Home-schooling rules OK
From Stephen Patten Sir: I do wish Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth had looked a bit further afield when researching their article on city academies and the involvement of the private sector (Liberate schools', 10 February). There is a far more productive and economic private sector that they overlooked: parents. Homeschooled children, if the research in the US is to be trusted, dramatically outperform their state-educated peers, by up to 40 percentiles. The cost is a tenth of that incurred by the state.
Instead of wasting taxpayers' money on encouraging parents to work, why don't politicians encourage them to stay at home and bring up and educate their children? Hang on! I know the answer to that one: there is a real danger that the generation educated by their parents might see through the cant of today's politicians and reject the politically correct nonsense that infests education in both state and private schools.
I write as a teacher with over ten years' experience in the state system.
Stephen Patten Ipswich, Suffolk
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