Parents are rushing to secure the services of tutors for the children
On Monday, Rae Burns made a decision she never imagined she would make. Over the Christmas holidays, the mother-of-three had suspected that surging rates of Covid-19 would force her children’s schools to close again.
The first lockdown was hard enough: Burns, 36, who was awaiting a hip replacement at the time, struggled with the rigmarole of supervising her three sons – aged eight, 10 and 13 – while also trying to manage her business from home.
The Brighton-based family is fairly academic (the boys’ father is a Cambridge graduate who works at Deutsche Bank), but the parents still found themselves having to brush up their own Maths skills before trying to explain it to their sons. “It was just so intense,” she recalls.
HOME schooling is on the rise in Hampshire since the start of the new school year, the county council has confirmed. Speaking to the Gazette, Cllr Roz Chadd, executive member for education and skills at Hampshire County Council said: “In Hampshire we have seen an increase in notifications of parents intending to electively home educate (EHE), since September 2020. “This is in line with most other local authority areas and is mostly linked to Covid-19. However, it reflects an acceleration of the steady increase in EHE numbers over the past 10 years.” Home Schooling Association UK (HSA), a network of home schooling families across the country, has also seen a 50 per cent increase in enquiries this year.