We are a small unregistered charity created by a home educating family in Wales; like many families, we are juggling work, home education and family life and we all know how hectic that can be. We became particularly concerned about state interference into Home Education back in 2019 when the Welsh Government consulted on a draft guidance on home education and subsequently on the draft database re
gulations which purported to create a database of home educated children. At that point we decided that we had to do something to stop what we believed (and still do) would be an unlawful encroachment by the Welsh Government on the rights to a private and family life, data protection and the rights of parents to exercise their parental responsibility to educate their children in accordance with their religious or philosophical convictions. We fund raised two legal opinions from David Wolfe QC to challenge the draft guidance on home education and draft database regulations. We could not have done this in such a short time without the help of a few very experienced home educating individuals, and with the support of many who donated to the cause; we are still very grateful to them all. On the 22 June 2020 the Welsh Minister for Education announced that due to the impact of Covid 19 “it will not be possible to complete the planned work on the home education statutory guidance and database regulations within this Government term“. Some of you may have already heard reports or have been the victim of local authorities (allegedly) abusing their position by door stepping home educating families, actively seeking and tracking down HE families and sharing their data, unlawfully asking to meet children at home, requesting to speak to children at home or assess or monitor the children's learning materials, requesting formal reports or even serving notices on home educating families. Please check out our website:
https://protectinghomeeducationwales.wordpress.com/2021/03/02/childrens-commissioner-presses-welsh-government-to-introduce-primary-legislation-on-he/
You will be able to see what we have been up to since the early days. If you have any questions please drop us an email to: [email protected]
