The Western Cape Education Department provided the following answers to questions from Fair Lady magazine on home schooling.

1. How many home schooling families are registered with the Cape authorities?

The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has registered 47 children from 41 families for home schooling since January 2008.

2. Is the number of registration a true reflection of the occurrence of home schooling?

We believe that these figures are a fair reflection of the number of learners registered for home schooling in the Western Cape. Parents in the province have to register for home schooling with the WCED. Parents are legally obliged to send children of school-going age to school, or alternatively register their children for home schooling.

3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of home schooling?

Advantages: Parents register their children for various reasons. Some parents simply believe that they can offer a better quality of education in the home, and have the qualifications to do so, or can afford to employ teaching assistance.

Some parents prefer home schooling for religious, social or cultural reasons, and prefer to provide the religious or cultural context for their children's education themselves. Some might prefer private education, but cannot afford private school fees.

In some cases, parents prefer home schooling for medical reasons, where the child cannot travel because of illness or disability.

Some parents may choose home schooling if they are visiting a foreign country and prefer to provide education for their children themselves. Others may simply live far from conventional schooling.

Disadvantages: This is a matter for debate, and a lot depends on the kind of public or private schooling available to the children concerned.

The school environment provides considerable learning opportunities, by mixing with people with different views and experiences of life.

Hopefully, children in schools will learn tolerance of other points of view, how to work in groups and learn from each other, how to socialise, how to make informed choices about their well being mental, physical, spiritual and social.

This is not to say that home-schooling parents can't provide access to these learning opportunities. A lot depends on what parents do in each situation.

4. Does the Western Cape Education Department encourage parents to home school?

We don't presume to tell parents what is best for their children, although we are committed to providing access to the best possible education, and we do invite parents to assist us in building a quality public education system.

By helping us to build a quality education system, parents will also assist us in building a society we can be proud of, based on values we hopefully share.

We need parents to apply their knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to bringing up their children and to making it possible for children to contribute to building a successful society.

This should start in our schools. We are also pleased to say that we have many examples where this is already happening. Schools are communities of people committed to educating the learners of the school. This community includes the learners themselves, their parents, teachers, school managers and leaders and support staff.

Successful schools tend to be successful communities and provide valuable opportunities for growth by all concerned.

5. Do the authorities check up on home schooling families to ensure that the children are getting the best possible education and how are these inspections carried out?

The WCED does not monitor the quality of home schooling on an ongoing basis, but will investigate if we have reason to believe that the parents concerned are not meeting the criteria for registration.

In terms of Section 13 of the Policy for the Registration of Learners for Home Education, parents who home-school their children must keep evidence of all relevant assessment results for a period of three years for monitoring by the provincial Head of Department.

At the end of every phase, the parent should appoint an independent, suitably qualified person approved by the Head of Department at the parent' own expense to assess the learner's progress at the end of the phase that the learner is completing. The person must submit a statement to the Head of Department confirming that the assessed learner has reached the level required to progress to the next phase.

6. Is it compulsory for home schooling families to register?

Yes, in terms of the South African Schools Act of 1996. Section 51 of the Act reads as follows: