The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill -
The child’s best interests: balancing rights and responsibilities in home education.
“The notion of obligations comes before that of rights” - Simone Weil
Few issues have caused more consternation and debate within the home education community than the recently enacted Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. It has met with considerable opposition from those of us who have elected to educate our children “otherwise than at school”. Despite its recent parliamentary success, there remains significant momentum behind efforts to amend - or even overturn - this legislation.
The scope of the Act is considerable and is being heralded as the most significant piece of education legislation for a decade. In relation to home education, Sections 37 to 42 address children not in school. While we await the consultation on the secondary legislation, a broad framework now exists outlining how parents will be expected to proceed, if they choose to educate their children at home. In some instances, parents will be required to obtain permission before deregistering a child from school. Local authorities will also be required to maintain a register of children not in school, with parents under a duty to provide specified information. This will include an estimate of the amount of time a child receives education from their parents and from any other educational providers, together with details of those providers where required. In certain circumstances, the local authority may also request a home visit.
As with any community within society, home education is not monolithic. When we began home educating in 2003, the community did feel relatively homogenous. However, over the years it has become increasingly diverse, with people choosing not to send their children to school - or withdrawing them - for a wide range of reasons, not all of which are compatible with the educational philosophy held by others within the community. It has become more factional and therein lies one of the difficulties in discussing the Act.
In recent years, those who speak is favour of registration, monitoring or more structured approaches have often been made to feel like pariahs. The loudest voices have tended to come from those who argue that private family life should exist free from state involvement. Yet this position overlooks the fact that we all exist within society and share responsibilities towards it. The private and public spheres inevitably intersect.
For eighteen years, we home educated our child, all the way through GCSEs and A Levels, ultimately leading to five Russell Group university offers. We never registered with the local authority because, at the time, we believed that education was a parental responsibility and that the state should not automatically oversee a lawful educational choice. I am, therefore, understanding of the concerns that this piece of legislation feels like a state overreach. I also believe—although I cannot know with certainty —that our child was able to flourish academically in a way that conventional schooling may not have enabled.
Alongside being a home educator, I am also a qualified social worker - formerly specialising in child protection - and a teacher. I am clearly not anti-home education, but neither am I uncritical of the status quo. As with most areas of life, there are two sides to every narrative. I have met many dedicated home educating families who provide rich, creative and highly individualised education for their children. However, alongside these families, I have also encountered parents who describe their children as “home educated” despite providing little or no education designed to equip their children for adult life and employment.
Some home educators focus, almost exclusively, on teaching life skills. These, of course, are important and a form of education. Yet, education extends beyond this. Formal learning also nourishes the mind and the intellect and provides access to opportunities that would otherwise remain closed. In some instances, the label of home education has functioned less as an educational philosophy and more as a means of disappearing from public view. As uncomfortable as it may be to acknowledge, this distinction matters, particularly given the marked rise in children not in school.
Defending the freedom to educate at home should not require defending situations in which children are effectively deprived of learning opportunities. A child’s right to receive an education should not depend solely on whether adults choose to fulfil their responsibilities. It is also reasonable to expect that those assuming responsibility for a child’s learning, should possess the knowledge and skills to provide suitable instruction themselves or have the means to secure appropriate educational support where necessary. Likewise, where teaching is delegated to external providers, proportionate oversight of those providers is a reasonable safeguard to help ensure educational quality and accountability. For these reasons, unlike many home educators, I support the registration and monitoring proposals contained within the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act.
Registration is not, in itself, an attack on home education. As a society, we register births, deaths, marriages and professionals. Registration, while seen by many as a threat, can be reframed as a way of public authorities simply knowing who exists and where responsibility in the system lies. A register can also protect responsible home educators. At present, public debate is too often shaped by isolated failures or safeguarding tragedies. If local authorities possess a clearer understanding of the home education population, policymakers can better distinguish between families who are providing effective education and those where intervention may genuinely be necessary. I have long maintained that it was a mistake for the government to link home education with instances of child abuse. There is insufficient evidence to support such a generalised assumption, and in many high-profile safeguarding cases, failures have occurred while children remained enrolled at school.
Responsible home educators should not fear visibility, if transparency helps preserve public confidence in educational freedom. Home education can offer significant advantages precisely because it is not bound by the constraints of conventional schooling. It can provide flexibility, individual pacing, one-to-one attention, and learning tailored to a child’s interests, strengths, and developmental stage. In doing so, it can achieve a level of responsiveness that standardised systems often struggle to match.
Registration, however, should not become excessive regulation. The consultation on secondary legislation will therefore raise important questions about proportionality and scope. Parents must retain meaningful freedom over curriculum choices, teaching methods, and educational philosophy. Home education succeeds precisely because it offers diversity, flexibility, and responsiveness to individual children. The challenge for government is to preserve those strengths, while providing appropriate accountability.
The state has a legitimate interest in ensuring that children are safe and receive an adequate and appropriate education. Equally, parents have a legitimate interest in raising and educating their children without unnecessary interference. Good legislation should respect both principles, rather than treating them as mutually exclusive. Above all, the debate should not be framed as freedom versus control - there can be both simultaneously and they can coexist responsibly. Rights, after all, carry responsibilities. Most home educating parents fulfil those responsibilities exceptionally well. As a community, however, we should not pretend that is universally true. The law should support freedom while ensuring that children whose education has been neglected, are not hidden behind the language of home education.
Legislation should also be judged by how effectively it protects the minority of children who currently have no one advocating for their educational rights. The devil, of course, will be in the detail. Home educators are right to express concerns about local authorities acting ultra vires and about the potential for mission creep. It is entirely reasonable to guard against registration evolving into excessive state intrusion, compulsory inspections, mandated curricula and stated pedagogy. Equally, registration and monitoring have the capacity to safeguard home education itself. Protecting educational freedom requires public confidence - it must be seen as a recognized educational pathway, rather than an unmonitored loophole. If that confidence diminishes, there is a greater risk of demands for more restrictive legislation. We should not forget that in many countries home education is illegal. Moderate regulation may therefore help to preserve the broader freedom to educate at home. Targeted oversight is preferable to blanket intervention, allowing authorities to focus resources where genuine concerns exist rather than assuming risk across the entire community.
Ultimately, the challenge is one of proportionality. Effective policy should support educational freedom while maintaining confidence that every child is receiving an adequate and suitable education. A well-designed system of registration and monitoring may achieve both aims—protecting vulnerable children without undermining the autonomy of the majority of parents who are already fulfilling their responsibilities.
Having exercised the freedom to home educate without registration, I understand the instinct to resist state involvement. Yet many years of experience - and the changing landscape of home education - have convinced me that a careful system of registration and monitoring can protect children's rights without undermining parental liberty. Parents have a legal right to choose home education under Section 7 Education Act 1996. However, children also have the right to receive an education that equips them for adult life and future employment. Education must expand, rather than limit, children’s life choices.
Responsible home educators have little to fear from proportionate accountability. Many professions and institutions accept some level of oversight, without sacrificing their independence. Supporting reasonable registration and monitoring is therefore not a rejection of home education. Rather, it recognises that rights are sustained by the responsible exercises of obligations. It affirms every child matters and that education is important, regardless of where it takes place.
If Simone Weil was right that obligations precede rights, then the obligation owed to every child is an education that equips them to flourish. Protecting that obligation is not a denial of parental freedom but one of the conditions that makes that freedom sustainable.
With thanks to Emma White, of Mark My Papers,
for inviting me to write this.
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