Update on Officialdom
Hi
I am still awaiting a reply to the letter I sent back to the EHE in response to their attacks on us and their threats of School Attendance Orders.
We did have one bit of good news on the Official front. We got a letter from Social Services apologising for the distress caused to our family over their intended “Initial Assessment” after this business with the Pen Pal letter.
Such a massive over-reaction with unproven allegations and police and social services involvement was totally unnecessary and has caused huge stress.
I suppose if we belonged to any other minority group, we would probably have cause for a huge compensation claim for harassment.
In terms of the requests for information from the EHE of the Local Education Authority as to their answers to the 60 questions in the recent review, it does not look as if information is going to be forthcoming.
I got an email about that matter and I quote it here:
“In relation to this request I can confirm that the release of this questionnaire may be subject to a Freedom of Information Act exemption and therefore a Public Interest Test will be held. In accordance with the County Council procedures a panel will decide if this information is subject to the exemption and if the information will be withheld, or if the information will be released.
No inference should be made from this letter that we currently hold the information that has been requested.
The Public Interest Test panel will meet in due course and I will contact you with the outcome as soon as possible after the panel has reached a decision.”
Hmm, very interesting…
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that they are absolutely terrified that home-educating parents will find out what the LA have written about them and that there will be such a public outcry over it that they will be unable to force through their intended draconian bullying and harassment policies.
When parents refuse visits from the LA, the argument often levelled against them is “well, if you have nothing to hide, what is the problem?” I would have to ask the same question of our LA.
Their 20 day deadline for providing the information under the Freedom of Information Act has now passed. I doubt I am going to get an answers because the LA has already made their position clear in another FOI request on the What Do They Know site.
Apparently they have chosen to take advantage of an exemption under the Freedom of Information Act and claim that releasing the information (whilst still claiming that they may not actually have it) could prejudice the conduct of Public Affairs!
Interestingly only a handful of LAs have been willing to release this information. Many have not replied to requests or have claimed that the form was filled out online, so no hard copies were retained!
Others, apparently including Bradford, have claimed that they were not “invited” to take part!
What a load of rubbish!
Clearly they were not expecting home -educating parents to find about this secret 60 questions questionnaire. Obviously they were not expecting people to want to see what they have written!
No doubt all this secret, hidden, unavailable and non-existent data will miraculously make an appearance when the next round of unfounded, unproven allegations and attacks start.
This data will suddenly prove “significant numbers” of home-educated children are at risk from all sorts of nasty things from parents.
So, in the meantime, we await a reply to our response to the threats of School Attendance Orders and being placed on the Children Missing Education Register.
Life has to go on!
Have a wonderful day.
Amanda Goldston
