Schools are driving parents into home schooling difficult pupils to boost their exam results and attendance records, experts have claimed.
Some schools had presented parents with pre-filled forms, requiring a signature to take full educational responsibility for their youngsters, officials said.
Children unhappy at school are more likely to play truant or disengage in lessons. Removing them from the roll would be an easy way to improve the performance of a school.
Graham Stuart, a Conservative MP and chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on home education, told The Times: “There’s evidence that parents with children who are presenting with behaviour problems are getting pre-filled forms sent to them to take their child out of school, which is scandalous behaviour. It definitely happens, it’s not just an isolated incident.”
Two council officials gave evidence to the Commons’ education select committee when Mr Stuart was chairman, saying that this had happened in their areas.
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Elaine Grant, the monitoring and support teacher for the London borough of Croydon, told the committee in 2012: “I try to work with schools to allow a cooling off period . . . because I only hear one side of it from the school. It is different when the parent comes and the child is being bullied and the school has written them a letter and said to the parent ‘sign it’.”
The parents often came to her office expecting a home tutor but she had to tell them that they had taken responsibility for the child’s education. She said: “They are absolutely horrified.”
Helen Sadler, who was home education adviser for Leicester council, said this happened not just in the authorities she had worked in. “ I have anecdotal evidence of it happening in other authorities,” she said.
Fiona Nicholson, a home education consultant, conducted Freedom of Information requests in 2014 which suggested that local authorities knew of 27,300 children being taught at home. Research by The Times indicates this has risen to almost 33,000 in less than two years.
A Department for Education spokeswoman said: “Schools are not allowed to offload pupils on the basis of academic performance. Moving a child is a decision made by the parent with the best interests of the child in mind. There are clear rules in place regarding exclusions.”