The Children’s Commissioner for England has called for a compulsory register of “off the grid” children following a huge increase in children disappearing from schools to be educated at home.
Almost 60,000 children in England are being home schooled at any one time and the number of children who are known by councils to be home educated was 27% higher in 2018 than in 2017.
It has risen by 20% in each of the last five years – doubling since 2013/14.
However precise figure remain unknown because parents do not have to register home-educated children. It is thought there could be as many as 20,000 more children educated at home at some point in the year.
In a report published by Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, to coincide with a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary “Skipping School: Britain’s Invisible Kids”, which will air on Monday, new data shows that off-rolling could be responsible for the increase.
Off-rolling is a practice that sees students taken off the register using informal exclusions, to ensure results are not brought down.
Analysis by the Children’s Commissioner’s Office suggests that a small number of schools could be causing the spike.
Nine out of ten schools saw no more than two referrals into home education a year, but for a minority of schools it can be more than 15 a year. New data from 11 local areas shows a 48% rise in the number of children withdrawn from schools into home education between 2015/16 and 2017/18.
Hackney in London was one of the 11 areas the study looked at. Between 2016/17 and 2017/18, Hackney’s academies saw an increase in children moving into home education of 238%.
The office also found that off-rolling was a concern to councils, with 88% saying they were worried about it, and that one in five children withdrawn from school have Special Educational Needs. The majority of councils (92%) also say they do not feel they have enough powers to assure the safety of home-educated children.
Longfield said that there are many parents who make a positive philosophical choice to educate their children at home, and do an excellent job but that this is not always the case.
There are tens of thousands of children in England receiving no school education. Many of them are ‘off-grid’, invisible to local authorities, she said.
Other parents have admitted they feel they have no choice but to home-educate and are struggling without help.
Longfield said: “Our investigations have revealed thousands of children are ‘off the grid’ because they are being home schooled. The numbers are rocketing and no-one knows how they are doing academically or even if they’re safe.
“Many parents who make a philosophical decision to home educate provide their children with a high quality education. But there are many other families who have ended up home educating for other reasons, and are struggling to cope. Many of these children are very vulnerable, have Special Educational Needs, or are unable to cope with a ‘one size fits all’ school system.
“Schools should be for all children, including those with complex needs and those who struggle academically.”
She said it was important to know who these children are, where they are, whether they are safe and if they are getting the education they need to succeed in life.
“There is a clear case for the Government to introduce a compulsory register for all home-educated children, without delay,” she added.
Later this year the Children’s Commissioner’s Office plans to collect data from all councils in England and publish it, school by school, identifying which schools have high numbers of children being withdrawn into home education which may suggest practices of off-rolling.
A spokeswoman for the department for education said that unofficial exclusions are illegal regardless of whether they are done with the agreement of parents or carers and regardless of the age of the pupil.
She said: “Where a pupil is asked to leave the school, the formal exclusions process set out in the school exclusion guidance must be followed. Where children are being home educated, we know that in the vast majority of cases parents are doing an excellent job.
“We also know, however, that in a very small minority of cases children are not receiving the standard of education they should be, which is why last year we ran a call for evidence on proposals to introduce a register, as well monitoring of provision and support for home educators. We will respond to that in due course.”