Please respond to Government consultation on home education by Friday 6th November
In what may result in a further attack on parental rights, the House of Commons Education Committee is currently consulting on home education and the deadline is 6th November 2020.
On 6 October 2020, the Children’s Commissioner informed the Committee that the Department for Education (DfE) has committed to introduce a compulsory register of home-educated children. She also insisted that the DfE should introduce termly inspections of home-educating families. These and other related matters are now open to consultation.
There is a real danger that such a registration and inspection system of homeschoolers will result in state interference into what and how parents teach their children at home, in the same way that the Relationships & Sex Education and LGBT agendas are being imposed by the Government on ALL schools. Home educating parents may come under undue pressure to teach their children according to diktats of the State, or else have their registration to homeschool removed from them.
Presently English law rightly recognises that it is the legal responsibility of parents — not the State — to ensure that their children receive a full-time education “either by regular attendance at school or otherwise” (Education Act 1996, Section 7). Parents therefore have the choice to send their children to school or “otherwise” educate them by other means, including tuition at home.
Parents choose to home educate for a variety of reasons; including because the child learns better in the home environment, because the child has special needs or has had particular problems at school (including bullying), or because this is the best way the parent can educate their children according to their beliefs and values.
Either way the rights and responsibilities over a child’s education are rightly with the parents, not the State. Schools teach children “on behalf” of their parents.
The Christian Institute have produced a very good short briefing about the consultation, setting out the key issues at stake and suggestions of the best way to respond. It is important to respond, as far as possible, in your own words.
The consultation itself can be found here. The proposals only apply to England but anyone can respond.
Although the RSE and LGBT agendas are of key concern to many of us, it will likely be more persuasive to make a positive case for the many benefits of homeschooling, and which undue interference from the state would undermine.
Please do alert other parents and interested parties about the consultation. Parents who send their children to school should also be encouraged respond, as important principles concerning parental rights are at stake, and many parents are looking to the possibility of homeschooling in case the situation in schools become untenable for them.
Parent Power
