LONDON—The Home Educators’ Summer Festival (HESFES), the world’s largest and oldest, annual gathering of home educators, opened for the twelvfth time on Saturday, July 10.
Held this year on 60 acres of land near Tonbridge, south-east of London, in Kent, HESFES is attended by families of home educators and schoolchildren alike.
Tents, tipis, caravans, motorhomes, bicycles, cars and people who have rented local houses converge for a week of workshops, games, entertainments, seminars and formal and informal meetings.
The all-ticket event, attracts thousands from around the globe and has consequently had to reduce its intake. This year it is again fully-booked several weeks in advance.
This year’s sharp-end focus of the HESFES Home Education Conference is on EU bureaucracy, Graham Badman’s review of Elective Home Education in England and the Children, Schools and Families Bill.
Although the last two Parliamentary documents were dropped by the previous Labour government due to the general election in May, they leave unresolved civil liberties issues around the regulation of home schooling.
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