UK home education guide
The 4 stages of deschooling, and how long each takes
Updated · 1 min read
Almost nobody decides to home educate in a single moment. It arrives in stages, and the stage you are stuck in tells you what you actually need next.
Every home-ed family walks the same road to the decision. See where you're standing.
Stage 1
The what-if
A bad school day, a news story, a friend who does it — and the thought lands: 'could we…?' Most people sit here for months.
Stage 2
The 2am research spiral
Legality, socialisation, GCSEs, money — forty tabs deep, every night. This is where most families stall, some for years.
Is it legal? (Yes.) Will they make friends? (Yes.) Can I do this? (Also yes.) …repeat nightly
The spiral is not indecision. It is a sensible parent trying to answer a question the internet answers badly, at the one hour of the day when nobody is asking them for a snack. It ends when the questions run out, not when the worry does.
Stage 3
The quiet decision
No fireworks — one morning the question flips from 'should we?' To 'when?'. The fear doesn't vanish; it just gets smaller than the reason.
Stage 4
The letter
Ten lines to the headteacher. After months of stage 2, the actual leaving takes five minutes.
The stage nobody names
Stage 5: now what?
The letter is sent and Monday is coming. The families who thrive are the ones who arrive at stage 5 with a plan already in hand.
Getting out of stage two
The research spiral ends when open questions turn into a day you can picture. Write down what a Tuesday would look like: what time you would start, which two subjects you would do, what happens after lunch.
If you can picture the day, you are already past stage two. If you cannot, that is the real gap, and it is a planning gap rather than a legal one. The legal part takes ten lines; the planning part is what everybody underestimates.