'When I said Archie was educated at home, people thought I was bonkers'

Later, he will probably go for a walk in the park with his mother and younger sister Calli and when they come back the three might read a book together or build yet another castle out of Lego.

One of the growing number of children who are being taught at home, for Archie there will be no dreaded Sats exams and when the time is right he will likely bypass GCSEs and move straight to A-levels.

Home education has often been seen as the preserve of a few pushy parents bent on hot-housing their children into intellectual geniuses while their peers are still struggling with basic algebra.

However, recent years have seen a significant rise in the number of so-called ordinary families, disillusioned with the traditional education system, removing their children from the classroom. About 20,000

children in England are now educated at home, more than four times the number in 1999, and with official records poor or in some cases non-existent, many believe the figure could be as high as 50,000.

It was two years ago that Archie's mother, Louise Cantlay, joined the ranks of the home educators. She is not, she insists anti-school and the decision was not an easy one.

"When Archie was really little it never crossed my mind that he wouldn't go to school," says Louise, who worked in administration before having her family.

"We knew we lived just outside the catchment area of the primary school we wanted him to go to, but we were told it shouldn't be a problem.

"Unfortunately, Archie's intake year was oversubscribed and so we had to look at what else was available. My husband and I are both open-minded and we knew that you shouldn't write off a school just because it's not high up the league tables.

"However, when I went to the one closest to where we live, the parents were all smoking at the school gates and inside things were no better. I would never have felt happy about sending Archie there."

Louise did manage to secure a place for her son at another school, but Archie never settled and just before he was due to start full-time, the family decided to home educate.

"I have wondered since whether maybe I should have forced him to go," says Louise, who lives in a modest terrace house on the outskirts of York city centre.

"Maybe after a couple of months of tears and tantrums, he might have been okay, but the more I speak to people, the more I think we definitely made the right decision."

Parents have the legal right to educate their children at home. They don't have to stick to the national curriculum and are given free rein when it comes to how and what they teach. With local authorities not

receiving any government money to support home education, most are left to get on with it.

Checks are occasionally made to ensure parents are keeping to their side of the bargain, but for most the official visits are both rare and brief.

"There really is no support and sometimes the education authority can be positively unhelpful," says Louise, who had no previous experience of teaching.

"There is a lack of understanding about what home education is and why people want to do it.

"It even took us a little while to adjust, but once we did I don't

think any of us have looked back."

Free from the usual rigours of a timetable and the need to meet a set of arbitrary targets, Louise often takes Archie and three-year-old Calli to museums and are frequent visitors to the local library.

"When I first took Archie out of school, people who we met in the street would often ask if he was ill," she says. "When I explained he was being educated at home, I could tell most people thought I was bonkers, so now I tend to change the subject.

"When you're not controlling a class of 30-something children you can be much more flexible about how the day pans out. At first I did get the occasional waves of panic that perhaps I wasn't doing things right or that maybe Archie was falling behind, but when you realise how much ground you can cover in just half an hour, eventually you learn to

relax.

"In school, children are often made to feel like failures if they can't read and write by a certain time. They are under an awful lot of pressure and big assumptions are made about their likely achievements at an incredibly young age.

"At home, Archie can develop at his own pace and that kind of freedom simply can't exist in a school. He's always had an appetite for maths, but like many boys of his age, his handwriting was not great. I knew eventually he would get the hang of it and he has. He didn't need to practise day in day out and he didn't need to be told he was doing it wrong, he just needed to be given a little time and encouragement."

Children who are home educated are often seen as being somehow socially dysfunctional. It's a stereotype reinforced by the kind of prodigies who tend to hit the headlines.

However, for every maths prodigy whose childhood seemed to have been sacrificed for intellectual success, there are thousands of others who emerge from home schooling unscathed.

"Archie goes to Beavers, he goes to karate classes and he has lots of friends who go to school," says Louise. "There's a tendency for people to think children who are home educate are either absolute brain boxes or totally out of control.

"The truth is that most of them are just normal kids."

With the family surviving on just one income, Louise knows that at some point she may have to go back to work. She is hoping to find a job which will allow her to continue home educating and while she knows that might not be easy, with a bit of lateral thinking she believes there is a happy compromise to be had.

"Some schools will allow a child to attend lessons two or three days a week and be at home the rest of the time," says Louise. "That might be the answer, but it's very dependent on the support of individual headteachers.

"I know a lot of parents can't wait until their children go to school, but for me being so closely involved in their education is a real privilege."

'For some, THIS schooling isn't a luxury, it's a necessity'

Most parents of four boys breathe a small sigh of relief when the school holidays come to an end. Rachael Leiby has no such respite and she couldn't be happier.

Six years ago, shortly after the birth of her youngest child, Joseph, Rachael who lives with her partner in Bielby, near Pocklington, found herself struggling to juggle the needs of her growing family. The morning school run turned into something of a nightmare and when each day began to feel more chaotic than the last, Rachael pressed the pause button and looked for an alternative.

"I had a couple of friends who were already home educating and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense," she says. "At the time my eldest two, Robert and Thomas were eight and six. They were doing fine at school, but as soon as I took them out everything just clicked into place and now I don't think I could ever go back.

Like many home educators, Rachael is a believer in autonomous learning. It's a philosophy likely to send a cold shiver down the spines of head teachers everywhere, but effectively it means the child decides what topics or subjects interest them. "I never wanted to be seen as a teacher in the traditional sense," says Rachael. "If the boys show an interest in a particular subject then I will do everything I can to encourage it, but I would never force them to learn anything."

The lack of compulsory lessons in English and maths has its detractors and the Government is considering changing the legislation relating to home education. The new guidelines are under consultation, but if they do go ahead, many fear the freedom home schooling families enjoy could be severely curtailed.

"The initial review showed a complete lack of understanding about the very basics of home education," says Rachael.

"The reason people take their children out of school is because they want to try a different way of doing things, but there are some people who want every child to learn exactly the same things at exactly the same time.

"For many, children, school isn't the best days of their life, it's the worst. For some, home schooling isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. All of my boys have a real love of learning and I know for them it was absolutely the right thing to do."