Are we being "groomed" to accept the imprisonment of parents for the crime of wanting the best education for their children?
I accept that it is morally wrong to lie or deceive; to use "duplicitous means" or "underhand tactics", for any purpose.
What I find more difficult is the erosion of ethical and linguistic boundaries by usages such as Schools Adjudicator Ian Craig: "Parents need to be persuaded that to take a place by deception ... [is] ... the theft of a school place that belongs to another". Elsewhere in the report in today's Times, the word "stealing" is also used.
The proposal from the Councils surveyed for the report? a new offence for which imprisonment of parents is a possible punishment.
Coming home this afternoon, I think I heard on BBC Radio 4 something to the astounding effect that over 3,000 new criminal offences had been created in the past 10 years or so. And now they want to lock up parents for what we are apparently to be persuaded is "stealing".
Now you and I may disagree about that. Lock them up, you might say. It is not my point. My purpose is to propose a new offence.
Today I rejoiced for one family who won their case at Tribunal to have their child with special educational needs admitted to the school of their choice. Moments later I was saddened to hear of parents who had decided to abandon their appeal to get their child into the school of their choice because they could see no hope of success in the face of their LEA's intransigent and mystical talent with facts and language.
What both LEAs have in common is a willingness to falsify reality, to make deceptive statements,in short to lie and cheat by various "underhand tactics". How can we put a stop to this practice?
Taking a leaf from Ian Craig's book - a swift modest proposal: let us make it a new criminal offence for any public servant to steal a child's education by such means; and for them to face tough new penalties including imprisonment - preferably in hulks moored on the Thames by the Kent marshes - or transportation to work without a final salary pension scheme in a conductive education school in the colonies.
That should do it.
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Footnote: so that no-one should be in any doubt, neither 'LEA' mentioned above is Sheffield. Nor was either Tribunal held in Sheffield.