Home educators’ fears came true yesterday when the government accepted the findings of the Badman report which recommended that they register annually and demonstrate to local authorities that they are providing a suitable education.
For anyone unfamiliar with home education, these are superficially reasonable demands. But home educators I have spoken to believe that current anxiety over child welfare failings is being manipulated by a government obsessed with monitoring and targets to interfere in a sphere over which they currently have little influence. Frustrated by review after review, the majority of home educators feel that the government is simply incapable of trusting parents to do the best for their children.
Home educators will now have to conform to the state’s ideas of what constitutes a ‘suitable’ education and jump through hoops to reassure local authorities that they have their children’s best interests at heart. Understandably, home educators are reeling at the prospect of justifying themselves to a state that so often fails both in education and welfare.
As Conservatives, we should be vigorously defending the rights of parents to reject the state’s ideas on education and the constant testing, restrictive curriculum and poor results that often stem from them. Home educators are self-reliant, pursue excellence, cost the taxpayer next to nothing, believe the parent, not the state knows best and firmly reject the idea that government has the answers to everything. A home education can also be an excellent option for those who cannot afford private schooling but have no confidence in a failing local state school.
The government must instead guard the sacred right of parents to educate their children whilst vigorously tightening the current system when it comes to child welfare. After that, it should look at its own ability to fulfil the Every Child Matters objectives rather than continue to pursue those who put their faith, time and passion into home education.
To read the speech I made on this issue in Westminster Hall on Tuesday, click here. This speech has attracted breathtaking support from home educators nationwide and I have received emails from many non-Tories who have said they feel so passionately about it that they will be voting Conservative at the next election. As one mother said,
‘I was delighted you stuck up for home education in the face of all the lefties who - as we all know - merely want to ensure that we are all grow up Marxists! My father was a teacher for many years and can talk at length about the way the left systematically destroyed education.’
