A strategy to encourage home educated children back into school and to support those who don’t return is being developed for Ceredigion.

The county council’s team leader from the education inclusion service, Catrin Petche, gave members of the learning communities overview and scrutiny committee an update last week.

Ceredigion has the highest number of home-educated pupils in Wales. “The number of compulsory school-age pupils currently known to be electively home-educated within Ceredigion is 186,” a council spokesman said.

The authority wants to reduce that and 10 have gone back to school since September.

Ms Petche said: “We firmly believe that the educational needs of children within Ceredigion can be met within the school provision available but also respect the rights of parents who wish to home-educate.”

This is conditional on children being provided a standard of education in accordance with their “age, aptitude and ability”.

The strategy is currently being consulted on with stakeholders, the committee was told, and it aims to better support and engage with families enrolling their children back in school, as well as those who wish to remain at home.

She added that early intervention was important to avoid a situation where parents felt their only option was to home-educate.

There is a register of pupils taken out of school and the reasons why, added Ms Petche, and the service wants to increase visits to such families.

Another area to be strengthened will be exams and ensuring there is suitable places to sit them, although they are not required to follow a curriculum, committee chairman Cllr Odwyn Davies was told.

Performance is also not measured, and this was an issue for Cllr Mark Strong but he was told that warnings had been given to parents recently that the education being provided was not of a quality to meet the child’s needs.

“I believe it’s dangerous that there are some children in our county that are losing out like this, it’s a huge loophole,” he said, adding that representations must continue to be made to Welsh Government.

Children at risk of abuse while home-educated was raised, with concerns about those never registered at a school and potentially unknown to the authority unless through social services.

“My concern is that we have to be reactive not proactive,” said Cllr Alun Lloyd Jones.