About HE UK |
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This website is based on the following principles.
- All children have the right to a suitable education 1
- Since education is a function of parenting, it follows
that parents, not the state, are responsible for a child’s education. 2
- People should not require permission or licence to
exercise their human right to parent their children. We therefore
oppose the principle of compulsory registration to home educate.
- We affirm the right of families, including their
children, to privacy and oppose the intrusion of home visits without
just cause. 3
- A child’s education is suitable if it:
- “Primarily equips a child for life within the
community of which he [or she] is a member rather than the way
of life in the country, as long as it does not foreclose the
child's option in later years to adopt some other form of life
if he [or she] wishes to do so”. 4
- Since all children are unique, and since there is
no universally agreed pedagogy, we oppose any imposed curricula,
ie National Curricula or other ‘standardised’ concept of what a suitable
education should look like.
- While we recognise it is the duty of parents to ensure
their children are suitably educated, we also hold that education
without the consent of the child is futile. Therefore, any form of
imposed education, cannot be ‘efficient’. Therefore, the form and
content of education should be with the active consent of the child. 5
- Everyone has the right to hold and express their
own beliefs, providing they are worthy of respect in a liberal democracy.
Following from this, children have the right of access to all suitable
age appropriate information and to live free from indoctrination. 6
- Personal respect is a fundamental right, and we therefore
oppose discrimination on any grounds including; race, colour, ethnicity,
gender, sex, disability or religion. 7
- All persons have the right not to be assaulted, we
therefore oppose all forms of corporal punishment. 8
References
Origins
The Home Education UK website was created by Mike Wood
(mike Fortune-Wood) and became live on the 8th of January 2000.
It mission was to promote the first comprehensive guidance to
the law in England and Wales as it related to home education: The
Elective Home Education Legal Guidlines (EHELG) published in
1999 by a team of volunteers led by Neil Taylor and, crucially, included
a barrester Ian Dowty. The publication of this work can be said to
be the catalist for the current home education movement.
Since 2000 the website grew into the UK's largest
and by far oldest conitnuously available website on the subject of
home education. It has also begun providing support for Flexischooling
as well as other issues such as schooling families during the covid
pandemic. It peaked at 3.4 million hits. Since then, more websites
have become available. Though HE UK is still among the most important
in the UK.
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