From time to time, the idea surfaces that homeschooling families should receive financial support from the state. The reasoning sounds simple: if parents educate their children at home instead of using public schools, they save the state money — so shouldn’t some of that funding follow the child?

A number of organizations such as the Institute for Race Relations (IRR) and the Freedom Front (FF+) promote the idea of vouchers that parents can use to send their child to a school of their choice. This mechanism could possibly be extended to include homeschooling.

Not everyone agrees. A well-known American researcher, Dr. Brian Ray, strongly opposes state funding for homeschooling. His concerns are mainly twofold:

1. It is morally wrong for the state to take money from some citizens to give to others for the education of their children.
2. Once the state provides funding, it will require control over how children are educated.

Dr Ray explains these views in a public video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTKNpnJHous

The Moral Argument: A Matter of Perspective

Dr. Ray’s first argument is philosophical. He objects to the idea of the state redistributing money from one group of citizens to another. Some families share this view. Others point out that education is already funded through taxes, and homeschooling families contribute to that system while not using public schools.

Does Funding Always Mean Control?

The second concern — that funding inevitably leads to control — is more practical and more relevant to South African parents.

It is true that when governments fund educational institutions, they usually attach conditions. The current BELA Act already stipulates curriculum and assessment conditions in order to register and the application form requires that parents and learners must be racially classified. In such a context it is not unreasonable to expect strict compliance with these and possibly more conditions linked to financial support.

Home Education and Independent Schools

Home education appears in the same chapter of SASA as independent schools. Section 51, that deals with home education also mirrors Section 29(3) of the Constitution that deals with independent educational institutions. This indicates that home education is treated, in law, as a form of independent school.

Section 29(3) of the Constitution also says that people have the right to establish and maintain independent educational institutions at their own expense. This phrase is important: it makes clear that there is no constitutional right to state funding for independent education — including home education.

Can Independent Schools Receive Subsidies?

Section 48 of SASA allows for provincial education departments to grant subsidies to independent schools, subject to conditions set by the MEC (Member of the Executive Council). Although SASA allows MECs to set conditions, those conditions would still have to pass constitutional and administrative-law tests — but this still leaves significant room for regulatory control. In practice, challenging unlawful conditions can take years and requires significant legal resources, which many schools or families cannot afford. Even if a court eventually sets aside unlawful conditions, the financial damage may already have been done.

If home education were ever included in such a funding framework, similar principles would likely apply. Where racial classification is already embedded in education administration, it is conceivable that future funding models could incorporate equity or transformation criteria.

Demographic criteria are already used in various areas of public policy, including employment equity. While education funding operates under different legal frameworks, this illustrates how education funding mechanisms can incorporate transformation objectives. See article at https://iol.co.za/capetimes/news/2020-10-20-sahrc-probing-complaint-regarding--coloured-teachers-self-classification-as-african/

Whether such criteria would ultimately be constitutional would depend on how they are designed. However, even if certain funding conditions were legally vulnerable, most homeschooling families would not have the financial resources to challenge them in court. In practice, this means that funding rules — even questionable ones — could still influence how families educate their children.

Families with multiracial or adopted children could find themselves in particularly complex positions if funding rules were linked to demographic criteria. Even if such rules were legally contestable, the burden of navigating or challenging them could fall heavily on ordinary families.

So Where Does This Leave Parents?

The current law does not place any obligations on the state to financially support home education. Parents should be cautious to promote state subsidies, because there is a risk that the state will use this to increase its control and push its transformation agenda into the private homes of residents.

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