Estimated numbers of home educators

[LovingHomeEd]

Hi, I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the right section so please feel free to shift it if necessary.

One thing that occured to me as I was reading the 2009 report from the Select Committee is the estimate of home educators - 20,000 to 80,000. Is there no way of establishing how many children live in the UK and how many are registered in schools? I know not being registered wouldn't necessarily mean the child is being educated at home, but I would have thought it would give a slightly clearer picture rather than estimates that vary so enormously. Did they publish last time how they arrived at the estimates? I didn't see it in the main report but I haven't read all the additional info yet so perhaps it is in there?

Just curious about this, it just seems odd that they don't have a more precise figure about the number of children who aren't registered with a school (seeing as they know everything about everybody now!).

[Dad23]

Subtracting children absconding from school and children in school from the figure for all children* in the country would seem to indicate how many children are in HE.

Downside: The govt would have to collect even more stats and require private schools to link up with a govt database to keep the govt up-to-date with numbers (and names?!) of children registered in the private sector.

*The fact that the UK has no exit control at borders, and we have no idea how many people / children live here, isn't a great starting point for using this method.

[LovingHomeEd]

Originally Posted by Dad23

Subtracting children absconding from school and children in school from the figure for all children* in the country would seem to indicate how many children are in HE.

Downside: The govt would have to collect even more stats and require private schools to link up with a govt database to keep the govt up-to-date with numbers (and names?!) of children registered in the private sector.

*The fact that the UK has no exit control at borders, and we have no idea how many people / children live here, isn't a great starting point for using this method.

Thanks for the info, D23. I can see it being virtually impossible to have exact numbers of anything, but I still find it a bit odd that the estimate varies by tens of thousands? They must have the number of families receiving child benefit? I know you don't have to claim CB and that some claims are fraudulent, but would it give them a reasonable idea of how many children are of compulsory education age? Presumably they could require private schools to submit their number of students each year, along with LA figures of students? I can understand an estimate being out by 1,000 - saying it's between 19 and 20,000 seems more understandable than having a gap of 60,000. They must have a reason for arriving at those figures? I find it very confusing!

[Dad23]

To me a gap of 60,000 seems a bit on the low side, artificially low maybe to cover the fact that nobody has the blindest idea.

Estimates of the number of illegal immigrants in the country vary from about 200K (Labour) to over a million (Daily Mail). Included in there are children. Whether those children are in full time education or not, their (uncounted) presence corrupts the figures as the government of the day has no clue about the total number of children in the country. Even if the dept logged every child in state + private education, they need to deduct that from a total figure to arrive at the number out of school. The total figure they have is little more than a wild guess that's off by several hundred thousand or maybe a million or two.

To the extent you underplay the total number of children in the country you undercount the numbers in HE as the HE figure is a remanent figure. My estimate is that the figure is well over 100K.

[llondel]

The number quoted depends on what the argument is and which side is putting its case. If you're opposing measures, quoting a higher number that makes it expensive to implement is good, whilst the supporters will be quoting a low number. When trying to rabble-rouse for Something To Be Done, a politician will use a high number because it makes the 'problem' much more serious.

[LovingHomeEd]

Thank you for that. So with that in mind, does anyone have an idea of how many people home educate or are all the numbers quoted just guesses?

[elizm]

Well my children think that everyone who doesn't go to school is "home educated" so take the entire population minus those who attend school there 's your answer. You might want to exclude those at university too but that's not compulsory so therefore debatable.