Rhys Laverty

The problem with Labour’s home-school crackdown

Bridget Phillipson (Credit: Getty images)

There are some counterintuitive differences between the US and the UK. One of them is this: home education has always been far easier in the UK, legally speaking, than across the Atlantic. But that is all about to change.

In states across the US, the right to home educate, and the attendant level of government oversight (e.g. registration, submitting planned curricula, proving progress etc.) has always varied wildly. But in the UK it has always been very simple: centuries of English common law mean that if a parent wishes to keep their child at home to be educated it is none of the government’s business.

The rising home education figures are not a simple story of child abuse hidden in plain sight

This makes sense after even a moment’s consideration: British mass education is a Victorian social experiment. The Elementary Education Act of 1880 legislated that all children aged 5 and 10 must receive an education.

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