How long has homeschooling been legal

This means precise figures for children being homeschooled are not available, but are estimated to be between sixty thousand and one hundred thousand children annually. Across Europe, while homeschooling largely appears to be on the rise , the landscape, in terms of legislation and regulation, is varied. In some countries, such as France , the United Kingdom , Austria, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Ireland homeschooling is widely accepted as a legitimate alternative to state or private schools.

There are, conversely, a number of European countries where homeschooling is illegal. Under international law, the child is the primary beneficiary of the right to education and education must conform to certain aims. International law additionally stipulates that states are legally bound to structure their education systems, whether delivered by the state or a private provider, in order to ensure that these requirements are met ICESCR, Article 13; CRC, Articles 28 and Ultimately, what this means is that international law places obligations on states to ensure that children, as rights-holders, are able to enjoy their right to education, and the provision of that education must conform to certain aims and minimum standards.

Similarly, the German education ministry highlights the essential role school-based education plays in the socialisation of children , and the importance of such socialisation to other cultures, religions, and customs in order for every child to grow up to be a well-rounded citizen in an increasingly multicultural society. Indeed, one of the drivers of the creation of human rights law in the aftermath of World War II was a desire to protect the freedoms of religious minorities. So, although children are the primary beneficiaries of the right to education, international law recognises that children are not fully autonomous rights-holders, and that parents and legal guardians have the right to exercise freedom of religion and conscience, which includes freedom from unnecessary state interference in how they chose to bring up their children International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [, ICCPR], Article 18 4 ; ICESCR, Article 13 3.

The freedom of non-state actors to establish private schools, although intimately connected with freedom of religion and conscience and a key means to protect it, is a freedom that extends to everyone. This means that anyone can establish and operate any type of school with certain restrictions, discussed below.

Other than religious schools, schools that cater for Indigenous Peoples and minorities, particularly linguistic minorities , are common and are a key means of protecting culture. As are schools that employ alternative pedagogies, for example, self-directed and hands-on learning, and schools that allow children to focus on their passions and non-academic talents, such as the performing arts or sports.

The answer lies not simply in examining the rights and freedoms separately afforded parents and children under international law, but also in how these are translated into legislation by different countries, and how, in particular, countries negotiate the freedoms of one group in relation to the rights of another.

As education is a human right, the state will always have a role in education policy. It cannot exit the field and leave education to non-state actors. Human rights law leaves it to each individual country to set their own minimum educational standards in line with the context and values of the country.

Such standards are not prescribed, although the CESCR indicates that they may relate to issues such as admission, curricula, and the recognition of certificates General Comment 13, para. For example, we know that in the United States , the vast majority of parents who currently homeschool have chosen to remove their children from the mainstream school system because they disapprove of what they perceive to be the secular, liberal nature of mainstream schools, and wish to educate their children in accordance with their religious traditions.

By and large, regulation of homeschooling is relatively loose in a majority of US states , with many states not requiring children to undergo any form of registration or compulsory examination or testing. Early in the decade homeschoolers had generally worked together with local public school officials, aided as needed by the efforts of Holt and Moore.

However, as relations with local officials became more tendentious in part as a result of the entrance of more oppositional and less cooperative evangelical and fundamentalist homeschoolers , a variety of organizations, some religious and some secular, engaged in legal efforts on behalf of homeschoolers and worked to change state laws.

HSLDA was one of these organizations, though others did most of the heavy lifting before it came into existence or while it was still in its infancy. In the early s, HSLDA made a name for itself by bringing about the end of the last remaining holdouts. Secular homeschool groups and organizations still existed, but they were overshadowed by the political power and organizational strength of HSLDA, which was aided by its commitment to hierarchical structure.

While early homeschool leaders had focused on liberating children from the constraints of formal schooling and freeing them to follow their interests, these new leaders had a different goal and vision. These new leaders created a radical social and religious vision in which children would be homeschooled with the explicit purpose of being launched into government, education, and the entertainment industries in order to transform the United States into a nation based in Christian beliefs.

While their beliefs and practices varied, some of these leaders have embraced a more extreme ideology that held that women should not attend college or endorsed a full return to Old Testament law. In contrast to the earlier focus on liberating children, these leaders have generally focused on properly training children, and in many cases have placed more emphasis on religious ideology than on education.

Meanwhile, homeschooling has continued to grow by leaps and bounds , especially as it has increasingly come to be seen as an acceptable educational alternative. A growing number of families have begun homeschooling for neither pedagogical nor religious reasons but rather for individual pragmatic reasons, including concerns about bullying or the poor quality of local schools.

Yoder that parents had the right to supersede compulsory education laws if the laws unduly impeded religious freedom. The Court ruled that it was permissible for Amish parents to remove their children from school at age twelve to maintain their way of life and exercise their religious freedom. Although the courts have protected the rights of parents, they have also defended the right of states to require and extensively regulate educational instruction.

Courts have ruled that if a state exempts home schoolers from compulsory attendance laws it is entitled to regulate their activities. States have the right to impose "reasonable" standards on home schoolers.

These may include regulations as invasive as administering achievement tests to monitor students' progress Murphy v. State of Arkansas, While most state laws include such requirements, enforcement is often sporadic due to the decentralized nature of home schooling and the lack of established overseeing bodies. Over the course of time, several states have refused to allow home instruction on the grounds that it would stunt the social development of children and would prevent them from living normal, productive lives.

The courts have determined that states are within their rights to make such determinations Knox v. O'Brien, States may mandate that children must attend school because of the interaction it provides with their peers and the exposure it provides to different types of people State v. Edging-ton, In the late s, the parents of home-schooled children began suing schools districts that denied requests for supplemental services, classes, extracurricular activities, and additional services such as lab science instruction that cannot be feasibly provided at home.

However, the courts have not mandated that districts provide such additional services. In Swanson v. Guthrie Independent School District , a U. Court of Appeals ruled that a school board may deny home-schooled children the right to attend public school part-time. Previously, the courts had held in Bradstreet v.

Sobol that school districts could require students to be enrolled in public schools in order to be eligible to participate in interscholastic sports. Although no randomized field trials have been conducted, some preliminary research suggests that children who are home schooled may outperform their counterparts in public or private schools.

However, given the variety of home-school settings and the uneven nature of preliminary research, it is not yet possible to reach any meaningful conclusions regarding the effectiveness of home schooling. Families who practice home schooling are often different in significant ways than families who do not.

These differences, including higher levels of education, larger family size, and divergent child-rearing practices, make comparisons problematic. Moreover, it is advocates of home schooling who conduct of the research on the subject; this raises questions as to the validity and reliability of findings. The largest and most comprehensive as of , conducted by the National Home Education Research Institute, examined over five thousand home-schooled students' scores on national standardized achievement tests for the through school year, and found that children who were home schooled outperformed their peers on standardized assessments.

In the fall of , Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, became the first postsecondary institution intended primarily to serve students who had been schooled at home. Of the college's first class of ninety students, eighty had been home schooled. Patrick Henry College's curriculum has a moral focus comparable to many home schoolers' early education and values, and emphasizes traditional Christian values.

The college is designed to address the typical challenges that many home schoolers face, as these students do not possess conventional educational records such as transcripts and may not be comfortable with their altered learning environment.