Nadia Sawalha and her husband have been homeschooling their daughters for six years

The nation was ordered to homeschool their children when the country went into coronavirus lockdown earlier this year.

Yet Nadia Sawalha has revealed she has already been educating her children at home for the past six years, after they struggled with ‘school phobia’ and ‘bullying’ during their time at school.

The Loose Women panellist, 55, revealed that they decided to pull their two daughters, Maddie, 17, and Kiki, 13, out of school when their youngest stopped eating and sleeping because she was so distressed about it.

Nadia and her husband Mark Adderley appeared on Wednesday’s episode of Lorraine, where they discussed their decision to homeschool their daughters.   

Nadia confessed: ‘Parenting teens can be so lonely because everyone stops sharing all the things that go wrong when they become teenagers… Our children haven’t been to school now for five or six years.’

On why they made the decision, she explained: ‘Well, firstly our youngest got to the point really where she had school phobia. It was a nightmare, she wasn’t eating, she wasn’t sleeping. We were in that real cycle of the private school cycle.’

Admitting that they now wish they had never put their kids into private education, Nadia said: ‘We say, don’t we, that our biggest parenting mistake was to send our kids to private school. We regret that hugely.’

Nadia explained that the couple are in no way ‘anti-school’ and believes that it is the right place for ‘most’ children to be.

However she added for her daughters it wasn’t the right choice, saying: ‘But some children struggle with it more and Kiki really was. She was a summer baby, she was a year younger than everybody else, she wasn’t ready. 

‘It was a highly academic school. We were on the cycle of picking them up from school, then extra lessons and extra tutoring and she was only six and a half! We just felt like we were on this treadmill and there was a shadow, not only over her but over the whole family.’

The couple, who tied the knot in 2002, said initially they had only done homeschooling after a private tutor suggested it and they thought it would be a stop-gap until they found a bigger school that suited their daughter better. 

Nadia said: ‘It went so well, so here we are five or six years later.’

She went on: ‘I don’t think I’ve met a wealthy home schooler.’

Mark added: ‘There are a lot of logistics but it’s not just financial logistics.’

Asked if the initial decision had been an easy one with them both on the same page, Nadia confessed: ‘We had another trip to our marriage guidance counsellor, I’m going to be honest Lorraine.’

Mark said at the beginning his ‘head almost exploded’ and that he had ordered white boards, blackboards and text books in a frenzy. But he soon settled into it, adding the key was: ‘Dive into their passions, in everything there is an opportunity to learn.’

Nadia explained their eldest daughter was homeschooled after suffering bullying at school. She concluded: ‘For people to know there is an option if your child is so unhappy at school is a major thing… [but] school is the best thing for most kids.’

Nadia laughed that despite an early worry about her daughters making enough friends, she has relaxed into it and they have lots of strong connections with friends through many different groups.

Speaking about his eldest daughter Maddie’s reaction to lockdown, Mark laughed that she had told him in amazement, ‘They are calling our life quarantine!’, adding she told her sister ‘The world is homeschooled.’