Reasons for alarm at the actions of the 'Secret Group'

I have had an email from somebody who seems to be quite well informed about what is going on with the new guidelines which are being drawn up. I am told that these new guidelines are not the only area of concern. There is still pressure from many sources, not least in the department for Education itself, for a system which will enable local authorities to identify every home educated child. It has been suggested that once these guidelines are finished, then the next step will be to negotiate with everybody to see how far it will be possible actually to change the law.

Something which a number of people have noticed is that Kelley Green, the home, a well known American home educator living in Canada, is very keen on compulsory registration. She does not call it that; she talks of a law about notification of intent, but it amounts to the same thing. She claims that this would be a good thing, if all home educators were legally obliged to tell the local authority that they are home educating. She says in her book, A Matter of Conscience;

'A notification-only law is not the same as registration. It is not a licensing scheme. It implies no power on the part of the state to refuse permission to home educate.
At the same time, the family would be notifying the state of its intent to maintain complete control and administration of the child’s education. This could, possibly, benefit home educators in several ways.
By making such an intent official, home-educated children could never be confused with those classified as “missing education,” or “excluded,” or “truant.” Those terms would be restricted to students whose relationship with public school has broken down, not those who have chosen to have no relationship with public school whatsoever'

It is no secret that Kelley Green has had quite a bit of contact with both Alison Sauer and Imran Shah and has been urging them to adopt this idea. I don't doubt that she means well by this, but as my correspondent points out, once they have been notified of the intention to home educate, local authorities ion this country are very unlikely simply to ignore the family in the future. In other words, this might work well enough in Canada, but there would be huge problems implementing such a scheme in this country. For one thing, it would have the result of criminalising any family which declined to send in such a notification.

I do not know whether this is why so many people are uneasy about the activities of Imran Shah, Alsion Sauer, Tania Berlow and so on. It really is strange that all those involved refuse resolutely to speak on any of the lists or forums. Even Tania seems to have become very shy lately. If the idea is that the law could be changed, perhaps by some Statutory Instrument requiring simple notification, then I can foresee trouble ahead.