OPINIONS AND LIFESTYLE SURVEY: Characteristics of Home Educating Families in the UK

Summary: Emma Smith is a professor of Education at the University of Leicester, and Jeanette Nelson was a doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham. In this article they use the results of an omnibus survey to provide an empirical look at home education in the UK.

The researchers chose to use the monthly Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) because there is no national register of home educated children, and it is thus difficult to achieve a random sample of home educating families. The OPN stratifies by four layers: region, the proportion of households with no car, the proportion of people of a higher socio-economic class, and the proportion of people who are aged over 65. Data is collected through face to face interviews with a trained interviewer. After up to about 8 visits at different times and days of the week, the survey ends up achieving about a 60% response rate.

Before discussing the results of the survey, Smith and Nelson discuss the preexisting literature on home education in the UK. The UK does not have many regulations for home education. Schooling is compulsory, but school attendance is not. Parents are not required to notify the government of their intention to home educate their children if the children have not previously attended school, and there is little oversight in terms of the quality of education that children receive, the curriculum that they are taught, or the number of hours that they receive instruction. While the government demonstrated concern for the possibility of child abuse (see a longer discussion of this topic here) when they commissioned the Badman Review in 2009, the home education community has successfully blocked any attempts at change.

The lack of regulation makes it difficult to determine the number and characteristics of home educating families in the UK. Researchers agree that the true number of homeschooling children lies somewhere between 45,250 and 150,000. There is not a good understanding of the characteristics of home educating families because studies are often conducted of small samples that lack generalizability. However, the studies do show that home educating families can be quite diverse. They are not limited to a particular political orientation or geographic location. Previous studies have found that the parents tend to be well-educated, with about 40% of families containing a university-trained teacher.  They also tend to be larger, with over 60% of families having 3 or more children. Common reasons for home educating in the UK include disappointment with education and schools, ideological reasons, mental stress on the child due to depression or bullying, peer pressure, and parents’ own negative school experiences.

After this orientation Smith and Nelson begin discussing the results of the OPN survey. In the survey respondents were asked if they had ever homeschooled their child or children. The question was included in the survey for 6 months, during which time a total sample of 6,135 households responded. Out of this number, there were 52 respondents who homeschooled their children. This leads to an estimate that around 1.3% of the UK’s school population is home educated. Within this, .2% of the sample reported that they fully home educate their children. 1.1% said they partially home educated their children. These estimates are in line with the previous research.

In terms of characteristics, home educators appear quite representative of the population as a whole. 86% of home educating respondents identified as White British, which is the same proportion as in the larger sample and the UK’s population as a whole. Overall the OPN survey claims that there are no statistically significant differences between the home educating community and the sample as a whole. While the data shows a slight tendency for home educators to be better educated and more likely to hold a managerial or professional occupation than the population as a whole, the study does not have the sample size to back this up.

Respondents were also asked to provide the main reason that they choose to home educate their children. The most common reason for home educating children (43%) was school related issues like bullying or dissatisfaction with the school. The second most common reason (26%) was logistic issues like the family moving abroad or a family from another country moving to the UK. In third place with 23% of the respondents was the special circumstances category. This includes children that are homeschooled because of health or special needs related reasons. Finally, less than 5% of the respondents said that they home educated for philosophical or religious reasons.

Appraisal: While this article is welcome because of the shortage of empirical research on home educated students in the UK, Smith and Nelson do not break new ground in their limited questioning. They reaffirm the estimated number of home educated students as well as their characteristics and motivations, but without greater depth, their research leaves a lot of questions unanswered. For example, they only asked about the primary motivation for homeschooling, but families will frequently give several reasons for educating their children at home. Also, they did not do a good job of sorting serious home educators from people who might have only done it for a year with one of their children. Basic questions about the number of children who were home educated and for how long would be crucial for future studies. In addition, their survey is susceptible to issues that are common to all surveys. While a 60% response rate is pretty good, homeschoolers have a tendency of being less trusting of the government and people who knock on their doors asking for information. There is a potential bias against more conservative home educators who might be less willing to divulge this information.  Nevertheless, it is good to have some actual data on UK homeschooling based on something more than small convenience samples.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in reviews are not the official views of ICHER or of its members. For more information about ICHER’s Reviews, please see the «About these Reviews» Section.