The Times Education Supplement is wrongly named.
It should in fact be called The Times School Supplement. The people who work there believe that education can only happen in a school.
Of course, they are wrong, but their whole economic and ideological ecosystem revolves around children being in schools, and children being educated outside of schools means that the TES and the teachers and companies that are connected to it in one way or another by six degrees of separation, will no longer have forced access to other people’s children and stolen money from the State, which is both how they earn their living and the substrate upon which they base their every thought.
In an attempt to increase the power of the Sate and to make sure that every child becomes a profit stream for the TES and teachers, ‘journalist’ Kerra Maddern has written a thinly veiled attack piece on home education, parents, the family and anyone who rejects the idea that education can happen outside of school.
I am now going to pull it to pieces.
Analysis: Without a national system local authorities are failing to keep track of children who drop out of education, sparking fears that they may be at risk of abuse. Kerra Maddern reports
This analysis is flawed. What this woman means by ‘national system’ is a successor to the paedophile catalogue ContactPoint, the nightmare central database where all eleven million children in the UK were to be registered by force (a ‘national system’) that over one million government workers were to be given access to, and from which celebrities, the ultra rich and MPs were to be exempted.
We wrote about ContactPoint many times, pointing out the lies, faulty reasoning, computer illiteracy and immorality of it. It seems that Kerra Maddern is on the side of those sick and stupid people.
Almost 12,000 children are officially “missing” from education, a TES investigation has revealed, with many at “serious risk” of physical, sexual and mental harm.
The thinking behind this number is flawed. Just because the State does not know what a child is or is not doing, this does not mean that they are ‘missing from education’.
The whole premiss of this article starts from the incorrect position that children are the property of the State, which of course, they are not. The State has no right to know what every child is doing and where it is at all times. Only fascists and paedohiles desire such information.
Similarly, just because the State does not know where a child is, it does not immediately follow that those children are at any risk of anything whatsoever. Only in the sick minds of the statist does ‘unknown to the State’ immediately translate to ‘in potential danger’. In fact, children in the care of the State are more likely to be abused than those that are not.
Leading children’s charities and Ofsted
Ofsted, which should be abolished, exists by making money off of children. They serve no useful purpose, as we and others have pointed out. Children’s charities, who are against home education to a man, also exist by making money off of children. All of these people make a living off of children. They will do and say anything to remove the responsibility for children from parents. They are in the Child Exploitation Industry and as far as they are concerned, the parent is their number one enemy, because parents have the power to cut off their streams of revenue – children.
say they are deeply concerned by the findings, which show that 11,911 children have fallen out of the education system and that schools and local authorities do not know the location of significant numbers of these young people.
Once again, the state not knowing about the location of a child cannot be extrapolated to anything whatsoever.
The last official estimate from the Government – made five years ago – put the total number of children missing from education at 10,000, suggesting that the problem has since deteriorated.
…or that it has improved; no one knows. Of course, it is in the interests of the Child Exploitation Industry to claim that everything is getting worse, because worse means more stolen loot (State ‘funding’, ‘grants’) for the exploiters; the charities, Quangos and the cronies of the State.
The TES statistics, obtained from every English local authority through the Freedom of Information Act, reveal the challenges of trying to keep track of thousands of transient families who move between regions.
There is no ‘challenge of trying to keep track of families’; it is not now nor has it ever been the business of the state to keep track of families and children. This is a non existent problem looking for a solution; it is precisely this sort of bad thinking that caused ContactPoint to be developed. It was bad thinking then, and is bad thinking now.
Children classed as missing from education have not been taught in school for at least a month.
This is simply a lie. Education can take place anywhere, including to some degree, in a school. It is absolutely impossible that the author of this piece does not know about all the facts swirling around the Graham Badman Report; that scandalous and outrageous report that galvanised an unprecedented revolt amongst home educators. It is impossible that she does not know about what home education is, how it works (so well) and all the issues around it. For her to now say, without qualification, that children who are not in school are missing education, and to mean it, is not credible. She must be deliberately misstating the facts to bolster her faulty argument. Very shameful, shabby behaviour.
Some are victims of over-crowding in schools, with local authorities struggling to find them places. Some are being taught at home, while others are school “refusers”. But local authorities say more than 1,500 others are “untraceable”. This has prompted concerns for their safety.
Once again, just because they are ‘untraceable’ it cannot be assumed that they are not perfectly safe and well, and this is not sufficient cause to put every child in Britain in a national database like ContactPoint, which is what the author is suggesting.
Even if you did create a system like ContactPoint, there would be no way to police it, keep the records up to date etc, and of course, no database, ID Card or technological solution can keep anyone safe. This is the central flaw in the thinking of people like Kerra Maddern; they have a child-like magical belief in technology and the State; it is stupid, dangerous and expensive, both in terms of money and Liberty.
Large urban areas have the highest numbers of children missing from education. Experts from Barnardo’s and the Children’s Society say that not enough is being done to ensure that vulnerable pupils remain in school.
These two charities would of course say that not enough is being done, and that children belong in school. They are a part of the industry that exploits children. They are hardly going to say that they are not needed, since out of the eleven million children in Britain, a vanishingly small number are at risk, and most of these are discovered and dealt with by the systems that are already in place. Why, if they were to say that, they would be out of a job, and could not extract more stolen loot from the State.
The Children’s Society claims that they are motivated by their Christian values. On the page describing this and the one that follows it, the word ‘parent’ does not appear. You can make of that what you will; the fact of the matter is the coalition ‘austerity’ measures are cutting off the funding from these ‘charities’ and they are desperate to justify the money they are getting. That means they have an interest in spreading fear about children – the source of their income – as far and as wide as possible. That is why we have seen a spate of questions in the House of Commons recently, and an article in the bird cage liner The Independent, which, mysteriously, quotes the exact number of ‘missing children’ that the TES does. Did the TES do its own investigation, or have they been given this number and the ‘facts’ by a PR company?
Make no mistake; these articles, questions in the house and what is to follow do not appear by coincidence or accident; someone is paying a PR company or staffer to coordinate all of this propaganda. You can tell by the similar wording in each article, the similar numbers and the similar conclusions in each article.
While each local authority has to keep a census of how many children are “missing” in their area, there is no national system for tracing children or transferring information between councils when they move.
Yes, that is correct. ContactPoint was proposed as that system, and it was rejected as inherently immoral, impossible to secure and a completely bad idea.
A legal duty to identify children missing from education was imposed on local authorities four years ago, but there is no requirement for parents to tell councils when they change address.
There should be no legal duty to identify children missing from education. Education is the duty of the parent, not the responsibility of the State.
The ID Card and NIR would have allowed councils to keep track of the location of all families; when you changed address, if you did not inform the State, you would have been fined £1000. The mass uprising against ID Cards caused that scheme to be abolished also. Kerra Maddern wants the paedophile catalogue and the ID Cards to be brought in so that her mythical ‘children missing education’ can all be rounded up and frog marched into school.
This woman is on the wrong side of history. And everything.
Leicester has the highest single number of children officially missing from education – a total of 2,611. Of these, 313 are waiting for a school place, but council officers are investigating why 2,298 are not attending lessons. Many attended state-run nurseries but have not moved into primary schools.
The fact of the matter is this; Leicester cannot run the schools it is already in charge of. They do not have enough places for all the students that desire one. If they find all these phantom children, where are they going to put them?
This is a perfect example of the illogic of the State and people like Kerra Maddern. The State system is hopelessly broken, and yet, they want everyone to be forced into it. They decry the decline of society, the feral children running wild, but do everything they can to undermine the authority of the parent and the central role of the family.
These people are completely insane.
The city council says its high numbers are the result of a “ruthless” process to trace the whereabouts of all children. “If we don’t know where they are, we do everything we can to find out where they have gone,” says head of behaviour and attendance John Broadhead. “Other local authorities do not do as much, but we treat this very seriously.”
Unbelievable. They are ‘ruthless’ in tracking down their prey. Remember there is no evidence whatsoever that the people they are hunting are in any danger of any kind. The only crime they have committed is that they once lived in or went to school in Leicester, and then stopped living or going to school in Leicester. These people spend stolen money and resources to hunt perfectly innocent people down, whilst for years their schools have been falling apart. Other local authorities have better schools, perhaps, because they spend their time and resources on teaching instead of playing at bounty hunters.
The council employs one member of staff just to track down missing children, assisted by 20 education welfare officers. Headteachers can alert the local authority to pupils who cannot be tracked down via a live database, introduced five years ago.
Absolutely astonishing. Twenty one people are paid a salary to track people down, whilst the schools are failing. They spend money on a database to track children, instead of spending money on pupils. Of course this is exactly what happens when you are spending other people’s money. In a properly functioning country where Liberty exists, these people would not be able to misallocate other people’s money, and the schools would be highly efficient and entirely productive places.
You couldn’t make up this insanity if you tried… unless you were from Leicester. You must realise also, that this spending is discretionary, “Other local authorities do not do as much, but we treat this very seriously.” that means they are choosing to spend money on this rather than the education they are providing in schools.
The TES investigation shows that a total of 67 local authorities claim they have no missing children and 29 have fewer than 20. But Kent County Council is unable to trace 618 children, Leeds reports 558 and Camden more than 100 (see tables, right). Because there is no national system, different authorities record children missing from education in different ways, making it difficult to understand the reasons so many have fallen out of the system.
This is the ‘problem’ that ContactPoint was going to solve. Once again, this is the discredited ‘national system’ that everyone came to understand as an unacceptable intrusion into the lives of the British people. Clearly Kerra Maddern didn’t get the memo. Or perhaps the contractor who got paid to develop ContactPoint is trying to drum up business for ContactPoint 2.0 through Kerra Maddern and her ‘journalist’ friends?
Who knows?
Someone is paying for this PR, that is for certain. Follow the money; see who is buying all these articles and then you will find out who is pushing for this.
Former Barnardo’s chief executive Martin Narey says the situation is “deeply troubling”. “School is somewhere that every child needs to be every day,” he says. “For many of our most vulnerable young people it is the only stability they know, the only time when a little chaos is taken out of their lives, the only time when they are required to behave reasonably.
We already know that Martin Narey thought that the peadophile’s dream database ContactPoint was a good idea:
It has been welcomed by children’s charities and organisations, including Barnardo’s, KIDS and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services. Martin Narey, chief executive of children’s charity Barnardo’s, said it [ContactPoint] “would make it easier to deliver better-co-ordinated services”.
[…]
http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=1747
School is NOT a place where EVERY child needs to be every day. This is just simple minded NONSENSE, and Martin Narey knows it. There are only a small number of reasons why he would say something that he knows is completely wrong. He is either deliberately setting out to deceive, or he is completely incompetent.
Everyone and their dog is sick of the lying, spinning, sickening child exploitation industry. The light at the end of the tunnel is the economic collapse, which will hopefully sweep these parasites away once and for all.
“It is the one place where poor life expectations can be reversed. So for thousands of children – inevitably those most in need of education – to be missing from school is deeply troubling. We need to keep children in school or, when removal is necessary, as it sometimes is, ensure alternative provision is always made available in a timely manner.”
No. Charities need to be funded only by charitable contributions from the pubic, and never from stolen money supplied by the State.
The job of a charity, in the case of education, is to facilitate education, either in school or in other places where it may take place. It is not the business of charities to force children to go to school, or to lobby the State to force children to go to school or to do any of those things that involve coercion.
This is why the charities that exploit children are fundamentally immoral; they use stolen money and attempt to coerce people into doing things that they would rather not do, instead of restricting their activities to helping people. These are not charities at all, but are instead, Crony Charities, similar to the Crony Capitalists that operate in serpentine symbiosis with the State.
Children’s Society policy director Enver Solomon says: “It is vital children don’t disappear from the school roll. There’s a danger this could happen to vulnerable pupils if schools just focus on attainment and their welfare is overlooked.
The school is not the parent. The State is not the parent. Schools should only focus on attainment; that is what they are for. Parents and families are solely responsible for the welfare of children.
“The most marginalised children have the most complex needs: they must be given additional help to remain in education.”
If you want to help them, stop taking stolen money from the state and help them. Stop trying to undermine the family and destroy home education.
Ofsted has also been critical of local authorities for failing to work together in identifying and helping children who drop out of school (see box, opposite). Patrick Leeson, the inspectorate’s director of education and care, says: “Children and young people who are not receiving education are at serious risk of under-achieving and falling behind. When their whereabouts are unknown they may be particularly at risk of physical, emotional and psychological harm.
This is of course, a lie. Ofsted is in danger of being abolished; they are flailing around their tentacles trying to insert them into every aspect of life that involves children, and with their sharply toothed suckers, attaching themselves so that they cannot be removed. They already provide useless ‘inspections’ of all schools; if they could somehow wiggle their way into home education and children missing education, the stream of salaries would be ongoing and enormous.
“Ofsted inspectors have found that local authorities, schools and partner agencies need to share information more effectively and systematically to identify children and young people who are missing from education, particularly when their whereabouts are unknown, and to take concerted action to remedy the situation.”
Ofsted’s brief does not include inspecting children who are not in school. They exist to inspect schools and generate reports. All of these disparate groups, that have the exploitation of children in common, fake charities, Ofsted, the TES, Local Authorities, all have a vested interest in getting information on children and then sharing that information. Doesn’t it strike you as bizarre that all of these different groups, all with a profit motive, are all calling for the reinstatement of something that has been roundly denounced?
New arrivals to the country account for a substantial group of those missing from education, according to councils. In Sheffield, for example, 460 children without places are from Slovakia, and are receiving council help in applying for school places.
Then these people are not ‘missing from education’ they are waiting for school places. No ‘national system’ like ContactPoint will help them get school places, and they are not in any danger by Kerra Maddern’s own definition, since they are known to the State.
Other children are not in school because their parents refuse to send them.
And that is their ABSOLUTE RIGHT. and sometimes its their DUTY also.
In Peterborough, 248 pupils are missing from rolls having turned down offers of places, mostly because the schools were too far away from their homes.
So these people will also not be helped by a national system either; they have been offered places in schools that are too far away; they are known to the state, the parents want their children to attend schools and the State could not accommodate them. These children are not in any danger whatsoever either.
This article, by listing the types of children missing, is whittling down the numbers considerably. If they did the rest of their homework, they would find that the number of ‘children missing education’ who were also in danger is vanishingly small in proportion to the eleven million children in Britain. There is no money in that calculation however.
Children from the traveller community are at particular risk of vanishing from the education system.
The traveller community, as has recently been seen, contains children that are perfectly safe, girls who are chaste and very strong families where divorce is a rare exception. Look at the phrase ‘traveller community’; these people are a community of the type that the rest of Britain so badly needs; one made up of strong, self reliant families made up of people who know who they are and who are not ashamed of who they are. They know their own minds, are not afraid to speak their minds and are perfectly happy just as they are. They do not want or need your ‘education system’ or anything else that your ‘culture’ has to offer.
Linda Lewins, vice-president of the National Association of Teachers of Travellers, says it is “vital” that traveller education services are maintained by local authorities. “Children from the gypsy and traveller community are much more likely to miss school,” she says. “Many families notify teachers they are leaving, but the local authority often finds it difficult to discover where they have gone.”
The National Association of Teachers of Travellers is a group established in 1980, “in order to address the isolation of teachers of Travellers and to support and encourage their work”. In other words, they have a vested interest in keeping track of the children of Travellers, so that they can get access to them and receive a salary. If Travellers and their children cannot be tracked, then the numbers of traveller children attending school by force will drop, and this is bad for business.
All you need to know about this group is summed up in this paragraph from their site:
NATT+ is now the nationally recognised voice of Traveller Education Services. It represents and supports members at a national level by addressing Gypsy, Roma and Traveller issues with a number of organisations including the DCSF and other government departments.
My emphasis. Birds of a feather, flock together!
A Department for Education spokeswoman said it expects local authorities to identify children missing from school and to allocate places as quickly as possible.
An unnamed spokeswoman, who doesn’t know what she is talking about.
But with no plans to put in place a robust national system to track and identify missing children, a rapid decline in their numbers appears unlikely.
ContactPoint is not coming back, should not come back, and is not needed. If you want to send your child to school, you can do so, though there may be a waiting list in some places, and you might not get the school you want or one that is close to your home.
If you do not want to send your child to a government school, or any school at all, that is entirely your business, and the State should not take any interest in you or your problems, or successes.
SAFEGUARDING – Families are strangers to councils
Ofsted inspectors found in a report published last year that many councils were failing to fulfil their safeguarding duties because they did not know enough about children in their areas.
Here we go again with the Orwellian doublespeak
It is clear that something is most definitely ‘up’.
These paid PR pieces appearing in different newspapers is a coordinated campaign to introduce ContactPoint 2.0, which is the only solution to this non-problem.
It will mean that mandatory registration of home educators will be back on the table at some point, under the absurd pretext of ‘safeguarding’.
Thankfully, all the arguments against this have been thoroughly explored and documented. If you have anything to say about it, it will be possible to refute any of Kerra Maddern’s and the other propagandist’s untruths by referring to the many documents that were generated in the last three years and that are on line.
It is nauseating that Kerra Maddern, the lazy editors who reprint press releases verbatim don’s have the intelligence to think about these subject clearly. Its also nauseating that they have no moral centre, no understanding of rights or the proper role of government. Finally, its nauseating that we have to go over this again, when it seemed like the tide had turned and everyone except the unrepentant monsters in the shadow cabinet finally understood just how evil the Big Brother nanny State was becoming.
It seems, once again, that some people like Kerra Maddern didn’t get the memo. This can be forgiven; not everyone is paying attention to everything or is born intelligent.
As for the others who exploit children for money….
