HED0821

Written evidence submitted by [a member of the public]

[Note: This evidence has been redacted by the Committee. Text in square brackets has been inserted where text has been redacted.]

As a home educating parent, I note the following about registration and monitoring

The ultimate sanction of the monitors would be a compulsory school order.  This has unbearable consequences:

--You are handing education officials the power to commit a child to an institution where neither child nor parent wish them to be.

--You are investing misplaced faith in these officials to wield such a terrible power, rather than investing faith in parents.

--Home Ed's success, like that of liberal democracy, lies in responsibility of the individual. Interposing the state in this manner corrodes the parent's responsibility and creates an adversarial relationship between the parent and the state.

--Those determined to elude or deceive monitors will do so easily. The victims will be those who lack the dishonest guile to game the system.

--It is doubtless expensive to the tax payer. Save the money and sort out the failings in the mainstream system which drove so many into home education in the first place

Best wishes,

[member of the public]

[location]

November 2020