Telegraph: Labour is meddling where it is not wanted over home-schooling

Telegraph View. Published: 8:01PM BST 11 Jun 2009

Written a couple of weeks ago now but this Telegraph article and the comments posted since provide good coverage of the Home Ed Review issues.

Even in its current decrepit state, the Government has not lost its unappealing appetite for control. It has given Douglas Jay’s notorious aphorism, “the gentleman in Whitehall is usually right”, a wholly unwarranted lease of life, long after it should have been consigned to the political graveyard. Nowhere has this been more true than in how we raise our young. In Labour’s view, the primary responsibility for this most elemental human activity rests not with the parent, but with the state.

That is the only conclusion that can be drawn from the indefensible decision of Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, to accept the recommendations of Graham Badman’s Review of Elective Home Education in England. Mr Badman appears to have concluded that parents are not safe to be trusted with the education of their children and that those who decide to school their children at home must become, in effect, subsidiaries of the state. They will have to register annually, be subjected to inspection visits by the local authority and submit a statement of their intended approach to their child’s education.

More of this article and comments http://tiny.cc/48lQX