This week need not be back-to-school week. Parents as well as their kids can benefit from home education

It is back-to-school this week. All over the country, stressed parents made last-minute dashes to the shops to force children to try on clumpy school shoes. Then they got up early, hurried their children into cars or on to buses, got stuck in jams, arrived later than intended and said a rushed goodbye. Then they found that the children had gone. Relief may have been mixed with melancholy, loss and a hope that the children were all right behind those high windows, told what to do by strangers.

The return to school is a well-established part of the journey of life. It seems normal, right and inevitable. But actually it is none of these things. Yes, it is normal in the early 21st century. But if modern civilisation started about 10,000 years ago, this way of treating children has been “normal” only for the last 2 per cent of the time. It is a new, artificial construct designed to provide education at low cost. It certainly was not created to provide a pleasant or socialising experience for children.

Schools are not clearly “right”, either. People tend to think that what everyone does and what they themselves experienced must be right. But there is nothing obviously ideal about delivering your children to other people who do not love them as you do, and who are likely to teach them things with which you may disagree. And sending children to school is not inevitable. Under the law, children must be educated. But they do not have to be educated at a school. There is another way.

Home education is not for everyone - not even a large minority. It is a luxury in most cases. The parent who becomes a home teacher earns no money. There have to be savings, or partners, husbands or wives must be willing to pay the bills. But lots of well-educated wives do not work and could save money by home educating. For those who can find a way, home-educating is a glorious, liberating, empowering, profoundly fulfilling thing to do. Far more people should try it. At present it is estimated that about 50,000 children are taught this way. The number has jumped from a decade ago but is still very few compared with America.

I have just finished two years of teaching my younger daughter, Alex, now 11. We have become very close. Many fathers see their children at supper time and a bit more at weekends. Alex and I were with each other all day, every weekday, in all sorts of places and circumstances. We knew and shared thoughts, ideas and feelings. I believe the closeness that we developed will benefit our relationship for the rest of our lives.

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Many teachers say they are concerned about "hidden" surveillance cameras located in their schools.

A snapshot survey of 249 primary and secondary school teachers suggested 84.6% had CCTV in their school.

The research, conducted by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), also suggested more than half - 52.9% - said it made them feel safer.

But 23.4% were concerned there may be hidden cameras whose existence was kept from both staff and pupils.

Tonia Matthews, a teacher at Trinity secondary school in Newbury, Berkshire, said: "Students feel secure to know if there has been an incident, i.e. bullying.

"We can then go back and look what happened."

Although 97.6% of teachers said CCTV was primarily used for security purposes, 49.5% said it was used for monitoring pupil behaviour.

Many schools have CCTV cameras and some are in classrooms.

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Students who started university in the UK last year can expect to owe more than £17,500 by the time they leave, according to an annual poll on debt.

The Push survey of 2,000 students also suggests that the average debt tops £4,500 for each year of study - nearly 10% more than last year.

The rise suggests students are being badly hit by the credit crunch.

Another poll of 3,385 students for the National Union of Students found many under-estimated their living costs.

According to the NUS survey of 3,135 current students and 250 would-be students, they spent £710 a year on groceries when they expected to spend £510.

They spent £740 on household bills but thought they would spend £580 and £100 more on travel than the expected sum of £285.

Student fees have massively increased student debt.

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This week my daughter brought home a letter from Chipping Campden school informing parents that they intend to introduce a fingerprint registration system. With the growth in the use of these technologies within schools, I hope that all aware and caring parents would think deeply about what is being proposed before their children are also asked to participate. Although under current legislation no permission need be sought from parents or children for such proposals, it is important to note that participation cannot be coerced.

The use of "surveillance" technology is becoming more widespread and we are encouraged to accept the routine intrusion, with the consequent threat of identity theft. Children are being encouraged to give up their personal and biometric data without fully understanding the issues involved and the long-term wider implications.

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British children are being "demonised" by a society that is locking too many of them up, according to watchdogs.

The joint report by children’s commissioners for all parts of the UK said attitudes towards youngsters were hardening across the country.

The experts said crime committed by children had fallen between 2002 and 2006, but the numbers criminalised had gone up by just over a quarter.

Their conclusions are part of a United Nations review of standards in the UK.

The four commissioners were appointed in a move to ensure children’s rights are more effectively recognised by policy-makers.

An anti-teen sonic device was criticised by watchdogs

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Moshe Kai Cavalin likes to tell about the time his father took him to take his college entrance test. The administrators told his dad he couldn’t bring an 8-year-old with him into the test room. His father told them the boy was going in alone — because he was the one taking the test.

“They were smiling … thought he was telling a joke,” Moshe told TODAY’s Ann Curry Wednesday in New York. But when Moshe’s scores came back, the administrators were suddenly telling his dad something else — that Moshe needed to be taking advanced mathematics.

And so, on a day when other kids his age are in the final week or two of fifth grade, 10-year-old Moshe was visiting New York and off for the summer, having just completed his second year at East Los Angeles College, a community college.

Moshe Kai Cavalin

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They are sparky, enthusiastic and imaginative, yet have never seen the inside of a school. David Robson meets the ‘home-eds’

How many A* GCSEs would Chung Chung Stockman achieve if she were receiving a conventional education? Twelve? Fifteen?

Chung Chung is 10, going on 11, going on 18, one of those sweetly precocious children who make your heart dance with their wide-eyed curiosity about the world.

"I’ve got a theory," she tells me, "but I don’t think you’ll understand it." Cue a fascinating, breathless discourse on the nature of education.

She’s right: I don’t understand her theory. It’s too idiosyncratic. But I know a clever cookie when I see one.

Hua Hua, her eight-year-old brother, is no slouch either. My eye strays to the bookshelves of the converted warehouse in Rotherhithe where they live, opposite a film studio. Good grief, Hua Hua isn’t reading Proust, is he?

Child’s play: the delightfully confident Hua Hua

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School-leavers should be encouraged to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen and country, says a report commissioned by Gordon Brown on British citizenship.

Report author, ex-attorney general Lord Goldsmith, says it would give teenagers a sense of belonging.

Council tax and student fee rebates are suggested for people who volunteer - as well as a "Britishness" public holiday.

The PM’s spokesman said he welcomed the "interesting" review, adding that it had sparked "quite a lively debate".

However, John Dunford from the Association of School and College leaders said the citizenship ceremony was "a half-baked idea".

Lord Goldsmith wants a British national day by 2012.

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Fraser Nelson reports on the radical Swedish system of independent state schools, financed by vouchers, that has transformed the country’s education performance and is now inspiring the Conservative party’s dramatic blueprint for British schools: to set them free.

This summer, at least 25,000 children will drop out of English schools without a single qualification to show for their years of compulsory education. Some 240,000 will graduate from primary school unable to read or write properly. By autumn, some 250 schools judged to be failing will welcome an intake of new pupils. Youth unemployment will probably hit an 11-year high. It will, tragically, be just another year in one of the world’s highest-funded education systems.

Two strategies are available to David Cameron in addressing this scandal, should he get to No. 10. He could perform his own surgery on the comprehensive system pretending, as all prime ministers pretend, that he can actually control it. The Local Education Authorities, with whom the power rests, would almost certainly ignore him, as they did Tony Blair. But the second policy would be a new one. He would invite anyone to set up a new state school, run it independently of government, and receive a sum likely to be more than £6,000 a pupil.

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· Tests and targets make parents seek alternatives
· Pupils in England ‘most tested in the world’

Parents are increasingly seeking alternative forms of education such as home schooling or Steiner schools to free their children from the state sector’s regime of testing and targets, academics suggest today. Most English pupils now start formal learning at four years old, among the youngest in the world, and go on to be the most tested throughout their education, according to a series of in-depth reports which will feed into a major review of primary schooling by Cambridge University.

Many parents are now considering alternative forms of education and more are opting to home-educate their children. The government should learn from the way children are taught in alternative settings such as Steiner schools where they learn through play, the academics say.

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