Press Release
Education Rights being Eroded in Scotland

"The discretionary provisos included in all the key sections of the draft allow education officers, untrained in home education, or prejudiced against it, the power to interfere with a family's right to home educate in the way best suited to that family, and in some cases with their right to home educate at all' says Ann Samuel Till, Edinburgh based council member for Education Otherwise.

"Parents in Scotland with children in state schools already face discrimination under the law when removing children from school to educate them at home, compared to those with children in independent schools. This guidance, if adopted, would give permission for the treatment of these parents to worsen. It also seeks to give unprecedented powers to Education Authorities in their dealings with all home-educating families and encourages them to flout data protection legislation in order to 'track down' children who are being lawfully educated at home".

A motion now before the Scottish Parliament calls for the withdrawal of the guidance and amendments to the law to end discrimination against parents wishing to withdraw children from state schools. This motion, lodged by Irene McGugan, already has an unprecedented amount of support for a motion of this nature, with forty of the 106 MSPs that are able to sign having either signed or pledged to sign.

Jill Fisher, chair of Education Otherwise, says "Education Otherwise urges the Scottish Parliament to support this motion and to amend the law in Scotland to ensure equal treatment for home-educators across the UK. Furthermore, it is essential that the draft guidance be withdrawn immediately and that education Authorities be made aware that the provisions in it were inappropriate and in some cases unlawful". Education Otherwise is also encouraging individuals to write to the Scottish Executive and the Education Minister in Scotland, and, where appropriate, to their MSPs to ask them to support the motion.

Roland Meighan, former Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham says "After 25 years of researching a variety of learning systems it seems clear to me that home-based education is a far more effective form of learning than mass coercive schooling. Therefore in the light of the evidence it is entirely inappropriate for the Scottish Executive to proceed with this ill-judged and restrictive guidance".