Children don't have to go to school. What the law requires is that they receive an appropriate education - and many parents are convinced that the best way of providing this is to teach their children at home.

Some parents feel their children simply can't cope with the rough and tumble of school life; others teach children at home because they regard orthodox schooling as a joyless, uninspiring and inefficient way of educating youngsters.

There's no official register of children educated at home, so it's impossible to say exactly how many there are in the UK. Estimates range from the Government's conservative figure of 25,000 to a staggering 150,000 - that's one per cent of the school age population. According to one BBC report, home based education is proving increasingly popular in Wales.

Now that the internet is offering a growing range of educational resources which are every bit as good as those available in schools, many more parents will be tempted to teach their children at home. Before making that decision, they'll need to think hard about, not only the obvious advantages, but also the serious disadvantages.

To find out more, visit the websites of various organisations devoted to home education.

The advantages of home education

Children who are educated at home

• receive far more individual attention than they would in an ordinary classroom
• can learn at their own pace, and follow their own interests, unhampered by the National Curriculum which home learners are not required to follow.

Advocates of home education say this means children are better motivated and have greater self-discipline. Research carried out at Durham University indicates that children are also likely to make far better academic progress than their peers who attend ordinary schools. In an article in the Times Educational Supplement, parents outline some of the other advantages.

Disadvantages of home education

Critics of home based learning worry that

• children miss out on the opportunities at school to interact with their peers and develop social skills.
• parents will not be aware of the latest educational developments.
• children can't take advantage of laboratories, gyms and other school resources.
• the breadth of children's learning and their progress will not be adequately monitored - especially as they do not have to follow the National Curriculum or take SATs.

Advice and practical help for home educators

The Government's guidelines
Advice from the Department for Education and Skills (DfES)

Organisations
Home Education - contains a wealth of resources and links to other pages
Education Otherwise - so named because the Education Act states children must receive an education either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.
Home Education Advisory Service - offers subscribers, among other things, a quarterly newsletter and an advice line.

For parents interested in pooling resources to set up their own informal school:
Human Scale Education - an independent monthly publication for home educators

Useful books
Free Range Education - how home education works, Edited by Terri Dowty, £12.99 - Hawthorn Press

Learning Unlimited, Roland Meighan, £7.95 - Educational Heretics Press

Doing It Their Way, Jan Fortune-Wood, £11.95 - Educational Heretics Press

Read Tracey Griffith's experience of Home Education.

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