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New education legislation, currently in the pipeline, has raised concerns among the home school community, as Franklin Times junior journalist Mercedes Basevi explains. She writes:
Dear Franklin Community,
I am writing this to each and every one of you to raise awareness for NCHENZ (National Council of Home Educators New Zealand).
We have just been informed about the latest Amendment Paper 583 on the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill. In particular, I am concerned about parts 5F and 51A.
The Ministry of Education [and minister of education] Erica Stanford are trying to place a new bill, which in short, states that all home educators and students are susceptible to receiving sporadic reports and/or tests. The students must complete and pass them – if they do not, they must attend a public or private school.
The problem with this, however, is that there was no communication toward the homeschool community whatsoever. Our senior coach and consultant, Sheena Harris, has kindly shared part of an email NCHENZ received on April 1:
‘The minister has forwarded your meeting request to me to respond to. I am the senior policy manager of the Learning Support Policy team at the Ministry of Education, and my team has policy responsibility for home education.
‘I understand that you were interested in meeting with minister Stanford to discuss matters related to home education. We have started thinking about some of the topics you have raised. This work is still in development and we are not in a position to discuss this with you at this time. We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you later in the year to hear your perspectives and feedback once our work is further developed.’
The issue with this is that the MoE was not in the initial development stages of this. The bill was put out on Tuesday, May 19 – it takes longer than a month and a half to put a bill of this importance through. Both the minister and the national office have NCHENZ’s details and they failed to let the community know, put out a poll, or send out a form.
NCHENZ has attempted to make contact since November. This is unacceptable, and what’s more is that Stanford has hinted at her use of AI to summarise all homeschool-related emails, letters and petitions.
We are a democratic nation and this issue completely disregards this fact. Ms Stanford has not asked what the nation thinks – NCHENZ alone represents the 4889 members that have signed up to our community and would be impacted – she has also broken our trust in the government, which is already fragile.
Fifteen years ago, MoE stopped sending out reports and tests because of the incredibly high percentage of positive results. Why now should this be any different? Yes, the world has changed but so have we – many of us for the better.
In our opinion – and I speak for much of the homeschooling community – this is discriminatory, unrealistic, and simply wrong.
We are trying to do the best we can for our families – we know them best. We choose to homeschool because we feel we can school our children better than the school system can. We can cater to our children’s needs and potential disabilities better than employed teachers can. As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child, and that is what we do here in our welcoming community.
We have extracurricular activities, we do sport, we have different opportunities to experience different things. Some of us learn from a life perspective, some of us learn from an academic perspective. We are all different, but our core is the same – we think our families can give our children a better life and experience – after all, they are not the ministry’s children.
In my opinion, I feel the Ministry of Education is trying to eradicate homeschoolers. Why is this? I think the government is simply afraid of us – they want uniform, controlled puppets. We can speak our mind. We can be who we are.
We will not simply bend our knees at their beck and call – we will fight for who we are, what we stand for and why we need our values to stay strong and honest. Let us be a working, united, democratic nation that supports all.
Mercedes Basevi
A successful homeschooler of four years
Franklin Junior Journalist
