The legality of monitoring of home education under European law

A little while ago, we looked at the fact that parents who wish to educate their own children in Britain are required to meet certain minimum standards in doing so. This inevetiably raises the question of who should decide wheter such minimum standards are being met; the parents or the state. Most home educating parents in Britain are under the mistaken impression that they are in law the final arbiters of what their children should and should not be learning. This view has never been accepted by anybody other than a handful of militant home educators. It is instructive to look at what happened when two parents from this country took their case to the European Commision on Human Rights. The ruling went against them; which was encouraging for local authorities in Britain who are in favour of monitoring home education.

A woman called Iris Harrison insisted throughout the 1970s that not only did she have the right to educate her own children, but that the lcoal authority had no right to dictate the form that this education should take. Eventally, the case was settled in court, with the judge ruling that children educated at home should at least receive systematic instruction in such subjects as reading, writing and arithmetic. (Harrison and Harrison v Stevenson (1981) QB (DC) 729/81). The parents then took their case to Europe, on the grounds that  their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights were being violated. Article 2 of the Protocol says that;

No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it
assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the state shall respect the right of
parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and
philosophical convictions.

The result was not at all what Iris Harrison and her husband had hope for, as it was ruled that not only is compulsory schooling quite compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, but that if any child is not in school, then the state has a perfect right to monitor his or her education.Clive Sheldon QC wrote about this case, saying that;

It was clear that A2/P1 implied a right for the State to establish compulsory schooling, be it in State schools or private tuition of a satisfactory standard, and that verification and enforcement of educational standards is an integral part of that right.
Accordingly, the Commission held that to require the applicant parents to co-operate in the
assessment of their children’s educational standards by an education authority in order to ensure
a certain level of literacy and numeracy, whilst, nevertheless, allowing them to educate their
children at home, could not be said to constitute a lack of respect for the applicants' rights under
Art 2 of Protocol. Accordingly, the Commission found that the complaint was inadmissible

In other words, according to the ECHR, the state can monitor home education to its heart's content! Indeed, in a later case, brought by a German, it was ruled that home education can even be completely banned and that the ECHR allows for this.

Home Education in the Early 1970s

There is something of a mythology associated with home education in this country. It runs like this. In the early 1970s, there were a tiny handful of home educating parents who were mercilessly pursued by the authorities. They were threatened with the loss of their children and attempts were made to force them to send their children to school. Just look at poor Iris Harrison. Then, a handful of brave parents got together and formed an organisation dedicated to protecting the interests of home educators and fighting to make the practice acceptable. Slowly, they did so; until today we can all enjoy the fruits of their struggle. Key court cases in the early 1980s established the right of parents to home educate.

Like all myths, there is a bit of truth in this, but precious little. In fact home education was an accepted educational option long before legal decisions such as Harrison and Harrison v Stevenson 1981 or Phillips v Brown 1980. I have in front of me several Penguin Education Specials from the early 1970s and they shed an interesting light upon how home education was viewed by local authorities at that time. I can thoroughly recommend School is Dead, by Everett Reimer and Free Way to Learning, by David Head. It is at the latter book that I wish to look, because it tells us a good deal about home education forty years ago.

Parents who did not wish to send their children to school in the early 1970s had various options. Setting up their own schools was a lot easier than it is now and quite a few were established in disused buildings. Freightliners in Camden was one such, as was White Lion Free School in Islington. Up in Manchester there was Parkfield Street in Moss Side. I was on the fringe of a couple of these ‘schools’. I use quotation marks, because these were really just groups of home educating parents who clubbed together and found a place where their children could learn. Local authorities were not at all opposed to this. They even provided premises for such home educating groups to use.

In addition to communal setups of this sort, there were plenty of parents who simply taught their children themselves. Luckily, we have a snapshot of local authority attitudes to such parents, because in Free Way to Learning, David Head interviewed some local authority inspectors and asked them what they thought of home education and how they got on with home educators. Now according to the popular mythology, they should at this time have been bitterly opposed to home education and determined to get the kids back into school. In, fact they were all, without exception, well disposed towards home education. Also, and this again goes against the what many people now seem to believe, all of them knew home educators; there were plenty around. We cannot do better than to look at what these local authority inspectors said;



We used to ask to see timetables, but with the changes in child education today that could be embarrassing. We also ask for samples of work, and again, changes could mean we’d be satisfied with, for example, tape recordings. The interviews are friendly.



The great thing we’d look for used to be some sort of programme, kinds of books read etc. Usually we found that parents’ approach was way-out reactionary and they had no idea of modern methods.



In fact we couldn’t these days really ask that a child covered a particular subject regularly.





These inspectors were speaking in 1972, five years before Education Otherwise began and almost ten years before the judgment in the Iris Harrison case. One thing stands out and that is that they are talking a lot in the past tense. They used to ask for this and that, but now things are a lot more free and easy. One of them is worried that parents tend to be too reactionary in their teaching methods; he says elsewhere that he does not like to see homes being run like schools! It is clear that these local authority officers have had a good deal of experience of home education and are absolutely fine with it. They are also becoming pretty laid back about the type of evidence that they might want to see and they are no longer interested in timetables.

None of this really ties in with the idea that local authorities forty years ago were dead against home education. They were not only familiar with it, but were pretty much in favour of it. In some ways, things were even better for home educators forty years ago than they are now! Can anybody imagine a local authority today leasing a building to home educators at a nominal rent, as Islington did for the White Lion Free School? Even home visits were not the norm. Here is an inspector for ILEA, the Inner London Education Authority;



The practice is for the District Inspector to see the parent at the divisional education offices and inquire into the details of the arrangements that had been made for educating the child.



Parents meeting the LA, without the child being seen and on neutral ground, away from the home! Evidence in the form of tape recordings, rather than written work, providing premises; things certainly seemed to be going pretty smoothly for home education forty years ago. Yet within ten years, there was confrontation, legal cases and all sorts of trouble. What went wrong? It is at this that we shall be looking in a day or two.

Why should I wish to delve about in the past in this way? What possible relevance has it for today's home educators? It will show how we moved from a situation where local authorities were by and large happy to see parents educating their own children to the position today, where there is a good deal of animosity and tension between the two groups. Those who wish to believe that this has nothing to do with the past, may of course simply not read this. I would not wish to shatter too many illusions!

The origins of Education Otherwise and a major strand of British home education

British home education may be roughly divided into two major strands. These may not inaptly be called the sensible and silly movements. Over the last week or two, we have mainly been looking at the silly movement; founded  by the sort of people who would advise their children to shoot local authority officers, rather than show them what they have been doing lately in history or mathematics. (I think Iris Harrison knows who we’re talking about here!) Many of these early and high profile home educators were associated with, or were fellow travellers of, the so-called ’Children’s Rights’ movement in the early 1970s.


Before we go any further, here is a question for modern home educators. What sort of irresponsible lunatic would say that it is fine for an eight year-old girl to have sex with a grown man? Can nobody guess? Here’s a clue, it is the same person who also thought that children should be allowed to take heroin if they wished, work in factories, vote at the age of six and drive cars at literally any age at all. I am surprised that some readers did not get the answer to this! It was of course that great ideologue and founding father of home education; John Holt.

I know that I have talked before of John Holt and his mad beliefs, but last night I re-read his masterpiece; the book in which he sets out his vision for the future of childhood. This book, Escape from Childhood, E. P. Dutton 1974, is a vision of hell. Children are working in factories and mines, rather than being educated; they are drinking alcohol and using heroin; having sex with adults as and when they feel like. This then is John Holt’s Utopia, his vision of the ideal childhood. Not going to school is only a small part of this new world that he envisages and urges us to bring into being.

John Holt was writing from the same perspective as many of those in this country who became known as militant home educators in the 1970s, the sort of people who founded Education Otherwise. I am not at all sure that those today who speak enthusiastically of John Holt really know what he was up to and the things that he believed. This is relevant to home education in this country today, because the ideas that he espoused are still going strong among some parents. We shall be looking into this in detail in future posts and trying to distinguish this type of political or ideological home educator from the more traditional ones; those whose interest in home education is purely… educational.

British home education; examining the mythos

Most political, religious and social movements have their heroes and martyrs; people who stood up for what they believed in, no matter what the cost. British home education is no exception to this general rule. Many home educating parents today are able glibly to quote the judgements upon which they believe their ‘right’ to home educate is founded; Phillips v Brown 1980, Harrison and Harrison v Stevenson 1981 and the rest. These are the key cases which a lot of home educators today feel established home education in this country as a recognised alternative to school. This is not really true and the fact that the idea has become ossified into almost an article of faith sheds an interesting light upon home education as it is often practiced today.


The first thing to remember is that parents in this country have been home educating without any problem for centuries. That parents were the best people to teach their children was taken for granted. It has often been remarked that our present queen was home educated, but the practice was not restricted to the wealthy and privileged. Throughout the years following the Second World War, there were parents who taught their children at home quite openly and with no interference from their local authorities. This continued up to the 1970s. It was then that things took a turn for the worse or became immeasurably better, depending upon your point of view.

During the 1970s, there were quite a few people teaching their own children. Some did not send their children in the first place, while others took them out of school to teach them at home. The general attitude of local authorities was that as long as the kids were being taught at least as well as they would be at school, there was no problem. In the early 1970s, a number of parents of this sort banded together to rent premises and start home educating groups. I was involved in one or two projects of this sort.

Some of the home educators at that time later became famous. Harry Lawrence, father of Ruth was one such. Home education was being undertaken openly and without conflict with the authorities. Until that is, several high profile cases which created confrontation with local authorities and made them suspicious of the whole business. At about the same time that Harry Lawrence was home educating his daughter, two parents in Leeds were asked by their local authority for some account of the education which they were providing for their son, whose name was Oak. The local authority had no problem with home education as such, there were others doing it in Leeds. They just wanted to assure themselves that the child was receiving an education and not being left to his own devices. The parents refused to say anything at all about the education being provided and as a result, the case came to court.

While this was going on, Iris Harrison’s children were also not attending school. She made it clear that she was not teaching her children, preferring for them to decide for themselves what they wished to do. It is worth bearing in mind that the local authority were worried about her children because they had been diagnosed as being educationally sub-normal. They were thought to be in need of specialised education and the authority was concerned that they might not be receiving this.

There were other reasons to be concerned. Mrs Harrison had told the children that they should fire a rifle at the feet of any local authority officers who tried to approach the home. With the best will in the world, any local authority which failed to investigate children with special educational needs whose parents were encouraging this sort of reckless behaviour would be negligent. We must also remember that the Harrison children were very unusual in other ways. As adults, they told their mother that if they had not been home educated, then they would all have been in mental hospitals or prisons when they grew up. There was more to this story than met the eye.

In short, up until around 1980, local authorities accepted the right of parents to teach their own children at home and the practice was viewed as being unremarkable. All that was asked was that some account of the education should be given and that parents would be prepared to discuss the matter. People like Harry Lawrence had no problems with his local authority because rather than urging Ruth to shoot at local authority officers, he was teaching her mathematics.

The main thing that the cases in the late 1970s and early 1980s were about was not home education as such. That ’right’ was never in doubt. These landmark cases were to do with whether or not parents had to teach their children and also tell their local authorities what they were teaching. This is quite a different matter and it is perfectly possible to be a fervent supporter of home education, while at the same time accepting that local authorities need to know what is going on.   It was, according to the views of some, at this point that things began to go wrong. Up until that time, home education had been concerned only with the teaching and education of children. It was in the late 1970s that not sending children to school became a political act; frequently undertaken by those with an axe to grind and who tended to be opposed, as a matter of principle, to authority in general.

The real threat to home education

Over the last year or two, quite a few people seem to have fallen prey to the delusion that some kind of war is being waged against home educators in this country. We hear of a campaign of vilification, attempts to introduce legislation which would limit the freedoms of home educating parents and all sorts of other alarming things. The odd thing is that although I know quite a few teachers, social workers and local authority officers, I have never heard any of them say that they wish to put an end to the practice of home education. Nor have I heard this wish being expressed by anybody else. True, many people have reservations about home education. These often centre around tired old chestnuts like socialisation or a supposed inability to study science without a state-of-the art laboratory. Never once have I heard anyone say that they think that somebody should put a stop to home education.

This is quite curious, in view of the feeling of being beleaguered and menaced by hostile forces ranged against them which quite a few home educators seem to have. What can explain the discrepancy between the way things actually are and the way that some parents think that they are? In order to understand this, we must look to the past.

Home education has never been illegal in this country. Indeed, until the nineteenth century, it was probably the most common form of education in use. Even with the advent of universal schooling in 1870, under the so-called Forster's Act, a loophole was left which meant that those who did not wish to send their children to school would not be compelled to do so. Introducing the Elementary Education Act to the Commons on February 17th 1870, W.E. Forster said:

'We give power to the school boards to frame bye-laws for compulsory
attendance of all children within their district from five to twelve. They
must see that no parent is under a penalty for not sending his child to
school if he can show reasonable excuse; reasonable excuse being
education elsewhere, or sickness...'

Just like the later 'at school or otherwise' which was included in the 1944 and later the 1996 Education Acts, so too with the 1870 Act. Instead of 'education otherwise' this had the get-out clause of 'education elsewhere'.

A mythology has built up around the home education movement in this country. Briefly stated, the standard version is as follows. Apart from one or two brave souls like Joy Baker, home education by parents was all but unheard of in the UK until the 1970s. Then a few daring pioneers like Iris Harrison and the parents of Oak Reah attempted to undertake it and were quickly pounced on by their local authority. As a result of the court cases against these early home educating parents, the practice gradually became established as lawful and local authorities were reluctantly compelled to acknowledge the right of parents to teach their own children. This is a very neat and appealing scenario, but unfortunately it is also wholly untrue and misleading. The legal action against both the Harrisons and the Reahs began in 1977, the same year that Education Otherwise was founded. Iris Harrison was a founding member of education Otherwise. All this helped create the myth that local authorities were at that time bitterly opposed to home education and determined to stamp it out. This was not really the case at all. There were other home educating parents at that time who were known to their LEAs and had perfectly good relations with them. Take Harry Lawrence, for instance. He began home educating his five year-old daughter Ruth officially in 1976 and nobody turned a hair. Why should they? It was obvious that the child was being educated and also clear that he had a perfect right to teach her at home if he wished, rather than sending her to school.

The reason Iris Harrison was taken to court was not because her children were not being sent to school. It was because she was allowing them to spend their time doing pretty much as they wished. If her daughter wished to play the violin all day, that was fine. Her son preferred tinkering with engines; he was allowed to do that rather than studying maths or science. In the case of Oak Reah's parents, it was not because they were home educating that they ended up in court. He was not the only home educated child in Leeds; none of the other parents were having any problems. It was the fact that Oak's parents refused to answer any letters or tell anybody what provision was being made for his education that they were prosecuted.

In short, thirty five years ago, just as now, local authorities were prepared to accept home education. What they were uneasy about were families that would either refuse to tell them what they were doing or were not apparently educating their children. Most teachers are well aware that individualised, one-to-one tuition in a relaxed, domestic setting is a fantastically effective method of teaching. Education professionals know perfectly well that children can do well in such an educational setting. What they are dubious about is the benefits of allowing a child to direct the course of her own learning. Because when those running Internet support lists for home educating parents say things like,

'obviously education takes place all the time and much can be learnt from surfing the net and watching TV! It is impossible for education not to take place, we're all learning all the time!'

then it sets alarm bells ringing. When parents casually assert that they are not worried if their children cannot read at the age of twelve and that this does not matter at all, this too causes massive concern. It is these sort of attitudes which pose the real threat to home education in this country and it is this sort of mentality which makes local authorities demand extra powers so that they can ensure that children aged between five and sixteen are provided with the efficient education which is their legal entitlement. The threat to home education is coming not from the local authorities or the Department for Education, but from those within the home educating community who raise the fear that many children who are not at school are nor really being educated at all.