it’s arguable whether the state’s range of remedies actually makes the individual child better off in the long run, but these measures serve to reinforce the idea that society has standards of parental care that must be achieved.

However, the routine monitoring and right to intrusion into family life by the state is insulting, unnecessary and cost-inefficient.

Better risk management and less frequent intrusion is a far better way of helping families whose children are educated at home.

Glimpse also a quite sober-minded professorial statement:
(“)You can become the best lawyer in the world, or the best doctor in the world, without any education whatsoever(“).

Your workplace employs you for only 25% of your time, dictates what skill you must use, and pays you one, two, three, up to twenty or more human-livings for applying that skill, for that 25% timeframe.
(We prefer to say ‘pay’ or ‘being given money’ and to avoid the trap of thinking ‘earnings’).

The workplace requires a fully-trained job-skill.

Your life-place on the contrary occupies you for a 75% timeframe, in which you apply a variety of living-abilities or borrowed-microskills (usually from one of your past workplaces) to spend what you have been given for selling yourself and your jobskill to the workplace in a 25% timeframe.

The dominant performance-principle at every level in both child-development and adult-reward systems is ‘Positive/Negative Reinforcement’ (“Good girl, go to the top of the class”; “Bad performance again last month, mister; the company has to let you go” [((Avoidance-whitewash terminology for "You-re sacked"))].

In the long-term ‘Reinforcement’ shows up as being very seriously flawed, in both its positive and negative arms.

It is being replaced, in a few isolated places including in the USA, by three more modern principles and models:
1. The friendly Method III of Needs-recognition and win-win-win cooperative problem-solving (Gordon);
2. Perceptual self-control theory (Powers); and
3. Self theory (Dweck);

each of which gets down to each individual’s real underlying need (including that of the teacher, parent, employer, other authority), firstly (Method III) cooperatively planning how each such basic need may best be met; secondly (Perceptual self-control) nurturing the individual’s inner achievement and ensuing sense of achievement in self-control more attractive and acceptable rewards than “bad girl, pay a fine”/”good man, we’re doubling your pay”; and thirdly (Self theory) encouraging all-round capability rather than exclusive focus on one specialist skill, coupled to objective-evaluation of others in comparison with self.
(Prof Caroline Dwecks universities team found that through the schooling and universities systems the ‘All-round’ stream which faced into their failures in a spirit of “that’s both interesting and challenging, apart from being a bit embarassing” and set about brushing them up to a pass level, ultimately equalled the stream of ‘Specialists’ who had been turning their backs on their failures and focusing on the one thing they had always been best at, in a spirit of “let’s not waste time on what we’re so obviously useless at”.

In each of the above three new learning/training/performance/reward models, those who become both willing and able to learn and apply their principles and practical-steps become more exemplarily co-constructive, more reliably workplace efficient, and less expensively community-supportive.

Relevance to ‘Home education’ ?

Given that both the local Education Authority and the Parent-and-Pupil neighbourhood body are fully familiar with and leaderfully/facilitation competent in the application of at least the Friendly Method III as the first and voluntary resort in every case of need, how or problem; it is quite probable that the other two similarly more cooperatively-participative and effective models, of Perceptual self-control and Self-theorisation attunement, will follow ‘naturally’, ‘evolutionarily’.

It is also probable that schooling and university training will re-order the existing priorities between the three learning modes, namely
(1)competitive(2)individual(3)cooperative teaching/learning, such that (1) cooperative learning comes first, (2) individual learning second, and (3) competitive learning third in importance and timeframing.

Simple closed-circuit surveillance of every teaching/learning session, whether in a schoolroom or home-room, administered by a coalition-body of fully-versed (Method III + Perceptual self-control + Self-thoerisation insight) educationists, teachers, civil-servants, parents/citizens, and mature-level students, should be a sufficient ‘win-win-win’ monitoring for each participant and responsible-stakeholder.

Contrasted with the huge amounts of money being splashed out in the open social market on private computers and webcams, such teaching/learning-place monitoring would surely be much more agreeably cost-effective than older-fashioned well-intentioned but now seriously-depreciating models of schooling, training, teaching & ‘education’, such as Reinforcement Theory ?

Our child did not want to go to school because his school would not let him work.
So we Home Educated him.
Would you support his choice to stay at home and work?

It seems to me that this bill is about REMOVING the RIGHTS of the CHILD and has nothing at all to do with the rights of the parents.

As parents, we wanted to support our child.
Incidentally he is now grown up and has a Master’s Degree and a well paid job.)

This Bill just wants to grab more power for the government.

I believe in the fundamental right of a child to live in a safe and loving environment.

I believe in the fundamental right of a parent to protect that child from abuse.

I believe , from statistics, provided by the NSPCC that abuse in school is endemic.

Until the children of Britain are protected during there school hours, from this abuse, Abuse which has lead many children attempt suicide.

We as a nation have NO right to demand that parents register there children with a LEA, to gain permission to educate there children at home.

I ask you lord Soley, when you send a child to school, who you know is going to get there nose kicked in on the way.. but the school says “we dont have a bullying problem here” what as a parent you would do?

Report it to the Governors? They then say.. oh no, we dont have a bullying problem here.. Report it to the LEA… By the time your child gets home.. another shirt torn.. another night spent picking up the tears.. another child let down by the system.. and there parents… Who want to protect there child from the bullies.. BUT according to the school “we dont have bullies here”

Once the schools of britain are safe, and provide an education for the children of britain.. THEN and only then.. can you realistically offer places for every child.. In the mean time.. Sort out your own side of the street.. Brush it clean.. and provide the children in those schools with the 1st class education they deserve!

Secondly Badman does make good point about the lack of support and services for home educated children. But we are rightly suspicious that these will not be delivered to our children and that they will come at cost to our independence.

So parents are responsible and accountable to their children. I agree.

Now, explain to me the mechanics of how a six, eight or sixteen year old can a) discover that their education is lacking and b) take steps to coerce their parents into providing a proper one.

As for the other point, it’s taken and understoof. Would you feel that part of the solution is to increase the training budget for Local Authorities, then? Perhaps a whole department of specialists who work with Home Educators, supporting those who need assistance as well as calling the slackers into account?

It’s something I’d see as working. Overstretched generalists in government tend to be the ones who come in for the stick, but in my experience small departments of specialists can consistently surprise people by being unexpectedly helpful, particularly when it comes to education and childcare.

You might, of course, have a different set of ideas, and I’d love to hear them. If it involves children enforcing parental accountability themselves, I trust you’ll understand my skepticism.

Easy, their children.