You report that Westminster council in London wants to impose annual visits on home schooling families to “ensure welfare of children” (We don’t need no education inspectors, insist home educators, 1 January).
British law places children’s education as a parental responsibility, with the state providing schools for those that choose them. Local authorities, repeatedly, find this concept difficult.
Calls to regulate home educationin the different British jurisdictions in recent years have all failed due to protection afforded to families by the Human Rights Act, which enshrines the “right to respect for private and family life”. Parents rightly fear local authorities for the bad decisions they make about the children they gain access to.
The Westminster education committee inquired into home education in 2012. It found no child protection issue. The chair, Graham Stuart MP, recently wrote that “the conflation of home education with a child safeguarding risk amounts to a serious stigma against parents” and that he had never seen either “any credible evidence that home education is a risk factor … nor … evidence that home education effectively hid abuse from the authorities”.
Only the Isle of Man requires children not in state schools to be entered on a database. This achieves nothing for children but has the consequence of damaging relations between parents and the education authority due to failures of bureaucracy.
Home-educating families may face bullying by prejudiced local authority officials. This feeds into the wider community, creating frustration and tension for families trying their level best for their children.
Tristram C Llewellyn Jones
Ramsey, Isle of Man
• It is easy to sympathise with parents who educate their own children feeling their rights are being infringed by local authority monitoring. However, the rights of children must also be upheld, and the UN convention on the rights of the child defines an education as the child’s right (articles 28 and 29), and restricts the rights of parents over a child in light of the evolving capacities of the child (article 5) and the right of the child to express their views and have them given due weight (article 12). While parents may legitimately campaign to ensure inspectors limit their activity, the state has a duty to promote children’s rights, perhaps especially where they may conflict with what parents see as their own rights.
Roy Grimwood
Market Drayton, Shropshire
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