Home-Education in Czechia: Twenty Years of Experience

Background

In all countries where modern home–education has emerged, the process of its establishment has been always accompanied by debates over its legislative framework (Barbosa, 2016; Hagen, 2011; Paciorkowski, 2014; Polaszek, 2011). In different countries, legal rules for practicing home-education were developed through different trajectories and disputes over legislation have had different outcomes that ranged from very liberal approaches to home education (such as in the UK), to strictly regulative ones (such as in the Sweden), (see Bhopal & Myers, 2016; Jones, 2016; Malmström, 2017). In rare cases, home-education was not made legal at all, such as in Germany (Martin, 2010; Spiegler, 2009). Quite often, the legislative framework has reflected not only actual political interests and lobbying strength of both the pro- and anti-home-education advocate groups but also reflected specific histories of individual countries, various historical experiences with home-education, and differences in cultural traditions.