On February 3rd the appellate proceeding of the Neubronner case will
take place in Bremen at this place and time:
Tuseday
"Dienstag, 3.2.09, 9:30 im Justizzentrum Am
Wall, Am Wall 198, 28195 Bremen, Sitzungssal 4,
Erdgeschoss"

According to the Tages Anzeiger, one of the most widely read newspapers in Switzerland, homeschooling is about to become severely restricted in the Canton of Zurich.

Private Education: Parents threaten with disobedience

December 4, 2008

Beginning next summer at the latest, parents will only be allowed to educated their children at home when they have a teacher’s certificate.  Eight families are resisting–with all means.  Tages Anzeiger

The article goes on to say that this new regulation will affect fifty families, but apparently only these eight families have chosen to fight.  The Education Director has thus far rejected all offers of compromise.  If they continue and do not win their cases, the families face fines of up to 5000 Francs (about $4,100) and a possible citation for disobedience of official orders.

The family alone is not sufficient for children

Of course, child psychologists and education experts weigh in with their thoughts…I think perhaps the same forumla for home education articles here exists in Switzerland.  From the obligatory expert, Professor Georg Stöckli of the Education Institute of the University of Zürich:

More of the story…

Spätestens ab nächstem Sommer dürfen Eltern ihre Kinder nur noch daheim unterrichten, wenn sie ein Lehrerpatent haben. Acht Familien leisten dagegen Widerstand – mit allen Mitteln.

Als der Kantonsrat das neue Volksschulgesetz verabschiedete, war seine Absicht klar: Alle Kinder sollten das Anrecht auf eine qualitativ hochstehende Bildung haben. Deshalb dürfen nur noch Personen, die eine abgeschlossene Lehrerausbildung haben, Kinder länger als ein Jahr daheim unterrichten. Die neue Regelung gilt seit diesem Schuljahr. Für rund 50 Familien im Kanton Zürich bedeutete das eine einschneidende Veränderung ihres bisherigen Lebens: Sie müssen die Kinder, die sie bisher daheim unterrichtet haben, in die Schule schicken. Einige zogen in Kantone, die den Privatunterricht erlauben, andere fügten sich.

Privatunterricht als gut beurteilt

Acht Familien aber wehren sich dagegen. In einem Brief an Bildungsdirektorin Regine Aeppli (SP) schrieben die betroffenen Eltern von einem «unüberwindbaren Gewissenskonflikt». Zwar seien sie «loyale Staatsbürger», aber «wir werden mit unserer Weigerung, unsere Kinder den unberechenbaren Risiken an der Volksschule auszusetzen, gezwungen, ein Gesetz zu brechen».

Mehr von der Geschichte …

The news release that a Texas School District could be the first in the nation to allow teachers and staff to pack guns for protection was deemed so preposterous it received a prominent spot on the Nutty News Network.

But the story is legit - the Houston Chronicle website notes that Trustees at the Harrold Independent School District have approved a district policy change that allows school employees to carry concealed firearms. And listening to Superintendent David Thweatt, the move is a necessary one to to deter and protect against school shootings.

School Gun-Free Zones the Problem
Lest there be any doubt about his viewpoints on the matter, Thweatt offered the following comments:

“When the federal government started making schools gun-free zones, that’s when all of these shootings started. Why would you put it out there that a group of people can’t defend themselves? That’s like saying ’sic ‘em’ to a dog.”

While Thweatt insisted that the school district has other security measures in place to prevent a school shooting, he noted:

“We have a lock-down situation, we have cameras, but the question we had to answer is, ‘What if somebody gets in?’ What are we going to do? It’s just common sense.”

More of the story,
click image

 This is from the website of the ILS, an accredited German distance learning institution.

The ILS has been mandated by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide distance learning to German pupils all over the world, so that they can obtain German school-leaving qualifications. This offer is geared towards German parents who, for private or professional reasons, are planning a long stay abroad and face the dilemma of how to deal with their child’s educational needs, where there is no German school nearby or such a school proves to be unsuitable for their child. The ILS’s solution – take your child’s school with you. German families overseas making use of the ILS’s services also receive financial sponsorship from the German government.

The quote is from one of the ILS’s happy clients, Angelika Schuberth, mother of Niklas and Jan : “While my children are overseas, they should receive the same education as in Germany – this is guaranteed by the ILS.”

Luckily for the Schuberth family, their children are also guaranteed the opportunity of receiving an education in their own language by the fact that no country in the world would prevent them, as expatriates, from doing this. No country, that is, except for their own home country, Germany.

The only guarantees for a foreign family living temporarily in Germany and trying to help their children receive a distance education, seem to be harassment, fines, possible jail sentences and threats of having their children removed by the Jugendamt. Take this statement by a father, whose son attended an English-medium state school in Berlin. (The parents were both academics with temporary positions at a university there). He says : The main problem with the German school was, the denial of our multicultural background. We removed our older child from school because of the unfair treatment received at school: refusal and derision of his vegetarian diet, derision of his parent’s accent in English, disrespect for the family’s non-confessional background, and refusal to court of any form of parental collaboration in view of a gradual adaptation of the child to the new environment. This caused recurrent nightmares, increasing anxiety and fear in the child.
We have been defined by the Jugendamt as people troubling the public order and they threatened to take our children away. Social services tried to enter our home alleging that we neglected our children. They questioned our neighbors and collected or manipulated evidence against us. We produced attestation of school attendance abroad but we were defined as unreliable and unconvincing. We were fined and some legal proceeding was also started against us. We arrived at the point of having to defend ourselves daily from aggression by the Jugendamt. We left the country overnight.

By the way, the education law of Berlin states : The school authorities can exempt a child from compulsory attendance for a particular reason.

15 of the 16 German states have similar exclusion clauses in their compulsory schooling laws. In practice, such clauses are only applied in cases where a child lives in a circus family, is too ill to attend school or for a young person who has achieved celebrity status and has a demanding pop music or acting career. Although the German government recognises the benefit of distance. education for Germans living abroad enough to sponsor it, this is not regarded as a convincing reason to allow an exemption for foreigners living temporarily in Germany.

We are not asking anyone here or in the European Commission to interfere with German law or the German school system. As I have stated, there are numerous opportunities for the German authorities to generously allow the exceptions that already exist in German law. The fact that celebrities who have a thriving pop music or acting career are granted such exceptions without a second glance whilst families such as ours and others whose children have very real educational needs that are not met within the German school system are subjected to draconian measures demonstrates the malicious intent behind such treatment.

The school authorities, in reply to our plea, have stated that “the state makes use of its mandate to educate and has the right to set its own educational goals.” The purpose of this so-called Erziehungsauftrag is to bring up children to be good, tolerant and responsible citizens. According to the court judgements on which this statement is based, this is only possible through physical presence in a school. One wonders then, why, the German Foreign Service supports distance education for German children overseas, if these children are thereby being deprived of the school attendance which is deemed necessary for their future? My plea to you is to help the German government rectify this gross hypocrisy and to recognise that freedom of choice in education is a fundamental human right. Why does the German government feel the need to force mobile Europeans who are only there for a short time to participate in their coercive educational monopoly.

The first time German law actively prohibited home education was in the "reichsschulpflichtgesetz" of 1938 under the Nazis where coercive measures "zwangsmassnahmen" were introduced and were subsequently included in postwar education laws in Germany. Why are the German states still clinging to enforcement of the measures whose original intent is clear. Why are the Germans still rigidly adhering to an element of their totalitarian past in letter and spirit.  

The March 2000 Lisbon Council set the goal of turning Europe into “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010”, emphasising the need for more and better trained researchers throughout the European Research Area – a true internal market for science and knowledge1. These researchers and other highly skilled professionals whose jobs require frequent moves want to bring their families with them and they want to be sure that their children can receive a stable education not subject to the arbitrary whims of narrow-minded bureaucrats in one European country. If there is no school in their language nearby, or the fees are unaffordable for them or their gifted or special needs child does not fit into this one and only school, then they should be accorded equal treatment with Niklas and Jan and with those teen celebrities who se needs are no more important than theirs.

Article 149 of the Treaty of the European Union states that, whilst respecting the responsibility of the Member States for their own education systems, the Community can take action by developing exchanges of information and experience on issues common to the education systems of the member states. In this spirit, I request the EU Parliament and the EU Commission to act on their responsibility by encouraging Germany to enter into dialogue with those seeking educational alternatives and to look at the experiences of the rest of Europe, which has not collapsed into anarchy, just because a handful of people choose alternatives to outmoded conventional schooling for their children.

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer,….
William Blake

When we applied to the school authority of the state of Niedersachsen for such an exemption for our children (which is possible under law), it was turned down. They stated that “the examples of other children who have come to Germany from other countries illustrate that a successful integration into the German school system would have taken place.” The big picture is totally ignored by the authorities – the fact that we were only temporarily in Germany was meaningless to them. In their justification, they went on to say that, “…A person is regarded as being resident in Niedersachsen and subject to compulsory schooling when he or she has resided here for more than five days, even if he or she does not intend to remain here permanently. This applies regardless of the person’s nationality. The lawmakers have ordered compulsory schooling even for only a short stay in Niedersachsen.”

As far as the second part of that statement is concerned, that the State has the right to set its own educational goals, it makes me wonder why the state tolerates international schools and schools run by the British and US military, in whose educational goals the German government has absolutely no say. German parents who have the financial means are sending their children to these schools in droves, as well as to boarding schools in other European countries. These children are being brought up in a radically different cultural environment, with a different curriculum to that of the German state schools and accredited private schools.

When we first made the decision to enable our children to learn through the medium of home education it was because we felt that this is the best way to help our family to stay together. We knew, that with four children, the fees of international schools were beyond our reach and we were comfortable in the knowledge that we are providing our children with an individualised mode of education that gives each of them the time to explore their own interests and to interact with local people in the country where we happen to be living.

From http://www.odl-liaison.org/pages.php?PN=policy-paper_2004

 3. Summary and Recommendations for Action

In view of the previous considerations, the European ODL Liaison Committee urges European institutions to consider the following:

1. Re-establish the policy momentum for the eLearning Initiative, but with two adaptations: make sure that the new discourse is more based on societal-economic demand and more coherent, linking eLearning closely to the lifelong learning agenda. Try seriously to achieve coordination of resources and actions in the field, to the benefit of effective use of public resources and higher impact and visibility of the implemented actions. Accept intervention of “other” resources and policy concerns to support eLearning - even though that may cost something in terms of autonomy and administrative procedures - because the public benefit will easily justify the procedural complications.

2. Both lifelong learning and eLearning are too important and pervasive in the knowledge society to be the exclusive competence of educational authorities who are used to manage school and higher education systems originally created to serve or accompany the industrial society by providing initial education.
   At present institutional competencies should be re-aggregated, at European as well as at national and regional levels, to guarantee coordination and coherence of action in the field.

---

 1 http://ec.europa.eu/research/press/2004/pr0206en.cfm

25 AVRIL 2008

Décret fixant les conditions pour pouvoir satisfaire à l’obligation scolaire en dehors de l’enseignement organisé ou subventionné par la Communauté française (1)

Le Parlement de la Communauté française a adopté et Nous, Gouvernement, sanctionnons ce qui suit :
CHAPITRE Ier. - Principes
Article 1er. Pour l’application du présent décret, on entend par personnes responsables les personnes tenues au respect des obligations en matière de scolarité obligatoire en vertu de la loi du 29 juin 1983 concernant l’obligation scolaire.
Art. 2. Par dérogation, l’information visée à l’article 8 des lois sur l’enseignement primaire, coordonnées le 20 août 1957, peut être effectuée au-delà du 1eroctobre lorsque le mineur soumis à l’obligation scolaire venant de l’étranger fixe sa résidence en Belgique dans le courant de l’année scolaire.
CHAPITRE II. - Elèves inscrits dans certains établissements scolaires
Art. 3. Sont considérés comme satisfaisant à l’obligation scolaire les mineurs soumis à l’obligation scolaire inscrits dans un établissement scolaire :
1° Organisé, subventionné ou reconnu par une autre Communauté;
2° Dont la fréquentation est susceptible de mener à l’obtention d’un titre bénéficiant d’une décision d’équivalence par voie de disposition générale en application de la loi du 19 mars 1971 relative à l’équivalence des diplômes et certificats étrangers;
3° Dont la fréquentation est susceptible de mener à l’obtention d’un diplôme ou d’un certificat relevant d’un régime étranger et dont l’enseignement est reconnu par le Gouvernement, à la demande de l’établissement ou des personnes responsables du mineur soumis à l’obligation scolaire, comme permettant de satisfaire à l’obligation scolaire.

Plus de l’histoire …

Home Educators across the Uk are being urged to write to their MPs to protest about forthcoming changes to the rules for benefits for lone parents in the UK.  As from November 2008, lone parents are required to switch to the Jobseekers’ Allowance when their youngest child reaches the age of 12, with the prospect of this age being dropped to seven in the future (2010). 

For lone parents who are caring for children with disabilities, or are home educating, these changes to the rules are very significant.  Transferring to Jobseekers’ Allowance means making oneself available for work, and may be patently impossible in the case of a child with complex needs.

I wrote to my MP some months ago when this change was originally discussed in the media, and received some very unsatisfactory replies from the Minister, Caroline Flint.  These seemed not to understand the problems with parents with children with severe disabilities may face in trying to find carers willing or able to care for their child.  In answer to my questions about home educating parents, the Minister suggested that home education need not take place within traditional school hours and therefore could be fitted around the required work - a useful reply for those already trying to argue that case with their local authority, but not much use for those who have children with complex needs.

Many families decide reluctantly to home educate because the alternatives they have been offered are unsuitable for the needs of their children, and some have such complex needs that some sort of respite for the carers in the family is an unattainable dream.  It seems completely outrageous that the Government should expect lone parents in that sort of situation to magically find appropriate (and affordable) childcare for their children in order to free them to take up employment. 

It was strongly suggested in the White Paper which was published last December, that parents fleeing from Domestic violence, parents caring for disabled children and home educating parents should not be subject to "increased conditionality".  That is, they should not be held to the change in rules which is proposed.  However, to date there has been no acceptance that flexibility must be worked into the arrangements for these children, and the situation remains that after Novermber 2008, lone parents must register for Jobseekers’ Allowance and therefore, be free to take up employment, irrespective of their commitments in the home.

If you are in the UK, please write to your MP, soliciting support for these families, and urging them to ask the government to incorporate some flexibility for parents caring for disabled children or home educating.  You may like to use the Write to them website, which assists you in contacting your local representatives.

For more information look at the Freedom for Children to Grow website.

In NL the latest news is that underminister (staatssecretaris) Dijksma has
decided to have some research done on electively HEing families in order to
answer the question whether or not regular supervision is useful enough to
change the law for it.

She sent a letter to the Parliament in which the govt acknowledged for the
first time that foreign research on HE showed good results.
For those who read Dutch, here’s her letter:
http://www.ingrado.nl/bijlages/Brief%2028-03-2008%20OCW%20aan%20TK%20inz.%20particulier%20en%20thuisonderwijs.pdf

The problem now is to make a HE law that is acceptable both to us HEors and
to a parliament filled with rather prejudiced opinions when it comes to
education.

A bill to amend 1976 PA 451, entitled "The revised school code," by amending sections 1561 and 1578 (MCL 380.1561 and 380.1578), section 1561 as amended by 1996 PA 339.

Sec. 1561. (1) Except as otherwise provided in this section, every parent, guardian, or other person in this state having control and charge of a child from the age of 6 to the child’s sixteenth birthday shall send that child to a public school during the entire school year. The child’s attendance shall be continuous and consecutive for the school year fixed by the school district in which the child is enrolled. In a school district that maintains school during the entire calendar year and in which the school year is divided into quarters, a child is not required to attend the public school more than 3 quarters in 1 calendar year, but a child shall not be absent for 2 or more consecutive quarters.

House Bill 5912 (2008)

Relevant sections of The Education (Scotland) Act 1980 Section 28(1) of the Act states: In the exercise and performance of their powers and duties under this Act the Secretary of State and education authorities shall have general regard to the principle that, so far as is compatible with the provision of suitable instruction and training and the avoidance of unreasonable public expenditure, pupils are to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents. Section 30 of the Act states: It shall be the duty of the parent of every child of school age to provide efficient education for him suitable to his age, ability and aptitude either by causing him to attend a public school regularly or by other means. Section 35(1) of the Act states: Where a child of school age who has attended a public school on one or more occasions fails without reasonable excuse to attend regularly at the said school, then, unless the education authority have consented to the withdrawal of the child from the school (which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld), his parent shall be guilty of an offence against this section. As is clear from the above provisions within the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, parents are legally entitled to educate their children outwith school. This is a right, not a privilege, and the law applies equally to everyone.