*Social Services Assessment Tomorrow!*

ouinon · chemical reaction Joined: Jul 11, 2007 Posts: 3444

My son is not doing a correspondence school course this year. We decided to go it alone, after discovering in April this year that children following correspondence courses are no longer exempt from Academic Inspection controls/tests in certain regions, ( which test my son passed ok in June, despite only having done, laboriously, about an hour's hyper-tedious "school"work a day throughout the year, the minimum necessary for the course assessment) .

Last week I sent off declarations to the Local "mairie"/mayor/Administration and the Academic Inspection telling them so, as required by the law.

Yesterday we got the first reply, a letter from the person on the local admin who oversees children's welfare etc, asking for the mandatory meeting with "us" to establish our reasons for homeschooling, and prove/argue that this does not adversely affect our son's health or socialising etc.

Just ( five minutes ago) had call ( in response to my phone call yesterday when the man was out), to make the appointment, and it is for tomorrow at 11 o'clock, in his office. I am going with my son, having asked if the presence of the father was necessary, which it is not.

Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Heart thumping, trouble breathing, vice like feeling in my head, hollow feeling in my guts, ............ If this doesn't go well ( if they think that he is being isolated, deprived, that I am deranged, that our reasons are unhealthy, etc) they can demand that he go to school.

This is the unusual/exceptional contact with "the law" predicted by some planetary movement at this time, ( i forget which )!! Wink

Seriously, for someone who has had almost no experience of dealing with anything to do with the law this whole procedure is totally strange for me, and a planetary transit at this time specifically refers to such a contact.

I am just blowing off steam of sheer fear here; I know that there is nothing to do but relax as far as possible, focus, get clear in my head what to say, and make sure that my son is as clean Wink

and relaxed as possible too, but somehow this Social Services "control"/exam seems harder than the Academic one where it was IQ skills in question.

AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! I am totally freaked out!! What will most convince them/him that we are not lunatics, weirdos, dangerously neurotic hermits, that I am not endangering my son's mental/psychological health by homeschooling?

I decided not to include the father this time because he so definitely didn't hit it off with the Academic Inspector at a first meeting in May ( when he went on his own to see the Education Advisor/ consultant) , which I am inclined to think would be the case again. The father does not react well to the generally well educated/middle class privileged people in bureaucratic/admin positions of power over him.

Perhaps I even know the guy who we'll be seeing ( by sight if not by name) ; this is a small village , and most of the "delegués"/local council representatives live locally. Yikes!!!

I mustn't go along frightened though, which will inevitably show and provoke suspicion. I must seem serenely confident, Laughing

very sane and reasonable, Laughing

and my son must not seem like some wild boy from the woods... ...

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"Life is pain; anyone who says different is selling something"