AGM time again!
2024 marks 30 years since the Home-Based Learning Network of WA (now operating as Home Education WA, or HEWA) was officially launched to represent and support Western Australian home educators!
Education laws being state-based in Australia, strong state-based advocacy is vital in providing advice relevant to our local requirements, maintaining beneficial relationships with the relevant government department, and speaking up in the interests of the home-educating community. We maintain close relationships to our counterparts in other states – particularly the Home Education Network in Victoria; and we have recently supported Queensland home educators in successfully campaigning against a proposed change to Queensland legislation which would have been problematic for them.
We continue to meet around twice-yearly with key personnel from the WA Department of Education, providing feedback on issues affecting our community (with particular note of any problems we hear of regarding moderators overstepping their legal authority), and receiving updates on departmental policy reviews and anything else they want to communicate to home educators across all of WA.
HEWA events are ever-popular. The 2023 HEWA Teen Ball was another great success, providing our teens with a wonderful celebratory night out. Our Year 6 Graduation Discos are also proving incredibly popular: the 2023 event sold out months ahead of the event, which was immensely enjoyed by the attendees; and the 2024 event has also sold out already. (We have started a waitlist for the 2024 Year 6 Graduation, and subject to volunteer capacity, *might* be able to run a second night if there is enough interest.)
LEAP continues to evolve in response to community interest and volunteer availability, and is currently running a series of very popular excursions to diverse places of interest around Perth.
A combination of financial factors and a change in employment law resulted in us very regretfully being obliged to discontinue the part-time paid Coordinator position at the end of our 2023-2024 financial year, so HEWA is once again a completely volunteer-run organisation. As a result, we particularly need at least one volunteer to take on our book-keeping and financial reporting responsibilities. We would also appreciate a few more general committee members to help us share the overall workload, and to ensure that we have succession plans in place for our existing committee members to eventually pass on the baton as HEWA continues to serve Western Australian home educators long into the future.
Membership remains key to our existence. While we serve the whole of the WA home-education community, membership subscriptions are HEWA’s main source of funding, enabling us to host our website (mostly maintained by volunteers), and cover the assorted financial costs of running the organisation. Even more importantly, though, every member we have validates our combined voice in representing home educators to government departments and the wider community. Fragmented into small groups, each group is easily dismissed as just a few people within the community. Standing together as the group representing ALL Western Australian home educators, with a 30-year history of that representation, we can’t be ignored as a splinter group. So firstly, a huge thankyou to all of our loyal members who truly enable us to keep doing everything we do. Finally, if you aren’t currently a member of HEWA, please do consider joining. Membership starts at just $30/year, and the more of the home-educating community that are HEWA members, the stronger our voice in standing up for us all.
Liz Read
Chairperson
