Children taken out of school for home tuition ‘in as little as a day’

CHILDREN ARE being taken out of school in as little as a day to be home educated according to an Ofsted report.

For many families, home education is not a preferred choice but a last resort amid a breakdown in relationships with schools, inspectors warn.

Special educational needs, medical and behavioural reasons are among the main motives for pupils being moved out of schools, Ofsted’s paper says.

Chief inspector Amanda Spielman said children should not switch to home education “simply to resolve difficulties in schools”.

The inspectorate’s small-scale study, based on research with families, schools and councils in the East Midlands, looked at why children move to home education from secondary school.

Figures suggest that as at autumn last year, there were an estimated 58,000 children being educated at home, up around 27pc on the previous year.

The report says its research found that parents “commonly viewed home education as the only option for them”.

And it warned that the length of time for a child to be moved to home education could be very short – as little as one day in some cases.

Some school leaders reported that parents moved their child to home education to stop them being excluded and for some parents the possibility of being fined or prosecuted for a child missing school triggered a move to home education, Ofsted says.

The report also says some families had tried other schools but they were unsuitable, or moves were unsuccessful and a few moved their child to home education despite not wanting to or being scared to do so.

In all the cases in the research, there had been a breakdown in the relationship between schools and parents, the study says, with both having a different understanding of what was best for a child.