Oh, Richard, please don't start. If you met her you'd understand. She remembers all she reads, she reads incessantly, she lives to learn, loves to learn...She's doing an OU course, with no debt at the end of it, she bought her own car, and runs it all herself, she has a full time job, just been given a pay-rise in these hard times, because the folks she works for realise what a gem they have.

You have a cranky view of Home Education you know..and if you took the trouble to read some of the Education Otherwise magazines, you'd find stories filled with children who've gone on to achieve a vast amount, after school had failed them dismally.

School's fine for some, many children thrive there...but many don't and that's what folks like you refuse to understand.

Insult my intelligence if it makes you feel a big man, but please, don't insult my daughter's, or my son's either, because they could both run rings around you in the Brain Box Department...

Thank you so much...

And just to re-iterate what I said earlier, and to agree with Bruce too who said it too...If the teachers themselves stood up to the folks implementing these changes then our schools would be far better, teachers would be able to teach *their* way again, exams would fade away, back to where they used to be, not dominating everyone's thoughts and souls....