Sex-ed gauleiters coming to a home near you

I have often wondered how long it would take for official bodies to start their inevitable attack on homeschoolers. Teaching children at home is the antithesis of the total control over children that the Government has gradually built up through the National Curriculum, "extended schools", and the "Every Child Matters" agenda. Even though in Britain, homeschoolers are a tiny minority, they cannot be comfortably accommodated with the kind of centralised control over education that the state has built up - a control that Stalin would have envied.

Now, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (acronmyn: NICE - how Orwellian is that!) has issued its "Final Scope" document for "Public health Programme Guidance". Apparently, NICE (or "the Institute") has been asked by the Department of Health to develop

guidance on a public health programme aimed at promoting school, college and community-based personal, social and health education, including health literacy1, with particular reference to sexual health behaviour and alcohol.

The Guidance will "support a number of related policy documents" such as (you guessed it):

• ‘Every child matters: change for children programme’ (Department for Education and Skills 2004a)
• ‘Extended schools and health services – working together for better outcomes for children and families’ (Department for Education and Skills 2006a)
• ‘Extended schools: improving access to sexual health advice services’ (Department for Education and Skills 2007a)
• ‘Healthy living blueprint for schools’ (Department for Education and Skills 2004b)
• ‘National healthy school status – a guide for schools’ (DH 2005)
• ‘PSHE at key stages 1–4: guidance on assessment, recording and reporting’ (Qualification and Curriculum Authority 2005)
• ‘Youth matters: next steps’ (Department for Education and Skills 2006b)
• ‘Improving access to sexual health advice services for young people in further education settings’ (Department for Education and Skills 2007b)
• ‘Sex and relationship education guidance’ (Department for Education and Employment 2000)
• ‘Teenage pregnancy: accelerating the strategy to 2010’ (Department for Education and Skills 2006c)
• ‘Safe, sensible, social. The next steps in the alcohol harm reduction strategy’ (DH 2007)
• ‘Drugs: guidance for schools’ (Department for Education and Skills 2004c)

Section 4.1.1 details "Groups that will be covered". These include the various categories of schools and ...

education other than at school, including home education and pupil referral units.

This is very sinister.