Home schooling <sic> enriching

[frockery]

Letter to The Telegraph, 22 January 2009.

Note the newspaper's use of 'home schooling' in its heading when the correspondent refers to 'home education'.

Home schooling <sic> enriching

SIR – Baroness Morgan, the children’s minister, says that, in extreme cases, home education could be used as a cover for abuse, neglect, forced marriage, sexual exploitation or domestic servitude (report, January 21). There are absolutely no statistics to back up this claim. It would seem that the Government just wants to regulate home education in its typically heavy-handed manner.

The studies into home education tend to point to the fact that, on average, these children do better academically than state-schooled children. They also have more rounded characters, as they are able to interact outside their peer groups.

This Government held a consultation on home education in 2007, but apparently it now needs another one so urgently that it can only provide four weeks for it. Is it because they did not get the result they were after the first time?

If you ask home-educated children, they would tell you how enriching it is.

Dr Ian Walkington
Madeley, Cheshire