Education – children can stay at home!
Posted by michael on October 10, 2009
Children will be able to choose to go to school part-time under plans unveiled by Ed Balls the Children’s Secretary. He is allowing kids to only have to attend school for certain lessons. He expects their parents to ensure they received the rest of their education at home!
Looks to me like education on the cheap!
I would guess that this initiative is to get as many children out of the schools so they they can use the spaces for other children. Saves them from building new schools or expanding existing schools!
Does this initiative really come from a government which is forcing ALL under 18s to go back to school? Quote from Ed Ball’s website:
‘Take our commitment to fund a place at school, college or in training for every 16- and 17-year-old who wants one.
Not much of a commitment if the kids (of all ages) can choose to stay at home!!!
But how many parents are actually at home during the day now? Can children really stay away from school to work at home if there are no parents there.
They won’t be able to have other adults (other than family members) care for the children because that would then be a school and need all sorts of red tape including registering to prove that the helpers are not sex offenders!
Another real issue is that the school buses only operate at certain times of the day. Children cannot necessarily get into school to attend these ‘certain lessons’ during the day that Balls talks about. And then how do they get home? New Labour strategists do not seem to have thought of that!
There is of course the possibility that this is being used to attack parents who genuinely and sincerely educate their children at home already! This may be an attempt to force these people to send their children into school for these ‘certain lessons’. Could this work? Home-educated children are not necessarily following the same curriculum as the state schools. This stands every chance of disrupting the whole home-education process.
The chances are that these ‘certain lessons’ will not be maths, science, English etc. It will be really interesting to see which ‘certain lessons’ that New Labour propose as mandatory. I bet that it will be the social, religious and lifestyle lessons.
I really do get the impression that no one in Labour really knows what is going on, that the ship is rudderless! Or they are not being open about what they are trying to do!
