Home education – Mark Field’s view

CES members have shown an interest in home education.   Indeed, we have home educators amongst our members.   When the big brother thought police start on about parents having a legal duty to send their children to school, they need to be reminded that, at least as the law stands now, they do not.   Their legal duty is to ensure their children receive a suitable education, and that can be by home education if they wish.

Home educators work hard to ensure that their children receive as rounded an education as possible.   Sometimes they are able to provide far more than a hard pressed school can.

Now Mark Field, MP for Cities of London & Westminster, has written this piece for Conservative Home.   (thanks to Conservative Home for this) 

“Home education – the government casts aside another liberty

“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.’”