In an open letter to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Elective Home Education, which was recently established at Westminster to promote better understanding of elective home education, the home education action group AHEd has affirmed its non negotiable commitment to protecting essential family freedoms in education.
Pointing out that it is parents, not the state, who have always had primary responsibility for the upbringing and education of their children, AHEd eloquently exposes the ‘Big Lie’ that has led to the widely held, but entirely erroneous, belief that school attendance is mandatory.
AHEd goes on to slam the “grossly disproportionate recommendations of the Badman review [which] hold serious implications for the civil liberties of all parents, children and families in this country”. It further points out that the proposals in the draft Children, Schools and Families Bill as introduced to the UK Parliament are non-compliant with human rights instruments, and, therefore, unlawful.
While its Parents’ Declaration continues to attract signatures from across the home educating community and beyond, AHEd gives notice to members of the APPG that it will not co-operate with the oppression of home educators and reiterates its absolute opposition to registration, monitoring, intervention, invasion of home educating family homes for no justifiable reason, and the interviewing of children alone.
It further demands that home educators be entitled to the presumption of innocence that is an established underpinning principle of English law. Underlining its non negotiable position, AHEd reminds the APPG that it expects elected representatives of a democratic parliament to say
NO to the nationalisation of children;
NO to the licensing of parents;
NO to any new legislation restricting home education.
As AHEd persuasively argues, the measures contained in the draft Bill have far reaching implications for all families in England, whose parenting will become subject to state licensing and regulation if they are enacted by what can now only be described as a fascist government.
