Home Ed Soars in Hastings as Schools Falter
JAMES PRENTICE AND HUGH SULLIVAN
School pupils returned to classrooms across Britain last week for the new academic year. In advance, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson issued a national warning to parents about absentee levels: “Every day of school missed is a day stolen from a child’s future,” she declared in a BBC interview.
But in Hastings over 1,400 school-age pupils were not in class at all in 2024/25. According to figures obtained from East Sussex County Council (ESCC), 1,221 of them had been opted out of both state and private schools and were registered as being ‘elective home-educated’. In addition, there were other children categorised as ‘missing in education’ – 200 of these in 2023/24. Figures for last year are not yet available, but if the trend of the last four years was not reversed, that number will have been even higher – and will be higher yet this autumn for both ‘home ed’ and ‘missing’.
The exodus from mainstream schooling has been taking place over at least ten years. In 2015/16 the number of home-eds in the borough was 356. The top graph on page 4 reveals a steady rise since then, accelerating during the Covid pandemic and briefly checked in its aftermath, but gathering pace again over the last three years. The graph below on the same page shows that, over this latter period, it is principally the pupils of secondary school age (Year 7 and above) who have been staying away.
The school most affected last year was Ark Alexandra Academy, with 94 new home ed cases among its former pupils (compared to 18 in 2015/16). But the trend has been increasing even faster at both St Leonards Academy (57 last year compared to just 4 in 2015/16) and Hastings Academy (33 last year compared to 5 in 2015/16). Ten years ago, there was an even split between home eds of primary and secondary school ages. Now 70% are in the latter age range.
Some general reasons why parents and children opt out of school education are explored in the Opinion piece on page 4, whilst the potentially positive benefits of home ed are enthusiastically endorsed alongside by parents who have embraced that option. However, poor performance of Hastings secondary schools, as measured both by exam results and by Ofsted inspections, should also be taken into account.
In 2009 48% of pupils in Hastings and Rye obtained five or more GCSEs at grades A to C in Year 11. That compared to 50% in the UK as a whole. Over the 15 years since, the local percentage has stalled at similar levels (last year it was 51%) while the national average has steadily climbed (to 67% last year). Pupils classified as ‘disadvantaged’ on socio-economic scales have performed even worse – just 11% of them achieved this pass rate in Hastings, well below the average of similarly disadvantaged pupils elsewhere across the country.
As for overall Ofsted ratings, Ark Alexandra has languished in the ‘Requires Improvement’ category for the past 15 years. Over the same period, Hastings Academy has slipped from ‘Good’ to ‘Requires Improvement’, while St Leonards Academy has tumbled from ‘Good’ to ‘Inadequate’.
In April this year the Hastings District branch of the National Education Union (NEU) wrote to Hastings & Rye MP Helena Dollimore declaring that the education system in her constituency was “in crisis”, and warning that without immediate and sustained funding it would collapse.
The union described to her a local education picture of schools “pushed to the brink by years of underfunded pay awards”; SEND provision “collapsing with EHCP delays, tribunal cases and desperate families”; major buildings suffering from asbestos and RAAC defects; support staff receiving “poverty pay” while facing “unrealistic expectations”. The NEU called for an above-inflation pay award, for the restoration of local democratic controls, i.e. an abandonment of the academy system, and for the abolition of Ofsted.
Dollimore herself hosted a Schools Summit in July, bringing together 20 local headteachers of both primary and secondary schools, and officers from both the Department for Education and ESCC. She reported in the aftermath that “our educational inequalities are nothing short of a national scandal”, and declared that she would “keep standing up for young people in our area to get the best state education possible”. The evidence of the figures set out above is that, in the judgment of many parents, that’s not worth waiting for.
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