A consultation report on a possible law to regulate home schooling has come in for severe criticism and been rejected as a good idea by over 80% of respondents.
The Education Minister launched a consultation on whether introducing legislation to force parents to register and engage with local education authorities had support amongst the public and LEAs.
Over 80% of parents responding to the consultation rejected the proposals, which included a possible legal right of entry into parents' homes.
As a result, the Minister has backed-off from introducing legislation, highlighting the very clear battle line drawn between parents, who overwhelmingly saw the moves as "state interference", and LEAs, who thought they'd like to start pushing their weight around inside people's homes because there could be welfare issues to consider.
A dark undercurrent in fact flows through the position of the LEAs. Their responses show a clear prejudice against the whole concept of home schooling. LEA responses seem to apply a suspicion that those parents who pull their children out of what are, within Wales, often dire schools, must have some motive other than alternative educational provision.
As is usual for just about any public body trying to get its own way these days, the words "health and safety" are used as justification to enter homes and inspect just what's going on inside. However, laws already exist to allow intervention where there is no evidence of reasonable educational efforts going on at home. Similarly, there are laws to deal with those tiny minority who may be hiding something sinister by keeping their kids from school.
But this is clearly not enough for the LEAs. Rather than accept the doctrine of innocent until evidence shows otherwise, they want to label everyone a criminal who must prove their innocence. They very much want to see parents as suspicious simply for wanting to home school. Their responses show a deeply troubling attempt at an extension of their mandates as educational authorities to something much more like a combination of police and social services.
One parent made the point, and I can confirm the sentiment, that dealing with a local authority was "the most stressful and time-consuming" thing she'd ever done. Across Wales, we have stories of authorities making false claims against parents, poor relations between schools and homes, and almost all 22 LEAs failing to meet those expectations for which they are paid handsomely to achieve.
Parents angrily made the point that LEAs don't, themselves, have a good definition of what a "suitable education" actually is, typically have a bias against home schooling for no good reason other than for being different, and cannot, in most areas of Wales, themselves deliver a suitable education. Witness the PISA results over many years to find justification for this view.
The Minister has, for his part, exercised what can only be termed good judgement in immediately pulling back from legislation in this area. Forging ahead would have led to an inevitable and rapid digging of deeper trenches between a state that wants to interfere deeper and deeper with personal lives, and those who are self-sufficient and see the Welsh education system for the total failure that it is.
The message from parents is clear: if the government provided education to an acceptable standard within Wales, they wouldn't have to sacrifice their lives to home schooling. The LEAs must look at their own, appalling record sheet of failures before they start telling parents they don't know what they're doing.
In the end, the parent has a legal duty, not just a right, to ensure the suitable and sufficient education of their children. That has always meant they have a choice to educate outside the state provisions, and even outside any formal school organisation. This must never change, and local authorities must never be allowed to be judge and jury in their own cause.
