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"Significant" rise in home schooling

Thursday, 12 December 2024 17:23

By Ted Peskett - Local Democracy Reporter X @TedPeskettNews

There's been a “significant” rise in the number of parents known to be home educating their children in the Vale of Glamorgan over the past six years, a council official has said.

Vale Council’s acting lead inclusion manager, Amanda Geddes, told a scrutiny committee meeting on Monday that although home education is on the rise, figures for the Vale are relatively low when looking at the whole of Wales.

Members of the learning and culture scrutiny committee also heard how the biggest reasons for parents deciding to home educate this year were lifestyle choice and anxiety.

Other reasons include bullying, medical needs, awaiting a place in a school of choice and parents deciding to continue home educating their children following the Covid-19 pandemic.

Vale Council is encouraging families not known to the local authority as home educating to approach them.

Ms Geddes said: "In terms of trying to find them, that is difficult. We work alongside our admissions team, so we have got young people who are in nursery but their parents haven’t applied for a primary place."

"Our admissions team let us know at that point. We also work alongside other local authorities, so if someone from the EHE community moved to one local authority to ours then we are notified that way and obviously schools have a process as well."

The number of children and teenagers being home educated who are known the to the council has gone up from 46 in 2018 to 176 in 2024.

However, Ms Geddes said that as of November 28th, the number of children and teenagers known to the local authority as being home educated was 207.

From 2020 to 2022, the number of children and teenagers known to the council as being home educated in the Vale went up from 87 to 134.

Despite it being difficult to find home educating families who don’t want to be known, Ms Geddes said engagement over the years has “significantly improved”.

Home educated learners who are deemed to meet the legal threshold for the quality of home education can also gain access to grant funding.

The funding, provided to the council by the Welsh Government, can be used to support home educated children and teenagers.

A council report presented to committee members on Monday stated that this is a reason for more home educating families choosing to engage with the local authority.

Vale Council carries out annual checks with home educated learners it knows about - these can take the form of face to face visits or virtual visits.

Parents of home educated learners can also submit reports to the council as part of its annual checks.

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