This is an excellent letter sent by a concern home educator to their MP seeking the contentious comments and conflations in the Prime Minister’s speech be addressed.

Permission obtained from author for this to be shared as required.

Dear

Re: Legal, Equality and Policy Concerns Arising from the Prime Minister’s Remarks on Home Education

I am writing to express serious concern regarding the Prime Minister’s recent remarks in Hastings on 5 February 2026, in which comments about extremism were placed directly alongside proposals for “tougher regulation of home schooling” and a “higher bar” for parents who choose to educate their children at home. While political speech is not unlawful, the framing, implications, and omissions in this address raise significant legal, moral, and structural issues that warrant urgent scrutiny.

1. Conflation of Home Education with Extremism

The sequencing of “extremism” immediately before “tougher regulation of home schooling” creates a foreseeable and damaging association.

This is particularly concerning because a substantial proportion of home‑educated children have special educational needs and disabilities (SEND);

disability is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010;

and implying proximity between a protected group and extremism risks indirect discrimination, public stigma, and institutional overreach. The Prime Minister did not explicitly label home‑educating families as extremists, but the rhetorical adjacency is harmful and foreseeable.

2. Misrepresentation of the Legal Framework

The Prime Minister’s remarks demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the law.

Under Section 7 of the Education Act 1996, the duty to secure a suitable education rests with the parent, not the state. This duty exists regardless of school attendance; is never transferred to the state; does not require permission from government or local authorities; and cannot be replaced by rhetoric about “higher bars” or “opting out.” Parents who home educate are not avoiding responsibility; they are fulfilling it directly, often because the state has failed to provide a suitable education. Suggesting otherwise risks encouraging local authorities to act ultra vires — unless the government intends to change the law so that parents may sue schools when they fail to teach a child to read or otherwise fail to provide a suitable education.

3. A “Higher Bar” for Home Educators Is Discriminatory, Legally Irrational, and Creates a Chilling Effect

Parents and schools discharge the same statutory duty under Section 7: to provide a suitable education. Imposing a higher standard on parents than on schools — solely because they have exercised a lawful educational choice — raises three distinct legal concerns:

1. Irrationality (Public Law): The state cannot lawfully hold parents to a higher standard than it holds itself.

2. Indirect Discrimination (Equality Act 2010): Home‑educated children are disproportionately disabled. A higher bar therefore disproportionately burdens a protected group.

3. Chilling Effect on a Statutory Right: Raising the bar for home educators discourages families from exercising a lawful right. Courts recognise chilling effects as legally significant, especially where vulnerable groups are involved.

Taken together, these issues make the proposal for a “higher bar” legally unsound and discriminatory in effect.

The Supreme Court has confirmed that there is no enforceable right to a particular standard of education (A v Essex County Council [2010] UKSC 33). Any attempt to impose a “higher bar” on home‑educating parents would therefore create a new, legally enforceable standard that would have to apply equally to schools and local authorities, since all discharge the same duty under Section 7 of the Education Act 1996. In practice, this would expose schools and local authorities to legal challenge on a scale the current system is structurally incapable of withstanding — effectively opening the door to collective litigation over educational failure.

4. Integration Is a Two‑Way Street — and the State Has Not Met Its Obligations

The Prime Minister’s comments imply that home‑educating parents obstruct “integration”. 

This is a fundamental misunderstanding.

Integration is not something parents impose on children. Integration in schools is something the state must facilitate by listening to families, providing safe, developmentally appropriate environments, respecting and designing for neurodiversity, and ensuring children are not harmed by the school environment.

Parents cannot integrate children into a system that refuses to safely integrate with them.

However, they are fully integrated in society, and arguably more so than schooled kids.

“Governing bodies and proprietors must ensure that children are safe and feel safe.”

5. School‑Based “Integration” Is Contrived and Restrictive

The school model of integration is based on age segregation, ability grouping,  rigid timetables, sensory‑overloading environments, and behaviourist discipline systems.

This is not integration. 

It is containment.

Home‑educated children, by contrast, socialise across ages, across abilities, through shared interests, and in real‑world environments.

This is authentic integration, not the artificial version created by school timetables.

“The school environment does not always provide the inclusive or socially mixed setting that policymakers assume.”

6. Home‑Education Communities Are Rich in Professional Expertise

In many home‑education groups, a high proportion of parents are former teachers, medical professionals, and degree‑educated professionals across a range of fields.

These are not fringe actors. These are people who understand pedagogy and child development, know the system from the inside, recognise when provision is unsafe or unsuitable, and choose home education because they know their children deserve better.

To imply that such families are a risk is not only inaccurate — it is unjust.

It is also inconsistent to trust these same professionals to manage classrooms of thirty children, yet draw the line at their ability to teach their own. The more pertinent question is why so many qualified teachers are choosing to home educate.

“Home educating families are changing and those changes are reflected primarily in those choosing to home educate… rises are driven by parents ‘voting with their feet’ to remove their children from schools which they consider do not meet their children’s needs.”

7. The School System Cannot Meet the Needs of Highly Able or Asynchronous Learners

My own reception‑aged child is a clear example. She is working at a level comparable to secondary‑level science in specific areas; following a curriculum more advanced than the national curriculum in all areas; on average two years ahead academically; and thriving in a personalised environment.

Her former science teacher — a qualified professional primary science specialist — resigned because she could not facilitate the level my child was working at.

What would a child like this gain from being placed in a reception classroom where children are learning phonics, differentiation is limited, and advanced learners are often left unchallenged, leaving them frustrated, bored and likely acting out.

Forcing a child like this into school would not be integration. It would create unnecessary trauma and constitute educational neglect.

“Too many of the most able students are failing to achieve their potential because the curriculum and teaching do not stretch them.”

8. Failure to Acknowledge Why Families Leave the School System

Families overwhelmingly leave school because their child’s SEND needs are not met nor likely will be; the environment is unsafe or traumatising; schools fail to provide a suitable education; or children experienced bullying, sensory overload, or mental health deterioration.

Parents are not avoiding integration. They are avoiding harm. “Parents often feel they have no choice but to remove their child from school because their needs are not being met.”

9. The Moral Failure of the Current Inclusion Model

Parents have repeatedly asked for sensory‑safe environments, trauma‑informed practice, 

developmentally appropriate pedagogy, 

flexible timetabling, 

reduced class sizes, 

and staff trained in neurodiversity.

Instead, they are offered tokenistic measures — such as “inclusion rooms” — that isolate disabled children rather than support them to equally access education.

This is not inclusion. It is segregation within mainstream settings.

And when a system repeatedly isolates, marginalises, or mischaracterises disabled children who do not fit its norms, the cumulative effect is a hostile environment. In any other context, this pattern would be recognised for what it is: institutional mistreatment of a vulnerable group. “Placing students with disabilities in separate classes or units within mainstream schools is a form of segregation, not inclusion.”

10. The Economic Contribution of Home‑Educating Families

Home‑educating families provide substantial, unacknowledged economic value:

– relieving pressure on an overstretched school system, 

– saving the state significant financial resources, 

– supporting sectors such as tutoring, educational suppliers, museums, libraries, and local businesses, 

– and reducing demand on CAMHS, EHCP processes, tribunals, and safeguarding services by removing children from harmful environments.

If the government wishes to increase state expenditure, close local businesses, and place more disabled children into systems already unable to meet the needs of the children it currently has, undermining home education is an effective way to achieve that. If not, the current rhetoric is counterproductive. “The system for supporting pupils with SEND is not financially sustainable. Demand for support is rising, local authorities are under growing pressure, and many are unable to meet their statutory duties.”

11. Evidence Shows Home‑Educated Children Often Outperform Schooled Peers — Raising Questions About the Current School System

A substantial body of international research shows that home‑educated children often outperform schooled peers academically; develop stronger self‑motivation; experience lower rates of anxiety and bullying, and thrive in flexible, interest‑driven environments.

These outcomes raise a legitimate question: whether the current school system is being protected from scrutiny at the expense of families who have lawfully chosen a different path for their children.

“Research evidence suggests that home educated children can achieve good educational outcomes and that some studies have found they perform better academically than their school‑educated peers.”

The Prime Minister’s remarks may not be unlawful in themselves, but they are:

– morally indefensible, 

– legally misleading, 

– structurally uninformed, 

– economically counterproductive, 

– contrary to evidence, and 

– dangerous in their implications for disabled children and their families.

The cumulative effect of this rhetoric — particularly when directed at a group disproportionately composed of disabled children — contributes to a hostile environment.

When a system repeatedly targets, mischaracterises, or pressures disabled children who do not fit its norms, the distinction between policy failure and institutional bullying becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.

Home education is not something to fear. It is a lawful, effective, and often essential educational choice that should be respected, supported, and — where appropriate — positively encouraged.

I urge you to raise these concerns formally and to seek clarification from the government to ensure that:

1. Home‑educating families are not stigmatised or misrepresented; 

2. Local authorities are not encouraged to act beyond their legal powers; 

3. Disabled children are not indirectly associated with extremism or treated as a risk group; 

4. The legal rights of parents under Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 are respected; 

5. Evidence‑based educational outcomes are acknowledged; 

6. The economic and social contribution of home‑educating families is recognised; 

7. And home education is treated as the legitimate, successful, and child‑centred educational pathway that it is

Yours sincerely,