A TINY team of officers is trying to keep track of 454 children in rural Dorset currently being educated at home – with a budget of only around £20,000.

And to make their lives more difficult they have no powers to enter homes or inspect the quality of education being offered – or not offered.

Numbers choosing home education in the county are rising – with 184 making the choice this year.

Some do it for philosophical reasons, but many opt out as they are disgruntled with what they see as a lack of support, or poor teaching, or because they have argued with the school.

The county council says there has been a gradual increase in those choosing to be educated at home since 2012 – although many return to secondary school at exam times. More than a hundred have done so this year.

A map before the county council’s safeguarding committee on Thursday revealed there are pockets of home educated children around the county, including Blandford, Verwood, and Christchurch.

'Virtual head' for home educated pupils, David Alderson, told the committee it was an "interesting" task keeping track of all the pupils across the county, with no powers to intervene unless there were safeguarding issues.

“The best way is to engage with the parents and carers and offer support wherever it is possible - we cannot enter a home without express permission, but we have got around 60 per cent of parents engaging with us,” he said.

The revelation prompted Cllr Bill Pipe to suggest lobbying to change the provision in the Education Act which excludes officers from checking on home educated pupils – a move the committee agreed with.

“It’s a stupid piece of legislation. We should lobby for the provision in the Act to be changed,” he said.

School exclusion officer Sylvie Lord said, nationally, the figures for home educated children had gone up by 200 per cent in the last three years – with pupils often ‘persuaded’ under threat of exclusion, or taken out by parents unhappy with what they were being offered. A third group were philosophically committed to the concept of home education, and a tiny majority took pupils out because they objected to some aspect of teaching – often sex education.

She said many parents did not realise they could ask for their children to be re-admitted to school at any time. She said the tiny support team offered help and support where it was invited.