PARENTS who teach their children at home are fighting proposals which they believe will erode the freedom of home education.

New Government legislation in the Children, Schools and Families Bill would allow local authorities to visit the estimated 50,000 home educated children and parents every year. It would force parents to register to home educate their children each year and grant their local authority the ability to revoke permission if the parent refuses to cooperate with its demands. Unregistered children would then be required to attend school by law.

But the rules would also require parents to agree to home inspections each year and that their would be interviewed in private.

Moreton-in-Marsh mum Jo Matthews said: "The Government wants to change the law so that inspectors can come into our own homes, test our children and interview them on their own. We are being made criminal sin our own country."

Pam Perryman of Chedworth is another home educator and said home education was as good as a school education as it could be tailored to the individual needs of the child.

"I have home educated my 14 and 22 year old from scratch with no interference from the state," she said. "My eldest gained a first class honours degree from Imperial College in Computing and Maths and now has an excellent job with a local games development company."

There are also concerns that the move would lead to increased costs for local authorities because of the home visits. In the first year these are estimated at £20-£99million across the UK.

A group of parents from across the Cotswolds have now enlisted the help of Cotswold MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown who has agreed to deliver a petition to Parliament asking the Government to abandon changes to laws governing home education.

"There is the issue of the inspection regime to see if children are being treated properly," he said. "The law is okay as it is at the moment."

A spokesman for the Cotswolds campaign said: "Quite a lot of children are withdrawn from school because they have learning difficulties that the school cannot deal with and some because they have been abused and bullied by other school children. Without the freedom to home educate these children would have a very unhappy childhood."