From Peter’s Perspective

By every estimate, home education continues to grow at a remarkable 5 percent per year in Canada, despite the fact that the overall population of school-age children is slowly shrinking. There are now more than 100,000 children experiencing the benefits a home education provides, and that is something to be celebrated!

CCHE continues to play a leading role in promoting and defending our parental right to direct the education and raising of our children. For a small organization, we have been able to have an oversized impact in support of our movement. But we continue to face real challenges.

Last year I wrote of the threat to home education in Alberta and the new birth of freedom Quebec families were beginning to experience. In one short year, things have reversed course dramatically. Alberta has elected a new, pro-home education government, removing the threat, while the new government in Quebec is stamping on the newly won freedom and demanding home educated children write public school exams.

Elsewhere, despite the legal status of home education, child protection workers are increasingly involved in investigations of homeschool families. Nowhere is this more evident than in Ontario, a province where home education has long been a legally recognized choice.

Our constant need to defend our homeschool freedoms across Canada reminds us that our freedom isn’t free.

Since CCHE doesn’t take government money, it is only with your support that we are able to do this work.

Your generous donation helps support various important initiatives undertaken by CCHE:

• First and foremost is the work we do in lobbying provincial governments and fighting precedent-setting cases in court. We have an experienced legal and lobby team that regularly delivers results.
• Next is the academic research we fund and publicize, which proves the value of home education to the general public and is used in our defence in court cases and in dealing with governments.
• We also invest heavily in training existing and future leaders of our movement across the country.
• And, to ensure no family is left behind, we provide modest support to those in temporary financial need to allow them to continue homeschooling.
• Finally, we share our knowledge and expertise as Canadian homeschoolers as a gift with emerging home education leaders from nations around the world as they seek to build their own national organizations and communities.

CCHE is the only organization in Canada doing this work on a national level and in the following pages you will find more details about what we accomplished last year. We look forward to your continued support in 2020 as we seek to further Inform, Influence, and Inspire.