Balls defends home schooling plan

People are fiercely defensive of their right to home educate

Children's Secretary Ed Balls has felt the need to defend a review of home education in England following messages people have sent him.

He said in his MP's blog that he believed the review, by Graham Badman, had been fair and balanced.

Home education was "a well-established and important part of the education system", he said.

But the government wants to register and monitor home educating parents and bar those it deems unsuitable.

Mr Balls said there had to be action following a "small but worrying" number of cases in which children had suffered harm.

"I thought it crucial that the review found the appropriate balance between two important principles, and I believe Graham Badman achieved this," he said.

These were:

• giving parents the right to decide how and where their children should be educated
• ensuring that every child is safe and gets the education they need to help them fulfil their potential

Concerns

So the government plans to have a registration scheme and arrangements to monitor the education that families provide.

Where there are serious concerns about parents' ability to provide "a suitable education in a safe environment" they should not be permitted to educate their child at home.

A formal consultation on the proposals is open until 19 October.

Mr Balls said he had written because "a number of people have emailed me or sent me messages about Graham Badman's independent review of home education".

A spokesman for his department was not immediately able to say how many messages he had received or what was in them.

But home educators are not slow to voice their opposition to any kind of official interference.

Many have had unhappy experiences with officialdom in the past, which may be why some are educating their children at home in the first place.