A tiny team of officers is trying to keep track of 454 children in rural Dorset currently being educated at home – with a budget of only around £20,000.

And to make their lives more difficult they have no powers to enter homes or inspect the quality of education being offered – or not offered.

Numbers choosing home education in the county are rising – with 184 making the choice this year.

Some do it for philosophical reasons, but many opt out disgruntled with what they see as a lack of support, or poor teaching, or because they have argued with the school.

But once out of school life can be tough and pupils who want to sit GCSEs and they may have to pay up to £1,500 per exam and travel to Southampton to sit them.

The county council say there has been a gradual increase in those choosing to be educated at home since 2012 – although many return to secondary school at exam times. More than a hundred have done so this year.

The county council has a team of one full time adviser and four part timers to support home-educated pupils and by their own admission they are permanently stretched.

“Virtual head” for the pupils being home educated, David Alderson, told the county council safeguarding committee that it was an ‘interesting’ task keeping track of all the pupils across the county with no powers to intervene unless there were safeguarding issues.

“The best way is to engage with the parents and carers and offer support wherever it is possible… we cannot enter a home without express permission but we have got around 60 per cent of parents engaging with us,” he said.

The revelation prompted Cllr Bill Pipe to suggest lobbying to change the provision in the Education Act which excludes officers from checking on home educated pupils – a move which the committee agreed.

“It’s a stupid piece of legislation. We should lobby for the provision in the Act to be changed,” he said.

School exclusion officer Sylvie Lord said that nationally the figures for home educated children had gone up by 200 per cent in the last three years – with pupils often ‘persuaded’ out under threat of exclusion or taken out by parents unhappy with what they were being offered. A third group were philosophically committed to the concept of home education and a tiny majority took pupils out because they objected to some aspect of teaching – often sex education.

She said many parents did not realise they could ask for their children to be re-admitted to school at any time. She said the tiny support team offered help and support where it was invited: “but it’s a thorny area to work in…we do our best to engage families as best we can on a budget of £20,000 a year.”

A map before the county council’s safeguarding committee on Thursday revealed that there are pockets of home educated children around the county, including Portland, west of Blandford and along the Dorset-Wiltshire border, north west of Verwood, with a small pocket of home educated pupils in both Dorchester and Christchurch.

Troubles with the standard of senior education on Portland is said to account for some of the recent rise in numbers there, but support from the Methodist church to home educators has also been a factor in persuading people to make the switch.

“For many people it is a positive choice, often made because people have the skills to provide a good home education,” said assistant social services director Claire Shiels.