ALMOST 500 children in the Cumberland Council area are home educated amidst a national rise in the number of parents choosing to educate their children at home.

A growing number of parents are considering home-schooling their children to avoid the daily grind of the morning routine and school run.

New research reveals that 77 per cent of parents find school mornings stressful, and almost half often don’t feel like good parents during the morning rush.

This is contributing to almost a quarter of parents considering home-schooling their child permanently to escape the madness.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show a dramatic increase in home-schooling over the last two years, with numbers soaring by 11,100 year-on-year between the 2022 and 2023 academic years.

In the Cumberland Council area there are 490 children currently being home-schooled with 70 sets of parents citing mental health as the reason for choosing to educate at homes.

40 children are educated at home on philosophical grounds, 40 are educated at home for fear of Covid, 20 are educated at home for lifestyle reasons and 10 are educated at home due to bullying.

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Clare Emmerson from Penrith runs a Facebook group of home schoolers in Cumbria and said that mental health is very often the reason people choose to educate at home.

She said: "A significant number of people withdrawing their children from school are for mental health reasons. If someone calls the local authority saying they think they need to home educate, they give them my number.

"When I get those phone calls, I think without exception, over the last two years, every one of those calls has been mental health related.”