Amendments protect rights of parents who educate at home

Three were brought by Yvonne Burford to address her concerns about registration, exam fees and monitoring, and all were supported by a majority of the Assembly.

Deputy Burford began by attempting to dispel some common myths, arguing that much of the education received by home educated children took place away from home – on beaches, in museums or even at States meetings – that children spent a lot of time mixing with their peers, and that parents did not have to be teachers themselves to provide a suitable learning environment.

‘Home educated children are usually very socially adept because their education happens in society,’ she said. ‘The name home education is, in many ways, a misnomer.’

Some analysis had shown, she said, that ‘for every hour of the school day, just 18 minutes is needed at home to achieve the same amount of learning’.

On the issue of registration, she pointed out that under the existing law of 1970, parents who educate their children at home from their early years do not have to register them. She had not notified anybody of her decision to home educate her son until he was six-and-a-half, she said.

The proposed new law will change this – a move which goes further than the UK and which has worried many home educating parents – and her amendment was not seeking to reverse this proposal, but merely to mitigate one of the effects of insisting on a home school register.

She wanted to ensure that once a child was registered at a school, parents could retain the right to remove them from it without having to wait for approval from Education, Sport & Culture.

Legal responsibility for educating a child rested with the parents, she reminded members, and that responsibility could be delegated to a school, but that delegation could be rescinded at any time.

Two-thirds of parents who home educate do so because they believe the school has failed their child over an extended period, she said.

‘By such a point, the child may well be distressed and the parent will want to take them out straight away, not wait weeks or longer to see if their application to home educate is approved,’ Deputy Burford said.

She said that the proposals would keep a distressed child a school, or leave parents breaking the law by removing the child.

She quoted correspondence from several parents who had concerns about ESC’s proposals and drew attention to advice on the States website which she said misled parents by implying that registration was currently compulsory.

She said it might reflect the law as Education would like it to be, but did not reflect the law as it is.

Opposing the amendment, ESC member Deputy Sue Aldwell argued that Education needed to be assured that parents were properly prepared to educate their own children before allowing them to do so, while ESC vice-president Deputy Sam Haskins warned against allowing de-registration to be done ‘on a whim’, with no intention of providing education.

Deputy Neil Inder echoed this, despite broadly supporting the amendment, saying a parent might remove their child from a school at the end of a bad week.

However, Deputy Victoria Oliver, who was home educated herself and who seconded the amendment, argued that this has not been a known issue in the 53 years in which the current law has allowed de-registration.

ESC president Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen defended her committee’s efforts to consult with parents and tried to reassure members that ‘this is not about control’.

However, the amendment was carried 27-9.

A further amendment from Deputy Burford to overturn a proposal to introduce means-testing for the exam fees of home-educated children was also well supported, winning 28-8.

This came after she argued that it would ‘add insult to injury’ for those children who had been taken out of a school after being failed by it.

A third amendment, which sought to ensure home-educating parents would be consulted over the formulation of future policies regarding monitoring regimes, won 26-7.