Home Education

Home education, also known as elective home education, is where parents choose to remove their child from school and take full responsibility for their learning. Any parent can choose to home educate their child, and they do not have to follow the national curriculum, enter them into any exams, or even have a teaching qualification.

It is a simple process to deregister a child from school, and some parents choose to do so if they feel that the school is not meeting the needs of their child. However, home educating a child is a big responsibility that requires a lot of time, patience, and energy. It’s always best to contact your child’s school prior to deregistering them to see if they can offer support and to try and iron out any difficulties that you feel they may be having.

If you still feel that deregistering your child is the best option, then in order to deregister, you would need to do the following:

• If your child does not have an EHCP:
  You would need to write to your child’s school explaining that you intend to deregister them and the date you wish for this to be effective from. The school will then remove the child from the roll and make the local authority aware of the change.

• If your child has an EHCP:
  The rules around deregistering are slightly different, as the local authority needs to be in agreement with the deregistration since they have a legal duty to ensure the plan can be met outside of the school environment. Someone will usually meet with you from your local authority’s home education department to discuss the EHCP and how you intend to meet the objectives in the plan. The local authority will then produce a report that is sent to the SEN team.