Religious Australian Parents Turn to Home Schooling to Fight Religious Discrimination

Religious parents in Australia are pulling their children out of school and resorting to home schooling to avoid the increasingly hostile environment towards religious values on campus.

New figures obtained by The Saturday Telegraph  reveal the number of Australian students being educated at home has soared 50 per cent in just four years to 4,479.

Many believe the shift is due to intolerance for faith-based values.

"In our celebration of a diversity, Christians are now the ones who are the target of bullying and in the minority," Accelerate Christian Home Schooling coordinator Stuart Chapman told the Daily Mail.

He said some Christian students are ridiculed for believing in biblical marriage after the country legalized same-sex marriages. He cited a case where students who opposed same-sex marriage were allegedly forced to stand at the back of their classrooms.

"Parents are feeling their children are being targeted because they believe in the traditional family."

Australian politician Kirralie Smith said she's not surprised by the move towards home schooling.

"I taught in a private school for three years before deciding when I was pregnant, over 15 years ago, that we would home school our kids," she said in a post on her Facebook page. "The system seemed broken even then. We knew we could fan into flame their strengths, and support them in their weaknesses better than any school system could. And we have been proven right with all three thriving in different ways."

"I am not at all surprised at the growth in this area and I suspect it will only continue as more indoctrination, instead of education, is rolled out in our schools," Smith added.

A spokesperson from the New South Wales Department of Education said parents' decision to home school their children should be respected.