The council wants to visit families who are educating their children at home once a year, in order to ‘look after the welfare of children’. But Leslie Barson, who homeschooled her two children, denied that this is a ‘safeguarding issue’. She commented: ‘There is no duty on a local authority to approve home education – it’s a parental responsibility. This is about approving and monitoring. I feel an inspection is an illegal infringement of my rights as a parent. The law says I’m responsible for my children’s education. The authority’s responsibility starts if there’s evidence of a problem or a concern. They think our children are at risk because they are not being seen daily by a teacher. But children are not safe just because they are at school.’