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EDUCATION IN UK

This web site is a celebration of families as places of education and parenting. The law in the UK is quite clear, parents rightly remain responsible for the education of their offspring regardless of whether they are in school or out of it. The state reserves the right to make enquirers should they have reason to believe that this responsibility is not being met and to offer an alternative educational environment to those who wish to use it.

In law the right to an education is unique in that it is an obligatory right, it is a right that may neither be denied or refused. Thus since a child does not have the right to refuse an education we believe that the state should remain flexible when defining what a 'suitable' education may look like.

It is a basic understanding of this web site that young people are autonomous beings, owned neither by parents or state. Since parents decided to bring their children into the world the relationship between parents and their offspring is asymmetric in that parents have obligations to their offspring which young people do not have towards their parents.

Even though the law expresses the right to home educate as a parental right, it is my belief that in the same way that young people have the right to decide upon medical procedures they should also have the right to be educated in a manner of their own choosing. This is not only right in principle but in practice too since intrinsically motivated learning will most readily "achieve that which it sets out to achieve". Ultimately, education cannot take place against a person's wishes.

The Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights 8th April 1999 stated:

"The respect of parent's freedom to educate their children according to their vision of what education should be has been part of international human rights standards since their very emergence."

While there are no official figures on how many children are home educated in the UK my research suggests that around 100,000 (approximately 1%) UK children of compulsory educational age are currently (2011) being home educated. A figure that is rising at above 15% per annum. This web site seeks to support those families and inform them of their legal rights and responsibilities.

In 1834 the Lord Chancellor, Lord Brougham and Vaux, was asked "Do you consider that a compulsary education would be justified, either on principles of public utility or expediency?" to which he replied "I am decidedly of opinion that it is justifiable on neither; but, above all, I should regard anything of the kind as utterly destructive of the end it has in view. Suppose the people of England were taught to bear it, and to be forced to educate their children by means of penalties, education would be made absolutely hateful in their eyes, and would speedily cease to be endured. They who have argued in favour of such a scheme from the example of a military government, like that of Prussia have betrayed, in my opinion, great ignorance of the nature of Englishmen." Report of the Parliamentary Committee on the State of Education. 1834.