Home-schooling parents in Westminster, London are campaigning against council plans to impose an annual home visit to monitor their children, saying it contravenes their parental rights, it was reported in January.
The council wants to visit families who are educating their children at home once a year, in order to ‘look after the welfare of children’. But Leslie Barson, who homeschooled her two children, denied that this is a ‘safeguarding issue’. She commented: ‘There is no duty on a local authority to approve home education – it’s a parental responsibility. This is about approving and monitoring. I feel an inspection is an illegal infringement of my rights as a parent. The law says I’m responsible for my children’s education. The authority’s responsibility starts if there’s evidence of a problem or a concern. They think our children are at risk because they are not being seen daily by a teacher. But children are not safe just because they are at school.’
No legal basis
Local authorities are not legally obliged to monitor the quality of home education on a regular basis, but under the Education Act 1996 they can become involved if it transpires that parents are failing to provide suitable education.
