Why Folkestone Academy’s EHE Rate Is Triple the Kent Average

In a single year, 58 pupils left Folkestone Academy for Elective Home Education—6.6% of the school’s roll and more than three times the Kent secondary average. The numbers raise sharp questions about support, oversight and what happens to children once they step off the roll.

At 8.30 on a weekday morning, a register tells you who is present. It struggles to say much about who is no longer coming. At Folkestone Academy the absence is measurable: 58 pupils moved to Elective Home Education (EHE) in 2024–25, up from 54 the previous year. With a statutory roll of 873, that means 6.6% of the school population has left for EHE—more than three times the Kent secondary average of 2.0%. It is the equivalent of almost two full classes no longer present in lessons, options blocks or tutor groups.

EHE is not inherently a problem. Many families choose it deliberately and do it well. The concern here is the scale and concentration of exits at a single secondary, and the opacity that follows. Once a pupil deregisters, the local authority may make only informal enquiries. It cannot require proof of a full-time, suitable education or sit down with the child. In practice, the moment a pupil leaves the roll, the public record thins out dramatically. We do not see the curriculum they follow, the hours they keep, the exams they plan to sit or the support available if they have additional needs.

The academy’s figures arrive against a county backdrop in which EHE is rising and tends to be highest in areas with greater deprivation, a group that includes Folkestone. But the tables for Children Missing from Education (CME) this year do not feature Folkestone schools among the highest-risk lists. That distinction matters: CME is about children whose whereabouts or provision are unknown; EHE pupils are known to be at home. The problem is that, beyond that headline fact, we know too little about the quality of what happens next.

Why are pupils leaving? The dataset does not say. In other parts of Kent, familiar pressures recur: unmet special educational needs, anxiety and mental health, behaviour policies that clash with individual needs, the lingering effects of post-pandemic absence, and, sometimes, a considered philosophical preference for home education. Without consistent, light-touch information gathered at the point of exit and revisited six and 12 months later, the town is left to infer motives from trends. That is not good enough for families trying to make difficult decisions—or for a school attempting to plan provision.

There are straightforward remedies that sit entirely within local control. A “warm handover” at the moment of deregistration would give families a named contact and a practical checklist—intended as support, not surveillance—covering timetable, reading and maths progression, exam routes, safeguarding arrangements and wellbeing. A rapid multi-agency meeting before withdrawal could ensure that reasonable adjustments, therapeutic input and phased timetables are fully explored. And for those who later want to return, a dignified reintegration route—one that is published and actually used—would make clear that EHE is not a one-way door.

Transparency would help most. A termly Folkestone Academy dashboard, published without personal data, could show counts and rates, broad anonymised reasons where families consent to give them, and outcomes after six and 12 months. If numbers are rising because home education is working brilliantly for a group of pupils, the town should know that. If the data reveals drift, the town should know that too—and act.

The school day will continue to start at 8.30. The register will still show who is present. But as long as nearly two classes a year leave for EHE and disappear from view, Folkestone is working without a full picture. A good home education can be transformative; a lack of visibility never is. The fix is not complicated: see the children, support the families, and show the outcomes. Until then, the charts tell the story—a growing exit and a silence after it—and Folkestone has every reason to close that gap.

With Thanks To Peter Read

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is Not a Crime