Home education action group, AHEd has written to the NSPCC Chief Executive decrying libellous public comments made by their Child Protection Policy Advisor, Mr. Vijay Patel, smearing home educators as child abusers.
Home educators in the UK are up in arms over the most recent news article linking home education and child abuse. Vijay Patel of the NSPCC is quoted in the
Independent newspaper as saying
Some people use home education to hide. Look at the Victoria Climbié case. No one asked where she was at school. We have no view about home education, but we do know that to find out about abuse someone has to know about the child.
The Victoria Climbie foundation responded to this new slur on their website as follows
VCF - The Victoria Climbié Foundation UK is genuinely concerned about the link being made between Victoria Climbié and home education, and Victoria as a hidden child. Victoria was neither home-educated nor hidden.
The reality is that there is no such thing as a 'hidden' child, only children who are allowed to fall through the gaps. The key issue here is how statutory services interact with children that are known within the child protection system.
Despite this and a viral campaign on Facebook, the NSPCC has still not withdrawn from the current home education review, which was itself announced with a press release quoting Baroness Delyth Morgan again linking home education and abuse.
The NSPCC has previously been forced to admit that there is no evidence of any link between home education and child abuse, but this does not seem to have stopped them from continuing to make these assertions.
