Home schooling: The Cour des comptes Issues a Damning Report, to the Detriment of Freedom and Public Funds

On June 26, 2025, the Cour des comptes (France’s highest audit institution) issued its “final observations” on “home schooling.” Far from supporting home schooling, which is, by definition, the least expensive model of education and could save the state a billion dollars, the Cour des comptes has supported a reform that is catastrophic and symptomatic of our country: more regulation, more civil servants, more spending, and less freedom.

This article was first published in French for the Journal L’Homme Nouveau.

Until 2021, homeschooling was a fundamental freedom in France. A simple declaration was sufficient to practice this form of education. This regime of freedom was consistent with international law, which clearly recognizes that parents are the primary educators of their children and that the state must respect their religious, philosophical, and educational beliefs. But in October 2020, Emmanuel Macron announced his intention to strictly ban homeschooling, except in cases of medical impossibility, for a serious reason: the fight against Islamist separatism.

However, the explanation that preventing Islamist separatism in families practicing home schooling was the primary reason for the ban has never been demonstrated by the government or the national education system. No report has been produced to support this assertion, and no figures corroborate the President's warning. In reality, the reason is mainly economic, as shown by the report of the Cour des comptes. The number of children being home-schooled rose from nearly 14.000 in 2007 to 45.000 in 2019. This increase has led to additional time and staff costs for organizing annual controls, and the national education system was no longer able to monitor all children. The regime change was intended to break the momentum of home schooling.

This is where the Cour des comptes’ report is particularly disappointing. Far from recognizing the huge savings that could be made by promoting homeschooling, the Court of Auditors focuses on the only cost of homeschooling for the State: the annual inspection. The Court notes that, because home schooling is practiced by a minority of people, restricting home schooling has no impact on the closure or opening of public school classes and therefore the reintegration of 30.000 home-schooled pupils has been achieved at no extra cost to the national education system. However, this is incorrect, firstly because the Cour des comptes is not considering the additional savings made by the authorities (transport, school lunches, extracurricular activities, etc.), and secondly because home schooling was expanding rapidly and on the verge of becoming significant. For the 2021-2022 school year, nearly 73.000 children were being educated at home. Considering the rate at which the increase was progressing, home schooling could have represented 100.000 children in 2025. It is “small streams that make big rivers.” Given that the average annual cost of a school-age child is between €6,000 and €8,000, it is significantly more cost-effective to fund one annual control and let parents who wish to do so cover any additional costs of schooling (materials, transportation, food, etc.).

Ironically, the reform has not resulted in any savings because, by halving the number of children in home schooling under the new authorization system, the administration has ended up spending all the savings on hiring new civil servants to implement the new authorization system! (“80 inspector jobs were created, which costed €8.7 million” (sic), page 8).

The second piece of evidence that this threat of Islamist radicalization was completely fabricated and that President Macron unjustly accused fully integrated families of separatist tendencies is that the Cour des comptes spends a large part of its report explaining that there is not much knowledge available about children who are educated at home. Yes, in reality, the administration had no tools to monitor students whose “social background is not fully known,” the reasons for home schooling were “poorly understood until 2024,” and we realize that the majority only home school for one or two years, rarely more, and that religious reasons for home schooling represent 0.6% of cases. All of this completely contradicts the idea that a separatist network is hiding behind homeschooling.

Ultimately, it feels like reading a report commissioned by the l’Élysée (the French equivalent of the White House) to provide after-sales service for a disastrous reform, as it is objectively malicious. In particular, it proposes ensuring that parents who educate their children at home do not receive the universal school allowance.

The Cour des comptes dares to write on page 22 that “the decrease in enrollment observed since the introduction of the authorization system is mainly due to the choice of families.” What dishonesty! The Cour des comptes acknowledges elsewhere that families have opposed this new system, that the National Education Ombudsman has been inundated with complaints, that significant litigation has ensued before the administrative courts, that refusal rates was very high, and that serious regional disparities have been observed. This decline in enrollment is anything but a choice made by families. It is the choice of an out-of-touch administration that fails to realize that public schools disappoint thousands of parents for a thousand and one reasons. Thousands of parents who, for compelling reasons, practical reasons, or by choice, prefer to take responsibility for their children's education themselves.

The additional costs generated by the reform and the increase in administrative procedures do not worry the Cour des comptes. On the contrary, it proposes that civil servants produce a practical guide to assist families with the procedures. How kind!