I was delighted to represent ParentPower at the March for Children on Sunday the 13th of July. The ‘Stop the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill’ collective brings together a coalition of parents and educators who are concerned about the wide-reaching consequences of this legislation. This time, the rallies were held in multiple cities nationwide, including Bournemouth, Bristol, Oxford, London, Sunderland, Wakefield, Liverpool, Bradford and Leeds.
My key points:
- Parents know their children best.
- Parents have the right to decide how their children should be educated.
- In most cases, parents are the best people to safeguard their children.
- The rhetoric surrounding the Bill maligning Home Education as a safeguarding risk is insidious.
You can watch my speech here.
We had a wonderful day meeting families from across the country. There were families from a diverse range of backgrounds who home educate for a range of different reasons, including catering for SEND needs, educating children in line with their faith or according to other philosophical convictions.
Jade Knight organised the event in Bristol and she spoke about her own home education experience. Jenn Hodge from ‘Doing Education Differently’ spoke brilliantly about the diverse range of reasons families choose to home educate, as well as her own work within the EHE community. Nicola Reekie from the ‘PDA Space’ spoke about the way in which home education is often a way of meeting the needs of neurodiverse children.
What is clear from the various contributions, as well as from the families I met, is that there are so many good and valid reasons why parents choose Elective Home Education (EHE) — reasons which have been largely overlooked in the representation of EHE by those supporting the Children’s Wellbeing & Schools Bill.
It is very important that we keep speaking up for the rights of families through writing to our MPs and Lords, attending protests and rallies, and spreading the word to our families and friends. The crux of the argument is that the state exists to defend and support the family, not the other way around. It is parents who must be allowed to make choices for the benefit of their children.
Marianne Tomlinson
