"I have drifted into this because of the Badman review and how home education is being handled from an educational point of view. I take an interest in that and therefore one of the related questions: how are these people handled by the welfare system?

The home education community is immensely diverse. I do not think that it can be categorised in any useful way. Clearly, a number of people home educate out of conviction-either that is their educational philosophy or they have a religious requirement which is not met by the state system. The majority are there by default because the state system has failed their children. They have children with special educational needs. I am sure the noble Baroness will recognise that many schools do not deal with such children properly. That is just a fact of life. If your child is disappearing down a whirlpool at school, it is noble and honourable to pick him out, take him home, look after him and make sure that he is educated properly. Some have children who ..,"

This is an extract from Amendment 74, to the House of Lords' Grand Committee debate on the Welfare Reform Bill (5th Day), Monday 22 Jun 2009, Moved by Lord Lucas. From Hansard It gives a clear summary of the difficulties faced by many Home Educating parents. The extract is continued below.

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The Badman Report on the Review of Elective Home Education in England is a travesty of report writing in that its conclusion appears to have been decided before pen touched paper, but worst of all, it is yet another attack on the basic freedoms that we have taken for granted for so long, in England. It complies with some unwritten government rule, that anything outside of its control, must be brought within. Badman has failed to understand that it is the collapse of the family unit and the failure of Social Services that has resulted in a number of horrific child abuse cases, not the fact that many children are educated outside of what many describe as a failing education system.

However, this report does have a future. It should be used, in academia, as an example of how not to write a report. To give an analogy.

If someone asked you to write a report on a bridge that they wanted pulled down, you could use the Badman report as an example of how to write it. You would say that it was not built using the latest materials, did not conform to metric measurements, the ballast varied from side to side and different bricks were used as the construction progressed. You asked modern bridge building experts for their opinion who said that its strength was difficult to judge because of its construction and no modern assessment system could be used on it, so it should be pulled down. Anyway, it was ugly. Even though almost no bridges of this construction had ever failed unlike those modern bridges which suffered from concrete cancer, and those that had been made of box section steel before the problems of internal corrosion had been understood. You would then bring in UN and EU regulations to bolster your case for destruction and selectively use any other regulations that you could find. The fact that this is an excellent bridge, built stronger than its modern examples, and was likely to last longer than them, is immaterial. It has to go and the report must say so. But back to the report.

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