An independent report, commissioned by the Government and published this year, recommends that home-schooling must come closer to the Government control. It says that home educators should be made to register with their local authorities annually, set out in writing their plans for educating the child for the next year and have regular home inspections to monitor children’s educational progress.
The review was conducted by Graham Badman, the former director of children’s services in Kent, who said that home education as it stood lacked ‘the correct balance between the rights of parents and the rights of the child either to an appropriate education or to be safe from harm’.
The report received full support of Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.
The recommendations in the report have sparked a furious row between home-educating families and social services departments in local authorities. Parents say are ‘absolutely devastated’ by the move, claiming it would remove their freedom to educate children beyond state control. They say the move would fundamentally undermine the responsibility that lies with parents to ensure their child is receiving a good education, and allow the state an unprecedented intrusion into family life.
Opponents of the plans will gather in Central London tomorrow, 15 September, to demonstrate against the plans and have begun a petition on the No 10 website, which already has almost 3,000 signatories, asking the Prime Minister to reject the proposals.
They claim that implementing the plans will cost councils £150 million a year and put extra pressure on already oversubscribed schools. Campaigners are also planning to march on Westminster next month, The Times reports.
There is also a protest planned at Stratford Park, Stroud, Gloucestershire, on Wednesday, 16 September.
Dr Barson said that they are hoping ‘to get it stopped at this early stage’.
'But this is a fight to the death. There are people talking about civil disobedience. We would take it to the highest court that we could,’ she added.
The launch of the review in January 2009, when the Lords Minister for children Delyth Morgan, a Labour peer in the House of Lords, warned that in 'extreme cases' home education 'could be used as a cover for abuse', was widely condemned by campaigners for home education, who said they were unfairly being made the subject of suspicion.
Fiona Nicholson, of support group Education Otherwise, a charity acting to uphold the freedom of families to take responsibility for the education of their children, said:
‘We felt rocks were being thrown at us. We'd had circumspect, polite conversations with ministers and civil servants, and then suddenly we were being accused of child abuse.
She later added that the introduction of a registration system for home-schooling would completely shift the balance of power.
‘The state is coming into family life and trying to regulate it. It is an extraordinary invasion of the family.' she said.
(See The Guardian report)
Earlier this year, Action for Home Education, another group focusing on the defence and advancement of home education rights and liberties and of fair and equal treatment for all home educators, has also called for the Badman review to be abandoned, saying it has been skewed to favour the evidence provided by local authorities.
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In August this year, parents in southern Bavaria in Germany have been forced to pay nearly 13,000 Euros in home schooling fines and have had a lien placed on their home by the government. Hans and Petra Schmidt have been teaching their children, Josua, 16, and Aaron, 14, for more than nine years in an attempt to shield them from what they hold to be a hostile moral and heavily secularised environment in German public schools.
Another German family has also recently left Germany and is seeking asylum in the US after facing stiff fines and the potential loss of custody rights for home schooling their children.
Sweden is also considering ban on all home schooling except for children with medical exemptions and foreign workers with the appropriate work visas. Mike Farris, the founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association, a non-profit advocacy organisation established to defend and advance the constitutional right of parents to direct the education of their children and to protect family freedoms, said that people ‘who have religious convictions or are home schooling for religious reasons will not be given one of these very rare exemptions.’
‘And so for all intents and purposes, home schooling is going to be banned in Sweden. They’re following the German statute, following the German model,’ he added.
In a recent case in New Hampshire, US, where home-schooling is akin to a constitutional right, a court ordered a 10-year-old home-schooled girl into a government-run school.
Although the marital master making recommendations to the court agreed the child is ‘well liked, social and interactive with her peers, academically promising, and intellectually at or superior to grade level’ and that 'it is clear that the home schooling ... has more than kept up with the academic requirements of the ... public school system,’ he nonetheless proposed that the Christian girl be ordered into a government-run school after considering ‘the impact of [her religious] beliefs on her interaction with others.’ The court approved the order.
John Anthony Simmons, an ADF-allied attorney, said:
‘Parents have a fundamental right to make educational choices for their children. In this case specifically, the court is illegitimately altering a method of education that the court itself admits is working.
‘The court is essentially saying that the evidence shows that, socially and academically, this girl is doing great, but her religious beliefs are a bit too sincerely held and must be sifted, tested by, and mixed among other worldviews. This is a step too far for any court to take.’
(See the Alliance Defense Fund and The Wall Street Journal reports)
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