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Ala Pomelile
Family First
Home education is facing proposed amendments to the Education Act that would expand the government’s regulatory powers. It did not take long for the mainstream media to link Tom Phillips’ homeschooling case to the need for new legislation. This reflects a common pattern of reacting impulsively to rare incidents and creating laws based on exceptional cases rather than the norm.
New Zealand has approximately 11,000 homeschooled children. The Phillips case is, by any measure, an outlier and treating it as the rule risks penalising hundreds of families for the actions of one man
Tom Phillips was a criminal. He robbed a bank. He abducted his children from their mother. He evaded law enforcement for nearly four years across remote Waikato farmland. He died in a confrontation with police. These are the facts of his case, and they are serious. But here is what Tom Phillips was not: a representative of New Zealand’s home education community. The distinction matters because it seems like the home education sector is being punished for the unfortunate actions of one man.
Let’s be honest here. The Ministry of Education spent months refusing to release information about the Phillips case under the Official Information Act, citing privacy grounds. It took an Ombudsman’s investigation to prise loose even basic details. Then, within days of that information becoming public, Education Minister Erica Stanford announced last-minute changes to the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill after it had already passed its second reading in Parliament.
The timing is no coincidence. The political logic is clear: a prominent case involving children has stirred public emotion, and this rare case is being leveraged to advance regulatory changes that might normally encounter more scrutiny.
Cynthia Hancox, government liaison for the National Council of Home Educators NZ, put it plainly. The connection between Phillips and the home education community, she said, is “a manipulation of the situation”. Phillips homeschooled his children, yes. He also drove a ute, ate breakfast, and breathed air. Are we going to regulate those things, too?
The harm done to the Phillips children was also the result of failures by police, the Family Court, and Oranga Tamariki. Let me be clear, all these agencies had contact with the family and warning signs before them. The Public Inquiry into the Disappearance of the Phillips Children is examining those agencies. It is not examining home education, because home education is not what went wrong. Would a murderer who sends their children to a state school prompt calls to regulate state schooling?
Two things can be true at once. Whilst there might be gaps in the school exemption process, acknowledging them does not mean home education is the problem. It means the application process may need to be more robust at the point of entry, particularly in cases where there are already known concerns about a family. Better cross-agency information sharing or a requirement to flag existing Family Court proceedings – these are targeted, proportionate responses to a genuine screening gap.
What is being proposed instead is sweeping regulatory powers (via regulations), significant new burdens for revocation for non-compliance, and limited appeal rights. This is not a targeted response. It is a bureaucratic expansion that treats every home-educating parent as a potential criminal.
Whatever one thinks of increased oversight for home education, the manner in which these changes are being introduced should concern every New Zealander who believes in democratic accountability, regardless of their views on education.
Introducing significant legislative changes after a bill’s second reading, with no consultation with the affected sector, is precisely the kind of heavy-handed governance we should all be concerned about. Even more alarming is the possibility that this bill gets pushed through under the guise of urgency.
Good law should be created through careful deliberation, honest intent and the appropriate democratic process, not panic. The proposed amendments to home education could revoke a homeschooling family’s exemption without prior warning or an appeal if they fail to follow regulations, which have not even been clarified yet.
New Zealand’s home-educating families have operated in good faith for decades, within a legal framework they did not design and cannot control. Home education communities deserve better than to be caught in the crossfire of a government seeking a visible policy response to a tragedy it contributed to.
Tom Phillips failed his children. The system also failed him and his children. Home educators did not.
This article was originally published by Family First New Zealand.
