A sad day.

The News is once again full of the terrible death of Khyra, and the suffering of her and her siblings. No-one can fail to be horrified by the events reported surely, and no-one wants to see them repeated EVER. But realistically, children will continue to suffer at the hands of adults who are supposed to care and love them. Sadly, there are going to be lots more Khyras, children will be continue to be abused and there will be no full stop.

We can try as individuals and as communities to protect our young. That's the most we can do - we can try.
We can remove children from abusive parents to place in the care of foster parents or state run homes, are they safer? Often not, abuse occurs in the system that is supposed to protect these children, it is not confined to the family.
However this is not an education issue, it is a safeguarding issue. Monitoring Home Educators because of this case makes no sense.

If we are to monitor Home Educators because of this case, then we will also have monitor the parents of under 5's, 5-18's in the school holidays and ultimately everyone 24/7. Think this is ridiculous? Think again - if home educators can't be trusted to care for their children, can anyone? The answer is obviously not.
Abuse doesn't have a time frame, it can take place over years, weeks... seconds. Death can come quickly, or he can tiptoe in...

The BBC report here states that

"Four months after Gordon pulled her daughter out of school in April 2008 the social work team manager agreed to close the case as home tutoring had been approved, according to the city council. Weeks later the seven-year-old was dead. "

Social services were unconcerned. If they had safeguarding concerns they could have used child protection laws to see Khyra, if they were concerned that education was not taking place they could have issued a School Attendance Order. They didn't, they were unconcerned, there was nothing that indicated that this tragedy was about to take place.
How can we prevent tragedies like this happening again? Treat all parents as potential abusers - this seems to be the governments answer, beginning with Home Educators.
Do you trust them to stop there?