1327-7634 Vol 8, No 2, 2003, pp. 127 - 135 Australia & New Zealand Journal of Law & Education 127 Home Schooling and Legislated Education Terry Harding and Ann Farrell Centre for Innovation in Education, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia Abstract Home schooling, as an alternate model of education, is emerging as a growing educational phenomenon throughout Australia. This paper critiques home schooling as an educational expression of parental responsibility for the education of children. Issues of child protection and duty-of-care are examined in the light of relevant legislative frameworks. Current notions of state and parental responsibility for educational provision are discussed in the light of critical theories. Background Home schooling or home education refers to the education of children within the home setting, independent of the formal schooling context, and usually overseen by parents or other adults, signifcant to the child and family. Rather than transferring responsibility for their children’s education to the state, ‘home schoolers’ assume this responsibility themselves. Over the past 20 years, home education has emerged as an educational phenomenon in many developed nations, with exponential growth in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Australia (Meighan, 1984; Ray, 1994). Mayberry, Knowles, Ray and Marlow (1995) assert that it is likely that home schooling has become a permanent feature of the educational landscape. The National Home Education Research Institute (1995) recorded, in the United States, that from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s, the number of children being home educated rose from 12,000 to around 1 million. Ray (1992) estimated with some accuracy that the number of home educated students in the United States would be approximately 2% (or two million) of the school aged population by the year 2000. Australia has seen a similar growth pattern in home education. Almost a decade ago, Hunter (1994) estimated that Australia’s home school population was around 10,000 although he conceded that such a decentralised group is not amenable to rigorous census. At the time of Hunter’s (1994) estimations, the Australian Christian Academy (ACA), as one example of a home schooling network, comprised 2,400 students 1 . Currently, ACA has 3,600 students, a growth of around 50 percent over eight years. Based on Hunter’s fgures and, assuming that the growth of home schooling in Australia would follow the ACA growth pattern, one might estimate that the current number of home schoolers in Australia is well in excess of 15,000. This contemporary educational trend is located within changing worlds of work, family and society, where new technologies and knowledge economies allow some individuals to access global knowledge from their own homes (Cazden, Cope, Fairclough & Gee, 1996; Stretton, 1999). New technologies and globalisation are reshaping schools and families (Luke & Luke, 2001) and the force of these changes is yet to be known. Gee, Hull and Lankshear (1996) see such endemic change as emblematic of ‘new times’ (xii) fuelled by productivity-driven economic