On what topic have we heard arguments like the ones highlighted below?
People who educate their children at home rather than sending them to school say they against having to register annually with local authorities.
Home education lobby groups told a committee of MPs that a register would lead to interference by officials.
But the Association of Directors of Children’s Services told the committee of MPs that a register was necessary to ensure children’s safety.
Committee Chairman Barry Sheerman said: “It seems strange that we do not know how many home educated children there are and where they are.”
Mr Sheerman said the issue of children who “disappear” was a very real and important matter and a register of home educated children could help in tackling this problem.
David Chaytor, Labour MP for Bury North, told the home education representatives at the hearing that he could not understand their reluctance to accept a register of home educated children.
“If you’re confident about the quality of what’s being done, what’s the objection to registration?“
And the folks opposed to the registration have some rather familiar arguments against the registration.
But Jane Lowe from the Home Education Advisory Service told the committee such a register would do nothing to address this problem.
“If any parent is suitably evil or deranged that they want to abduct and abuse a child then they’re not going to take any notice of the minor offence of not registering themselves with the local authorities to home educate,” she said.
Ms Lowe said: “The problem is the local authorities don’t leave people alone – they interfere with what’s being done.“
She said if parents had made a decision to withdraw a child from school, it often took them a while to sort out the kind of provision that local authority officers might expect to see.
So far, on the pro-registration side, we’ve got:
A: A gun home schooled child register will make the world safer “for da chilluns”.
B: We need to know how many guns home schooled children there are and where they’re at just in case one is lost or stolen.
C: If you’re not doing anything wrong, then why are you worried about being on a list of gun owners home schoolers.
And on the pro-freedom side, the logical arguments of:
A: No registration list has ever stopped a criminal, because they’re criminals.
B: Interference and wait times caused by such a list actually harms a person seeking to defend themselves home school their child.
C: The registration process is so onerous that a gun owner home schooler could very likely never meet the government’s criteria.
Maybe if they hadn’t so readily folded on firearms, folks in the UK wouldn’t be seeing this happen to something so low on the government’s priorities list as home schooling their children.
Found via CCinZ
