More parents choose to educate children at home

Families are rejecting the state school system in favour of educating their children at home at a rate of more than 100 per month, as worried parents seek to avoid the pressures of Sats and bullying, a leading advocacy group for home education said yesterday.

The rising numbers are a cause of concern for traditionalists who say that some children receive inadequate lessons or are even pushed to work in the family business.

Yesterday the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT), debating the issue at their annual conference in Bournemouth, called on the government "as a matter of urgency" to upgrade its monitoring procedures for children educated at home.

Kim Tomsett, a local education authority official who has worked with home educating families in west Sussex for three years, said that she had witnessed children being taken out of school on the premise that they would be home educated, only to start working in the family.

"In the main it is very successful, but there are families that are completely lost from supervision, either because they want to be or by accident," she said. Members of PAT want the government to introduce closer monitoring and support for parents.

Last week, parent representatives met officials from the Department for Education and Skills to discuss plans to develop guidelines for all LEAs on dealing with families who have opted out of schools.

But home educating parents are nervous of state intervention, fearing that they could be inspected by people who do not understand the different styles of teaching at home.

Belinda Harris Reed has worked with Education Otherwise for 16 years after opting to educate her two sons at home. She said: "We are getting 100 new families a month. I don't think that people take on home educating lightly. Now most people take their children out of school because of bullying, not like me for a philosophical viewpoint."

Membership of Education Otherwise, the oldest group for home educators, has almost doubled in the past two years, to 6,000. Studies show that anything from 25,000 to 150,000 children are being taught at home for some or all of their school years.

Parents have to register with their LEA if they intend to take their children out of school. LEAs can choose to inspect them and samples of their work, but families do not have to "present" their children. And the authorities are only responsible for those who have been in the system; if a child has never been registered at a school, they have no jurisdiction.

Miriam Alcaraz-Stapleton, 18, was educated at home in Edmonton, east London, with her seven siblings until she went to sixth form college to do A-levels. She is planning to do physiotherapy or acupuncture at university.

Her parents had themselves had bad experiences of school. "I had formalish lessons three times a week until I was 12 in Spanish, French, English and maths, taught by my parents and other family and friends. My mum got work books and text books and we had trips to museums and outings.

"I believe that I've been part of the real world since I was born and that people in school are going to have more difficulties making decisions when they get into the real world. I know that some of them do.

"A lot of people - including teachers - don't realise it's legal. People always ask whether I have friends of my own age. Yes, we do. Some people have asked whether I was disabled. The other question is whether we are rich or very poor, or very clever or very stupid, or were you expelled?"

A DfES spokesperson said: "We believe that for most children school is the right place in which to receive education. However, parents have the right to educate their children at home if they so wish."