Parents must ensure that their children receive suitable full-time education for as long as they are being educated at home.
Parents may choose to home educate their child from a very early age and so the child may not have been previously enrolled at school. They may also elect to home educate at any other stage up to the end of compulsory school age.
Parents do not need to seek the permission of the local authority to educate their children at home (unless their child is registered at a school as a result of a school attendance order).
If a child attends a special school, the school cannot remove the child’s name from the register without the permission of the local authority. The local authority will only be able to give that permission when they are aware that the child or young person will have access to the provision that is laid out in their Education, Health and Care plan. It is the parents responsibility to ensure their child has this access.
Where parents are funding a place for their child at an independent special school, they do not require permission from the local authority to de-register.
Schools must not seek to persuade parents to educate their children at home as a way of avoiding an exclusion or because the child has a poor attendance record.
Parents who choose to educate their children at home assume full financial responsibility for the educational costs, including the cost of any educational resources, sporting activities or part-time alternative provision and including the cost of arranging examinations and paying the examination fees.
In the case of children with an Education, Health & Care plan, please refer to the section below on SEND.
The type of educational activity can be varied and flexible. Home-educating parents are not required to:
- teach the National Curriculum
- have a timetable
- have premises equipped to any particular standard
- set hours during which education will take place
- have any specific qualifications
- make detailed plans in advance
- observe school hours, days or terms
- mark work done by their child
- match school-based, age-specific standards.
A parent does not have to provide a ‘broad and balanced’ curriculum or give formal lessons. They do not have to mark work done by the child, formally assess progress, or set development objectives. They do not have to match school-based, age-specific standards or reproduce school like socialisation or learning opportunities. However, many home-educating families do some of these.
Furthermore, it is likely to be much easier to show that the education provided is suitable if there is breadth of learning and content and the concepts of progression and assessment are incorporated into the child’s learning.
