Christian group criticises government proposals targeting home-schooling parents

The Christian Institute has hit out at “intrusive and burdensome” proposals to force parents who educate their children at home to report their involvement in extracurricular activities including Sunday School. 

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill might be debated in Parliament today. Clause 25 would require local authorities to create a register of home-educated children of their area. Parents would have to supply information in regards to the period of time they and some other individuals spend educating their child at home.

The Christian Institute says the necessities “could amount to an almost hour-by-hour breakdown of a baby’s life and relationship with their parents, in addition to their involvement in sports clubs and places of worship”.

There would even be an obligation on Sunday School and sports club leaders to maintain records about which children of their groups are home-educated.

The Department for Education claims the measures will “put children on the centre of presidency” and “stop vulnerable children falling through cracks”, but The Christian Institute says they’ve “echoes of totalitarian states” and amount to “bureaucratic over-reach”. 

The Christian group believes the measures may additionally contravene Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the correct to a non-public and family life. 

“These latest proposals clobber hard-working parents with excessive and intrusive bureaucracy simply because they home educate,” said The Christian Institute’s Deputy Director Simon Calvert.

“It doesn’t make sense to require officials to discriminate against them after they are simply in search of to supply an education in the most effective interests of their child.” 

Mr Calvert said it was unfair to treat all home-educating parents as “a suspect category” and make them disclose sensitive information that shouldn’t be required of fogeys who send their children to highschool. 

“Home-educating parents have long suffered unjustified discrimination. During lockdown, when most families experienced a type of home education, this negative attitude dissipated. The bill risks undoing the progress made, to the detriment of home-educated children and their families,” he said.