Today, the House of Lords debated one of the most chilling education bills in modern British history. If it passes, the ironically titled “Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill”, will force an unprecedented crackdown on home-schooling, at a time when many families are desperate for an alternative to our crumbling and dogmatic state system.
English common law has always recognised that parents have natural and legal authority over their children, including responsibility for their upbringing and education. This was reinforced and formalised in the 1996 Education Act. But that Act didn’t create the right to home educate, because that’s not how common law works. In our tradition, everything not explicitly forbidden by law is allowed, and rights are shaped through centuries of court decisions. That’s very different from civil law systems in Europe, where the state often defines and controls what rights people have.
Now, this bill would create a national register of all children not in school. That would turn home-educating families into surveillance targets, no matter their intent, their values, or how well their children are actually doing. Our system is supposed to presume innocence unless guilt is proven. But this bill flips that. It treats families as guilty from the start and opens their homes up to sinister state inspection even when no evidence of neglect or abuse has been provided.
Some of the Bill’s most worrying clauses include giving the state power to decide what counts as “suitable education,” forcing parents to seek permission to home-school, allowing mandatory inspections, and threatening parents with prosecution, fines or prison if they don’t comply.
No one is being served by the current arrangement, so why is Labour squeezing the remaining escape routes?
Labour is using tragic cases, like the murder of Sara Sharif and the grooming gang scandals, to justify this assault on parental rights. But neither of those cases had anything to do with home education. In fact, teachers saw that Sara was bruised while she was still in school. Her disgraceful killers only pretended to home-school her during the last six months of her life.
I am not afraid to admit that home education can often be imperfect, but that is true of any approach to education. But this bill is political opportunism, wrapped in moral panic. It puts vulnerable groups at risk, including children with special needs who are routinely failed by mainstream schooling. Then there are the lentil-munching child-led learners whose votes Labour might already fear losing to the Greens. Whether a hardcore anarchist or a Trad Catholic, any parents seeking to offer their child an alternative to the state orthodoxy of the day will be presumed to be at fault.
Notably, this bill has arisen at a time when state schools are falling apart, private schools are under threat from VAT, special needs provision is broken, and mental health among both pupils and teachers is at crisis levels. No one is being served by the current arrangement, so why does Labour wish to squeeze the few remaining escape routes?
Well over half of adults in England believe school doesn’t prepare children for work or adult life, and almost half of pupils leave primary school unable to read and write properly. Instead of investing in real improvements, the government is trying to. If this bill passes, a future government could declare either left-wing or right-wing beliefs “unsuitable” for home education. That would allow the state to effectively ban alternative education for whole groups of people based on ideology.
The government will no doubt accuse its critics of far-right scaremongering. But history tells us what happens when the state takes over education completely. In Nazi Germany, the curriculum was rewritten to serve the regime. In the USSR and Maoist China, alternative education was banned. In East Germany, schools were used to control what families were allowed to believe. Observing the horrors of totalitarianism across the Channel, Rab Butler’s 1944 Education Act was designed to prevent any such clampdowns in the UK. Labour’s new bill would vandalise that legacy.
The question is simple. Should the state have final say over how your child is educated or should we trust that the vast majority of parents know best? If you take the latter view, you must urgently call on your MP to protest Labour’s plans.
