Risk of compulsory schooling due to parental rights’ reform
Schooling by default for children 3 to 18 years old in case of
parental clash.
The bill about parental rights and child’s interests adds a new
article to the Education Code : the section L.131-13.
According to this article, any child from the age of 3
is sent directly to state school if his parents disagree about forms
of education on change of residence or at the beginning of a new school
year and this, whatever the education choices might have
been previously. This section contradicts the current Education code
according to which education is compulsory for children from 6 to
16 years old and provided by state or private schools or
parents.
The French Parliament is made up of the National Assembly and the
Senate. A law is adopted if both assemblies agree on the same text.
Currently, the bill on parental rights and child interests has passed
the National Assembly and will probably come under discussion in the
Senate in October.
This is the next step of our struggle for homeschooling
A petition has been written.
This constitues an obvious topic for the next JIPLI.
A brief overview of recent developments in the National Assembly in
June:
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Since there are lots of amendments from the Opposition, the allotted
time for debate was run over. Thus, the government alloted the
bill to its own time to the National Assembly and added it to the
agenda of Monday, 16th June and Friday, 27th June, to debate and pass
the remaining amendments (about 300), noticing each time less than a
week before. The closing vote occurred on 27 June. Afterwards, this
bill will be debated in the Senate. We do not know the date yet but we
hope it will not be before autumn.
Altough we were on the look out for the agendas, the short time limit
prevented us from setting up a widespread calling up.
Collective work with three other homeschooling associations CISE,
LAIA and PIF enabled to draw up an amendment modifying this new
article and to start disseminating it to the deputies initiating the
bill or the article L.131-13 and to the members of the Woman’s rights
committee on the National Assembly. We also distributed the
amendment to the homeschooling social networks with a call for
contacting these deputies. The short time limit left us little
hope to have at least a deputy supporting it.
Moreover, even in this case, this amendment would allow homeschooling
and ease matters in family’s everyday life but education at school
would remain the prime reference and the extension of mandatory
schooling beyond the age of compulsory education, the Trojan horse
opening up the way for other more and more restrictive laws about
homeschooling.
