ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the questions of the rights of parents which are of concern to both parents and teachers, and which are germane to recent educational legislation. It explains unavoidably complex, for despite popular rhetoric, that is the nature of the issue in question. The chapter looks at various aspects of the changing role of parents in the educational process. It focuses on parents' rights in education, and particularly on their newly granted rights to increased choice and control over the education of their own children, revealing this addition to our armoury of personal liberties to be something of a double-edged sword. A whole raft of policies, most obviously early legislation to permit parents to choose a child's school. Parental rights in such cases are unambiguously grounded in the parents' duties as trustees of their children's welfare and as agents for securing those children's interests.
