At least 3000 reactions are in,
from over 16 countries.
Thank you!
It is still very worthwile
to send your mail (Dec 2003).
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In The Netherlands home education as such is currently not a legal option. You may try to get an exemption from school registration, but only for deeply felt religious or philosophical reasons. These exemptions are recognised with great reluctance, for your child is not considered to be educated effectively without school attendance. Once your child has attended a school even this option is barred; taking a child from school as a result of a change of your opinion about life is in fact prohibited.
Now only the parents of about a 100 children have been able to avoid this trap to secure their freedom. Many more families would like to home-educate their kids but are not able to get their way without years filled with court cases and child protection investigations.
Since some court cases have been won rather unexpectedly by home-educators this year, Maria van der Hoeven, the Dutch minister of Education wants to make life even more difficult for them. Despite the fact that the current law does not consider home-education to be an effective option next to schooling, she wants to put us under tight educational supervision. The Educational Committee of the Second Chamber, the Dutch House of Representatives, will have a debate on her plan on October 30, at 10.00 AM.
Since only a 100 Dutch children are exempted from school registration, most politicians do not consider this important. The debate has been postponed twice already, and now it has even been put into a 1 hour shorter schedule than before. But from the attention this small group has drawn in the past few years, one might think that the potential interest in home-education is far, far greater. Thousands of children are known to be damaged by their school-attendance, many more children do not attend school for numerous reasons. Many of those would be helped out of if their parents would only be entitled to home-educate them.
We, a group of home-educating parents in the Netherlands, want home-education to become a legal option, its effectivity recognised by the authorities, and most of all we want parents to exercise a free choice for and with their children without unnecessary state interference.
That is why we ask for your input. We know some members of parliament sympathise with us, after having sent them tens of pages of arguments against the minister's view, but all this input has come from a small group of activists so far.
So, after having sent them lots of info about reseach and different legislative possibilities we need a lot of your messages to reach the hearts of those MPs! Let them know that home-education has become an indication for respect of human rights! Let them find out that home-education has grown to a worldwide grass-roots movement of responsible families!
Reading English is no problem for most Dutch people, knowledge of French and German is also wide-spread here, so don't hesitate to express yourself in your mother tongue. Perhaps you can include an English summary.
You can tell the Dutch legislators your own story and opinion using this email.
-- This mailto-link above is also the link to be used, if the following, more complicated links don't function. This typically happens in older Windows versions. In that case, you can copy text from below. --
If you don't have the opportunity to write down your opinion in detail (we know how busy home-educators always are!), then you can use our quick sample email which includes the following text:
[subject=Debate about home-education
Dear madam Minister, dear Committee members,
Through this message we want to express our concern with the way how home-education has been misjudged in The Netherlands so far. We urge you to correct this judgement and to remove any obstacles in your law that still prevent parents from exercising their responsibilities freely, with or without the use of schools.
Allowing home-education as such has become an indication of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms of both parents and children, since its effectiveness has become clear beyond reasonable doubt. Please act in accordance with this understanding.
Sincerely,
your name and country]
[subject=Debate about home-education
Dear madam Minister, dear Committee members,
Through this message we want to express our concern with the way how home-education has been misjudged in The Netherlands so far. We urge you to correct this judgement and to remove any obstacles in your law that still prevent parents from exercising their responsibilities freely, with or without the use of schools.
Allowing home-education as such has become an indication of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms of both parents and children, since its effectiveness has become clear beyond reasonable doubt. Please act in accordance with this understanding. The NVvTO has asked us to answer the following questions, in order to help you to become more familiar with home-education.
- How and why does home-education work for you?
- Is it a real and viable option in education? Why?
- Does it work for you family? How?
- Do you think a teaching certificate is necessary or useful for home-educating parents?
- Do you consider routinely held inspections useful or necessary?
- What has been your own experience with inspections on your home-education, if any?]Sincerely,
your name and country]
All these email links should start your own mail program and set up a mail to be sent to the Educational committee of the Dutch parliament at cie.ocw@tk.parlement.nl and to the Minister of Education at info@minocw.nl. A CC is included to our mail address home-education@xs4all.nl, so that we can make a compilation of your messages and present this to the Dutch press. You can freely change all of these items, to make this message exactly your own.
However, if you want to keep your identity or e-mail address confidential, please send your mail to home-education@xs4all.nl, and we'll forward your message without sensitive data.
Any further questions or remarks? Mail us at home-education@xs4all.nl.
A thousand times thanks from the current and future home-educators in Holland.
Kind regards from the NVvTO, the Netherlands Association for Home-Education
Information and updates on this action can be found on www.thuisonderwijs.net/support-nl/
- Press releases on Home education in The Netherlands by the Ministery of Education, Culture and Science of The Netherlands
- Home-Schooling/Education in the Netherlands (NNvTO)
- Dutch-only:
Reply from NVvTO to plans of the Minister
Part 1: Thuisonderwijs: erkenning en toezicht. Een reactie op de notitie “Thuisonderwijs in Nederland” van Maria van der Hoeven, minister van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschappen.
Part 2: Thuisonderwijs, nakomende aandachtspunten
Nederlandse voorbeeldmail