Family Education Legislation Should Be an Education Law

The promulgation of the Family Education Promotion Law marks a milestone in the transformation of family education from a matter traditionally confined to the private domain of "family affairs" into one elevated to the realm of "state affairs". From the perspective of its regulatory subjects and mechanisms, the Family Education Promotion Law belongs to the category of social law. However, this legislative positioning has generated significant challenges in implementation. A divergence persists between the "prosperity" of legislative design and the practical demands of implementation: many responsible entities lack the necessary professional support and capacity to perform their duties; the law fails to designate a specialized competent authority, resulting in inadequate resource allocation and enforcement capacity for advancing family education; and its provisions largely remain at the level of concepts and principles, with insufficient substantive guarantees for the fulfillment of legal responsibilities.The inherent characteristics of family education give rise to particular institutional demands. Given the highly professionalized and complex nature of family education and its guidance, legislation should explicitly regulate the conduct of subjects with professional expertise and implementation capacity. In view of the social reality of parents' "objective inability" to fulfill educational functions and their need for convenience, legislation should fully account for the critical role of schools in advancing family education. With respect to the autonomy of family education, legislation must balance parental authority with the state's parens patriae role. Furthermore, in light of the internal character of family education, legislation should strengthen quality supervision over homeschooling within compulsory education. Accordingly, family education legislation should return to its essential nature as educational law in order to address current implementation dilemmas. It should: designate education administrative departments as the sole competent authority for family education, with the All-China Women's Federation serving as an auxiliary coordinating body; establish schools as key actors in the family education support system, assisting parents in substantially enhancing their capacity for family education; improve the regulatory framework for family education service institutions, thereby providing families with diverse and reliable service resources; clarify the principles and limits of external intervention in family education, with respect for and support for parents as the core legislative tenet; and balance the internal autonomy of family education with the public responsibility of compulsory education by establishing robust mechanisms for the supervision and evaluation of homeschooling.