Homeschooling in Russia and Foreign Countries: Approaches to Legal Regulation
Alternative forms of education are becoming more and more popular around the world. One of the leading forms of alternative education is family education (or homeschooling) - which presumes that the education is being delivered in a place other than formal school. At the same time, homeschooling as an institution causes great controversy around the world due to the implicit rejection of parents who choose homeschooling instead of formal school education. Thus, they declare that the state education system(s) cannot ensure realization of the educational needs of the family for one reason or another. Against this background, the number of countries prohibiting homeschooling is quite small, and the freedom to choose the form of education is enshrined in legislation of most countries. There is a sharp contradiction between the state educational policy - which in most cases implies universal school education - and supporters of homeschooling and other alternative forms of education, which refuse the state involvement for their children to get education based on the state system. Studying national practices of regulating homeschooling allows one to study how different countries react to this contradiction in their own political and legal context. This study is devoted to a comparative analysis of the laws of Australia, Austria, Great Britain, Israel, Russia and the USA - which regulate homeschooling -, while additionally covering analytical materials of international organizations and other sources containing expert assessments of the level of development of homeschooling in these countries in order to identify the best and worst practices in regulating homeschooling and the ways in which these countries respond to the contradictions that homeschooling causes to their educational system(s), as well as understanding where to place Russia in the international context of legal regulation of homeschooling.