Millions of children are being harmed in schools every day.
No one is listening.
Home educators are blamed for multi-agency safeguarding failures.
No one is listening.
Parents are prosecuted for protecting their children or taking an affordable holiday.
No one is listening.
VAT on independent schools is negatively impacting 10,000’s of children – many with SEND.
No one is listening.
Families and Professionals are Uniting and Take Action
Background and context
Evidence
My School Story: What families have endured.
My School Story collects evidence of “school causing harm” and gives the opportunity for adults, parents and professionals to recount their experiences, giving them the voice that they have been denied.
We want to increase understanding and demonstrate that we need to “Do Education Differently”.
Child's Voice: What children want you to know.
We have asked children what they want the world to know about their lives. This could be about mainstream school or learning in a different way, such as home education or a virtual school.
Children deserve to be heard and respected. They deserve to be given the best start – which is not our current mainstream schools.
Home Ed Alumni: Education outside of school works.
Home Education Alumni (adults who were once home educated) have kindly agreed to share their photo, what they do now and a statement on what being home educated, meant to them.
The purpose is to show that home education is not hidden and that school is not essential – and in many cases, it is not the best option.
We are campaigning for:
1. Removal or full reworking of policy or proposed, that fails to hear and act upon the voice of its stakeholders (children and families).
- The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
- The Data Use and Access Bill
- VAT on Independent Schools
- School Attendance Fines
2. Removal of policy or proposed policy, that ignores centuries of recognised parental primacy, human rights, and reasonable thresholds for data sharing.
- The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
- The Data Use and Access Bill
- School Attendance Fines
3. The Government to notice, acknowledge and rectify the failings of mainstream schooling – a system that routinely causes harm to young people and staff.
Failings include, but are not limited to:
- Mental, physicial and emotional abuse.
- One-Size-Fits-All methodology which discriminates against neurodivergent children.
- Subject hierarchy (promoting EBacc subjects and academia above the arts, sport, engineering & life skills).
- Draconian behaviour and uniform “management” approaches
Governments, councils and schools make decisions for children every day – they talk about the child’s voice – but do they ever listen?
Over 100,000 young people and families will be impacted by the introduction of a Children Not in School register and associated legislation proposed in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. It will affect education providers too, who are already considering removing their services.
The Labour party are using tragic cases of multiagency safeguarding failure (as a result of ongoing Government underfunding) to push through undemocratic legislation, to remove parental rights, to “grab data” and to try and push young people back into the schools that failed them.
Every child in the country will be impacted by the proposed “Unique Identifier” – having not learnt from the Horizon scandal – they are planning on using AI to manage our childrens private data. How long will it be before the wrong families are investigated and young adults are finding their data has been leaked, impacting their credit rating and ability to get a job – or worse.
These risks are even more concerning when read alongside the proposed Data Use and Access Bill.
Whilst this time and money is being wasted – the Government refuse to acknowledge or act, on the failings of our mainstream schooling system, which is the biggest safeguarding risk to children.
Parents and carers have watched Sure Start centres close (which had multiple proven positive impacts on wellbeing and education for young people), austerity measures, the cost of living and now they are the ones left with a mental health crisis in young people to navigate.
Our Government is at a fork in the road. They continue as they have been, forcing more and younger children into childcare, blaming parents for their failings and tightening the vice of mainstream education.
Or they stop. They hold back on any further legislation and they look to others within the UK and beyond, for a better way.
It is at this time that we all need to ask ourselves – what is the point of 9 GCSEs passed, if it has destroyed a childs mental health in the process?
The Government MUST do better.
#AreYouListeningNow is supported by:
