The Schools Bill, which is about to be sent from the Lords to the Commons, proposes to turn Britain, and particularly England and Wales, from one of the world’s freest places to home educate to one of the most restrictive. It will empower the Department for Education and local authorities to inspect living-room home education “settings”, close private schools, force school attendance for a given child with no redress, prevent any new religious schools from opening, relocating or expanding, ban tutors whom they do not like from teaching even online, and force parents to supply any information or surrender any materials that they see fit.
In this segment, Alex Thomson runs through the 25 tyrannical aspects of the Bill, using a list hosted by Education Otherwise and by Tap News. More detail is given by Schools Week, Wendy Charles-Warner and Tristram Llewelyn Jones, the latter two writing in The Conservative Woman (TCW). Finally, Debi Evans discusses how special educational needs are being invoked by the Bill to spread standardisation at the cost of children’s misery.
