Mr Balls should gaffer tape my mouth SHUT

DUH! Here I was, misguided and foolish, doing that HOME EDUCATION stuff all wrong. Damn those kids and their rights to a free-thinking education.

Because from Mr Balls' view right now, that home ed stuff that I've been doing? All WRONG.

Mr Balls, my teaching performance is way down. If I continue to inflict on my children this sort of unfocused, unstructured activity, lacking rigour, direction and purpose, like VISITING THE CINEMA, just score my teaching performance on the home educating league table of deliverable performances a BIG FAT ZERO.

Make that a double big fat zero with extra zeroes for my failing to deliver the Labour government's perfectly reasonable performance standards with assessable attainment targeting and differential academic goals on a planned framework including identifiable edubabble for verification of learning outcomes to be assessed and authorised by the due departments and shared stakeholders in the assessment process.

Guilty as charged. Last week I took Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to see Night of the Museum II. Because they asked to go.

OK. The film is a load of crap, a vehicle for Ben Stiller, and is naked US cultural propaganda with barely any focus to link together the characters. And I still took them to see it and I called it EDUCATION.

And why? Shark, Squirrel and Tiger like Night at the Museum. It's one of their favourite films. So when the sequel came out, of course they want see that too. And there I was, promising to be at that cinema for numbers III, IV, V, VI and VII. Or until Ben Stiller selfcombusts, whichever comes first.

Mr Balls, you're probably aiming to re-educate me. Because this is a non-state approved activity. No matter that Night of the Museum II provides excellent material for Tiger to chatter about. Endlessly. Tiger's ambition is to be a film animator. But an education aiming to fulfil my child's potential is just not good enough, is it?

Neither is what we now do on Monday afternoons. The kids see Dale.

I know I said, Move over, God. Dale is mightier than God. Dale, the king of animation and the controller of the plasticine, is running a set of animation courses for the little home ed kids, and wow, aren't my kids lucky enough to go to that.

But screw the animation. Tiger needs to TOE THE PARTY LINE.

Because what did we home educators really achieve today? Go on. Put it in the newspapers like this. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger chatted about a film. And then this afternoon they mucked around with plasticine.

You see? LACKS RIGOUR. Clearly, I need to have done lesson structure 17, attainment target 3.5, assessment 4, key stage 3, time allotted 40 minutes, test assessment due date 12/10/09.

MR BALLS, I FAIL.

But you haven't got enough gaffer tape to go round my big fat mouth now.