Pupils staying at home as fears over Covid linger

NUMBER OF CHILDREN HOMESCHOOLED IN AREA TRIPLES

CHILDREN in one west London area are not going back to school due to lingering fears of Covid, officials have said.

Hammersmith and Fulham is seeing record high levels of home-schooling as families are frightened to send their children back to their classes.

Three times as many children are being home-schooled in the borough compared to before the pandemic, says the council’s education officer.

There are now 190 children being home-schooled in the borough, compared to 69 before the UK first went into lockdown.

Borough council education officer Elizabeth Spearman, in charge of school admissions, said at a Hammersmith and Fulham education committee meeting on November 16 that fewer children were returning to school.

She said: “There is a fear of sending children into school and their children bringing home Covid.

“The other thing has been families having to home educate through no fault of their own and have actually quite enjoyed it and have decided to once the schools re-opened again.

“We don’t want our schools to be devoid of children. We have got to walk this tightrope.”

Anyone in the borough is allowed to home school their children and is supported by the council in doing so, but the home schooling community likes to keep its distance from education officers, and borough council staff often have to deliver messages to families’ doors by hand.

Covid lockdowns meant school buildings were closed to most pupils from the end of March to September last year.

Nationally more than 40,000 pupils were formally taken out of school in the UK between September 2020 and April 2021, compared with an average of 23,000 over the previous two years, BBC research shows.

Before the half-term break, 158 children missed school in Hammersmith and Fulham due to Covid-related reasons on October 21.

There were 58 school absences related to Covid at the beginning of the autumn term on September 9.