On the afternoon of 27 March 2024 we received the following email from the Welsh Government’s Equity in Education Team:
Dear Families First in Education
We have prepared a children and young person’s version of our consultation document to support targeted engagement with children and young people. This is attached for your information, and we have shared this with our networks who we have asked to support reaching children and young people.
Yours sincerely
Equity in Education Team
Attached to this message were two files, English and Welsh versions of PDF forms:
Please note: We are not sharing these for our readers to encourage their children to use, but in order to maintain transparency with everyone.
We have today replied to the Equity in Education Team, with a copy to the new Cabinet Secretary for Education, Lynne Neagle MS, explaining why we consider these documents are not fit for purpose.
Our letter lists 14 areas of concern, the most basic being that there is no address included for young people to return the form and that, as of today, these children’s and young people’s versions have not been added to the consultation’s home page on the WG’s website. There are many things about the design and wording of these which indicate that they are not aimed at children who will be included on these databases (e.g. EHE young people), but at children who regularly attend school.
To the best of our knowledge, no home educators were informed of the existence of these documents prior to 27 March. However, Equity in Education stated in their brief email that they had “shared this with our networks who we have asked to support reaching children and young people.” They did not provide any information about which organisations are included in their networks, nor what efforts they have made to reach out to those who would be impacted the most by the proposed measures. We have therefore raised these and connected matters with them, including the existence of on-line response forms which have come to our attention.
Please read our full letter for details of the concerns we have raised.
We will, of course, update readers when we receive a response from Equity in Education. Until then, please remember that we are not encouraging anyone to use these forms. If younger members of your family wish to respond to the consultation, consider allowing them to use the Government on-line response form (especially the final free text box) or write their own response and email it to the address given on the Consultation page.
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