The Government has backed down on sweeping new homeschool regulations just hours before they were set to become law, following fierce backlash from the public, the homeschooling community and last-minute pressure from NZ First and ACT.

Education Minister Erica Stanford announced yesterday she would pull the homeschooling provisions from the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill, which was due for its third reading. The reversal came after Stanford met with NZ First late Tuesday and again on Wednesday, before confirming the provisions would be removed.

Stanford met with homeschooling families on the steps of Parliament yesterday during an organised picnic and said there had “never been any intent to stop people from doing the wonderful job they’re doing at home”. Stanford said the proposed changes were about ensuring children received an adequate education, adding that feedback showed the issue was “more complicated than first thought”.

The backflip came as a petition to “Reject ALL proposed changes to the New Zealand Homeschool Legislation” gained more than 10,000 signatures within a week, alongside a campaign encouraging homeschoolers to write to MPs.

ACT education spokeswoman Laura McClure warned that Clauses 5F and 51A risked treating good parents with suspicion and imposing unreasonable compliance burdens. McClure also argued section 640A would give “a free rein for a future government to regulate homeschooling out of existence”.

While ACT appeared to publicly claim credit for the reversal, with leader David Seymour stating on X that “We have fixed it, and Parliament will take those clauses out of the law today”. NZ First leader Winston Peters rejected ACT’s claim to credit, accusing the party of “pretentious mimicry” and said “We'll have to home school them. This is the second time in about four days. The last one was the claim they were the people who got that [funding] for St John ambulance. Only one party did that.”

All coalition parties had originally voted the Bill through its earlier stages. RCR had highlighted concerns about the proposed changes through Simon O’Connor’s interviews with Cynthia Hancox, Government Liaison for the National Council of Home Educators of New Zealand, which explained what was being proposed and why homeschooling families were pushing back.

Originally published on RCR Bites.

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