Tristram C Llewellyn Jones is a retired airline pilot, home educator, and civil liberties campaigner.
Flick Drummond’s recent ConservativeHome article makes the case for tighter monitoring of home education. As a home-educated child, who home-educated his own children in turn, I think this is misguided.
Having refused to go to public school, I had a very informal free-range education on our family farm in Suffolk. When I was fifteen, I drove the combine harvester, rode a motorbike, had a firearms certificate, and shot rabbits. At age 22 I was selected for pilot training in the Royal Air Force and later had a career as an airline captain; being independently educated helps in a profession where self-reliance ensures survival.
This helped inspire me to remove my own two children from a failing primary school and decided to avoid completely the sink comprehensive we had been allocated. Home education was the last resort for our children. But my wife and I rolled up our sleeves and devised our own curriculum and style of teaching. Both of our children were accepted into Oxbridge. As such, I believe I am in a good position to defend home education.
In my long experience, those who wish to regulate home education usually do so based on negative preconceptions. They do not like home education and seek to control it. Conservatives should not fall for this worryingly socialist stance.
It is simply not correct that the Conservatives have delivered on education. Where home education numbers are rising it is because of dissatisfaction with what the state is offering. Drummond is mistaken to assert that “absence rates are at crisis point”.
The Daily Telegraph has asserted that ‘secondary school absence was continuing to increase ‘ but was required to publish a retraction and admit that: “This was an error. In fact, secondary school absence is now decreasing, from 31.5 per cent in Summer 2021/2022 to 24.1 per cent in Spring 2022/2023.” The reality is that attendance is naturally correcting to pre-pandemic levels without the need for any policy interventions.
Likewise, claims that families are “struggling with home education”, that “not every child is in home education because it is in their best interests”, or that “not every parent feels equipped to provide the quality of education they feel their child needs” also rest on questionable assumptions.
The Telegraph initially reported that “evidence showed the majority of children educated at home did not receive a good education.” This time, following a complaint to the Independent Press Standards Office, it was forced to publish a retraction stating that this was “inaccurate as there was no available evidence to support the claim.”
It is also misleading to infer that home-educated children might not be safe. Where is the data that suggests home-educated children are more at risk than schooled children?
A register of children not in school is a solution in search of a problem, and home-educating parents rightly do not trust that the suggestion that it “wouldn’t change much for those families that are already doing an excellent job”. We know full well that the state expands by mission creep, and that as soon as MPs have their list it will be expanded and used for other purposes.
Parents will understand this so a significant proportion of home educators will simply avoid registration, and accept the risk of legal action, to avoid having their lives run by a local authority. Drummond may get the register – but she won’t get the information.
British parents have always had control over their children’s education; there is no need for this to be codified in law. We are not given our rights as parents. We are born with our rights, and the state only has rights when prima facie evidence of wrongdoing presents itself. Innocent until proven guilty is hard-wired into the DNA of our common law. Conservative MPs will tamper with it at their peril.
Tristram C Llewellyn Jones is a retired airline pilot, home educator, and civil liberties campaigner.
Flick Drummond’s recent ConservativeHome article makes the case for tighter monitoring of home education. As a home-educated child, who home-educated his own children in turn, I think this is misguided.
Having refused to go to public school, I had a very informal free-range education on our family farm in Suffolk. When I was fifteen, I drove the combine harvester, rode a motorbike, had a firearms certificate, and shot rabbits. At age 22 I was selected for pilot training in the Royal Air Force and later had a career as an airline captain; being independently educated helps in a profession where self-reliance ensures survival.
This helped inspire me to remove my own two children from a failing primary school and decided to avoid completely the sink comprehensive we had been allocated. Home education was the last resort for our children. But my wife and I rolled up our sleeves and devised our own curriculum and style of teaching. Both of our children were accepted into Oxbridge. As such, I believe I am in a good position to defend home education.
In my long experience, those who wish to regulate home education usually do so based on negative preconceptions. They do not like home education and seek to control it. Conservatives should not fall for this worryingly socialist stance.
It is simply not correct that the Conservatives have delivered on education. Where home education numbers are rising it is because of dissatisfaction with what the state is offering. Drummond is mistaken to assert that “absence rates are at crisis point”.
The Daily Telegraph has asserted that ‘secondary school absence was continuing to increase ‘ but was required to publish a retraction and admit that: “This was an error. In fact, secondary school absence is now decreasing, from 31.5 per cent in Summer 2021/2022 to 24.1 per cent in Spring 2022/2023.” The reality is that attendance is naturally correcting to pre-pandemic levels without the need for any policy interventions.
Likewise, claims that families are “struggling with home education”, that “not every child is in home education because it is in their best interests”, or that “not every parent feels equipped to provide the quality of education they feel their child needs” also rest on questionable assumptions.
The Telegraph initially reported that “evidence showed the majority of children educated at home did not receive a good education.” This time, following a complaint to the Independent Press Standards Office, it was forced to publish a retraction stating that this was “inaccurate as there was no available evidence to support the claim.”
It is also misleading to infer that home-educated children might not be safe. Where is the data that suggests home-educated children are more at risk than schooled children?
A register of children not in school is a solution in search of a problem, and home-educating parents rightly do not trust that the suggestion that it “wouldn’t change much for those families that are already doing an excellent job”. We know full well that the state expands by mission creep, and that as soon as MPs have their list it will be expanded and used for other purposes.
Parents will understand this so a significant proportion of home educators will simply avoid registration, and accept the risk of legal action, to avoid having their lives run by a local authority. Drummond may get the register – but she won’t get the information.
British parents have always had control over their children’s education; there is no need for this to be codified in law. We are not given our rights as parents. We are born with our rights, and the state only has rights when prima facie evidence of wrongdoing presents itself. Innocent until proven guilty is hard-wired into the DNA of our common law. Conservative MPs will tamper with it at their peril.