The Guardian spent time at Oasis Academy Hadley, where more than half of pupils are in poverty but ambitions are high “It’s the biggest story, mark my words. I think it’s really worrying. There are going to be dead children.” Zoë Thompson is not a drama queen. She studied physics at King’s College London, and thought she would work for Nasa. In fact, she went into teaching and has been principal of a large academy in a tough corner of north-east London for six years. In that time she has seen it all, but the surge in the number of children being taken out of school by parents on the pretext of ..read more

Fines, health needs, and a poor learning environment are among the reasons for the rise in children taken out of school Julie, a 47-year-old counsellor and mother of two from Northamptonshire, made the drastic decision to take her daughter out of school last June, before the end of year 3. “My child had been struggling with the school environment from the start,” Julie said. “She’s autistic, has sensory difficulties, finds noise and lights difficult, but is academically clever. She found it so hard to navigate relationships with peers and her anxiety was so intense she was mostly mute at schoo ..read more

We would like to hear from parents who began home schooling their child in the last year. What was the main reason for the change? The number of children being homeschooled in England rose by nearly 14% last autumn, official figures show, with parents increasingly citing mental health as the main reason for home education. Department for Education (DfE) statistics showed that 92,000 children were recorded as being home schooled on one day last term, compared with 80,900 at the same point in autumn 2022 ..read more

Mental health being increasingly cited as main reason for parents choosing home education, official figures find The number of children in England being home schooled increased by more than 10,000 last autumn, with mental health being increasingly cited by parents as the main reason, according to official figures. The statistics published by the Department for Education (DfE) showed that 92,000 children were recorded as being home schooled on one day last term, compared with 80,900 at the same point in autumn 2022 ..read more

Department for Education estimates 97,000 children were home educated in 2023 summer term, 11,000 more than previous term More than one in 100 children in England were homeschooled last summer term, with many parents citing lifestyle or “philosophical reasons” for abandoning traditional classrooms. New estimates by the Department for Education (DfE) show that 97,000 children were home educated in 2023’s summer term, an increase of 11,000 compared with the 86,000 home educated at the start of 2023 ..read more

Labour has proposed more rigorous oversight of the system, but it should go even further What happens when a parent’s right to decide how to bring up their child comes into conflict with that child’s right to a safe, fulfilled life? Happily, there is usually no such dilemma. But where there is, one of the most fraught questions about the power of the state to intervene in the privacy of family life is posed. There are very good reasons to be wary of the state’s over-involvement in the parent-child relationship: in the words of Lady Hale, the former president of the supreme court, “in a to ..read more

Legislation would put legal duty on councils to keep register of children not in school amid historically high absence levels A Labour government would legislate for a compulsory national register of home-schooled children as part of a package of measures designed to tackle the problem of persistent absence in schools in England. The proposed legislation would place a legal duty on councils to keep a register of all children who are not in school, and on parents to provide information about their child’s education at home ..read more

More US families are choosing to home-school, meaning removing access to mandated reporters and lack of education monitoring As more people in the US choose to home-school their children, experts have warned that the lack of oversight over the process leaves children at risk of isolation, receiving a poor education, or suffering abuse and neglect. The number of Americans choosing to home-school has more than doubled in some states since the Covid-19 pandemic. While that represents a small minority of American children as a whole, the rise in children being home schooled has troubled both acade ..read more

Trump is calling for support of home schooling and tax breaks for providing scholarships for private and religious schools Beyond the tumult surrounding Donald Trump’s presidential bid and his threats to seek revenge against his political enemies should he win, the Republican frontrunner has seized on an issue that even some Democrats say could attract new voters in 2024. Trump is backing “school choice” programs that use taxpayer dollars to send students to private and religious schools. It is a stance with wide appeal as parents have become increasingly fed up with the state of US public edu ..read more

My wife, Sarah Guthrie, who has died aged 80, was involved in setting up a pioneering lunchtime theatre project in the 1960s before home educating our four daughters and establishing an organisation to help other parents do the same. She went on to teach young asylum seekers and children unable to attend school while simultaneously maintaining a career as a cartoonist for various magazines ..read more