I have read with interest your intended plans for those of us who home educate our children. I would like to make a few comments about those plans.
With respect to the compulsory registration of all home educators, I am sorry, but I fail to see what this would acheive. Well, no, that’s not entirely true, I do know three things it will achieve - a huge public expense which this country can ill afford at the moment, another database to go astray and a feeling of persecution in those it applies to. I certainly don’t see why this registration has to be done in some public building, that just seems a waste of time and yet more money in transport costs, you see, most of us are fairly internet savvy, I’m sure we could fill in the appropriate data for ourselves, much as we do for tax returns and electoral registers.
No other section of the community needs to do this. Vegetarians don’t need to line up at a school canteen to register their children (and in theory there is a small chance that a vegetarian child may not be provided with a diet suitable to their age and activity levels), children who attend places of worship of every kind do not have to line up at a pre-selected church hall be registered (and again, in theory they may come into contact with all sorts of radical and separatist ideas there) children who do any number of potentially concerning activities don’t have to line up at the local scout hut to register just on the off chance that one of them may fall foul of disaster. So why home educators? Are we really such a scary bunch?
So we shall move onto the next issue. That of providing a one year plan of our intended study. Now, to be fair, I could, possibly, do this. Unlike many British home educators, I am not autonomous, well, not currently, I do reserve the right to change my mind if autonomy becomes an educational method that suits my child in the future. I could, therefore, say that over the next 12 months we will be making use of SonLight’s Core 2 with a few side trips into other great British and American literature and supplemented with a balanced array of workbooks covered literacy and numeracy. I am not going to be any more specific than that, because my crystal ball is in for repair so I’m really not sure what else we will do. But I reserve the right to abandon SonLight should the books not be up to their usual standard or should my daughter suddenly have a burning desire to do a multitude of lapbook or poster projects instead. I reserve the right to take 2 years to finish Core 2, or 6 months, depending on how we go. She will still be kept busy, she will still be learning, just perhaps not in the way I thought we may be previously.
Staying on the subject of how I chose to educate my child, but moving on to your second recomendation. I fully accept that schools need prescriptive guidance on what to teach. A teacher has 30 or more children in her care for the vast majority of his or her working day. Then there is marking, and meetings, and after school activities. These people do not have the time to find a resource that would light "little Johnny"’s fire and engage him in productive learning whilst Young Tom investigates engineering principles and Tiny Tim curls up with his favourite book. It can’t work in a normal classroom setting and no one expects it to.
As to sitting on consultation panels, well, I’m sorry, we have been shown very clearly over the past year exactly how you value our opinions. I fail to see why I should waste time I should be investing in my daughter by sitting in meetings that will do no good.
And then we reach Number Seven. I’m not quite sure how to address this whilst remaining calm and rational. You see, I am at a loss as to how you think that this can possibly be legal or acceptable. If I were a criminal, you would require a judge to sign a warrant to allow officers of the law, who had already developed some sort of case against me, or at least have some justifiable suspicions, to enter my home. I am reasonably sure that the police do not routinely inspect the homes of known miscreants just in case, let alone calling on law abiding citizens just on the off chance that they may have something they aren’t allowed. And yet, you are going to compel me to allow a stranger into my home for no other reason than I chose to home educate my child. Not only that, once you have gained access to my home you intend to allow a stranger to speak to my child without myself or her father present. As far as I am aware, the only justifiable grounds for speaking to a child without the parent present is where there is clear evidence of abuse, and even then a second responsible adult needs to be there. This is not only offensive in its insinuation that abuse is to be strongly suspected in home educated children but against the rights of the child to having a reasonable expectation of privacy within the home and to chose who they speak to.
Finally, I would like you to clarify please, what exactly you mean by "anything else which may affect their ability to provide a suitable and efficient education.." as I am very concerned that this will be used as a "cop out clause" for insisting children are placed into schools against their wishes when the family does not fit into some kind of acceptable norm.
So we are going to be in a much better position come pay day and may even be able to afford Christmas after all 
Yesterday I slipped up 
she had lemonade whilst we were out with mum and dad and at 9pm she was Wide Awake and wanting Attention. So she got it! She got attention whilst she was doing her maths puzzle book, her English puzzle book, her NVR book, her reading book…. yeh, she got lots of attention!
