Dr Alan Thomas, visiting fellow at the Institute of Education, said: "It is unclear how many children are being educated at home, as a DfES-funded study at the Institute of Education demonstrated. The numbers will only be ascertained if some kind of registration is made compulsory.
"However, a danger with registration is that it may lead to inappropriate monitoring, with formal schooling used as the yardstick of effectiveness.
"Most parents find that school methods are inappropriate at home and often adopt informal approaches: no set curriculum, no lesson planning (no lessons!), no assessment. There is no evidence that children educated informally are in any way disadvantaged, socially or intellectually. For this reason, home educating organisations should be fully involved in the monitoring process, as is the case in Tasmania.
"Home educators are the only group of people who are pioneering different philosophies of education and methods of learning. If everything has to conform to school, no progress will be made in understanding the nature of human learning."
Stakeholder Response: Secondary Heads Association
Martin Ward, deputy general secretary at the Secondary Heads Association, said: "Home education done well can be very effective.
"As sixth-form college principal I would enrol students every year who had been educated at home and who, whilst they might need to take an extra year to do their GCSEs before going on to A Levels were often then very successful.
"However, there are dangers, parents educating their children in this way need to take great care to make sure that they are covering all aspects of a full education, that they give their children opportunities to socialise with people of their own age, and that they instil a 'work-ethic' appropriate to the age and development of the child.
"Further, parents who take this line should be aware that it is a very expensive and demanding long-term project. Most such parents do take the education of their own children very seriously, work very hard at it, and are supervised by their local education authorities.
"Those parents who avoid such supervision are of concern, and their children deserve to have someone ensuring that they do receive a full education, so it may be that a regulation obliging parents to cooperate with LEA supervision would be apt."
