Pioneers of education at home toast their 25-year revolution

A charity that helps parents to educate their children at home celebrates its 25th anniversary this week.

Education Otherwise started with a meeting in a barn between six sets of like-minded parents and a former nun who wanted to find a husband and raise a family. Now an extimated 50,000 children learn out of school.

Iris Harrison, the charity's founder, says opinions on home education have had a sea change. The numbers involved are also growing as technology makes it an easier option. But Mrs Harrison can recall cowering in her home 25 years ago, fearful that council officials could arrive at any time to take her four children into care.

One day when she had to go out she even left her oldest son, Grant, at home with an air rifle with instructions to "shoot at their feet until I come home".

Now she is consulted by education department officials in Worcestershire, ironically the council that took court action against her all those years ago, and runs a helpline set up by the charity for other parents wanting to follow her example.

The case of Mrs Harrison and her husband, Geoff, and their four children became a cause célèbre for parents who wanted to educate their children at home. She said Education Otherwise was launched soon after the legal challenge began. Since that first meeting, it has steadily grown and now has 3,500 members.

The rise is put down to an increase in the number of families dissatisfied with the state system realising they had the power to do something about their concerns. The success of the internet has enabled them to access materials that broaden their children's horizons and has made study at home much easier.

Official recognition of the value of home learning is also growing. Next week a pioneering scheme starts in three local education authorities combining to launch an online service to educate school phobics and excluded pupils. The authorities, Buckinghamshire, Hillingdon and Hounslow, have set up Notschool.net from the start of this term and estimate 60 pupils will be taught this way.

"We are taking up society's problems; helping children who cannot succeed in school," Mrs Harrison said. "I have had parents phone me and say, 'If I don't take my son out of school, he's going to end up as fodder for the penal system. He's so unhappy and withdrawn at school'. They start talking and they start crying. There are children who threaten suicide because of the bullying they suffer at school. Once they've taken the decision to take their son out of school, though, it's a great relief. They know they don't have to go back."

Education Otherwise takes its name from a clause in the 1944 Education Act, which states: "It shall be the duty of the parent of every child of compulsory school age to cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable to his age, ability and aptitude, either by full time attendance at school or otherwise."

The question of how the word "efficient" is interpreted has led to legal clashes of the kind the Harrisons experienced. Three of their four children – Wanda, now 36, Andrea, 35, Grant, 34, and Newall, 33 – were profoundly dyslexic. Wanda began running away from school after another pupil hit her and she elicited the unsympathetic response from a teacher: "Hit her back."

The other children soon wanted to be taught at home. But, the Harrisons said, an official from the local education authority told them the children would become socially isolated if they were home-educated. Court action aimed at penalising them for allowing the children to play truant followed.

During this, the family moved to a remote cottage in Scotland to evade detection and were at one stage planning to send their children to a friend in Sweden to avoid the nightmare of them being taken into care, which had been threatened.

Eventually, after years of legal hearings that ended in the High Court, an out-of-court settlement allowed them to educate their children at home. The children spent their days at their farmhouse near Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire gaining what their parents firmly believe was a far more practical education for life than would have been on offer in school. Andrea spent hours practising her violin, but Grant was more practical, repairing a Morris Minor they still have.

Iris and Geoff Harrison helped with their children's education, although they prefer to describe their efforts as "facilitating" rather than formal learning. Grant now works for the local social services department with disabled people, Newall manufactures kitchen units, Andrea is a shiatsu practitioner and Wanda trains people to use recycled waste in a project to help provide employment for people who have been in trouble with the law.

Mrs Harrison is convinced the trend towards home education will grow. "The world is a fast-changing place," she said. "Technology offers exciting possibilities. I was dismissed as an anarchist and very political 25 years ago but people are becoming more aware of the shortcomings of the school education system in providing for everyone."

Life-saver - when Jan Price's bullied son tried to kill himself she knew school was not for him

Jan Price was at her wits' end when her son tried to kill himself because he was being bullied at secondary school two weeks after he started there, and she is convinced he would have tried again if she had not immediately taken him out.

Now Jan is teaching three of her four children – William, aged 13, and daughters Rebekah, 14, and Antonia, 11 – at home in Firth Common, Worcestershire.

She says: "He was dyslexic and at primary school the school refused to accept he needed extra help. He had been bullied and he couldn't cope with it when it happened at the high school. After he tried to commit suicide, I realised I couldn't take a chance. He would have gone through with it if I hadn't found out I could educate him at home."

Jan contacted the helpline and for the first time realised the law would allow her to teach her children at home and William was taken out of school. She was immediately confronted by Antonia who told her: "If William's at home, why can't I be?"

Rebekah stayed on for another year and a half until one day her mother heard her "come out with words I never knew she knew" and she admitted she had one voice for school and another for home.

"If I speak normally at school, they call me a snob," she confided.

The two girls do most of their learning through websites on the internet and can motivate themselves but Jan has to take more of a personal role in educating William. "His reading has improved," she said. "His writing on the computer is good, too, but he's more practical – a genius with electronics. He makes TV's that don't work, work.

Jan said she would have educated all her children at home if William's problems had emerged earlier. (Her eldest daughter is 17 and is at the local sixth-form college.) But she added: "It doesn't suit all children. A lot of children need the stability of a school and if you've got a good school and good teachers to go with it they might get a lot more from that."

Richard Garner