LONDON: Education campaigners demanded government action Friday after new figures revealed the number of children in England being homeschooled jumped more than 13 percent in one term last year.

The Department for Education (DfE) reported that around a quarter of parents involved said they were keeping children at home primarily as a “lifestyle choice” or for “philosophical or preferential reasons”.

That represented an increase on the start of the school year, when fewer than one in five gave those as their main motivations.

The homeschooling trend, which has intensified since Covid forced parents to teach their children for prolonged periods, has heightened fears that increasing numbers are missing out on quality education and socialisation.

“I think it is a surge — these numbers have skyrocketed over the last seven or eight years,” former children’s commissioner Anne Longfield, who now chairs the Centre for Young Lives think-tank, told BBC radio.