Scotland to ban teaching of children at home

Parents fighting for the right to educate their children at home are threatening a legal battle with the Scottish Executive in protest at new plans designed to force their offspring to attend school.

The Executive is proposing to encourage councils to use details from the 10-year census data, birth registers, medical records and other confidential sources to track down the estimated 5,000 children thought to be taught at home.

But, backed by an international coalition of pressure groups, parents are seeking to overturn draft guidelines that they claim will discriminate against them and infringe their right to bring up children in accordance with their views. They are even threatening to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

In England and Wales, parents just have to write to the headteacher if they want to remove their child from school. But in Scotland they have to obtain the permission of the local education authority first – a process that can take between eight weeks and 17 months.

However, an anomaly in the law means that permission only needs to be sought if children have already been part of the state system.

If a child is never enrolled at a comprehensive school, or starts in a private school, or even if the family moves to another area, then consent from the local education authority is not needed.

To rectify this anomaly, MSPs tried to change the law with an amendment. But they were defeated by the Executive, which promised to introduce guidelines to address the animosity that often exists between local authorities and home educators.

Once the authorities find the families, they would have a responsibility to assess the provision of education for each child – a move that Freedom in Scottish Education, a coalition of home-educating families and pressure groups, feels would allow local authorities to impose their own standards.

Alison Preuss, of the Schoolhouse Home Education Association, a charity set up to support parents who opt out of the state system in favour of home teaching, said: "We were amazed how appalling these proposals are. It is the very reverse of what was intended and a clear infringement of our civil liberties."

Although the guidelines do not give local authorities the right of access to the home, it is suggested that they should be able to question the children.

"Many children have been taken out of schools because their welfare has not been looked after in the first place and we feel this is an invasion of privacy," Ms Preuss said.

"Another major concern is an apparent attempt to impose state priorities on home education, which would probably mean they would recognise only their methods and national curriculum as evidence that the child is being properly educated.

"The Executive has gone a step too far and, if they continue to press these guidelines on us, there will undoubtedly be a court case as it infringes the basis of the core principle of human rights legislation and is clearly discrimination against a minority group."

Campaigners claim that two independent lawyers have advised them that the proposals are fundamentally flawed and open to legal challenge.

Officials from the Scottish Executive, which denies the proposals are anything other than an attempt to improve relations between home-educating families and councils, are due to meet with representatives from Schoolhouse and other concerned bodies to discuss their objections in detail before any further moves are made.

Going it alone: Jennifer Laing and son Nicholas

Her child's education was more important than her career as a restaurant manager for Jennifer Laing. So, eight months ago, she went part-time and took eight-year-old Nicholas out of the state system. Neither have any regrets.

Ms Laing, 33, from Edinburgh, felt the only way to help her son's educational needs was to accept responsibility herself. "Nicholas has difficulty with writing and I tried to explore ways in which he could learn at school without having to constantly do repetitive work-sheets but eventually it came to a point where the school was not willing to work with me so I withdrew him," she said.

"We have been doing it for eight months now and I can see there has been a terrific improvement already, not just in what he's learning ­ which is much more suited to his ability and interest levels ­ but it is also more advanced than what he was doing at school, without him having to sit and do lots of written work."

Ms Laing said Nicholas, her only child, was so much happier, as though he were different person.

"We don't have a set structure such as a starting time. Instead we sit down and discuss how we are going to plan our day, which may involve working on the computer, reading a book or going to a museum.

"We do bits of maths and bits of English but it is very informal and possibly not what the local authority would regard as proper education, regardless of whether Nicky retains the knowledge or not.

"When I first said I wanted to take Nicky out of school they were very intimidatory, demanding to know details of qualifications, timetable, curriculum and access to the child and home. It took eight weeks to de-register him, which was very stressful," she said.