From a Home Schooling mailing list comes this astonishing story:<\/p>\n
We have just returned from a weekend away. At Liverpool Street station on Thursday (when we left) we were approached by a truancy officer together with a helmeted uniformed officer. There were also two other uniformed officers stood behind at close-ish range.<\/p>\n
They asked us if we were on holiday and if we had permission for Reuben to be out of school. I explained that we were home educating and that we were on holiday. They had no problem with this but asked us to fill out a rather lengthy form which they would then send to check us out with the local authority. I explained that we were not known to our local authority as this was not a legal requirement. They said this wouldn’t be a problem. The LA would just check that we were not ‘out’ of one of their schools.<\/p>\n
The details of the form were as follows:<\/p>\n
Child’s name
\nAddress
\nLocal authority
\nDate of birth
\nTelephone number
\nDate child last attended school
\nIf child was excluded – date of exclusion
\nWhether child was with parent
\nReason for being out of school
\nName and address of parent
\nEthnicity<\/p>\nThere may have been a few other things that I can’t remember.<\/p>\n
I was unsure about filling in these details. I had hoped to remain unknown to the LA for at least a while longer.<\/p>\n
In the event, our train left in 10 minutes, so we filled it in to avoid hold-ups.<\/p>\n
Has anyone else been approached like this? Is there a formal response that I should have been aware of? Do you think that the LA will put us on their register now? Or perhaps, as Ian thinks, it will be lost in a mountain of paperwork and never touched again.<\/p>\n
I will let you all know if we are contacted for an inspection, as this would be the only route to it as far as I know.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There is no way that people in this country know that this is going on, because if they did, they would surely be outraged. Parents are responsible for their children. If a child is with its parents, by definition<\/i> the child is not a truant, because truancy means absent without leave from school<\/i>:<\/p>\n