Extremists ‘are exploiting home school loophole’

Ministers must crack down on home schooling because extremist groups are encouraging parents to pull children out of mainstream education, an Ofsted chief has warned.

Matthew Coffey, of the schools watchdog, said that a loophole in the law could “feed” illegal schools.

MINISTERS must crack down on home schooling because extremist groups are encouraging parents to pull children out of mainstream education, an Ofsted chief has warned.

Matthew Coffey, the chief operating officer at the schools watchdog, said that a loophole in the law could “feed” illegal schools. Parents are under no obligation to inform local authorities that they intend to home-school their children, or to give a reason why.

“The Government needs to have a really long, serious, hard look at how it can close that loophole whilst maintaining everyone’s right to educate children,” Mr Coffey said.

He said the most accurate figures to date showed that around 30,000 children in England were home-educated in 2014-15, a figure that had risen steeply over the previous few years.

Mr Coffey said that parents were using the guise of home education as a vehicle to send children to illegal schools. “Elective home education is being used as a way of taking children out of mainstream education and putting them into to these unregistered settings,” he said.

Various companies and websites provide resources for parents to homeeducate their children according to Islamic principles. One website, seen by The Daily Telegraph, has a section dedicated to advising parents on how to withdraw their children from school without arousing suspicion.

“You will doubtless be asked about your child’s schooling by your Health Visitor, but if you give them a confident answer, explaining how you are teaching and how much your child is already achieving, they should be content with that and are unlikely to take it further,” parents are told.

Mr Coffey, who oversees all of Ofsted’s operations across the country, said he accompanied inspectors to an illegal hardline Muslim school which had barred up windows, no running water and “filthy, dirty conditions”.

A Department for Education spokesman said: “Parents have a right to teach their children at home if they choose but all children must still get a safe and suitable education.”