L.A Visit

With *I de-registered and back home we have had the L.A round again. His name is John and he's actually really nice and very pro home -ed. Went through the motions and basically got a satisfactory mark before he left.

I thought I would ask him about the Home Ed Bill. Now I asked John and he thinks that the most will happen is that they will make registration compulsory but families with satisfactory records won't really have anything to stress about as they will already know that those families are home-edding well. I know the large majority of home ed families are doing brilliantly anyway, so everyone can take a breath. He also said that with rising numbers of families choosing to home educate they are already having a bigger load to cope with and the Home Ed Bill will only put a strain on the already overloaded system. He said that this year so far he has already had over 500 home visits to do and if numbers keep going up it will mean that probably we will stop having yearly visits and most likely have a visit every 18 months.

I'm so happy as I asked my home ed lady who does the yearly visits the same thing and she said basically the same as John, today. So nothing has changed as far as they know. I know I can't fully trust what they say as they don't get to make the final decision on it, but it has put my mind at ease.

But what a great win for the home ed community that the numbers are going up! I'm so pleased that people are taking control of their children's education and realising they can have a say in how they want to educate. I know our girl *I wanted to go back to school, and we did let her, but I wasn't happy about it. I knew after a while the problems would start and she would feel the pressure of SAT's and things would just go downhill. And they did. So as much as we try to allow the kids to think for themselves and make decisions, sometimes you have to say, "No, I'm the parent and this is what is going to happen". They don't always like it but we know what is best for our children. With *N now in college, I know that there's now another opportunity for *I and *O to give them access to further education if they choose and a great alternative to GCSEs and tests.