It’s hardly a surprise. Successive governments of all political persuasions have threatened to force home-educating parents to register with local officials and submit to intrusive bureaucracy. There are some politicians, many of them sitting in our current Parliament, who think parents should only have one choice when it comes the education of their children: the state.
It’s a war against parental choice. The recent policy of imposing VAT on private schools has damaged several private faith schools, who are already running on a shoestring to keep fees low. Parents who won’t be able to afford the resulting hike in school fees may have been considering the option of home-schooling. But now they face the prospect of interference and intrusion by busybodies from the local council turning up on the doorstep and demanding an hour-by-hour account of family life.
