Mayo Ma'am on Nostr: Why TERFS , FREE SPEECHERS and FREE THINKERS should care about home education: “ Of ...
Why TERFS , FREE SPEECHERS and FREE THINKERS should care about home education:
“ Of course the primary problem in the Sara Sharif case was not home-schooling but the decision of the (still anonymous) family court judge to hand her over to a man with a known track record of abuse in the first place.
And of course it’s not the only thing driving the proposed new provisions. The education Blob has wanted to get tighter control on home-schooling for years. They hate the idea that children can simply be removed from schools and educated by their parents instead. The Blob sees schools not primarily as institutions for imparting knowledge but for imparting indoctrination about contemporary and progressive values. So proposals to control home-schooling have kept surfacing. So far they have been seen off. This time it looks like they are going to win.
So what does this Bill do? It requires home-schoolers (the numbers of which are booming by the way) to register with the local authority. That isn’t quite what it sounds. You have to supply a whole list of data, including Equality Act-protected characteristics, a vast amount of personal information and background detail, plus “any other information the local authority considers appropriate”: in other words, anything it wishes. There are potential checks on what’s being taught, by whom, and when. It’s a whole new bureaucratic regime to which home-schoolers are subject.
The problem here is that many local authorities have already shown they are hostile to home-schooling and indeed come close to harassing home-schoolers. It’s easy to see how home-schooling parents could face the kind of guerrilla warfare with the authorities, backed by fines, that those trying to keep their children off puberty blockers have had to contend with.
Of course children subject to formal Child Protection Plans will be stopped from being home-educated children. No one would argue with that. But so will children subject to simple investigations under the Children’s Act. Yet, according to research by Education Otherwise, the organisation for home educators, nearly 80 per cent of such investigations lead nowhere. There’s obvious scope for misuse by those who want to block home-schooling.
Anyway, is there actually a problem with home-schooling? Not really. In 2023 only 1.4 per cent of home-educated children were given a school attendance order. In the same year 10 per cent of state schools were found by Ofsted to be “inadequate” or “require improvement”. Which system is failing here? Especially after the Government’s planned evisceration of academies and free schools, home-schooling is a vital safety valve, the last refuge for those who can’t afford private school fees and whose local school is failing.
Now of course it’s true that the nature of home-schooling will vary family by family. That is precisely the point of it. So some parents will educate their children in a way the rest of us wouldn’t. I think that we, as a society, can run that risk. For the bigger threat is that we concede the right of the state to intervene on everything, to stop us deciding what’s best for our own children. Then we will have begun to eliminate private space altogether. Once we have accepted the principle that the state can set the rules, we have no ability to say back to it: “I hear what you say. But this is my family and I am teaching them my values not yours.”
That’s why keeping an eye on fundamental principle is important and that’s why we all have an interest in preserving home-schooling. Home-schoolers are not just doing the right thing by their own children but also maintaining the principles that freedom and autonomy are intrinsically important matters and that the state does not have the right to go anywhere at will. Whatever the cause, it’s not worth giving those rights away for.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/16/home-schooling-helps-us-resist-indoctrination-education
“ Of course the primary problem in the Sara Sharif case was not home-schooling but the decision of the (still anonymous) family court judge to hand her over to a man with a known track record of abuse in the first place.
And of course it’s not the only thing driving the proposed new provisions. The education Blob has wanted to get tighter control on home-schooling for years. They hate the idea that children can simply be removed from schools and educated by their parents instead. The Blob sees schools not primarily as institutions for imparting knowledge but for imparting indoctrination about contemporary and progressive values. So proposals to control home-schooling have kept surfacing. So far they have been seen off. This time it looks like they are going to win.
So what does this Bill do? It requires home-schoolers (the numbers of which are booming by the way) to register with the local authority. That isn’t quite what it sounds. You have to supply a whole list of data, including Equality Act-protected characteristics, a vast amount of personal information and background detail, plus “any other information the local authority considers appropriate”: in other words, anything it wishes. There are potential checks on what’s being taught, by whom, and when. It’s a whole new bureaucratic regime to which home-schoolers are subject.
The problem here is that many local authorities have already shown they are hostile to home-schooling and indeed come close to harassing home-schoolers. It’s easy to see how home-schooling parents could face the kind of guerrilla warfare with the authorities, backed by fines, that those trying to keep their children off puberty blockers have had to contend with.
Of course children subject to formal Child Protection Plans will be stopped from being home-educated children. No one would argue with that. But so will children subject to simple investigations under the Children’s Act. Yet, according to research by Education Otherwise, the organisation for home educators, nearly 80 per cent of such investigations lead nowhere. There’s obvious scope for misuse by those who want to block home-schooling.
Anyway, is there actually a problem with home-schooling? Not really. In 2023 only 1.4 per cent of home-educated children were given a school attendance order. In the same year 10 per cent of state schools were found by Ofsted to be “inadequate” or “require improvement”. Which system is failing here? Especially after the Government’s planned evisceration of academies and free schools, home-schooling is a vital safety valve, the last refuge for those who can’t afford private school fees and whose local school is failing.
Now of course it’s true that the nature of home-schooling will vary family by family. That is precisely the point of it. So some parents will educate their children in a way the rest of us wouldn’t. I think that we, as a society, can run that risk. For the bigger threat is that we concede the right of the state to intervene on everything, to stop us deciding what’s best for our own children. Then we will have begun to eliminate private space altogether. Once we have accepted the principle that the state can set the rules, we have no ability to say back to it: “I hear what you say. But this is my family and I am teaching them my values not yours.”
That’s why keeping an eye on fundamental principle is important and that’s why we all have an interest in preserving home-schooling. Home-schoolers are not just doing the right thing by their own children but also maintaining the principles that freedom and autonomy are intrinsically important matters and that the state does not have the right to go anywhere at will. Whatever the cause, it’s not worth giving those rights away for.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/16/home-schooling-helps-us-resist-indoctrination-education