Having no actual evidence or even basic information to hand Baroness Morgan decides to announce that home education can be an excuse for forced marriage, domestic servitude and other forms of abuse. Therefore the Balls sent out his hound Badman to sniff out some actual evidence. On finding none at all Badman made up some statistics and the NSPCC helpfully provided support suggesting among other things that a toddler killed at her home was home educated. She wasn’t. The two cases where home education was a factor were jumped on gleefully and the fact that the first abuser was a registered foster mother right under the eyes of SS and the second was a mother whose children were in school and who was also right under the noses of SS was duly ignored (though not by the MSM thankfully).
The year went on with half truths and lies being told by so many people in positions of power that I can barely be bothered to list them. If you’ve paid attention you will have seen it play out.
Finally we reach the point where the Bill looks set to fail to get through. We might sigh with relief at the thought that forced sex ed (grooming) and forced licensing of home educators might not happen (for now).
The country is financially embarrassed and a general election is due. Education is in the papers as schools churn out the illerate and innumerate and children can’t attain basic GCSEs even when they are free at school. Children go to school in stab vests and at my local comp children are locked in as police are called to try and stop a riot.
In the light of all this the DCSF announce their research into home education. It is set to begin in April. How much will it cost I wonder? And how on earth do they expect home ed families to forget what has been said and done and just go along with it?!
I would love to see real research done in the UK. I am curious about the outcomes of those of us who home educate. We know that American outcomes are very good. So good in fact that some universities over there make a special effort to recruit homeschooled youngsters. But in the UK we have less data to go on. It would be better if some Unis got together and pooled resources to do the research-but that probably wont happen any time soon.
Perhaps the next Govt will ditch all this and try and rebuild some trust with home edders first. We’ll see.
In some ways it doesn’t matter. Is the research useful? I wonder.
Thinking Love, No Twaddle 
It is laughable, isn’t it?
And, one supposes, that the ‘research’ will be of the calibre of Mr. Badman’s make it up type.
They are on a loser here. I suspect that perhaps one or two families will co-operate and the rest will not. I certainly will not.
They have money that MUST be wasted I mean used up because of budgets. If they don’t use up their allotment of tax payers’ money, they will get less in the next fiscal year! So they have to use up more money than they are getting so that they can request more for the next budget.
Could you get in touch with me about your comment on Fr Ray’s blog? Thanks.