Tristram C Llewellyn Jones is a retired airline pilot, home educator, and civil liberties campaigner.
I am a home-educating parent, and home-schooled our two children through their secondary years.
Back in the 1970s I, as a child also home educated at secondary level, was on the other side of the fence; the local council took issue with my parents over the fact of my home education and, frankly, put them through hell.
With a career as a pilot in the Royal Air Force and airline industry behind me, I originally had no thought of home educating.
But my wife and I found that the education provided by the state schools on the Isle of Man was so poor that we frankly couldn’t bear to watch the slow-motion car crash we had signed up for.
I had no intention of letting the local authorities treat me as my parents had been treated. I therefor took a keen interest in education law, and the politics thereof.
Earlier this year the Government cancelled the Schools Bill. Amongst its provisions was a bid to bring home educators under much greater state control.
In this, it was strikingly similar to a new education bill which the Isle of Man had introduced in 2019, in response to which myself and another parent obtained a legal opinion on the type of intrusive monitoring that is being pushed on parents.
The conclusions should be of keen interest to everyone involved in this debate. They are especially timely given that Flick Drummond will this month be introducing a Ten Minute Rule Bill to create a register of home educated children – something both the Government and Opposition indicate they still they still wish to do.
So just what are the issues for families and government?
At the core of the argument is the balance of power between the family and the state. Home schooling is conducted in the sanctity and privacy of the home, by law abiding parents. It is rooted in longstanding common-law tradition, which has always held that parents, not the state, assure the education of the individual child.
From this flows the essential freedom to disagree with what the state teaches, and to provide something better, without Big Brother breathing down your neck or peeping through the curtains.
The prospect of government undermining such a right, and directing ever more family activity, naturally infuriates many parents.
On the other hand, the Government now wants prior knowledge of all home schooling. Without comprehensive knowledge of every child’s education, it purportedly fears that we parents might end up teaching the wrong things.
Ministers therefore proposed a compulsory register of every home-educated child, with extent of the required database and associated powers as yet unspecified.
But will a home education register satisfy Government without riling parents? In a word, no.
A home-schooled child can already be compelled to attend a school if the magistrates can be satisfied, under the balance of probabilities, that the child’s education is unsuitable. Parents have no argument with this law, which has stood the test of time since 1944.
This is instead a power-grab by the bureaucracy. Sitting between parents and the courts are local authority home education officers. These are civil servants, upon whom there are scant checks or balances, who enjoy a policing role over families educating their own children.
Now they want more power. At present, families are not compelled to deal with the local authority – a situation obviously unacceptable to town hall officials. A register would change this, and that prospect has many people worried. As my own parents’ experience showed, local education officers often discharge their responsibilities very badly.
Andrew Selous MP, speaking in a recent Westminster Hall debate on home education, argued that the UK should follow “best practice in Europe” as otherwise we could be an “outlier”.
But this division, if it exists, surely owes much to the fundamental difference between the British common law and the civil law systems which predominate on the continent. The latter reverses the relationship between the citizen and the law: instead of presuming that we may act freely unless the law provides otherwise, it holds that people may act only as provided for by law.
What business has a Conservative government – one which has made much of renegotiating our relationship with Europe – adopting policies rooted in such a tradition, which whatever its merits is so very different to that which prevails in Britain and the Commonwealth?
Then there’s the obvious logistical pitfalls. In the wake of New Labour, Britain is littered with failed database projects. The National Identity Register was repealed by the Coalition Government and the Contact Point child database was scrapped, as was the lesser-known Ryogens database – intended to log individual children’s bad traits lest they get into trouble.
Most infamously, Scotland’s Named Person law, which sought to impose on children an external guardian of the state’s choosing but was struck down by the Supreme Court. In her landmark judgment, Lady Hale wrote:
“‘Individual differences are the product of the interplay between the individual person and his upbringing and environment. Different upbringings produce different people. The first thing that a totalitarian regime tries to do is to get at the children, to distance them from the subversive, varied influences of their families, and indoctrinate them in their rulers’ view of the world. Within limits, families must be left to bring up their children in their own way.”
Attempting to register home-educating parents would be like herding stray cats. Families will move to avoid registration – many are already sick of local authorities and adopt the campervan lifestyle.
Wealthy home schoolers have homes in different jurisdictions and are never anywhere long enough to be ordinarily resident. Some simply would not register.
Sophisticated home educators will also mount challenges in the courts. Legal opinion obtained in the Isle of Man explained that intrusive monitoring of home educators is captured by human rights and equalities legislation.
Specifically, it is a case of the state attempting to coerce families towards a particular philosophy, in complete disrespect of their freedom of thought.
This debate is unlikely to attract much attention. But it needs to: if the Government were to get the power to database one discreet section of society, then the practice would spread. Currently, because they have increased in number, Government frets about home educators. But who would be next?
Any group irritating the establishment could be databased and tracked. And once you start collecting data, the impulse to act on it too often proves irresistible – especially to officials seeking to expand their influence.
The common law has for centuries been a quiet but effective shield against the overweening ambitions of the state. We should not abandon it now.
Tristram C Llewellyn Jones is a retired airline pilot, home educator, and civil liberties campaigner.
I am a home-educating parent, and home-schooled our two children through their secondary years.
Back in the 1970s I, as a child also home educated at secondary level, was on the other side of the fence; the local council took issue with my parents over the fact of my home education and, frankly, put them through hell.
With a career as a pilot in the Royal Air Force and airline industry behind me, I originally had no thought of home educating.
But my wife and I found that the education provided by the state schools on the Isle of Man was so poor that we frankly couldn’t bear to watch the slow-motion car crash we had signed up for.
I had no intention of letting the local authorities treat me as my parents had been treated. I therefor took a keen interest in education law, and the politics thereof.
Earlier this year the Government cancelled the Schools Bill. Amongst its provisions was a bid to bring home educators under much greater state control.
In this, it was strikingly similar to a new education bill which the Isle of Man had introduced in 2019, in response to which myself and another parent obtained a legal opinion on the type of intrusive monitoring that is being pushed on parents.
The conclusions should be of keen interest to everyone involved in this debate. They are especially timely given that Flick Drummond will this month be introducing a Ten Minute Rule Bill to create a register of home educated children – something both the Government and Opposition indicate they still they still wish to do.
So just what are the issues for families and government?
At the core of the argument is the balance of power between the family and the state. Home schooling is conducted in the sanctity and privacy of the home, by law abiding parents. It is rooted in longstanding common-law tradition, which has always held that parents, not the state, assure the education of the individual child.
From this flows the essential freedom to disagree with what the state teaches, and to provide something better, without Big Brother breathing down your neck or peeping through the curtains.
The prospect of government undermining such a right, and directing ever more family activity, naturally infuriates many parents.
On the other hand, the Government now wants prior knowledge of all home schooling. Without comprehensive knowledge of every child’s education, it purportedly fears that we parents might end up teaching the wrong things.
Ministers therefore proposed a compulsory register of every home-educated child, with extent of the required database and associated powers as yet unspecified.
But will a home education register satisfy Government without riling parents? In a word, no.
A home-schooled child can already be compelled to attend a school if the magistrates can be satisfied, under the balance of probabilities, that the child’s education is unsuitable. Parents have no argument with this law, which has stood the test of time since 1944.
This is instead a power-grab by the bureaucracy. Sitting between parents and the courts are local authority home education officers. These are civil servants, upon whom there are scant checks or balances, who enjoy a policing role over families educating their own children.
Now they want more power. At present, families are not compelled to deal with the local authority – a situation obviously unacceptable to town hall officials. A register would change this, and that prospect has many people worried. As my own parents’ experience showed, local education officers often discharge their responsibilities very badly.
Andrew Selous MP, speaking in a recent Westminster Hall debate on home education, argued that the UK should follow “best practice in Europe” as otherwise we could be an “outlier”.
But this division, if it exists, surely owes much to the fundamental difference between the British common law and the civil law systems which predominate on the continent. The latter reverses the relationship between the citizen and the law: instead of presuming that we may act freely unless the law provides otherwise, it holds that people may act only as provided for by law.
What business has a Conservative government – one which has made much of renegotiating our relationship with Europe – adopting policies rooted in such a tradition, which whatever its merits is so very different to that which prevails in Britain and the Commonwealth?
Then there’s the obvious logistical pitfalls. In the wake of New Labour, Britain is littered with failed database projects. The National Identity Register was repealed by the Coalition Government and the Contact Point child database was scrapped, as was the lesser-known Ryogens database – intended to log individual children’s bad traits lest they get into trouble.
Most infamously, Scotland’s Named Person law, which sought to impose on children an external guardian of the state’s choosing but was struck down by the Supreme Court. In her landmark judgment, Lady Hale wrote:
“‘Individual differences are the product of the interplay between the individual person and his upbringing and environment. Different upbringings produce different people. The first thing that a totalitarian regime tries to do is to get at the children, to distance them from the subversive, varied influences of their families, and indoctrinate them in their rulers’ view of the world. Within limits, families must be left to bring up their children in their own way.”
Attempting to register home-educating parents would be like herding stray cats. Families will move to avoid registration – many are already sick of local authorities and adopt the campervan lifestyle.
Wealthy home schoolers have homes in different jurisdictions and are never anywhere long enough to be ordinarily resident. Some simply would not register.
Sophisticated home educators will also mount challenges in the courts. Legal opinion obtained in the Isle of Man explained that intrusive monitoring of home educators is captured by human rights and equalities legislation.
Specifically, it is a case of the state attempting to coerce families towards a particular philosophy, in complete disrespect of their freedom of thought.
This debate is unlikely to attract much attention. But it needs to: if the Government were to get the power to database one discreet section of society, then the practice would spread. Currently, because they have increased in number, Government frets about home educators. But who would be next?
Any group irritating the establishment could be databased and tracked. And once you start collecting data, the impulse to act on it too often proves irresistible – especially to officials seeking to expand their influence.
The common law has for centuries been a quiet but effective shield against the overweening ambitions of the state. We should not abandon it now.