Home education in the UK

Yes, in all four nations. Education is compulsory; school is not. You do not need a qualification, a registered curriculum or anybody's approval to begin.

• England and Wales. Section 7 of the Education Act 1996. The duty sits with the parent, and it is to provide a suitable education, not to replicate a school.
• Scotland. If your child has never attended a state school you may simply begin. If they are enrolled, you need the council's consent to withdraw them, which is granted in the ordinary case.
• Northern Ireland. The duty is comparable, and you write to the school and the Education Authority.

1. If your child is at school, deregister. You give notice in writing and name the day. You are not asking permission. The full walkthrough for England, with a letter you can copy, is at deregistering from school.
2. Work out the year group, then stop worrying about it. Useful for knowing where to start and almost nothing else: what school year is my child in.
3. Deschool before you plan. Most families move too fast into a timetable. A few weeks of reading, cooking, museums and being bored is not lost time.
4. Pick two subjects, not ten. Maths and English daily, everything else weekly, is a realistic first month: your first week, day by day.
5. Start a record on day one. It takes a minute a day at the start and a weekend to reconstruct later.

You are free to teach anything. Most families still use the national curriculum as a spine, because it is a sequence somebody else has already thought about and because it makes returning to school possible if that is ever wanted.

The lessons to teach it are free. Oak National Academy publishes every national curriculum subject from Reception to Year 11, written by subject specialists and funded by the Department for Education. You can see what each year covers, subject by subject, in the UK primary curriculum.

A child does not have to sit in one year group across the board. Year 4 maths and Year 3 writing at the same table is ordinary, and one to one moves faster than a classroom, so gaps close more quietly than people expect.

It can cost nothing. The curriculum, the lessons, the library and every exam specification are free. The real budget question is not resources, it is whichever parent stops working or drops to part time. The full breakdown is at how much does home education cost.

A council may make an informal enquiry about the education a child is receiving. You are not obliged to meet anyone, to let anyone into your home, or to have your child assessed. Most families answer in writing, once a year, with a short account of what is being covered.

A separate change is coming. The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 creates a Children Not in School register, and it is not in force yet: what the register will and will not do. How to answer a letter today is at replying to your local authority.

Home educated children sit GCSEs as private candidates at an exam centre. You arrange and pay for the entry per subject, and centres differ a great deal in what they charge and which boards they take, so ring two or three in the year before.

Colleges, sixth forms, apprenticeships and universities all admit home educated students. The practical work is finding a centre early rather than persuading anybody that home education counts.

It is the first question every relative asks and the one with the least substance behind it. Home educated children are not at home all day: groups, clubs, sports, music, volunteering and mixed-age meet-ups fill an afternoon more easily than a school timetable does.

The honest version, including what genuinely is harder, is in home education and socialisation. If the question is coming from one particular person at your table, for the sceptic is written for exactly that conversation.

Local authorities reported 126,000 children in elective home education in England on the autumn 2025 census day, and 175,900 at some point across 2024/25. The numbers, and the caveat the Department for Education attaches to them, are in how many children are home educated.