The Hague tells homeschooling parents to send children to school

More than 100 children who are being homeschooled in The Hague because their families opted out have been told they must go to school after the summer.

The city council has become the first in the Netherlands to scrap the exemption on grounds of conscience, with more likely to follow suit.

“These children have simply disappeared from view,” Hilbert Bredemeijer, the alderman from the Christian Democrat (CDA) party responsible for education, told Nu.nl.

“There may be some children who are getting good education at school and are still able to make friends. But we have no certainty of it whatsoever, because there is simply no supervision available.”

The number of children being educated at home in the city has quadrupled in the last five years, with 102 registered as living in the city but not attending school. Across the country the number has gone up from 705 to 2,860 in 10 years.

The Supreme Court ruled last month that parents can only claim exemption from the obligation to go to school (leerplicht) if there is no suitable school nearby, defined as within 6km of their home for primary schools and 20km for secondary schools.

Prosecution service

“We have around 200 schools in The Hague of all types, sizes and profiles,” Bredemeijer said. “That must be enough to raise children in the right way, with pupils getting diplomas and, not insignificantly, a social context.”

He said the council was prepared to take steps, including asking the prosecution service to prepare criminal cases against families that refused to comply with the order to send their children to school.

The public prosecution service (OM) stopped charging parents over absenteeism last year, but Bredemeijer said its policy could change again in the wake of the Supreme Court judgment.

The government has also said it wants to scrap the clause in the Compulsory Education Act that allows parents to opt out of public schooling on grounds of lifestyle or conscience.

“I think the prosecution department, just like me, is waiting for clarity from the cabinet,” Bredemeijer said.