Home-school cause at risk of being set back for decades

They're right, you know. Eddie O'Neill and Monica O'Connor, the home-schooling Co Carlow parents of six kids ranging in age from six to 26, are right in saying it's unconstitutional to make them agree to be assessed as their children's educators.

They're wrong in thinking they shouldn't have to register and agree to be inspected. They should.

But not according to the Constitution. Article 42.1 states that parents should "provide, according to their means, for the religious, moral, intellectual, physical and social education of their children". And Article 42.2 explicitly states that the education can take place at home.

The Constitution doesn't concern itself with the kind of education parents provide. It doesn't even say the parents should be able to read and write.

The "certain minimum education" which the Education (Welfare) Act (2000) requires - and under which the inspection O'Neill and O'Connor are resisting can take place - does not have the backing of the Constitution.

Monica O'Connor was stating nothing but the bald truth when she complained to Newstalk: "The fact that you can be assessed for a Constitutional right means you can be denied a Constitutional right."

As for the constitutional amendment on the rights of the child we passed last year? It doesn't change anything as regards education. It means the State can intervene "in exceptional cases, when the parents - for physical or moral reasons - fail in their duty towards their children".

It doesn't say anything about the parents' educational level and there would have been an understandable outcry if it had. But few of us were thinking of parents as home-educators when we voted on that amendment.

This is territory which is fraught everywhere - the line between the responsibilities of parents and of the State with regard to children. I wholly support the right of parents to educate their children at home and I know it is best for some children.

I wouldn't like home education to be illegal as it is in many countries, including some which are meant to have good education systems, such as Germany and Sweden. In Denmark you're inspected if you don't send your child to preschool, for pity's sake.

However, I also support the right of children to "a certain minimum education". Sadly that could not be provided by all parents, and that's why most countries which allow home education have some form of registration or inspection.

Few would deny that the O'Connor/O'Neill clan seem to have got a fantastic education with two passionate, enquiring, intelligent, educated parents and surrounded by their siblings and the wonders of nature. The education my kids have got in their local schools in Dublin probably could not compare to it.

But few would want children to be home-educated by illiterate parents, because although this educational deficiency is probably not these parents' own fault, one thing's for sure - it shouldn't travel into the next generation. And I don't know who could teach a child to read and write if you can't yourself.

Few of us want a situation in which children are being kept at home to work at household chores or farm work - or far less savoury occupations - instead of being at school.

There are children who are abused in their home environments and the requirement to be at school or with a registered home-educator provides children with a certain minimum protection. There is no reason for confidence that another Ariel Castro isn't lurking somewhere out there in suburban Ireland.

If the Education (Welfare) Act were enforced as the published Guidelines suggest, I think we would have a fairly good balance between a parents' right to be the "primary educator", responsible for providing the "religious, moral, intellectual, physical and social education of their children", and the right of the children to "a certain minimum education".

The guidelines make clear that the inspector is not empowered to go into a home brandishing the curriculum like a weapon: "Irrespective of the manner in which the provision is made", they say, "the critical issues to be considered are whether the approach adopted is suited to the needs of the child, whether successful learning is taking place and whether the child is making reasonable progress given his/her ability and learning needs."

I think those are good guidelines though, of course, there will always be specially sensitive inspectors and specially thick inspectors in any regime.

But nowhere in the Constitution is a parent's right to home-educate made subject to any "minimum standard" and if the wholly well-intentioned Eddie O'Connor and Monica O'Neill end up in the Supreme Court vindicating their Constitutional rights they are sure to win. And risk setting back the cause of home education for decades.