Teachers voice fears over home-schooled children

TEACHERS today sounded a warning over the number of children being home-schooled, saying many are not getting a proper education.

London headteachers are doing “everything they can” to prevent children who are persistently absent from being taken out of school permanently to be home educated, they said.

It comes as the number of children being home-schooled in the last academic year in England reached more than 126,000 — an increase of almost 10,000 on the previous year, according to government figures.

Schools are not required to provide any support to parents who opt for elective home education and support from the local authority is discretionary. There are fears that parents who are “absolutely fed up with the system” and whose children are regularly skipping school are registering them as home-educated instead.

Sir Dan Moynihan, chief executive of the Harris Federation, said: “We are very reluctant to allow a child to go off-role. Home schooling has gone up since the pandemic, but we will do everything we can to try to stop that happening.

“We will make multiple efforts to try and accommodate a child because I would say the majority of people who since the pandemic become homeschooled are not getting the quality of education they would have got had they been in school.” Asha Vaghella, a lead youth worker for the Oasis charity, who works with children who are absent in Enfield, said: “We are fighting so hard to keep children in school and I really struggle to understand the way you can just take your child out of school. You write a letter to your local authority, you take your child out of school and then happy days — get on with it.”

She added: “These parents didn’t finish school, these parents don’t have the facilities and resources or finances to provide that education at home so how can that be allowed to happen?”

She added: “It’s hard enough to get a child to concentrate in school, but imagine being at home when you have so many distractions.”

Parents don’t have facilities to provide that education so how can that be allowed to happen?