How ECHR rulings may further undermine parents.
ParentPower have written extensively about the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill which has made its way to the ‘report stage’ in the House of Commons. There will be a short third reading followed by a parallel process in the House of Lords. As previously reported, the legislation contained within the Bill will heavily restrict Home Education. If the Bill passes, Local Authorities will be handed significant powers to inspect homes and families, and they will receive considerable latitude when considering whether to hand out ‘School Attendance Orders.’
Attached to the Bill is a ‘Human Rights Memorandum’ which considers the impact of the Bill in the light of the European Convention on Human Rights. One can consider this the Bill’s small print. Point 161 of the memo is of particular concern:
The first issue with the memo was ably analysed by Randall Hardy in his article in the Daily Sceptic. The memorandum cites a European Court Judgement (Konrad Vs Germany, 2006). In this case the parents (Konrad) argued that ECHR Article 2, protocol 1 protected their right to educate their children at home according to their religious convictions. The court found this not to be the case because German Basic Law and the Baden-Württemberg School Act (the state in which the family lived) both made school attendance compulsory for the majority of children. Leaning on this (German) judgement, the memo states that ‘the state can insist on compulsory education, in school.’ (Paragraphs 161c and 178c). Considering this judgement, it doesn’t seem far-fetched to argue that the Bill is taking us in the direction of an outright ban on home education. To rely on a judgement in Germany, where the state has long banned elective home education and where the state’s duty to supervise education is enshrined into their constitution, without recourse to British law, is unconscionable. It is shocking that the Government is trying to overturn British law by the backdoor.
The second key issue with this memo is that it places the ideology of the state ahead of the beliefs and values of parents. It makes it clear that the intentions of the state, i.e. ‘integration,’ trumps the rights of parents to educate their children at home in order to raise them in a faith tradition, or in accordance with their philosophical beliefs. To a family with a particular faith or set of philosophical beliefs, the heavily politicised education system can represent a considerable danger to the integrity of the family unit. Children don’t simply learn academic subjects at school. In many schools they are exposed to various forms of secular morality — including about gender ideology, sexual identities and lifestyles — that are still contested in society at large. It is simply false that the evenings and weekends are enough time to counter whatever damaging ideas and ideologies children might learn in school. What the memo is saying here is that all families should fall into line with the secular state agenda. That is quite a sacrifice on the altar of ‘integration’. That is authoritarianism.
The third issue is the ironic assertion that the state has a role in ensuring ‘pluralism’ in education. We usually think of pluralistic society as a non-homogenous society, where people with a diverse range of beliefs and lifestyles coexist. It is baffling then that the memorandum appears to justify the quashing of communities who want to electively home educate their children, in order to raise them in a particular religious tradition. In paragraphs 183 and 184, for example, the memo acknowledges that the Bill will hinder the centuries old Yeshiva education of Orthodox Jews. A pluralistic society accepts and celebrates the existence of such diverse communities. The insistence that all children need to go to school to learn the same things so that they can live in the same way is excessively statist. It places the ideology of the state above the human rights of the family. It reduces religion and belief to the realm of the hobby; something that can be carried out only in one’s free time, and in a way ineffectual and harmless to the unifying ideology of the state. This goes counter to the last two centuries development of religious liberty in Britain, and reduces religious faith and parental values to something of little or no importance.
ParentPower Team
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