Popularity of HE
From HomeEdWiki
How Popular is Home Education?
In the U.K. (as in many other countries) it is not known how many home educating families there are. As there is no specific need for registration in order to educate at home, then there are no official figures. Estimates range from 40,000 to 150,000, but home education organisations tend to suggest around 25,000 to 50,000 is likely.
In 2002/2003 there were approximately 10 million pupils in UK schools (both public and independent) - taking the estimate of 40,000 home educated children gives a figure of 0.4%, while 150,000 would be 1.5%.
(Reference for total pupil numbers: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=7297 )
Figures for Scotland
As Scotland does keep figures centrally, there are estimated numbers for home education here, although the number of home educated children known to be educated at home due to parental choice obviously does not include families who are not in contact with the local authority, so this will be an underestimate.
In 2006/7 there were 703 electively home educated children in Scotland, known to the local authority. Of these, 564 had been withdrawn from a local authority school and 139 had never attended a local authority school.
For comparison, in the same year there were 1,172 children being educated outside of school by the local authority, 956 of these due to prolonged ill-health or ill-health of a family member, and 216 for "other extraordinary circumstances" (this includes geographical remoteness, and some children of travellers).
And there were a total of 692,215 pupils in publicly funded schools, and 30,519 in independent schools (2006 figure).
So, in Scotland, only 703 out of a total of 724,609 "school-age" children are known to be home educated. Just short of 0.1%.
Even allowing for this being an underestimate, this is a very low figure compared with the estimates for England & Wales.This may be because some aspects of the education system in England & Wales which cause dis-satisfaction are dealt with very differently in Scotland - the Scottish 5-14 Guidelines are less prescriptive than the National Curriculum, the Scottish testing regime works on a much less stressful system than SATs, and the concept of "parental choice" of schools (which has proved to give little real choice) was not brought in.
(Reference for number of pupils educated outwith schools: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/11/19125551/10
Reference for total number of pupils: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/School-Education/TrendPupilNumbers)
