petal, how many homeschooling parents do you actually know personally and what criteria do you use to determine whether they are wako?

I am just curious.

"Why make it compulsory?"
Going back over the last two decades, the governments both Labor and Liberal ran the childcare centers (public/council) down and literally handed over to a couple of private pre-school operators premises, land and facilities amounting to millions of dollars paid for over some decades through taxes. This was all done sneakily behind the backs of the public in an air of secrecy and fraud with no mandate.
Two operators now own 600 pre-schools. One of them, let on probably more than he should of when he exclaimed about two months ago '40 percent profit was due to government subsidies!' In other words government subsidies are so high that they cover all his staff wages and overhead costs and boost his profits! As well, it was stated openly that he was making so much money he wanted to extend this operation onto the international front. The childcare industry is recognized on the stock market as one of the fastest growing sectors and literally a good milking cow - hence the drive to make pre-schools compulsorily! This process is market driven, assett creating, exploiting the educational needs of pre-school children. If you think about it, it is like a double blow when the government use public taxes to wreck the public system then encourage and subsidise high crippling fees. The parents have struggled to keep up with the high fees.
The high taxes we are subject to, the government either misappropriate or use them as a weapon against us.
The other aspect is turning the emphasis around from the freedom of learning from play and social interaction - to a government directed more formal and disciplined oriented approach to education.

Freedom of choice means that no parent's should not be forced to send their child to pre-school. It also means that one citizen should not be forced to subsidise another's choice. In other words, pre-school education should not be free.

Hi there Jolanda. Most homeschooling parents do so because they are very strongly religious and intolerant of wider society. This is a fact. It is very easy to determine their level of "wacko-ness" within a few minutes of talking to them.

And one thing I should point out - parents who are quite obviously "wacko" (for want of a better term) because of the way they talk about their attitude to schools, and / or their child's educational prowess, and / or their child's development, _do not see themselves as wacko_, and therefore it is pointless trying to convince them of this. Does that make it a bit clearer?

What it makes clear is that you seem to have an opinion based on your own prejudices.

The same could be said about parents who see others as wako, they dont ever stop to think that they themselves might be the one that is wako.

Parents homeschool for a variety of reasons including the fact that sensitive children are bullied in school and the system does not protect them.

True Jolanda... but is the solution to not send them to school?

How will they learn to adapt to these situations? It's a hard fact, but bullying occurs in the wider community. I'm certainly not condoning it, and I don't have the answer as to how to solve this problem, but if they don't learn to cope with these kinds of situations as children, they mightn't be able to cope with them as adults.