21/06/2022
Another detailed write up of the school bill explained by someone in Education
EVERY PARENT with a child under 18 and in full time education, whether via school or home education NEEDS TO READ THE SCHOOLS BILL IN FULL.
Do not just read the glossed over introduction on the gov website, it is perfectly worded to make it seem positive.
Currently in the UK our rights include the right to make sure that our children are receiving a full time education that suits their aptitude, abilities and needs.
The new Schools Bill, if it becomes law, will affect every parent’s rights long term. Once you have lost rights in law, it is almost impossible to get them back. You have to fight it beforehand. Yet most parents are not aware that they are about to lose some very fundamental parental rights.
For an example, one of your legal rights as parents in the UK, is that if your child has SEND or bullying issues at school, you can make the choice to withdraw them to home educate them, send them to another school if you prefer, and you have other routes and choices you can go down. You can visit schools and speak to SEND specialists, all before making your choices. This is just one tiny example.
Under the new bill, if you decide to home educate, you will need to obtain consent from the school your child is registered at. You may then get local authority staff who are not trained in education or SEND, assessing your child's learning, well-being and development. The local authority will have the power to decide, at a moment’s notice, that your child must return to school, and they may send them to an inadequate school of their choosing, where your child’s needs may not be met, and from which they will not be allowed to be withdrawn by you.
If the Schools Bill becomes law, your rights, as parents, will be removed from you and given to the government. You will no longer have any control over your child's education.
The Schools Bill is being advertised as a bill only targeting those 'missing education'. However, if you read the actual document, you may well feel outraged! You do need to read it thoroughly though. To not read it, would mean to blindly accept that the government knows what is best for your child and you do not.
Please read the Schools Bill and do what you can to fight it. Write to your MP. Find out who your local peers/members of the House of Lords are and write to them. The Lords are generally very nice, friendly and approachable people! As their job is to hold the elected government to account, you will be helping them to do their job!
The Schools Bill does not just target home educators, travellers, those living nonadically etc as most of the public have been led to believe. It will affect any child under 18, including yours.
Do you have a child who is sick or poorly a lot? This bill will affect you.
Do you have a child who has mental health issues and is too anxious or depressed to attend school at times? This bill will affect you.
Have you had a bereavement in the family, and your child wants to attend the funeral or needs some time off to grieve and process things? This bill will affect you.
Do you have a child with undiagnosed or unmet special or additional educational needs? This bill will affect you.
Is your child being severely and persistently bullied or socially ostracized at school, to the extent that it’s affecting their physical health, mental health and well-being? This bill will affect you.
To put it bluntly, if you have a child, this bill will affect you.
How much control do you want the government to have over your parenting choices? We all parent differently, depending upon our lifestyles and communities, our cultures and traditions, yet the government clearly want to put in place a standardised parenting style with little to no wiggle room.
All children need to be safeguarded, but this is not the way to do it. Your children may soon become wards of the state, because soon you will have very few parental rights left.
Please educate yourselves, because it is so hard watching those around us willingly allowing their rights as parents, actually as human beings, to be stripped away because a document is too much effort to read and understand. Its just easier to go along with the crowd, the status quo, and accept that the government must know what’s best for our children and our families.
Every parent should read and know this bill inside out, every grandparent, every aunt and uncle, every guardian, every older sibling. You have a duty of care to your families to understand what you are non-verbally agreeing to by allowing this bill to just pass you by. These are fundamental rights that are being stripped from UK citizens. Do not sleepwalk into something that you have not read and do not understand.
The words of Martin Niemoller come to mind: “Then they came for … and I did not speak out”.
Just to raise awareness to the new Schools Bill which is being proposed.
Schools Bill for families of children in school:
For parents of children in schools, the Schools Bill represents a frightening ‘power grab’ by the DfE. Even former education ministers in the House of Lords have raised concerns over that.
Under the Bill:
1. All schools must become academies, ending the dual system under which church schools have always operated.
2. New academies can only have state provided sites, closing the future possibility that any new church school can be set up. In fact, the DfE wants to prevent any new church school from being set up.
3. School governance can be decided by the DfE as the Bill gives the DfE power to remove governors and replace them itself.
4. The Bill provides that worship and RE arrangements in academies can be changed or even removed by DfE regulations.
5. Schools set up under trusts would lose the right to receive or buy extra land for their school.
6. The DfE will have the right to set the curriculum removing any freedom of choice from school heads and governors.
7. The DfE will have the right to set school hours and term times removing any freedom of choice from school heads and governors.
8. The DfE will have the right to set absence policies, completely removing the right of any parent to obtain permission from the head teacher for term time off for any reason.
9. The DfE will set fines for absences and has already indicated that these will be punitive.
10. The DfE will have the right to set admission procedures, regardless of the current admission policies of each school.
11. If you are a teacher, the DfE will set your salary level.
12. If you are a teacher the DfE can ban you from teaching not only in schools, but also online and remotely.
13. The DfE will control how the proprietors of school spend their money, completely removing their autonomy.
14. The Bill gives OFSTED the power to seize any material from a school (or anyone it thinks might be a school) that it sees fit. It will be a criminal offence to not comply.
15. The Bill introduces a register of children not in school. This does not just affect home educating families, but also erodes the rights of school children.
16. If your child takes a day off for an appointment, you will have to register with your local authority.
17. You will be under a duty to supply your local authority with any information that it demands of you, under threat of fines or imprisonment if you fail to do so, or even if you make a clerical error in doing so.
18. If you use a tutor, or out of school classes, the service provider will be under a duty to provide your child’s details to the local authority.
19. If a tutor or service provider fails to provide the information, or makes a clerical error, they can face closure, fines and loss of their business.
20. If a family member educates your child with an EHCP (or 5 children or more) for some of the time, they will have to register as a school and face OFSTED inspection and the duties that schools have to provide your information to the local authority.
21. Any ‘setting’ which provides education to one child with an EHCP or 5 or more without an EHCP will have to register as a school: no exceptions are made for childminders, tutors, after school clubs, forest schools, relatives and large families who home educate.
22. We know that children in the UK are amongst the unhappiest in Europe and that mental health in schools is a real issue for many. The Bill takes away your right to remove your child from a school without oversight of your local authority, regardless of how that authority has already failed your child.
23. If your child has an EHCP and you are served with a school attendance order, the bill prevents you from every having it revoked, even if you move from the area, or the education that you provide is suitable.
24. The Bill gives the DfE the right to close down independent schools and make it an offence for the school to continue to operate.
25. Independent schools will need to apply for DfE approval if they change their details, including: the proprietor, the address, the age range of pupils, the maximum number of pupils, whether the school is for boys or girls and whether it provides accommodation.
What this Bill does to you is take away your right, as a parent, to choose the education for your child and gives that right to faceless civil servants in the DfE who do not know your child. It makes all education provision come under the control of the DfE and local authorities with no exceptions.
