After home education was legalised in 1996, it has grown exponentially for about 20 years. In this period it has made a difference in the lives of thousands of families. Children could develop their personality in a safe environment and receive an education that was adapted to their individual needs. In this period there were a few attempts by the state to interfere in home education, but the mere existence of...

By the weekend of the 10th of November the Department of Basic Education (DBE) was scrambling to deal with a tsunami of public comment on the draft Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill. By early Friday afternoon over 6000 comments were received and more were flooding in every minute. This wasn’t the nightmare the DBE expected when they quietly released the BELA Bill for comment on the 13th of October. But...