Homeschooling in Europe - November 30, 2007 Update

Regarding homeschooling in Europe, the HSLDA and the WorldNet Daily are the most familiar and prominent conduits of information on the subject. However, the HSLDA website is by no means kept up-to-date, and much of the writing is very confusing and hard to follow. So if you go to the website and look up "homeschooling in Poland," you may find some information that is 4 years old and you may still not understand the issues.

There are websites that provide information about international homeschooling, but there too, information is not up-to-date. In Germany you can go to Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit, and that has pretty good information, although not always up-to-the-minute.

The Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit did have a link to an article in the UK "Guardian" (October 18, 2007) on what they called a "ghost school" in Bremen, Germany, that was operating "under the table," as we would say. Although no one messed with the successful school in the past -- whose young pupils went on to government schools and performed successfully, by the way -- the Bremen government decided to crack down on this independent school around the same time that the Neubronners were charged with illegally homeschooling.

Speaking of the Neubronners, their accounts have been released (this occurred on November 24, 2007 or so), and they have been told they can have custody of their children at least until the next hearing. Perhaps, Germany will not adopt such a fearfully hard line approach.

In other good news, the Slovakian embassy in Vienna has acknowledged that homeschooling in the younger grades (Grades 1-4) will now be legalized "within certain limits," and I don't know what those limits are. Presumably this is also good news.

There is a website entitled hausunterricht.org (http://www.hausunterricht.org/html/rechtliches.html), which documents the legal situation throughout Europe. According to this information, homeschooling is not illegal anywhere in Europe.

Posted at Friday, November 30, 2007 08:36 PM
In Education & Children Category | Permalink