Co-operative: Home Options In Childhood Education

Laws and regulations governing homeschooling in Ontario and elsewhere

What are the laws and regulations governing homeschooling? It depends on where you live. You can get an overview of the legislation in different Canadian provinces at The Association of Canadian Home-Based Education.

Members of C:HOICE in London, Ontario, are affected by the Ontario Education Act. Also of relevance are the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Canadian criminal code.

The Ontario Education Act

To read the full text of the Ontario Education Act, you can:

• download a .doc file of the full text,
• view it in a new window, or
• view it in this window and use your browser's back button to return to the C:HOICE website. (The Act is a big webpage and can take awhile to display)

The sections most quoted as relevant to homeschoolers are sections 21(2)(a) and 24(2): [emphasis added]

21 - (2) A child is excused from attendance at school if,

(a) the child is receiving satisfactory instruction at home or elsewhere;

24. - (2)Where the parent or guardian of a child considers that the child is excused from attendance at school under subsection 21(2), and the appropriate school attendance counsellor or the Provincial School Attendance Counsellor is of the opinion that the child should not be excused from attendance, the Provincial School Attendance Counsellor shall direct that an inquiry be made as to the validity or excuse for non-attendance and the other relevant circumstances, and for such purpose shall appoint one or more persons who are not employees of the board that operates the school that the child has the right to attend to conduct a hearing and to report to the Provincial School Attendance Counsellor the result of the inquiry and may, by order in writing signed by him or her, direct that the child,
(a) be excused from attendance at school; or
(b) attend school,
and a copy of the order shall be delivered to the board and to the parent or guardian of the child.

New government policy

There has been disagreement between the homeschooling community and the school boards about how to understand the law as stated in the Act. A consultation process has been happening over the last few years, with the goal of revising the Ministry's policy. Now, in June 2002, this new government policy on homeschooling is finally out - this replaces the infamous Johnson Memorandum of 1981.

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

11. Any person charged with an offence has the right
(d) to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal; [emphasis added]

We would suggest that recent practices in Ontario contravene this principle: when the onus is on the homeschooling family to prove "satisfactory instruction" rather than on the school board to prove otherwise; or when the authority to assess whether instruction is satisfactory is given to someone involved in the school system rather than to an independent party with no competing pedagogical, social or financial (funding) interests.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 10. Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him. [emphasis added]

As mentioned in the comments about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, this principle is contravened when the authority to assess whether instruction is "satisfactory" is given to someone who, by virtue of belonging to the school system (which has a vested interest in a specific pedagogy and no understanding of pedagogies that are very different) is not "independent and impartial."

Canada is among the signing nations of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the General Assembly of the United Nations. While it states (article 26[1]) that elementary education shall be compulsory, it also states (article 26[3]) that

Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Because the public school system represents a gathering of people (schoolchildren and schoolteachers, etc) under a particular set of internal rules and regulations by which one is bound only if one is associating with it (- and not, for instance, if one is associating with a private school), one might also argue that it constitutes the equivalent of an association. In which case, article 20(2) applies:

No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Canadian criminal code:

Families who believe that physical disciplining of a child is the parents' right alone and not a school teacher's, and families who believe that there is never a set of circumstances under which force is "reasonable," will find no support in section 43 of the criminal code:

Section 43 - Every school teacher, parent or person standing in the place of a parent is justified in using force by way of correction toward a pupil or child, as the case may be, who is under his care, if the force does not exceed what is reasonable under the circumstances. [emphasis added]

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