Local home-schooling families are celebrating a win in the fight against regulation following the state government’s reform “pause”.
Recently proposed laws would require homeschooling parents to follow the Australian national curriculum, but the push has been put on the backburner.
The government said the reforms would enhance child safety and wellbeing and were “much-needed” as the number of homeschooled Queenslanders had almost tripled since Covid.
But now, following backlash from the homeschooling community, education minister Di Farmer has withdrawn the proposal because it “could lead to unintended consequences”.
Boronia Heights mother and homeschooling advocate Patricia Fitzgerald was firmly against the changes, claiming the national curriculum was inferior to the level of education she offered her two children.
“We’ve saved the home education community,” Ms Fitzgerald said.
“We put forward all our submissions, and there were a lot of concerns with nearly every single point of the bill that was about home education.
“So, we worked really hard on outlining how those clauses would actually affect us in our home education and how we do what we do.”
Beyond curriculum reforms, one of the major concerns from parents was the government’s desire to drop provisional registration for families entering home education.
Ms Fitzgerald said this was a safety risk to children who needed to urgently leave school.
“Families who need to leave school in a moment – whether it’s a safety issue or whether the child’s not coping – they wouldn’t have a provisional time that allows them to get their head around how to home educate before having to actually register,” she said.
There were over 1300 submissions made to the government from those in home education, ranging from parents to students, including Ms Fitzgerald’s children.
The government will establish a Home Education Advisory Group, which Minister Farmer said would consider “how we ensure children being home schooled are receiving the high-quality education”.
“I have listened to education stakeholders who have made it clear both through the committee process and through ongoing meetings I have been having with them, that more work needs to be done,” she said.
“Additionally, a review will commence into the role of the Home Education Unit to how best it can help not only better regulate but provide important support to families who choose to home school.”
Ms Fitzgerald welcomed the advisory group, and said it was important it was “fully representative of the home educators across Queensland”.
“We have actually started meeting with Di Farmer,” she said.
“We had a meeting with her yesterday and we started discussing the diverse range of people that should be included in this advisory group.
“We want people who are strong advocates, but we also want people who are representing the neurodiverse group, representing the Indigenous group, and representing the rural group.
“We need to make sure that we represent the community as much as possible, because we want to make sure that any bill in the future is not going to have those severe implications on any of the home educating groups.”
Minister Farm said while there were “many aspects of the proposed bill” she fully supported, there were a number of aspects that “clearly need more time to work through”.
“I want to thank all stakeholders for their passion for education and these amendments will affect the future education of thousands of young Queenslanders so it’s important that we get them right,” she said.
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