News item | 18-12-2025 | 3:30 PM
State Secretary Koen Becking of Education wants to make a quick decision for children who do not go to school because their parents have objections. In such cases, parents state that they cannot find a suitable school in the area that matches their faith or philosophy of life.
In our country, children from the age of 5 have to go to school. If parents have directional concerns and therefore keep their child at home, they must appeal to their municipality for an exemption from the Compulsory Education Act. The Public Prosecution Service indicates that it is very difficult to make a substantive assessment of these appeals.
Each municipality appears to implement the rules regarding directional objections in a different way. In addition, there have been various court decisions following prosecution of cases. This gives the Public Prosecution Service insufficient legal support. Since April, the Public Prosecution Service has therefore stopped prosecuting these cases, if it has to assess the substantive objection to the direction objection.
Concept of decision
The State Secretary writes in a letter to the House that he understands the decision of the Public Prosecution Service, but also believes that a solution is needed quickly. He is considering setting up homeschooling as a separate sector or scrapping the exemption for direction objections. The State Secretary wants to explore both options very carefully legally, because they touch on Article 23 of the Constitution.
“The fact that more children and young people are not participating in education is a worrying development,” the State Secretary writes. ‘The result is that children do not learn well and cannot develop fully. It is therefore an important priority of the ministry to ensure that children receive the education to which they are entitled again.
The State Secretary’s two lines of thought cost extra money that is not currently available and they require a principled choice. It is therefore up to the next cabinet to make this choice. There will also be a broader exploration into the future of the Compulsory Education Act and its relationship to criminal law, about which the House of Representatives will be informed before the summer of next year.