A new study has revealed that children exposed to higher amounts of a common pesticide found on commercially-grown produce are more likely to have ADHD than those exposed to lesser amounts.

Children could be taught in converted homes and shops under a government scheme allowing parents, teachers and other groups to set up their own schools.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, announced he would overhaul “bureaucratic” planning laws to enable existing buildings to be used by teachers and pupils.

In 2009, the increase of prescription drug use among children was nearly four times higher than in the overall population, making children the leading growth demographic for the drug industry.

As residents of the world’s consumer capital, New Yorkers can have anything delivered to their door at any time. They can have their hair cut in the living room, have champagne and caviar rushed to them on a whim, enjoy a shiatsu massage in their own bed or invite a clairvoyant to predict their future from Tarot cards laid out on the kitchen table.

But there is one thing that is currently unavailable for delivery to those who live in this most can-do of metropolises. Women can not legally give birth at home in the presence of a trained and experienced midwife.

A mother alleged to have ‘emotionally abused’ her daughter by telling her she was born by caesarean has fled to Ireland with the child.

After allegations that included Mrs Malik cuddling Amaani for too long while dropping her off at nursery, social services placed the little girl on a ‘child protection plan’ and scheduled a child mental health assessment.

The US government is considering whether to appeal the granting of political asylum to a German couple who fled to Tennessee so they could home-school their children.

In the first case of its kind, a federal immigration judge in Memphis granted asylum to the Romeike family , who fled to Morristown, Tennessee, in 2008 to escape prosecution in Germany, where the educational practice is illegal.

A German homeschooling family is seeking asylum in Canada after fleeing their native country due to persecution, reports the Globe and Mail.

The family will make their plea on Tuesday in a closed hearing before the Alberta Immigration and Refugee board. They say that they would be persecuted in Germany for homeschooling, based on the German law that forbids homeschooling with little exception. Parents who violate the law have faced hefty fines, as well as imprisonment and state seizure of their children.

Judge: Teaching children ‘basic right no country has right to violate’

In a decision bound to send a shock wave through the European Union, a federal immigration judge today granted political asylum in the United States to a German family whose members feared persecution if returned to their home country because of their decision to homeschool.

“We can’t expect every country to follow our Constitution,” said the opinion by Judge Lawrence O. Burman. “The world might be a better place if it did.

“However, the rights being violated here are basic human rights that no country has a right to violate,” he said.

A Montgomery County couple has been arrested on child endangerment charges for failing to register their children with the school district as they were home-schooled, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said Monday.

Richard Cressy, 47, and Margie Cressy, 41, both of the town of Glen, never registered their four children or their home-schooling curriculum with the local school district, said the Sheriff’s Office.

Paul and Lisa Hessey believe in the long-term benefits of healthy eating and rejected advice to feed their two-year-old son high-calorie snack food such as chocolate, crisps and cakes.

To their horror, social workers put Zak into foster care ‘to assess his needs’ and allegedly threatened the couple with the loss of their parental rights if they fought the decision in court.

Juergen and Rosemary Dudek of Archfeldt, Germany, were sentenced to 90 days in prison in July 2008 because they homeschool their children. Their sentence was overturned by an appeals court because of a legal error, and a new trial was ordered. Their new trial began November 16. German news reports indicate the judge appears disposed to seek a compromise. But prosecutor Herwig Mueller has vowed to appeal any sentence that does not include jail time for these parents, who have been in the spotlight for years because of their insistence on homeschooling. This was the same prosecutor who appealed the lower court sentence of only a fine, saying to the family, “You don’t have to worry about the fine because I will send you to jail.”

Parents will face fines if they remove 15-year-old children from sex education lessons as they become part of the national curriculum for the first time.

Lessons in relationships and sex will begin at five, with prescribed content for each age group.

Just when you think the Unesco people have reached the upper limit of their criminal mindset, a new document emerges that proves you wrong.

An abject draft report on ‘International Guidelines on Sexuality Education’ proposes desensitizing children as young as 5 to the concepts of masturbation and preparing them incrementally for the possibility of an abortion. Although the report sparked a mild controversy in the beginning of September, the final ‘Conference Ready Version’ of the report has not removed the proposals.

Virtually everyone can see that there is something terribly wrong when two working mothers are targeted by officialdom for failing to register their informal childcare arrangements with Ofsted, the UK Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills.

Welcome to a world where the feverish and disoriented outlook of the child-protection industry is tightening its grip over society. And as a result, in twenty-first century Britain informal childcare arrangements risk becoming criminalised.

Booklets from a subsidiary of the German government’s Ministry for Family Affairs encourage parents to sexually massage their children as young as 1 to 3 years of age.

“Fathers do not devote enough attention to the clitoris and vagina of their daughters. Their caresses too seldom pertain to these regions, while this is the only way the girls can develop a sense of pride in their sex,” reads the booklet regarding 1-3 year olds.

A young mother who was judged too stupid to care for her own baby has accused social workers of ‘stealing’ the child from her.

The woman, who must be identified only as Rachel for legal reasons, is taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights in a last ditch attempt to halt the adoption of the child, now aged three.

The UK has one of the worst records for child wellbeing in Europe, according to a new study released today.

Published by Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) from research by the University of York, the results put the UK as 24th out of 29 countries, only ahead of Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta.

The results back-up a 2007 table by UNICEF which placed the UK at the bottom of a list of 21 industrialised nations for child wellbeing

New figures show that 25,300 older people died last winter as a result of cold related illnesses – underlining the genuine misery faced by many hard-pressed pensioners. Since Labour took power in 1997, over a quarter of a million pensioners have now lost their lives this way – equivalent to the entire population of a city the size of Newcastle, Nottingham or Plymouth.

The number of home-schooled kids hit 1.5 million in 2007, up 74% from when the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics started keeping track in 1999, and up 36% since 2003. The percentage of the school-age population that was home-schooled increased from 2.2% in 2003 to 2.9% in 2007. “There’s no reason to believe it would not keep going up,” says Gail Mulligan, a statistician at the center.

The number of households in fuel poverty rose to 3.5 million in 2006, the latest figures from the Government showed today.

The figure, an increase of one million on 2005 levels, includes around 2.75 million homes classed as…