It is estimated that between 70% and 95% of home educators are not registered with a provincial education department. But now we need hard data to show the education department and parliament what the real state of home education registration is and why. With BELA Bill looming on the horizon we urgently need to the hard facts. Un-registered and registered can help by participating in this research survey.
Even where home educators register many experience problems with registration. Some wait years for a response. Some object to unreasonable registration requirements. The Provincial Education Departments (PEDs) are compelled by law to register learners for home education. Failure to do so infringes on our members’ rights, and the Trust is therefore engaging with the PEDs to attempt to solve these difficulties. Registration for home education should be an easy, painless and predictable administrative process. However, we need hard figures to explain the problems to the authorities.
That brings us to the question: Why does registration pose so many problems to homeschoolers? This is the question we are trying to solve in this REGISTRATION SURVEY. These problems have been around for more than 20 years and are likely to increase when the BELA Bill is signed into law in future. It is time to address these problems, but to do that we need data. This is where you can help.
We need real homeschoolers’ opinions and experiences to reflect in the Survey – yes, homeschoolers like you! It will help us immensely if you could take 5 minutes to fill in the anonymous survey. No-one will be able to track you from the data we share. The link is the following: https://pestalozzi.org/en/home-education-registration-survey/.
Whatever your problems with registration – please complete the survey so that your voice can be heard. Complete the survey if
- You object to registration for home education.
- You have tried to register with your PED but were unsuccessful.
- You are currently trying to register with your PED but are experiencing difficulties.
- You are successfully registered with your PED but experienced difficulties during the process of registration.
- You are successfully registered with your PED and experienced no problems.
Please forward the link to the Survey (https://pestalozzi.org/en/home-education-registration-survey/) to all homeschoolers you know and spread as widely as possible, to your friends and family, and on your Whatsapp, Telegram and Facebook groups. We need input from as many homeschoolers as possible to provide a realistic picture of the state of home education registration in South Africa.
Having trouble getting registered? Please send full details of your problem to defensor@pestalozzi.org, so we can relay it to the appropriate PED. A few PEDs have offered to give special attention to these homeschoolers’ problems if we send them a list of those.
PS: If you by any chance run a cottage school or centre, please complete this survey, or if you know of any cottage school or centre, please pass on the following link to them: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3W3L3XG.
If your child attends a cottage school or centre please pass this survey on to the centre owner.
This is a similar survey to the registration survey, but for cottage schools and centres, to gather data in order to improve the legal provision for these micro-schools. Please help with this survey as well! Thanks!
Our older children are done with their secondary education and we never tried to register them due to the situation many home,-school parents experienced with the registration process. We also choose not to as we believed that our children belonged to the Lord and not the government to prescribe what they should be taught. We did not agree with the current school systems choices of exposure and also was able to get far better choices of education form other choices.