My first awareness of politics was of a Badman, the Badman: Graham Badman, the titular conductor of the 2009 Review into Elective Home Education in England. As a young child, I thought this name highly appropriate. Mr Badman had been commissioned by then Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Ed Balls to investigate home education, to understand how it was regulated by local authorities and whether it was being used as a cover for widespread child abuse. Following his report, in the Queen’s speech that year Brown’s government promised to bring in compulsory registration and regulation of home educators. This met with outrage from parents.

On the 8th of December 2009 petitions from 120 constituencies were presented in the House of Commons, the highest number ever presented simultaneously on a single topic. (My father tried to hand our constituency’s petition to our Labour MP but he didn’t show up). The Parliamentary Select Committee overseeing the Department launched its own inquiry into the quality of the review. In their findings they underlined the poor and rushed quality of the evidence presented by Badman in support of his proposals. The Committee vigorously rejected any form of compulsory registration or monitoring. In the election of 2010 home educators, many of whom were lifelong Labour voters, dropped Labour en masse. The government’s election defeat put the issue to rest for the time.

In the recent King’s Speech a Labour government have once again put forward their ambition to register and regulate home educators. The idea had already been revived in 2021 by the Conservatives following a 2019 consultation of Children not in School, smuggled in as part of proposed legislation on unregistered religious schools, primarily citing concerns about incidences of unregistered Jewish and Muslim schools.

My own experience, as a home educated child, was a dream

Unlike the popular conception of American-style ‘home schooling’, the majority of home educators in Britain are not making their choice for reasons of faith conviction. Many indeed are not even religious. Instead, most are driven by a desire to give their children not just the best education possible but the best childhood. When I first started, this was overwhelmingly the main reason. Increasingly however, many are home educating because they are compelled to following experiences of extreme bullying; serious anxiety brought on by treatment at the hands of teachers and peers, with the clinch point for parents often brought following incidents of self-harm and suicide attempts; and many more cases of complex needs being failed (most commonly autism, ADHD and dyslexia). Once out of school, it is incredible how quickly most parents start to say that their child is becoming their old self again. It’s a healing that’s wonderful to watch.

In Britain the law requires parents to provide for their child’s education “either by regular attendance at school, or otherwise” (Education Act 1944, section 36). It is under this provision for “education otherwise” that home education is situated. Britain’s constitution understands the education of children to be both a parent’s right and responsibility, for which the government offers opt-in help in the form of state schools.

My own experience, as a home educated child, was a dream. I was home educated from birth until I went to university. I choose the term ‘home education’, rather than ‘home schooling’, advisedly. The latter is more commonly used in America while the former has always been the preferred term for parents in Britain; the latter conjures up images of doing lessons at home, the home becoming school (the experience of many during Covid), while the former stresses that the child receives education via the home.

My experience was certainly not of school at home. Until I started my GCSEs (which are indeed possible to do from home, as are A levels) we rarely sat down at a table to do formal work. Instead learning was exploratory. I was exposed to all sorts of new knowledge through frequent outings to museums, galleries, nature reserves, and learning centres, and through a varied range of books from the public library or charity shops. It is amazing what opportunities and resources are available inexpensively or free. Of course, with the full advent of the internet, these opportunities are now exponentially greater. This was the closest we got to a curriculum. Whatever particularly grabbed my childhood attention and interest, mum leaned into and provided more opportunities to explore. First it was wildlife, then it was history. I have never lost these early loves. Mum, despite her own failed history O-level, provided opportunities for me to explore and develop my own interests. It turns out if you never teach children that learning is work that they have to do, they do it naturally because they want to. There is no surer way to curtail curiosity than constraining and compelling it.

Children learn basic skills like reading, writing and arithmetic in their own time, some quicker and some slower than they would be expected to at school, and they learn them more naturally and profoundly if allowed to do so at their own pace, spurred on by their own curiosity. Children want to access the knowledge and stories contained in writing, and they want to record and communicate their knowledge and thoughts by writing. Finer and more technical skills can always be picked up quickly when the child is older. There is no need to waste valuable childhood or curtail natural curiosity by the insane anxiety to get ahead early. I have never met an illiterate home educator, but teachers in school report increasing illiteracy in their classrooms, children left behind by the rigid pace of the curriculum.

And who populated this world of exploration? The daily question from relatives, neighbours and strangers: what about socialisation? Is it just you facing your mother across the table? Far from it. My explorations of the world were most regularly in the company of others. We did our outings and activities with groups of all different sizes, and our weeks were filled with meeting our local friends. We once counted at least 100 families that we knew and collaborated with. But this socialising is quite different to school. You are not daily surrounded by the same group of people, all exactly the same age as you. You see your friends one-on-one or in groups of various sizes, and you have friends of different ages. You spend time with their brothers and sisters and with them and their parents. Home educated children frequently report, even into and beyond university, finding it easier to talk and relate to adults of all ages than their school educated peers. This does not come at the cost of friendships with their peers. Home educated children report rarely experiencing peer pressure or bullying, while from my own experience I enjoyed both positive and profound relationships with my friends, and count some of these among my closest friends still.

Childhood is a precious thing, not just a jumping off point before real life starts

So what’s the problem? If it’s all so good, if you have nothing to hide, why not consent to government registration and monitoring? This was a sentiment expressed not infrequently back in 2009. This is not untrodden territory. If your child has been to school and then come out and you remain in the same council area, then you will have already been registered and have received ‘inspections’. This work is delegated to the councils, many of which have little understanding of what is required or permitted of them. Currently an inspector does not have the right to enter your home or meet your children and there is no official criteria or curriculum against which to make their assessment, rights reiterated by the Select Committee in 2009. But councils are often unaware of this. Inspectors can sometimes be relaxed and open but they are often intimidating and domineering. Now the government is again seeking to expand the legitimate powers of councils, to draw up a national compulsory register of all home educated children, and to impose the national curriculum through assessment and monitoring.

For some parents this will not present an insurmountable burden, beyond the unnecessary work and emotion it will create. They are articulate and confident, they can create the bland box ticking narrative required out of the thick world of exploration and holistic learning which they are providing for their children. They can reduce their child’s development, as both a learner and a person, into a report that fits within the bonds of the national curriculum. They are able to. But not everyone is. Many, many parents who I have witnessed provide their children with the most wonderful childhoods, filled with learning and growth, whose children have gone on to great things in education, career and personhood, would have lacked the confidence and formal education to perform and jump hoops for a government inspector. Non-standard, informal learning is met with an inspector’s scepticism and suspicion. A child’s incredible achievements find no box to tick.

The government’s proposal presents a huge waste of time and effort, in areas where they should be serving the most vulnerable. Only a very small minority of child abuse cases have involved parents claiming to home educate, and in these cases social services was nearly always already aware of the issues via other channels. Most child abuse cases involving school age children involve children who are at school. What a tragedy if time and money are taken away from pursuing these cases to heap burdens and constraints on parents trying to give their children wonderful childhoods. Because that is what home education is all about. Childhood is a precious thing, not just a jumping off point before real life starts. It should be enjoyed to the full, filled with wonder, play, exploration of the world and self-discovery, not wasted sitting in assembles, queuing in corridors and waiting for the class to quiet down. The children of these wide and deep childhoods grow up to be ambitious and curious, wide in empathy and deep in self-knowledge. Every child deserves the best their parents can give them and the government’s only role is to empower parents to this end.