UK home education guide

Thinking about home education but not sure you can do it

Updated · 1 min read

This is not written from the middle of home education. It is written from two years of reading about it, before my daughter is old enough for school at all.

My daughter is three. I started researching her education early — and couldn't stop.

What I found first

126,000 kids already out

Home education in England is growing double digits year on year. This isn't a fringe anymore — it's a quiet movement.

What surprised me most

Leaving is the easy part

One letter. No permission, no panel. The legal side that scares everyone turns out to be the simplest step of all.

The letter is ten lines. The fear of the letter lasts months longer than the letter.
True for almost everyone

What nobody had solved

The planning black hole

Every parent I read about hit the same wall — not teaching, planning. What to teach, in what order, every day, for years.

Every account said the same thing in a different way. The teaching was fine. It was the endless deciding that wore people down: which topic, in what order, and whether something important had quietly been missed two terms ago.

So, being a dev dad

I built the missing piece

A full primary curriculum — planned, sequenced and paced — so the parent's job is showing up, not sequencing 4,832 lessons.

Why I'm telling you

You might be two years behind me

If you're where I was — curious, worried, googling at 2am — the research is done. You can start from here.

What two years of reading changed

It did not change the legal picture, because the legal picture is simple and was simple the whole time.

It changed what I thought the hard part was. The hard part is not teaching a seven-year-old to read, or answering a letter from the council, or finding people to see on a Wednesday. It is holding a coherent plan across every subject for years, on top of everything else a family already does.

The planning is the part that does not solve itself

StudyDen plans the year so your evenings stop going on deciding what comes next. Years 1 to 6 are live, sequenced week by week on Oak National Academy’s lessons, with a record the parent can actually show. Music is the one national curriculum subject this plan does not carry. Everything else runs Year 1 to Year 6, apart from critical thinking, which starts in Year 2, and computing and French, which start in Year 3.

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Read next

Home education UK: 7 things worth knowing before you start

From a dad two years deep in the research — before my daughter even starts school.

Your first month of home education: do this, not that

The month that decides whether it sticks — and the mistakes almost everyone makes in it.

Your first week of home education: a day-by-day plan

The week's only job is settling in. Here's a plan you can steal day by day.

The two longer guides

Deregistering from school sets out the law, the timing and a letter you can copy. For the sceptic at your table answers the relative who thinks you are winging it. Neither needs an account.

Written for families in England unless stated otherwise. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own rules, and a child at a special school follows a different process. Nothing here is legal advice.