MP’s concern at rise in home-schooling in region
THE DOUBLING of the number of home-schooled children in a Yorkshire city is just the tip of the iceberg, according to an MP.
Recent figures show there are now 278 children schooled at home in Hull, up from 120 in 2015/16 – raising fears, says West Hull and Hessle MP Emma Hardy, that some children are being removed from schools’ books without a formal exclusion.
Speaking in the House of Commons Ms Hardy raised concerns over “off-rolling” where the parents of challenging children are persuaded to home-educate, most commonly in year 11.
She said school funding cuts, lack of access to support for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and an increase in the number of isolation rooms “where students are left copying worksheets in silence for days on end” were all playing a part.
The MP said: “We all believe that students should receive a good standard of education but that good standard should be for everybody, not just the ones that haven’t fallen out of the system.
“We need better funding, better ways of judging if a school is good and a better way of making sure that schools include everyone so that all children in Hull can have the best education possible.”
In the UK 48,000 children were being home-educated in 2016-17, up from about 34,000 in 2014-15, with mental health issues and avoiding exclusion among reasons given by parents.
Home-education is illegal in countries including Germany, Croatia and Brazil but parents are allowed under UK law to educate their children at home from the age of five to 16.
They do not have to follow the National Curriculum and supporters say benefits include flexibility, the ability to learn at the child’s pace and the fact there are no school runs.
Changes in technology have also made it easier to teach out of the classroom.
However critics have raised concerns about everything from the quality of teaching to raising a child in an environment akin to a “gated community”.