How to Start Home Education in the UK: A Beginner's Guide

Editor's Note: This post has been updated with the latest UK home education information, our personal experiences, and additional resources to better help families starting their home education journey. Last updated: 12.11.25.

When we first considered home education for our family, we spent hours researching and wondering if it was the right path. While traditional schools work well for many families, we discovered home education could offer the personalised learning experience we wanted for our children. If you're asking the same questions we did - what exactly is home education, and is it right for your family? - this guide shares everything we've learned on our journey.

Understanding Home Education in the UK

In our experience, home education (also called elective home education or EHE) means taking responsibility for our children's learning outside the traditional school system. While we're the primary educators, we've found tutors, online resources, and other home education families incredibly supportive. The beauty for us has been designing learning that fits each child's unique needs and interests.

Why We Chose Home Education

Every family's reasons are different, but here's what drew us to home education:

Personalised Learning: We can tailor education to each child's pace and interests, which has fostered a much deeper love of learning in our household.

Family Values: We love being able to incorporate our family's values and beliefs into daily learning.

Flexible Lifestyle: The ability to adapt our schedule for family trips, activities, or just a spontaneous outdoor learning day has been wonderful.

The Benefits We've Experienced

Personalised Learning: This was our main reason for starting, and it's lived up to our hopes. Each of our three children learns differently, and we can adapt to their individual styles.

Stronger Family Bonds: Learning together has brought us closer as a family. We genuinely cherish the extra time with our children.

Flexible Scheduling: Some days we start later, finish earlier, or take our learning outdoors. This flexibility has been perfect for our family's rhythm.

What We've Learned Along the Way

Time Commitment: Home education requires significant time from the parent leading the education. As a stay-at-home mum, I've woven teaching into our daily routine.

Legal Requirements: Many parents don't realise that in the UK, you don't need permission from schools or local authorities to home educate. In our experience, local authorities have been supportive, with light-touch annual check-ins.

Social Opportunities: We make sure our children have plenty of social interaction through clubs, community groups, and church activities. When they were younger, playgroups were perfect; now our older children enjoy weekly clubs.

Approaches We've Explored

We've experimented with different methods and found that mixing approaches works best for our family:

Structured Learning: We use The National Curriculum in England (the 2020 framework published by Scholastic) as our core guide. This gives us a clear structure and ensures we're covering key subjects, which provides a great sense of security and direction for our planning.

Child-Led Learning: Alongside the structure, we make plenty of time for following our children's interests, which has led to some of our most rewarding and engaging learning moments.

UK Legal Framework - What We Know

From our experience in England and Wales, there's no formal registration process for home education. However, we take seriously our responsibility to provide a suitable full-time education. We found the "Elective home education: guide for parents" on Gov.uk really helpful when we started.

Questions We Asked Ourselves

If you're considering this path, here are the questions that helped us decide:

• What are our educational goals for our children?

• Do we have the time and commitment for home education?

• How will we ensure social opportunities?

• What are our children's learning styles?
  
  

Resources That Helped Us Start

Online Learning Platforms: We've found these UK-based sites incredibly helpful:

• Oak National Academy - Free lessons and resources aligned with the English national curriculum

• Twinkl - Loads of printable resources and lesson ideas (they have a great home education section)

• BBC Bitesize - Brilliant for covering specific topics and subjects in an engaging way
  
  

Online Communities: We've found wonderful support and ideas from UK home education forums and social media groups where parents share their experiences and resources.

Final Thoughts From Our Family

Home education has been a rewarding journey for our family. For us, it's not about recreating school at home, but about creating a learning life that fits our family and helps each child flourish in their own way.

Want to Continue the Conversation?

We'd love to share more about our home education journey and learn from yours too. Connect with us here on the blog or through our community - we're all in this together!

The Uwah Family