28th June 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Ofsted have issued a report highlighting the difficulties involved due to not knowing which children in the UK are home educated. In an article on the BBC website it’s stated that local authorities have a statutory duty to ensure that all students have a “suitable education”, but that without a register of those students who are tutored at home by their parents, it’s not possible to fulfil that duty.
It’s estimated that 50,000 students in the UK are home educated, and parents of these children were generally strongly opposed to the departing Labour government’s plan to monitor their children’s education more closely. This plan was scrapped shortly before the general election, but the recent Ofsted report has raised the issue again.
The report claimed that most parents choose to tutor their children at home because of bad experiences that they or their children have had at school, bullying being an important issue. Oftsed also said that the majority of home educated students are enthusiastic about their education, and that parents in general do a very good job.