ABSTRACT
As an important educational phenomenon, home education has achieved rapid growth in many countries, such as the USA, Canada, and Australia. The rapid growth of the home education movement has inspired academic researchers to investigate the relationship between home education and the law (Petrie, 1993; Bauman, 2001; Hepburn and Belle, 2003; Neal, 2006; Basham et al., 2007). In the past decade, there has been a growing number of home-schooling families in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Zhejiang, Liaoning, and Yunnan. The dramatic growth in the number of home-schooling families has attracted widespread attention from the media and the public. However, it is still a marginal education phenomenon, and academic researchers have failed to examine the development of home education in the context of China. Policy-makers and education officials have acquired little substantive information about home education because home education is illegal under current educational law, and there is no literature that has systematically examined the legal status of home education in China. This chapter seeks to explore the legal status of home education and provide an in-depth discussion as to whether or not it is currently forbidden by law in China. This chapter may facilitate further discussion and contribute to a timely analysis of the relationship between law and home education in China for both English-speaking and Chinese readers. In what follows, compulsory education law in China will be briefly described. I will then discuss the legal status of home education in Western countries, those of East Asia, and finally in the context of China.
