Petition to Parliament

Please consider signing up to this petition:

Petition site

Using the above link, you can offer to be coordinator for your constituency, or contact your local coordinator to offer to sign. Coordinators will have to collect petitions and make sure they present them to their MPs by the end of November.
Although it would be good to get a high number of signatures on the petitions, the most significant element of this is to get petitions from as many constituencies as possible, so that a large number of MPs, presenting the petitions, will repeat the wording of the petition in the House, on the same day, or over several days.
Children are also welcome to sign this petition - it is NOT restricted to over-18s.

If you offer to coordinate your local constituency, you will receive information by e-mail, including the petition itself, which is worded as follows (full text but do not print, the petition will be provided via coordinators):

“To the House of Commons.

The Petition of persons resident in the [ ] parliamentary constituency.

Declares that they are concerned about the recommendations of the Badman Report, which suggests closer monitoring of home educators, including a compulsory annual registration scheme and right of access to people's homes for local authority officials; further declares that the petitioners believe the recommendations are based on a review that was extremely rushed, failed to give due consideration to the evidence, failed to ensure that the data it collected were sufficiently robust, and failed to take proper account of the existing legislative framework.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families either not to bring forward, or to withdraw, proposed legislative measures providing for tighter registration and monitoring of children educated at home in the absence of a thorough independent inquiry into the condition and future of elective home education in England; but instead to take the steps necessary to ensure that the existing Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities are properly implemented, learning from current best practice, in all local authorities in England.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.”

This text comes from the office of Graham Stuart, MP - thanks are due to him for his recent and ongoing work on behalf of home educators.

There has been a lot of discussion among home educators about this petition, about the process by which it has been created and the people who helped Graham Stuart as part of that process. I am one of them and I can only state that I feel that my motivations and intentions were good and honourable and that this is potentially a very valuable tool for us to use.
Please read the petition, read any other information you need to and make up your own mind.