‘Making sure children are safe, well and receive a good education is our most serious responsibility… However, there are concerns that some children are not receiving the education they need. And in some extreme cases, home education could be used as a cover for abuse. We cannot allow this to happen and are committed to doing all we can to ensure children are safe, wherever they are educated.’
So the Children’s Minister Dame Morgan of Drefelin was quoted as saying in explanation of the just announced decision of her Government to institute a review of official procedures for monitoring the standards of care and education of the country's estimated 50,000 children currently in receipt of home-schooling.
Clearly the state has a perfectly legitimate interest, indeed an obligation, to ensure that all children who grow up within its jurisdiction receive adequate care and education.
However, one has to wonder about the timing of the Government’s decision to conduct this review, as well as the sense of priorities it displays.
The announcement of the review comes on the same day as newspaper reports that many secondary schoolchildren now turn up for school wearing stab-proof and bullet-proof vests.
It also comes less than a week since the release of the 2009 School League Tables for England and Wales that showed that almost 400,000 schoolchildren, half the relevant age-group, failed to obtain 5 GCSE’s including maths and English at grades A* to C. That level of attainment is the Government’s own benchmark of a satisfactory education. Over half of the country’s state secondary schools are reportedly failing to ensure the majority of their pupils leave with such grades.
In light of these facts and figures, it would seem that, if Dame Morgan sincerely wishes to take seriously her ministerial responsibility to ensure that the country’s children are safe and receiving a good education, the review that she urgently needs to institute is not that of the country's home-schooling arrangements. It is rather a review of the safety and education arrangements in its publicly-maintained schools.
Fat chance.