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Who Controls the Agenda? Theological Perspectives On State-Controlled Home Education in the United Kingdom
By Sarah Holmes and Harriet Pattison
Review and comments by Douglas Pietersma, Ed.D., Research Associate, National Home Education Research Institute
Background
This study,
“Who controls the agenda? Theological perspectives on state-controlled home education in the UK” by Sarah Holmes and Harriet Pattison (2024), was catalyzed by Christian home educators concern surrounding a proposed Schools Bill (2022) in the United Kingdom (UK), who perceived potential detrimental impacts to home education freedoms. The uproar against this bill was marked substantially by theological rationales; therefore, the researchers sought to discover the theological perspective of
Chrisitan home educating families in the UK for an answer to what drove their objections. The only direct implication to home educators in the proposal was a registry for those not attending schools, but the home educators clearly saw other potential threats to their freedom.
Methodology
The researchers sent out a survey in July of 2022 through several home education support organizations, with explicitly religious constituencies,
which garnered 462 responses, a supermajority (88%) being from the UK. No other demographic data was collected in order to encourage participation among a group of participants that are typically resistant to such solicitations.
The survey was part of a broader project regarding the perceptions of Christian home educators in the UK vis-á-vis the proposed Schools Bill; however, the analyses, discussion and conclusions in this paper were delimited to the theological perspectives of
respondents. The answers to two open ended questions and two multiple-choice questions were analyzed for the research question at hand.
Open-ended questions:
- What led you to home education?
- How does the Schools Bill make you feel as a Christian home educator?
The qualitative data obtained from these was analyzed on three levels: “1) word level, 2) discursive level and the manner in which comments were said, 3) social level, to understand
their comments in the context of wider culture.”
Multiple choice questions:
. . . . .
The full article can be viewed online: click here.
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Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.
President, National Home Education Research Institute (www.nheri.org)
