Home education in England

How many children are home-educated?

DfE data from the autumn 2025 school census suggested that 126,000 children were in elective home education. This represented around 1.5% of children of school age. As this is a relatively new data collection, data quality is rapidly improving, which makes trends over time hard to estimate.

Education is a devolved issue and this briefing covers the position in England only.

How common is elective home education in my area?

The map below shows the estimated proportion of children aged between 5 and 16 who were in elective home education in each local authority on 2 October 2025. By hovering over your local authority, you can see the number of children this relates to also.

Source: Department for Education, Elective Home Education, Autumn term 2025/26

Responsibilities of those home schooling

Under the Education Act 1996, parents and guardians, including those who choose to home-educate their children, are responsible for ensuring that the education provided is efficient, full time and suitable to the child’s age, ability, aptitude and any special educational needs they may have. They are not required to provide a broad and balanced curriculum and do not have to follow the national curriculum. Home-educating parents must be prepared to assume full financial responsibility, including the cost of any public examinations.

The DfE has published departmental guidance for parents on home education.

The role of local authorities

The DfE has also published guidance for local authorities. Local authorities have no formal powers or duty to monitor home education. However, they do have duties to identify children not receiving a suitable education, and to intervene. As part of this, the DfE recommends that authorities should contact people who are home educating children at least once a year to enquire about the suitability of the education being provided.

If it appears that a child is not receiving a suitable education, one way that local authorities can intervene is by issuing a school attendance order. However, the government encourages authorities to address issues informally before serving a notice.

Local authorities also have powers relating to safeguarding, which may be used if it appears that a lack of suitable education is likely to impair a child’s development.

Register of children not in school

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 requires children to be registered with the local authority when they are being educated outside of school some or all of the time, such as through home education.

The relevant measures are not yet in force. A consultation is expected on how the register will work in practice.

Consultation on guidance for home educating children (2023 to 2024)

In October 2023, the Sunak Conservative government published revised draft home education guidance for local authorities and opened a consultation.

The draft guidance recommends that local authorities should operate a voluntary registration scheme for children receiving elective home education. The consultation was open until 18 January 2024. The current government has not yet published a response.