Register for Home Education

Long overdue.
The quality of the education provided needs to be monitored properly as well.
The two children I encountered professionally who were home educated were withdrawn because of incidents involving knives at their homes, and the parents were fearful of official investigations when the children talked about it at school.
Both children returned years later, way behind in their education, and emotionally damaged.

My daughter home schools all her children. They all have varying degrees of autism, and cannot cope in mainstream education, yet none of them are considered to have severe enough problems to be eligible for special school education.
She has a yearly visit from the LEA to assess her teaching, and the children's knowledge. They go through all the work books and all her curriculum material. They asked where she sourced her teaching material, and how much it cost, if it wasn't a free resource.
At the last visit the lady from the LEA wrote down some of the websites my daughter had found for teaching geography and maths, so that she could pass them on to other parents struggling to find good teaching material.
In all the lady stayed for over four hours. Her inspection was very thorough.. My daughter was given a glowing report and told to keep up the good work.
My grandchildren do all sorts of other activities outside the home too. Kayaking, art group, folk group, and regular home school meet ups. The children have lots of friends, and none of them want to go back to school.
If the LEA found that the children's education was lacking, they can insist upon them going to school.

I was horrified that this didn’t exist already. I have no objection at all to home schooling and the support organisations I believe are excellent but the children need some external checks. At very least it’s a safeguarding issue not just an educational one

I think it would be good to have a register and suspect the media just looked for ones who objected. My niece homeschooled her 4 and was part of a larger organisation of home schoolers. In her case it was extremely successful.