The COVID pandemic has led to a fundamental shift in the way parents view school, with many no longer viewing it as completely necessary.
Connor Parker
Updated Fri, October 6, 2023
There's been a growth in the number of parents who believe life experiences and seeing the world can be more beneficial than being in school all day. (SWNS)
What's happening? The alarming growth in the number of pupils absent from school is being supported by an increase in the number of parents who believe it's in their children's best interest to be taught at home.
The COVID pandemic has led to a fundamental shift in the way parents view school, with many no longer viewing it as completely necessary.
Research group Public First said many parents now "view attending school as one of several - often competing - options or demands on their child on a daily basis, against a backdrop of a more holistic approach to daily life."
This has led to alarm in the government who said more than a fifth (22.5%) of pupils were persistently absent – around double the pre-pandemic rate.
Many of the reasons there's been a rise in children being absent from school are due to physical and mental illness as well as poverty.
In response to this MPs have called for a reassessment in the approach to school absence and called for the government to offer more support for children who are struggling to afford going to school or need extra support due to a disability.
Read more: MPs urge consistent approach to fines as school absence rates ‘of great concern’ (PA)
But on top of this, there has also been a growth in the number of parents who believe it is in the best interest of their child to be taught at home.
Here Yahoo News UK speaks to some of the parents who have made the decision.
Educating on the road
Carl, Ruth and kids Maisie, Pippa and Marley in Bali with elephants in March 2023. (SWNS)
After struggling through the pandemic Carl and Ruth Jackson promised to make more use of their freedom so they sold their home and bought a campervan.
With it they travelled through Europe, taking their three children out of school to join them.
They left in November 2022, visited 28 different countries and returned in August this year.
Carl said he wanted his children to be "more open-minded."
They arranged to homeschool their children with their school and found the teachers were supportive of their move.
Carl told Yahoo News his eldest is now in secondary school, his youngest is in primary and the middle child is waiting for a placement.
He said he had no problem with the British schooling system and his decision to take his children on the trip was not a criticism of it.
Carl said he decided to take them out of school "to give them a little bit of a boost" and was confident all of his children were as advanced in learning as their peers.
He said he didn't think children being in school 9-3 every weekday was very "effective" and his experience of homeschooling was it was quite easy to "compact down the school day."
He said homeschooling can be very successful when the parents are responsible and committed to teaching their children everything they need to know.
Despite their success, Carl cautioned it is not an easy thing to do and it is not for everyone.
He said it could be "dangerous if some parents think they can take their kids out of school and think its an easy life."
"If it's handled correctly and you put the right time and effort into it at the very minimum it is equal to what they learn in school and has the potential to be much more.
"I think homeschooling can have a lot of benefits, but I don't think it's right for everybody, it probably isn't."
Read more: Parents don't believe children must be in school every day anymore (Sky News)
'Deschooling'
(SWNS)
Bethany Bishop, 29, took her oldest son, six, out of education in May 2023 and is now transitioning from learning at school to being educated at home.
Bishop had trained to be a teacher but decided against getting a job in order to spend more time with her children.
She said her son struggled with home and writing, leading him to not enjoying school.
This led her to taking her son out of school and she now teaches him at home.
Without the rigours of the 9-3 timetable, she lets him decide how to spend the day, whether that is lying in, helping with breakfast or spending an afternoon in the park.
She said her family were supportive of the idea and the only thing he misses is his friends, who he still sees.
Her child now has an unstructured learning schedule with every day being different.
She told Yahoo News UK her son is always learning and they no longer need to be educated purely from a textbook or whiteboard.
Bishop also said her son's reading is now more advanced than his peers and he reads every day without any encouragement from her.
She cautioned against every parent considering homeschooling because it's not a "one shoe fits all" situation.
But she added: "I do think there are issues with the school system and we force children to learn things sooner than they need to learn them."
She said at school parents don't have any say in the way their children are taught or what they are taught.
Bishiop said with homeschooling not only can the parents have more say over the way their child learns they can also listen to their children and spend time educating them in the way they want to be taught.
Read more: Warning over 'grossly inadequate' mental health support for schools (Sky News)
'Exams don’t prove how you are as a child'
Kelsey Hall and Rachel Andrew with their children on what should usually be a school day. (SWNS)
Kelsey Hall, 29, decided to deregister her son, Logan, seven, from school in March 2023 as he “hated” going.
Now she homeschools him with her sister Rachel Andrew, 24, and her children Mila, four, and Ronnie, two.
The pair don’t stick to a rota or schedule and won’t force them to read or study.
Instead, they do everything on the children's terms – spending time baking, at the beach and taking trips to places such as the police station - to teach the kids about everyday skills.
Kesley said Logan hated school and would take his uniform off every morning.
But now he is "happy and confident now. Everything we do is on his terms.
“We don’t have a rota or a schedule. We're trying to build his confidence.”
Rachel said she had been interested in homeschooling ever since her experience in education.
“I was forced to do lessons I wasn’t interested in at all. I had so many passions that I wanted to pursue.
“I’ve never used my GCSEs.”
Kelsey said they will give Logan the option to take his GCSEs if he’d like to – and can pay for him to sit them.
But they don’t want to pressure him into doing them or going to university.
She said: “Exams don’t prove how you are as a child. We're outside every day. Logan is more willing to learn."
Read more: Fines for parents taking their children out of school for holidays is just a cash cow (Yorkshire Post)
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